The holiday season can be a truly great time for everyone, where consumers can take advantage of great holiday deals and many businesses have a boom in sales due to the Christmas shopping season. Unfortunately not all industries such as auto workers are so fortunate, as sales tend to slow down around the holiday season. Thankfully, there are workarounds to this, as auto workers can implement a few strategies for increasing sales during the holiday season; here are five of them!
Learn How to Leverage Your Inventory
Regardless of how great of marketing tactics you may implement to get customers in the door, you simply can’t out-market a bad lot. During this time of the year, small compact cars with few safety features and below-average handling won’t sell well during the snowiest season of the year. Four-wheel-drive vehicles such as SUVs and trucks are much more likely to attract buyers.
But with this said, there are other models that are great to have around that you may not initially think of. Convertibles and sports cars are great to have on the lot, if they are strategically priced; because of the lower demand during this time of the year, a good deal is necessary to attract customers.
If you happen to have a lot of leftover models from last year, this is the perfect time to promote them at a discounted price, as consumers tend to flock to the best deal around.
Offer Winter Sales or Promotions
The Winter months offer plenty of opportunities for sales and promotions, thanks to the various holidays at this time of the year. Cyber Week, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Years are all great opportunities for holding dealership sales. Again, utilize your old inventory. By pricing and advertising old models at a good price, you should be able to sell off old models, make room for newer inventory, and make a decent profit in the process.
Give Your Online Marketing Strategy a Tune Up
A solid marketing strategy for your car dealership is absolutely crucial in order to get noticed online; regardless of your industry, you should always have a digital marketing strategy in place. By this, we mean a website, social media accounts, and regular updates on both are necessary. First and foremost, if your auto business doesn’t have a proper website yet, stop reading this article and get on that immediately. If you know little about website creation, then we consider hiring a freelancing expert.
Additionally, make sure that your business has social media presence. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even TikTok are essential platforms for building brand trust, and it only takes mere minutes to create accounts on said websites. Additionally, make sure that these accounts are dead; you must regularly utilize them to notify your followers of upcoming sales events, promotions, and new inventory arrivals. If you’re worried that you simply won’t have enough time to invest into regularly updating these accounts with new posts and updates, then try using social media management software, such as HootSuite.
Possessing a strong social media presence and a well-optimized business website will put you ahead of your competition, and more likely to get noticed during the slower months of the year.
Increase Your Consumer Base with Online Sales
One negative aspect of selling cars during the holiday season is that there just aren’t as many consumers currently looking for vehicles at this time; folks are either on vacation, saving up their hard-earned cash, or are simply waiting to buy until the warmer months of the year. Regardless of the reason, there aren’t enough people interested in buying cars in your area.
But fret not, because there’s a solution to this problem. By widening your scope of sales, you can sell to a larger consumer base and more easily sell off your old inventory. This of course can be done by offering online car sales. Online car sales have become much more popular in recent years, with the car shortages in the last couple of years making it somewhat of a necessity. So if you’re looking to sell more cars this holiday season, one no-brainer is selling cars to consumers outside of your local area; it’s great for both the consumer and your business.
Utilize the Best Software
In order to succeed in this industry, you’ve got to invest in the very best software available to you. And a major plus that comes with the slower Winter months is that it gives your business time to try out and transition over to newer software.
This means you’ll finally have time to upgrade from your old DMS that you’ve been using for the last eight years to something more modern, as well as finally pulling the trigger on that CRM software that you’ve been procrastinating on purchasing. And of course, you should make the necessary upgrade to both an advanced TMS (transportation management software) and load board in order to transport your loads.
Not all TMS systems and load boards are made equal, with some of them offering key features that are absent in many others. Super Dispatch is an all-in-one platform that packs in both an advanced load board, which allow dealers to link up and do business with car haulers in their area, and a Shipper TMS that gives you the ability to track your loads via GPS, manage all of your car haulers and loads within one easy tool, receive BOLs from Carriers, and much more.
If you’ve recently jumped into the world of online car sales, then you’ll definitely find great value with Super Dispatch. If this sounds like something that your business would benefit from, then consider requesting a demo today!
