VIN-Based Marketing is Mission-Critical for Auto Dealers

Dealers have been playing guessing games for decades… but guess what? Digital marketing tools available today let you rely on actual data instead of hunches and soothsaying to set your dealership up for success.

Digital marketing at the vehicle identification number (VIN) level uses advanced machine learning and AI technology to gather up billions of data points and turn them into actionable insights.

So if you don’t just want to sell a car — you want to sell a silver all-wheel drive SUV with a moon roof and a spoiler — read on to learn how VIN-based tools can help you nail down your best strategy.

Real-time data, just for dealers

VIN-based digital marketing solutions access, combine and leverage several types of data to get a full picture of your market outlook. These include:

1. Market data. The tech scrapes website inventory data from 19,000 U.S. auto dealers.
2. Audience data. Precise audience analytics pinpoint exactly what users are shopping for based on their online behavior.
3. Inventory data. We feed in your dealership’s unique inventory and analytics info.

These three steps unlock heaps and heaps of relevant, accurate, up-to-the-minute intelligence for your dealership’s decision makers. But since those folks have enough to do already, we add one more critical ingredient:

4. AI-powered predictive modeling. This technology organizes an ocean’s worth of data in nanoseconds to make it accessible and meaningful.

Audience opportunity > audience engagement

Here’s where VIN-based marketing sets itself apart: Marketing at the VIN level presupposes that while the general goal of digital advertising is to drive online traffic, its actual value depends on two things: the type of traffic, and where exactly that traffic is headed.

A lot of digital marketing tools focus on “audience engagement,” which is a fancy term for any action a user takes online — but most of the time, what they mean is clicks. Problem is, you can get 10,000 clicks on a vehicle and still not sell it.

Engagement isn’t the key to moving inventory — opportunity is. And for auto dealers, opportunity lives at the intersection of active shopper data and your website’s specific, unique vehicle description pages (VDPs). Not your homepage, and not your inventory listings on third-party websites.

How we turn data into action

At Adpearance, we’re using the MarketAI platform to match up exactly what shoppers are looking for with VDPs — individual vehicles in your inventory — that fit their needs.

“We leverage the real-time audience data and we pair it with live inventory and market data at that exact moment to identify the best opportunity a dealer has,” says Hayley Weaver, Sr. Digital Strategist at Adpearance.

Hayley works with auto dealers to help them leverage and interpret MarketAI data. She sends regular email updates, meets with partners over Zoom, and helps customize user dashboards to display the most pertinent information for different areas and key roles.

“A general manager and a marketing director want to look at different angles,” Hayley says. “I could put 100 pages of data in front of everyone… Or, I can break it down in a way that lets each decision maker say ‘OK, here’s how I can change my business. For the next 14 days after the meeting, I can focus my energy and efforts on X, Y and Z.’ There’s a level of proactivity we bring, along with the insights.”

What does the tech reveal?

Like other predictive models, VIN-based AI improves over time as it tracks historical data and trends — a major value-add for ongoing clients.

But even during an initial demo, dealers get access to game-changing information. Here are three things VIN-based technology offers instantly:

1. Deep visibility into what’s happening in the market around you.
2. Your dealership’s performance compared to the competition.
3. Helpful suggestions for addressing areas where you’re deficient.

“We analyze the inventory down to the VIN level, figure out where they can use help, and explain how MarketAI will go about attacking those opportunities for them to land actionable traffic on their VDPs,” Hayley says. These insights can help dealers with things like allocating new inventory, and directly impact how much they’re paying in interest for vehicles that have been sitting on the dealership lot or in the showroom.

“We make sure you’re putting your best foot forward, and that’s also what the AI is going to do all day, every day: find your opportunities and help you increase your turn rate and market share.”

Want to find your opportunities?

Schedule a free demo with an Adpearance expert to take our powerful VIN-based tech for a spin.

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