There’s never been a better time to optimize and maximize vehicle inventory sourcing. We’ve pulled the ideas below from our webinar “Maximizing Trade for Maximum Inventory Sourcing“, which you can still watch on-demand.
The Foundations of Vehicle Inventory Sourcing with Trade
The cornerstone of maximizing your trade-in leads is giving your consumer a multitude of ways and locations to access the tool. We recommend that you have our tool sitting your homepage close to the fold, on your SRP, VDP, and a custom landing page.
Sometimes we’ll have a customer request to remove one of the placements, which under most circumstances is a terrible idea. Our support team always reviews and shares back that customer’s analytics before making that change. Something as seemingly routine as dropping the placement from the SRP can result in a 30-40% drop in trade-in leads!
Our data also shows that 75% of leads come from mobile. If you haven’t spot-checked your website on a mobile device lately, do it now and make sure it looks great.
Placements:
- Homepage
- SRP
- VDP
- Your own custom “value your trade” landing page
- Floating Button
The floating button Trade integration keeps the trade-in option always on screen. The only time we recommend not using it is when your screen already has 3 floating tools on it already. The screen is already cluttered and user experience will suffer as well as possible conversions.
Finally, make sure to have links to your “value your trade” landing page in all of your sub-menus – New, Used, Finance, etc.
Google Analytics:
We make it easy to integrate all of our data in Google Analytics. Contact Support to help walk you through the steps to integrate Trade Google Analytics. Every lead that drops into your CRM can be traceable to a specific campaign, you can track the campaigns, medium, and source by using UTM codes. These codes can be built using the Google URL builder. Not only will this help you determine where your lead came from for the follow-up touch, but it will also help you spend your money more effectively in the future.
Need help setting up your Google Analytics? Email Support.
Beware Conflicting Numbers
Do your values sync across all of your website tools? When there are multiple ways, from multiple tools, to value a trade on your website, you need these numbers to match to keep the consumer happy. TradePending integrates with all the companies pictured here, and many more.
Marketing Campaign Channels
Marketing is usually an outward looking endeavor, but some of the best leads can be found in your CRM. Mine customers that have reached 12-60 months of vehicle ownership and reignite the conversation a request to value their trade-in.
Many of our dealers routinely see 50-75 inbound leads per email campaign. Of course, that amount depends upon the number of customers you can reach and the quality of the messaging. Either way you need to make sure that your team is aware of the campaign details so that they’re ready to respond to leads quickly.
Examples of Campaign Channels:
- Email newsletters
- Social media post to landing page
- Google My Business
Each of these style of campaigns have guidelines that should be followed. For example, make sure that the call-to-action button points to the Value Your Trade page on your website. If you link anywhere else, you will experience a drop-off in engagement, affecting your lead generation and conversions.
Tip: Pin your trade-in posts on social media to remain up top and visible.
Positioning & Messaging
We’ve outlined a few strategies around different messaging options when crafting the copy of your campaigns.
The Tried and True “We Want Your Car & Time to Upgrade”
These types of campaigns tend to work well. Because they are the most common type of “value your trade” campaign, the messaging can quickly become stale if used to frequently.
The Upfront: Supply Chain Challenges
We have seen many dealers test this upfront, honest approach and it is driving considerable lead results for vehicle inventory sourcing. Consumers can hear the news about a chip shortage or see the lots of local dealers becoming sparse and feel the reality of the situation. Track your campaign and verify these results with data of your own.
The Community Focused
This approach will make a consumer feel better about a purchase. Not only are they in a new car, but they’re also getting into that new car by helping out the local community. Julie Kimes from O’Daniel Automotive Group tried this campaign for a food drive to great success on two fronts: helping the community and free media. Bring in X amount of cans, and receive Y dollars towards your new vehicle.
Special Incentives & Promotion
With the competitive inventory sourcing that’s going on currently, a little extra cash on top helps the consumer to choose you.
Off the Wall Attention Getters
Be bold, be silly, be unexpected, and get noticed. 
Sourcing From Other Sources
Buying Center Website
An online buying center has many benefits that a typical dealership just cannot compete with.
- The market area is virtually limitless
- No OEM branding to dissuade brand loyal customers
- Many easy to remember domains are available
- Exclusively dedicated to vehicle inventory sourcing
Street Purchasing
Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, and other public driven forums are fast becoming another financially feasible way to source vehicles. We’ve seen dealerships handle this with part-time workers and teams of one up to teams of 4. Companies like Vettx and Vehicle Acquisition Network help streamline the process of proactive street purchasing.
Service Lane
When consumers are servicing their vehicles with you, there are several touch points where you can interest them in a possible vehicle trade, and boost your chances of vehicle inventory sourcing.
- Including a Trade Market Report with the completed work order
- Dedicated ‘Value Your Trade’ kiosk in the customer lounge
- WiFi hotspot log-in with optional link to value their vehicle.
- Service desk QR Code campaign
We’ve only briefly touched on each topic here. If you’re looking for more detail, check our previous webinar on the same topic.
Are you looking for more ideas and help with sourcing inventory? Download our “Ultimate Checklist for Sourcing Pre-Owned Inventory“.