LotLinx is taking its inventory marketing tools to the cloud.
LotLinx, a digital marketing company that enables stores to tailor VIN-specific campaigns to drive traffic to certain vehicles in need of online attention, is making its tools available in a cloud-based platform for the first time.
Using LotLinx Turn, dealers can analyze their inventory to see which vehicles are getting the most online hits. The extra insight makes it possible for dealers to direct digital marketing dollars to the vehicles that need it most.
Previously, LotLinx customers would consult with the company’s digital strategists to develop the campaigns, but the Turn platform puts that power in the hands of dealers.
Instead of throwing money at broad digital campaigns to draw consumers to dealer sites, stores can be more granular with their strategies by funneling people to specific vehicles that have been sitting on the lot for a while without getting much online traffic.
LotLinx founder Len Short said it costs $26 per day to keep a car on the lot, so growing stockpiles can eat away at profits. LotLinx, based in Chicago, was founded in 2012.
“What dealers are doing right now is they’re starting with audience and throwing money at it, and then the clicks are trickling down. They tend to bunch up on the most popular cars,” Short told Automotive News.
He added, “They may say, ‘I spent $10,000 on [search engine marketing], and I have 200 cars.’ You would assume that’s $50 per car, but in reality, when they look at it, they find out that five of the cars got $2,000 of SEM. And 80 of the cars got none.”
Dealers have been turning to LotLinx technology to channel money to specific vehicles on their lots for several years. Street Auto Group in Amarillo, Texas, has been working with LotLinx to push cars in a truck-heavy market.
Brad Paschal, Street Auto’s e-commerce director, sometimes uses the VIN View Optimizer from LotLinx to get a breakdown of viewership data for vehicle detail pages.
Paschal then identifies the weaker performers and has LotLinx develop Facebook ads for each vehicle. The ads link consumers directly from their news feeds to the vehicle detail pages on Street Auto’s websites.
Short said some dealers prefer to let LotLinx strategists handle the heavy lifting of their digital campaigns, but others are more advanced and can develop their own plans.
Turn includes a new LotLinx search engine marketing tool that allows dealers to automate the search ad bidding process for used inventory on Google AdWords. The system uses machine-learning to optimize the ad spend.
“Dealers are concerned about two things. One is a growing bubble in inventories in general,” Short said, “and then the need to substantially increase and support their used business, which is where they make their margins.”
