“If You Can’t Beat ‘Em – Join ‘Em”

Automotive Internet Advertising

A great used car dealer and I were together today, I say great because I know very few individual dealers who can sell over 5600 used cars a year between two single point dealerships.  The conversation was directed at a competing dealer who had  upped their package on AutoTrader and was now stealing business from us in the used category. The dealer who was biting at the ankles of this used car giant had discovered a small niche. They had taken not just their current inventory but also all cars that they had sold in the last 60 days and posted these cars to AutoTrader. It is truly amazing how many used car leads you can get if you have 843 cars posted to a site like AutoTrader and Cars.com.

We put in phone calls to our rep and inquires toAutoTrader about the legality of this and only to find out there is not a whole lot they can do to police the sold and unsold vehicles that a dealer wants to post. We decided if we couldn’t beat ‘em to join ‘em.

It’s something to consider if you want to increase used car sales due to shrinking new car volume.