SCHENECTADY, N.Y. -

Do Cars.com and AutoTrader.com make up the majority of your used-car marketing strategy? If so, you are selling yourself short! While both of these properties are a great way to market your vehicles, there is so much more you can do that will double or triple your used-car sales numbers.

 1. Separate Used-Car Website: This would be one of the first things to start with if you want to increase your numbers. A stand alone website allows a real benefit to merchandising your used-car inventory. Make sure the website allows the use of video for each specific vehicle (see below).

2. True Video Walk Arounds: We did the research, and I am here to tell you a sales person with product knowledge and a hand cam video recorder doing a detailed 8–12 minute video is a sure way to drive buyers to your dealership. You don’t need a Hollywood production, just a basic video that provides true product knowledge and a multiple ways to contact your dealership will work just fine (make sure the video is in your website and on YouTube). If you need examples, then google “Free Car Shopper Leads with YouTube.”

3. Live Chat: Again, we did the research and when you add chat to your website, the leads will increase almost instantly.

4. Open Lead Forms: Lead forms that are opened up so the shopper knows what to do instantly will increase leads by 8–15 percent. In other words, instead of having a button that says "Quick Quote" that a shopper clicks and then goes to a form, skip the button and put the full form on the vehicle detail page.

5. Pay for Shoppers: A PPC/SEM (pay per click/search engine marketing) campaign is a sure fire way to increase leads now that you have your stand alone website ready to convert. In the last 30 days, there were over 11 million searches in the United States for the two variations of "used cars for sale" and "second hand cars", so imagine if you were to develop a campaign with only 30–50 different search terms. Also, there were nearly 2 million searches for used cars on a mobile device, which could also be a SEM/PPC campaign.

6. Behavioral Marketing: A behavioral campaign also known as retargeting or remarketing will keep leads coming back. This type of marketing is great to create the needed awareness that newspaper, radio and TV used to drive. But be sure not to limit your campaign radius. You want to do a minimum of a 200 miles radius.

7. Thank you:  I think an email thank you or better yet a personal handwritten note to every customer is something 1 in 3000 people do! You will be amazed at how many repeat sales and referral leads you will receive by taking a few minutes and telling someone thank you. Try it for the next 90 days, and see if you don’t benefit from it!

Paul Portratz is Chief Operating Officer of Potratz Advertising.