Client Success: Promoting Under-Marketed Inventory at Two Separate Auto Dealerships

The sales goals of auto dealerships are always shifting in response to market changes. When new vehicle inventories are available, salespeople face greater urgency to move used inventory and make room for those incoming vehicles.

Similarly, when consumer demand for new vehicles declines, the push to promote pre-owned vehicles takes on greater importance. No matter what short-term goals these dealerships are facing, an agile marketing strategy can help your business adapt to changing business needs and drive vehicle sales that help achieve your business goals.

Cox Media was recently called in to support two separate dealerships facing the same problem: under-marketed vehicles were spending too much time on the auto lot, impeding each dealership’s ability to circulate in new inventory and keep sales flowing.

Our experts sat down with each business to develop a strategy that would achieve their marketing goals.

The Goal

For auto dealership A, under-marketed vehicles across its new and used inventory were sitting on the dealer lot for an average of 72 days.

Dealership B faced a similar problem: it had identified a collection of popular new and used vehicles that had been poorly marketed and were spending an average of 31 days on the lot—despite these vehicles seeing strong market demand from consumers.

Both dealerships wanted the same solution: a targeting strategy that would promote these under-marketed vehicles to potential buyers, driving sales and opening up new space to bring fresh new and used vehicles onto the lot.

The Solution

In both cases, Cox Media’s team used Advanced Dynamic Auto to identify individual vehicle VINs that were sitting on the lot for too long and were being under-marketed. For dealership A, this targeted approach identified 29 used vehicles that met the criteria of being under-marketed.

For dealership B, 20 new vehicles and 21 used vehicles were identified as being popular models that were under-marketed in the dealership’s prior strategy.

Once these vehicles were identified, they could be incorporated into dynamic advertising campaigns where the individual vehicle photos and information could be dynamically inserted into a paid ad. By concentrating ad resources on building visibility for these individual vehicles, the dealerships were able to address their under-marketing oversight and drum up interest in their idle inventory.

The Results

Each dealership saw excellent results from Cox Media’s strategic approach using Advanced Dynamic Auto. For dealership A, the resulting campaign achieved the following:

• A 39 percent lift in vehicle details pages for vehicles promoted through Dynamic Auto;
• Successful sales for all 29 vehicles promoted through the campaign;
• An average timeline of 24 days between marketing the vehicle to completing its sale;
• An additional 145 views generated for organic and direct page views, reflective of the high-quality audience targeting achieved by the campaign.

For dealership B, the campaign delivered:

• An 18 percent lift in VDP views;
• Successful sales for 27 of the 41 vehicles marketed, achieving a sell-through rate of 66 percent;
• An average timeline of only eight days between the initial marketing and the vehicle’s sale, achieving rapid results for the campaign.

Even when your business is targeting specific marketing outcomes to address your business needs, targeted marketing and dynamic delivery can help you leverage digital tools to achieve these goals.

Looking for help moving inventory at your own dealership? Contact Cox Media today to see how we can help.