How to use MarketAI’s VINSights to your advantage

Vehicle pricing and inventory decisions are a key part of a dealership’s day-to-day operations. A few hundred dollars could entice a shopper to buy from your dealership or push them toward a competitor. One of the most common struggles many dealers face is the increasing difficulty of staying competitive while also maintaining a desirable profit.  

Too often dealers rely on gut instincts or last year’s sales to make decisions about their inventory today. But the automotive industry moves too quickly for those strategies. Today’s car lots are empty compared to last year and the vehicles that are in stock vary and include fewer desirable vehicles. Those unique factors make real time data essential. 

To help dealers make more data-driven decisions, ZeroSum introduced VINSights, one of many inventory-focused features within the MarketAI platform. VINSights is a real-time analysis of how your inventory compares to the market in key characteristics like pricing, turn rate and days on lot. With the option to narrow down to year, make, model, trim and mileage these features can be used to make incredibly precise decisions.  

This data removes the guesswork and acts as one of your most strategic weapons within the MarketAI platform. With one quick glance dealers can see where opportunities lie and where some classic pitfalls might be. The information in VINSights gives you the ammunition you need to make smart inventory decisions.

With this precise reporting, your dealership also has the advantage when it comes to procuring new inventory. Dealers using MarketAI can use competitor data to make trades or pick up units that they're turning faster than their market. Once they bring a shopper into their store, they can also use VINSights to see if with their inventory composition it makes sense to flip someone from a new vehicle to a used vehicle. Or vice versa. 

While dealerships use this real time data within their store, MarketAI simultaneously uses this integrated data to react quickly to the strengths and weaknesses of your inventory. Ad creative, delivery and budget are all dynamically adjusted across all of our marketing solutions to provide the best performance and get your inventory in front of active shoppers. Within VINSights, you can look at VDP views down to the VIN to see these optimizations as they happen.   

Example of VINSights in Action  

The Facts: A Honda dealer in Massachusetts was turning their HR-V inventory faster than their market. For some trim levels, they were turning units 120% faster than their competitors. But, on average their pricing was about $1500 below their competition.  

The Results: With the help of VINSights and their dealer success manager, the dealer was able to take advantage of this opportunity by bumping up their pricing by $750 to increase their gross but maintain their higher-than-the-market turn rate. Within a week, the dealer sold 70% of their HR-V inventory at this higher price point.