Elevating Your Online Merchandising to Move Aged Inventory

Every car dealership faces the inevitable challenge of aged inventory. You know the drill: the flooring costs pile up, valuable capital is tied down, and that once-promising vehicle just sits, collecting dust and depreciating in value. It’s a common pain point, and the pressure to move these vehicles can feel immense.

But what if the solution to turning that slow-moving stock into profit isn’t just about price drops or sending it back to auction? What if the key lies in how that vehicle is presented to potential buyers across the online marketplace?

Aged inventory often suffers from outdated photos and stale descriptions, diminishing its appeal on third-party sales channels (CarGurus, AutoTrader, Edmunds, etc). Re-merchandising, through refreshed photos and updated geo-targeted vehicle descriptions, can breathe new life into these vehicles, making them attractive to the right buyer and unlocking their sales potential.

In this blog post, we’ll break down the benefits of re-merchandising your aged vehicles to help move them off your lot once and for all.

When faced with stubborn aged inventory, many dealerships instinctively turn to familiar strategies: aggressive price drops, costly paid advertising campaigns, or relentless lead mining. While these tactics have their place, they often come with significant time investments and can drive up your advertising cost per car. The reality is, the longer a vehicle sits on your lot, the more it costs your dealership in flooring fees and depreciation.

The Power of a Digital Facelift

There’s a smarter, more foundational starting point: a strategic digital facelift for your aged vehicles. Re-merchandising is far more than just a quick wash and vacuum. It’s about transforming how your aged inventory is presented online, giving it a fresh start in the digital marketplace. This process provides listing services with crucial new metadata to crawl, effectively restarting the engagement cycle for a particular vehicle.

Re-Engaging Buyers with Fresh Data

A refreshed listing is a powerful way to re-engage potential customers who may have previously viewed that vehicle. For instance, platforms like CarGurus actively track user browsing activity and can notify interested customers of updates or changes to vehicles they’ve shown interest in, bringing them back to your refreshed listing.

While adjusting the price can certainly influence a sale, a comprehensive re-merchandising effort—specifically re-shooting the photos and tweaking or completely rewriting the descriptions—can attract an entirely new audience of potential buyers. More importantly, it re-introduces those previous visitors to a listing that now looks and feels like a brand-new opportunity, not just another piece of stale inventory.

High-Impact Photography

Regardless of the age of the listing, vehicle photos are where you make the crucial first impression. For dealerships located in regions with clear, distinctive seasons, updating your photography is a remarkably effective way to remove visual indicators that inventory might be aged. For instance, if your online listing still features a vehicle surrounded by snow in June, it immediately signals that the car has been sitting on your lot for an extended period. This seemingly minor detail can inadvertently suggest to potential buyers that there might be an underlying issue with the vehicle, raising unwarranted suspicion, especially for used inventory.

Building Trust & Transparency w/ Your Photos

However, the goal of updated photos isn’t to mask any problems with the car. Rather, it’s about building trust and accurately representing the vehicle’s current status and appeal. Often, aged inventory simply hasn’t found the right buyer yet, particularly with unique trade-ins or vehicles boasting very specific configurations. Professional-quality, high-resolution images are non-negotiable. This means capturing a variety of angles – clear exterior shots that highlight its lines and condition, detailed interior views, and close-ups of key features like infotainment systems, wheel designs, or unique trim.

Transparency is key; don’t shy away from showcasing minor, transparent imperfections, as this further builds trust and sets realistic expectations. A robust photo gallery, with ample variety and quantity (aim for at least 30-40 photos), directly impacts buyer engagement. Ultimately, custom photos draw the buyers in, laying the groundwork for the detailed descriptions to help seal the deal.

The Retargeting Boost: Why Fresh Vehicle Descriptions Matter

Your vehicle descriptions are an often overlooked sales asset. Many dealerships fall into the habit of simply regurgitating specifications in their “Dealer Notes” instead of leaning into storytelling. The features of a vehicle are important, but simply listing off them off is no better than linking to the owner’s manual. You’re essentially writing for algorithms rather than potential buyers, rather than prioritizing connecting with your buyers on a more personal level.

Using Storytelling to Connect w/ Buyers & Create Relevance on Search Engines

Rewriting and retargeting vehicle descriptions functions similarly to refreshing your photos; in tandem with one another, it can provide your listings with a powerful boost. Custom descriptions centered on storytelling and answering questions supply search engines and your listing platforms with new metadata to crawl, which can reinvigorate your ranking potential across your various platforms by signaling freshness and relevance to search crawlers.

This strategy is even more important if you original photos were taken in a studio environment; typically there will be little visual difference between images captured in summer or winter, making the description the primary indicator of a refreshed listing.

Hone in On Locations & Speak Directly to Your Buyers

The key to truly effective vehicle descriptions, especially for aged inventory, lies in making them personally relevant to the buyer. This is where geo-targeted descriptions come into play. By incorporating location-specific keywords, and speaking directly to the type of buyer for the vehicle, you can expand the potential audience for the listing. Incorporating this language is not complicated – it is as simple as clearly stating your dealership’s location and referencing neighboring communities or areas you’re looking to attract customers from.

Custom vehicle descriptions help buyers envision themselves using the vehicle in their everyday lives. These also serve as a place to directly answer their unspoken questions and build a stronger emotional connection than a simple list of features ever could. This in turn can motivate browsers to convert into qualified buyers.

Offer a “Live” View w/ Video Walkthroughs

A video walkthrough of your aged inventory is an excellent way to complement your updated photos and descriptions, providing a dynamic and engaging layer to your online listings.

These videos allow you to create a more personalized experience, letting a member of your team showcase the vehicle’s features and condition. Using largely unedited video can foster a more human connection, building rapport and trust with potential buyers. This content is also highly versatile; it can be easily repurposed for social media campaigns or timely paid advertisements, gathering even more attention for your aged listings.

Time to Re-Energize Your Aged Inventory

Aged inventory can feel like a stubborn puzzle, but it doesn’t have to eat away at your profits or patience. While fixes like drastic price drops or extra ad spend might seem appealing, the real game-changer lies in a clever, cost-effective approach: strategic re-merchandising. Giving your online listings a fresh look with re-shot photos, retargeted, locally optimized descriptions, and engaging video walkthroughs truly gives these vehicles a new lease on life.

Remerchandising aged inventory can turn these vehicles from a headache into opportunity. If you’re ready to explore how a comprehensive re-merchandising strategy can boost your dealership’s bottom line, we’d love to chat. Reach out to Surfwrench at info@surfwrench.com or 877-653-5828 today for more information on how our specialized merchandising services can help you get started!