Provided by ARI

Is your sales lot empty? You can still drive shoppers to your dealership. Providing customers with a way to preorder inventory can help turn a “no” into a “not yet.”

Maintaining a customer base can be difficult when inventory is scarce, and it can raise concerns about the state of your brand when your sales lot fills up again. ARI is supporting dealers through inventory slumps by providing expertise on preorders.

Here are some best practices you can follow to provide preorder options:

Use Prominent Website Design
If you’re taking pre-orders for “coming soon” inventory, make sure your website visitors are aware as soon as they land on your site. Shoppers who are looking to purchase inventory that’s currently out of stock or on back order may not realize preordering is an option if it’s hidden within your navigation menu or deep inside a content page. To ensure your online preorder success, take advantage of prominent website real estate such as above-the-fold website banners, prominent call-to-action buttons, and pop-up messaging to promote preorders.

Create Website Banners
Your website should be your sales hub, which means it needs to reflect your current sales strategies. Website banners provide organic marketing to drive visitors to your preorder campaign. Use high-quality visuals and concise messaging and place banners above the fold of your website to increase awareness.

Put Your Lead Forms to a New Use
Lead forms are an underutilized resource that already lives on your website. ARI has seen our website lead forms drive up to 10% more leads for our dealers. Lead forms are available in two different formats:

• Traditional: These are the stationary lead forms that reside on primary webpages, such as home page, contact and inventory listings. Adjust the lead form message to encourage leads to inquire about preorders and submit their contact information.
Pop-ups: Pop-up lead forms can appear in the lower corner of your website as soon as a visitor clicks on your page. This lets shoppers submit a preorder to your dealership within seconds of arriving on your website.

Update Your Inventory Listings
You may be hesitant to feature inventory that’s not currently available to shoppers. Instead of removing out-of-stock inventory from your website, update the listings that are available for preorder – including adding messaging like “Coming Soon – Pre-Order Today!” If you haven’t already, integrate your dealer management system (DMS) with your website to provide shoppers with your most current and accurate inventory listings.

Keep Track of All Website Visitors
Use your website’s analytics to determine how much traffic interacts with your preorder pages and which units receive the most attention. By integrating your customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can use a single platform to track each individual lead engagement and identify which website visitors are interested in pre-orders and ready to make a purchase.

Successful website preorder campaigns require preparation and follow-through to convert buyer interest into sales. By creating a comprehensive marketing campaign, you can reach a serious volume of potential buyers and keep potential leads engaged with your dealership through inventory shortages. With consistent follow-up to all customer inquiries and inventory orders, you can build an even larger customer base than you had before. When your lots are full again, your list of buyers will be too!