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Customers have two questions. How does your dealership answer them?

What does "doing video" actually mean? When anybody says “we’re doing video at the dealership”, that can mean a lot of things to different people. We see three primary types of video: sales/service, customer-shot walk-arounds, and test drive videos (like the purple outlined me in this thumbnail). The first kind of “doing video” is the one we hear about the most: sales people and service techs sending videos to customers of vehicle walk-arounds and the results of the multi-point inspection. Video is damn close to a silver bullet in both of these use cases, because it nearly doubles both appointment set rates as well as repair order acceptance rates. The second kind of video is having customers send a video walk-around of their own car as a part of the trade-in process. The timing of when they send the video is really key here. If you ask a customer to shoot a video before they’ve completed the form, they abandon the form the majority of the time, and you’ve lost the lead. If you ask for the video after they’ve got the value, i.e. something of actual value to them, those motivated customers will hop up and send in that walk-around video. You preserve both quantity and quality of leads. The final kind of video is test drive videos. Every single year, the #1 automotive-related search query on YouTube is "Test Drive". Providing test drive videos on your site keeps buyers on your site and connects to the emotional buying mentality of shoppers. Here’s what we mean by that. Pictures and 360 tools help show the condition of the actual vehicle on the dealer's lot. Personalized video works in that same vein but adds in a warm introduction to the sales staff. Test drive videos allow buyers to picture themselves driving the vehicle on local highways, and you want them doing that on your site, not YouTube.

Let's take a break from talking about tariffs and talk about how damn cool Mullinax Ford's approach to using video in the sales process is. The context: Just before NADA 2025 we launched a new feature inside our Trade tool that lets customers send in walk-around videos of their vehicle after they’ve received their trade-in value and market report. We noticed one dealer was getting 10x the video submissions compared to everyone else. Mullinax Ford was doing something really creative. The team at Mullinax took these customer-filmed walk-around videos of their trade-in a completely different direction. Whenever they connect with any lead on their phone, not just a trade-in lead, they ask if the customer has a trade-in. If they do, they take down the info, plug in the customer’s already submitted contact info, run a market report to send them their trade-in value, and here’s where they got the process dialed-in. While still on the phone, they tell the customer to expect a text from Mullinax Ford so that they can submit a video of their trade-in. They also follow up with a basic email with instructions on how to do it: walk around the vehicle, point out any damage, show the interior, record the odometer and show any dashboard lights, and make the video as long as you want. This approach is really straightforward and really innovative. They’re getting people engaged in the process, and further engaged with the dealership, while surfacing those more motivated shoppers and getting them into the mentality of “Yeah, I think I am ready to trade in”. Kudos to Mullinax Ford for developing a great process, and hat tip to TradePending’s David Lowitz for sharing this story with us to share with you.

Great news! Our payment calculator on steroids that turns your website traffic into leads, aka our Payments product, is officially certified and approved by Stellantis for placement on CDJR websites.

Buying Center websites are a great way to source more inventory. We're taking a look at a some examples.