Credit Based Car Buyers

The more I read about negative equity the more apparent it is just how large the pool of vehicle buyers are completely under water in their auto loans. The more dealerships I visit, discussions are more widespread about incorporating hooks aimed at credit into both our traditional and digital advertising. While the economic outlook for 2017 looks very positive, dealers have a real need to understand the credit mix of today’s shopper and what it will take to turn these shoppers into buyers.

When crafting a message, it is not just important to focus credit aimed ads towards used cars but equally as important to base your offers toward new car buyers. Especially during the months of January and February which many dealers refer to as “sluggish”. The dealers who are very good at mining poor credit and getting deals put together are the ones who come out of the gate in a new year with a better start.

Many people think that the key to attracting bad credit buyers is better done through direct mail, however, digital and traditional media can be equally as effective in creating credit traffic. Digital executions range from paid search activity targeting auto loan approval, display ads, video pre-roll and email marketing. Traditional media components work as long as the message sells the fact that you can get people bought with less than perfect credit. Traditional media used to be more dependent on the time and station that a credit message was targeted. Today with the growing sector that has bad credit, you are less handcuffed to run only on programming that was historically thought as credit based programming.

In preparing for the future you have to not only know the best way to target your buyers – you have to know what they will look like from a credit standpoint.