The Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) of any vehicle on the road has many data points and information built in that marketers can take advantage of.
Car dealerships no longer have to guess at their inventory or simply sell cars; they can sell specific models because that’s exactly what customers are looking for. When the VIN matches up with what a customer is searching for, the right marketing team can link the inventory directly to shoppers, allowing them to find the exact vehicle they want. These ultra-specific ads give shoppers a more unique, engaged, and personalized experience than they could ever expect to have with a dealership.
Here are some great ways to use VIN-level ads to link your shoppers with your inventory directly.
A deep dive into the data
Dealers have a unique perspective regarding car sales, and that means understanding what their customers are looking for when they visit. There are several types of data that give you a full market outlook, giving you a deeper look at what your customers are searching for based on VINs that are sold. These outlooks include:
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- Market data – The data collected comes from website inventory data from 19,000 automotive dealers in the United States
- Audience data – Analytics that pinpoint audience precision to show exactly what many users are searching for when they begin their online search for a vehicle
- Inventory data – This is the dealership inventory information on your lot, including what you expect to arrive in the next shipments
- AI-powered predictive modeling – Using AI tools, the system can predict which vehicles your customers are looking for and what they might buy from you
Increased audience engagement with a personal touch
VIN-level ads allow you to market directly to customers looking for vehicles that would match specific VINs. This ensures you can target customers performing online searches for specific models and with certain features. Instead of focusing on a wider range of audience engagement, you can target specific customers and let them know how many vehicles matching their search are at your dealership location at that specific time. Engagement with your customers is the key to moving your inventory, and you have that opportunity when you focus on exactly what they are looking for.
Why is this advertising better?
It seems pretty obvious that targeting customers directly with ads that match VINs are easily the right choice, but there are two approaches to advertising, categorical and VIN-level.
Categorical advertising promotes the broad vehicle range and model types. This means advertising SUVs, trucks, or cars, and not items that are nearly as specific as what you can with other marketing efforts. This means you create marketing campaigns around make and model, pushing customers toward your general inventory of that vehicle type. This means all SUVs are basically the same, despite that not being the case at all.
VIN-level advertising promotes individual vehicles based on their unique qualities. Instead of marketing specific categories, such as SUVs, a targeted marketing campaign is created for each vehicle on the lot. This can mean adding the color of the vehicle, interior features, the size of the wheels, etc. With every vehicle being advertised, it can be more time-consuming to create VIN-level ads that target customers searching for specific vehicle features.
Categorical marketing limits your sales potential
The traditional marketing efforts, which fall into the Categorical side of the conversation, allow you to promote general messaging to drive traffic to your general inventory page. This allows customers to see vehicles that are similar to each other on your pages. This approach seems more cost-effective, but it makes it more difficult to sell your mid-level vehicles that are much different from the most popular cars on your lot. The most popular models you have available are going to sell, no matter what you do. This means you need to focus on the other vehicles you’ve got in your inventory.
Maximize every vehicle’s potential with VIN-level ads
By promoting specific vehicles, these models receive more visibility than they would without the support of this type of advertising. VIN-level ads allow vehicle ads to appear for users searching for features and qualities, including pricing, features, color, and local demand for more models on your lot. Using this type of advertising, you push the less popular models and allow them to be much more visible than they already are.
The future of advertising
Instead of taking a broad-strokes approach to advertising, you can create a much more focused approach using VIN-level ads that will give your inventory the push it needs to allow slower-moving vehicles to be pushed toward customers searching for what those vehicles have to offer. This type of advertising could be a game-changer for many dealerships.
