A neighbor recently asked on our neighborhood email group, “I’m ready to sell an extra car I no longer need. Should I go to CarMax or Carvana?”
The neighbor didn’t mention any local dealerships as an option. Why? How? What?
The millions in advertising that CarMax and Carvana spend to build brand awareness around selling your car to them freakin’ works. When someone is ready to sell their car, they are top of mind.
When someone is ready to sell their car, do you want to be competing with those two at the very last moment the people are making up their minds?
Wouldn’t it be better to have your dealership be top-of-mind before that decision making process even begins? Of course it would, but how?
If you’ve got the ad budget to promote your desire to buy cars or your buying center, by all means, spend the ad budget. That definitely works, and it’s your most expensive option, but it’s going to be really hard to outspend CarMax and Carvana.
You can email and snail mail your customers every month asking them to trade-in. That message is going to get stale very fast and increase your unsubscribe rate or toss-in-trash-rate.
Or you can provide them something of value every month, like the value of their car, and how it is changing over time. Carvana does this with Value Tracker, and you can do this yourself manually, or you can do it with our Value Watch product.
Every single month of every year, they get an email from your dealership, with their car, truck, SUV, or minivan’s value, building that top-of-funnel brand awareness and ultimately customer loyalty.
When they’re finally ready to trade-in or sell, you’re not having to compete with the national chains and every other dealer in your market, they’re coming to you.
What’s the best way to build brand loyalty for car dealerships?
Providing something of value to customers is an excellent way to build brand loyalty. An excellent approach is to send them the value of their car each month, and how it changes over time. TradePending’s Value Watch is the best tool to build brand loyalty for dealerships.
