As a dealer, you know the power of listing your inventory online. You know it’s a great way to drive more potential buyers to your physical store. In fact, according to Think with Google, as much as 46% of shoppers look at inventory online before visiting a brick-and-mortar store. But do you know how to make your online inventory really stand out?
This blog post will provide you with actionable strategies to help your inventory listings thrive, not just survive online. It will show you how to showcase and market your inventory to more shoppers. Specifically, you will learn:
- The Importance of Active Inventory Marketing
- Common Mistakes Dealers Make with Online Inventory
- Strategies to Generate Awareness and Drive Traffic to Your Listings
The Importance of Active Inventory Marketing
With so much competition for online customers, listing your inventory on your website isn’t always enough to generate interest in your offerings. You have to be proactive in your approach to both listing your inventory and letting your audience know what you offer and why they should shop at your dealership.
Active inventory marketing, then, is the process of displaying AND advertising your inventory listings on your website and third-party marketplaces. This dual-focused approach creates a comprehensive online presence that keeps customers flowing through your online and in-store business.
Active inventory marketing can set your dealership apart from other businesses that are content to simply display their listings, without going the extra mile to market them. This passive approach to inventory marketing has one major fault—it relies on shoppers to do all the work to find your inventory.
Active inventory marketing, on the other hand, gives you a real competitive advantage by proactively putting your listings in front of more potential buyers. Your marketing does the heavy-lifting by bringing in more customers, instead of waiting for customers to come to you.
More specifically, active inventory marketing can help your dealership increase sales substantially by giving your potential customers what they’re looking for. This also helps you to optimize inventory levels and better forecast demand.
Common Mistakes Dealers Make with Online Inventory
Like most marketing strategies, not everything you do to promote your inventory will be effective. In fact, some strategies can result in a net negative for your dealership and drive customers away from your inventory. Consider the following mistakes dealers make when promoting online inventory.
- Inventory Updates: Failing to update your listings often can give users the wrong impression of your dealership and your inventory. This includes using poor-quality images, lackluster product deceptions, and showcasing previously sold inventory. These faux pas give shoppers the wrong impression of your listings and contribute to a poor brand image for your dealership.
- Searchability: Many dealers also tend to neglect the “searchability” of their inventory. Good product descriptions with powerful keywords are paramount, but many dealers fail to pay attention to the tools and the tactics that drive traffic to inventory listings.
- Sharing Inventory: Many dealers neglect to share their inventory on other available channels, such as social media. This key marketing omission automatically limits the reach of inventory and results in missed opportunities and reduced customer interest.
Strategies to Generate Awareness and Drive Traffic to Your Listings
There are several ways you can increase awareness of your listings and leverage them to drive more traffic to your site and your store.
SEO Strategies
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a highly effective marketing strategy that involves making small, sometimes subtle improvements to your website (in this case, your inventory pages) to increase the visibility of your listings on search engines.
At first glance, this might seem like a form of passive inventory marketing. After all, SEO by definition, relies on shoppers to search and select the inventory they want to see. But behind the scenes, your marketing is working hard to help potential customers view your inventory first, before they visit your competitors’ sites.
You can utilize SEO to take control of your search rankings by implementing the following strategies:
- Use Inventory Keywords: By Utilizing relevant keywords in product titles and descriptions, you can increase the chances that your inventory will appear at the top of the search results pages. This includes listing keywords that are relevant to the specific inventory you’re trying to showcase. You can even use location-specific keywords in your inventory page content, including in headlines and subheads.
- Incorporate Backlinks: Implementing a broader backlink strategy will bring greater credibility to your website and make it more likely that search engines will return your inventory pages. This involves working with websites, directories, and even influencer blogs and social media accounts to link to your pages. This adds authority to your website in the all-seeing eyes of online search engines.
- Study Analytics Data: Your SEO strategy is only as good as your ability to track trends and make adjustments when necessary. You can utilize Google Analytics data to track website traffic and monitor the performance of your campaigns, then make adjustments to your SEO strategies as needed. Consistently monitoring analytics allows you to always stay on top of the search results pages.
SEM Strategies
Search engine optimization can take your dealership to the top of the search engine results pages, but with so many factors in play and so much competition for keywords and customers, it’s never a guarantee. Search engine marketing (SEM) uses paid ads that guarantee that your inventory will appear at the top of the search results pages.
In combination with SEO, SEM can increase the visibility of your inventory online and drive more traffic to your inventory pages. Like SEO, these ads include keywords that attract online traffic and send users directly to your website’s inventory—no steps in between.
If you’re trying to promote specific inventory, you can use both search (text-based) ads and display (visual) ads that focus your ad content on the exact inventory you want to sell, right on the search results pages.
The following SEM strategies can help you promote and sell more inventory:
- Use Long-tail Keywords: Online shoppers tend to use sentences when searching online. Using long-tail keywords made up of three to five keywords linked together allows your SEM strategy to capture searches for specific inventory items you want to sell. Long-tail keywords also tend to have lower search competition, so you can ensure that your SEM ads show up for the right shoppers.
- Implement Negative Keywords: Particularly important for targeting and selling online inventory, negative keywords allow you to choose the words that don’t fit your products’ description. These may include a brand, make, or model you don’t sell or words like “pre-owned” or “used” that don’t fit the description of your items.
Automated Email Marketing Strategies
An automated email strategy tracks your leads online, learns about their preferences, and sends them automated emails designed to nurture them through the buying process—one email at a time.
If you’re trying to promote and sell your inventory, automated emails can help you send personalized emails to individual leads, promoting specific inventory that will match what they’re looking for. It’s a great way to connect interested, ready-to-buy customers with your inventory.
You can use automated email marketing to sell your inventory using the following strategies:
- Sales and Promotions: If you’ve discounted certain inventory items, automated emails can send interested customers deals that may push them toward a purchase.
- Inventory Invitations: If you know a certain lead has interest in a specific inventory item based on their previous searches, you can send them an automated email inviting them to revisit pages and view items.
- Featured Inventory: Got new inventory in your store that you want to promote? Send out automated emails to potential customers that match the inventory they’re interested in viewing.
- Trade-Ins: After your existing customers have owned their items, units, or equipment for a specified amount of time, you can send out automated emails promoting your trade-in offers. Remind them about how they can get top dollar for a trade-in, while also promoting your existing inventory.
- Parts and Service: Upkeep is a part of owning a vehicle or unit. Send out automated emails with service offers or discounts of parts to keep customers coming back.
- Price Drops and Restock Alerts: If you know your customers are interested in specific inventory, send them automated emails every time you get a restock or issue a price drop. Personalized emails can help you sell your inventory faster.
Targeted Display Advertising Strategies
Similar to automated emails, a targeted display ad strategy can serve shoppers ads featuring your inventory, based on their specific interest. When your leads go online, they will see ads that are tailored to their interests, even when visiting other sites.
This can be an extremely effective way to continue to promote your inventory and keep track of customers after they visit your site. Use the following strategies to target the right audience with your display advertising.
- Website Retargeting: Follow shoppers around online after they’ve visited your website to keep your inventory top of mind.
- Location Targeting: Target shoppers in a geographic area around your dealership (or your competitors’ dealerships) to send targeted ads to potential customers who have visited specific locations.
- Behavioral Targeting: Even if a potential customer has never visited your dealership or your website, you can target them and send them ads about your inventory based on their browsing behavior and online searches.
Social Media Strategies
There are more than 5 billion social media users around the world. That’s more than 60 percent of the entire world’s population, according to a report from Global Social Media Statistics. What’s more, 410,000 new social media users are added every day and each user averages just less than two and a half hours of social media use every day, according to research from the University of Maine. It goes without saying that social media can be an effective way to find potential customers and showcase your inventory.
When it comes to advertising your inventory, you can use platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to bring in interested buyers. In fact, according to HubSpot, 41 percent of consumers discover new products through social media. You just have to implement the right strategies on the right social channels for your intended audience.
- Platforms: Choose the platforms that your audience is most likely to spend their time and find the right mix of social channels that allow you to showcase your inventory most effectively. For example, Instagram is a particularly effective platform for showing off visuals of your inventory.
- Social Posts: You can generate a following on your own social media channels and showcase your inventory to your entire audience. With the right content and visuals, your posts have the potential to reach your followers and your followers’ followers as well.
- Paid Social Ads: Like targeted ads, you can leverage the power of social media to segment your audience and target them with personalized inventory ads that appeal to their specific interests.
Website User Experience Strategies
You don’t always have to think outside the box to bring in new customers. Your website is one of your best tools for showcasing your inventory and attracting new customers. You just have to choose the right website partner, create the right content, and employ the right user experience to make it effective.
- Mobile Friendly: Make your website mobile friendly. As much as 63 percent of website searches are done on a mobile device, according to Statista. That means your website needs to be responsive and easy to navigate and follow for people on their phones.
- Personalized Experience: You can use personalized inventory pop-ups, including recently viewed inventory, to bring organically returning visitors back to their previous listings. This makes it easy for potential customers to pick up right where they left off.
- Inventory Merchandising: Use high-quality photos on your listings to help potential buyers see themselves with your inventory. You can also employ search filters, categorization and recommendation engines to ensure that each shopper finds exactly what they’re looking for.
- Data Analytics: Review your website data often to see who is visiting your site, how long they are staying on your inventory pages, and better understand the behavior of your audience. This can help you make changes to your website design and optimize your listings to bring in more buyers and boost inventory sales.
Ensuring Your Inventory Thrives
In an age of active online shopping and engagement, listing your inventory on your website is no longer enough. You have to be proactive in capturing the attention of potential customers. Apply the strategies (and avoid the marketing mistakes) in this article to get the most out of your listings so you can thrive, not merely survive, in an increasingly competitive online marketplace.