In today’s market car dealers marketing output will almost certainly concentrate on internet advertising, with images and detailed descriptions second only to ensuring the stock is correctly price pointed.
As measuring the data becomes more scientific, car dealers are increasingly finding themselves able to be more specific in targeting the needs of their potential buyers.
Interestingly in the battle for pricing supremacy the field of operations for used cars is becoming a little blurred.
One sales manager we spoke to recently discovered that because of the way customers are asked to build their search criteria when looking for a suitable used car online, they will often concentrate on inputting pricing bands which streamline their search. The relative inflexibility of this approach means that if a car falls below that of the criteria entered in terms of price it will obviously be omitted by the database.
These cars, believe it or not, end up not getting enough visits because they are too cheap!
The incongruity is that dealers are not necessarily pricing their stock in a more individual way and are using a one size fits all approach. This may mean car dealers potentially missing out on opportunities and customers missing out on buying the cars they actually want.
This particular sales manager has now decided to take a much more balanced approach to pricing his stock and whilst understanding that pricing the car competitively (well duh!) is essential there still needs some flexibility in looking at how that price sits in the wider market, and it is not always cheapest that’s best.
