As the new year gets underway, many dealers are planning for a new riding season coming soon with events, offers, new inventory sales and more. But every day you turn the lights on in your dealership you have money tied up in inventory sitting on the floor you need to move. What are you doing to get that inventory in front of as many customers as possible?
Driving foot traffic in the winter can be harder than convincing your crazy brother in law he voted for the wrong person last November. This is where you let technology do the work for you.
I’ve said in blog after blog your customers are on their phones. You are no doubt seeing this more and more through your website traffic and social media. Now it’s time to use the mobile channel for even more customer engagement.
There are a few tools out that are designed specifically for your industry to optimize your inventory in a mobile-friendly format and offer that inventory in places where your customers are already browsing. Don’t make them come to you.You must go to them.
Leverage that mobile club you’ve built by texting them a link to your inventory that can be viewed on their phone. Or deep link to a specific unit you want to move and “Feature” it for a quick sale.
Do you currently have your inventory available to shop on these platforms: YouTube? eBay? Craigslist? Twitter? Facebook? If your answer is NO to any or all of these you are missing a HUGE opportunity. Your customers are on these sites daily. More importantly they are on these sites on their phone.
Mobile traffic average for each platform:
- YouTube - over 50%
- Twitter - Over 78%
- Facebook - Over 79%
- eBay - 59%
- Craigslist - Almost 70%
All of the above sites have contributed to the demise of the traditional newspaper classifieds. And it’s unlikely you still list your inventory in your local paper. But it’s not easy for a dealer to follow those eyeballs from newspapers to digital sometimes. You can’t find the shoppers online as easily as you once could. That’s where finding a partner to help will make a world of difference.
In some cases an investment of less than $500 a month can get you on ALL of these sites with zero effort on your part. Have your inventory converted to videos optimized for YouTube viewable on a mobile phone. Did you know the engagement with mobile videos dominates their desktop counterpart. And in a previous blog I pointed out that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet. Don’t you want your customers to see YOU when they search?
You invest a great deal of time and resources to social media so why don’t you have your inventory alongside all your posts and pics. Your inventory is CONTENT. Customers may not be shopping today for a new side by side or a new motorcycle but tomorrow they may be. Or maybe they see something they just can’t pass up. They can easily pass it up though if they never see it.
How much do you invest each month in SEO or ad services? $1000? $2000? And why do you do that? To get customers to see your inventory. So investing in ways to disseminate your inventory on multiple platforms where your buying audience already is can be just as important. And you’re much more likely to convert customers to buyers if it’s more of an organic, natural process versus an ad they must click on.
Until someone comes up with the magic formula where you can spend NO money advertising and have all the customers you can handle you must continue to find solutions to keep the doors open. And having a budget-conscious mindset makes it all the more difficult to know what to trust and invest in. The bottom line should be trust your customers. You know what they are already viewing on your site and online. Start there then invest prudently in the extra stuff later on.
