How To Make Your Car Dealership Business Thrive (Even In A Saturated Market)
Making your car dealership thrive is always challenging. However, it is particularly difficult in saturated markets. When competition is high, opportunities to make profits are almost always low.
Fortunately, this post is here to offer some assistance. It gives you some ways to make your car dealership thrive, even when rivals are all around you.
Here’s what to do:
Table of Contents
Make Sure Your Customer Service Is Up To Scratch
Make sure your staff is trained in customer service, focusing on building relationships for the long run, not just to close a sale. Understand customer needs and offer tailored solutions. A personalized shopping experience makes customers feel valued.
Also, consider your post-sales support. Great after-sales support, such as maintenance, warranties, and check-ins with customers, could bring a customer back and refer others.
Develop Your Online Presence
Another pro tip is to develop your online presence and make yourself more visible.
For example, you want your website to be user-friendly and mobile-optimized with easy access to main information such as inventory, prices, and financing details. You also want to leverage UGC. Reviews are a good way of building credibility with potential clients.
If you get stuck, consider SEO for car dealers. These specialist services can take care of all the technical aspects of reaching customers online. For example, they can deal with your website backend and engage prospects on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Furthermore, they can share updates, promotions, and educational content related to cars and the buying process, which is invariably handy for people who don’t know much about cars.
Stay Adaptable
It also helps if you can be more adaptable. Staying informed about the latest happenings in the industry is essential if you want to provide customers with the best advice possible.
Currently, dealerships are focusing on the expansion of EVs in the marketplace. Consumers want to know more about electric vehicles, but they don’t always want to drive them off the forecourt because they don’t know enough about them. Being adaptable as a dealership and learning about them can be invaluable.
Create A Loyalty Program
Depending on the types of services you offer, you could also consider creating a loyalty program. These are ideal for customer retention reasons as they encourage repeat purchases.
For example, you could:
- Offer money off future vehicle purchases
- Offer customers discounts on various services
- Provide money off accessories with car-buying loyalty programs
Focus On Inventory Management
Another thing you can try is to better manage your inventory. Focusing on high-volume vehicles will let you stock the cars that people actually want instead of those that are more fringe. By all means, put a statement vehicle at the front of the dealership to get people excited, but make sure your bread and butter are the vehicles people drive every day. Don’t try to do anything too fancy.
If possible, also think about the colors and trims people want. Having these vehicles in stock ready to go increases the likelihood of making an immediate sale.