Recently, Dominion Dealers Solutions’ portfolio company Dealer Specialties announced a new inventory syndication partnership with Facebook Marketplace. The partnership allows dealers to syndicate their inventory directly to Facebook Marketplace, relieving them from uploading inventory manually. This feature will be available to current inventory management software customers at no additional cost.
Facebook currently has over 2 billion users with 550 million visits to buy-sell groups each month. Last October, Facebook announced an expansion on the selection of vehicles available to U.S. shoppers on Marketplace. “We noticed that autos is one of the most popular categories on Marketplace with millions of Americans looking at cars and vehicle listings every day,” said Facebook product manager Bowen Pan in an interview last fall with Forbes.
“We’ve been working with Facebook to create a better experience for our customers who sell a great deal of their inventory on the platform. We are confident that this will allow dealers to have more control and faster access to the inventory that’s listed,” said Shane Marcum, vice president of inventory services & solutions at Dealer Specialties.
By default, Marketplace shows listings and dealerships within 40 miles of a person’s location. Shoppers can sort through car listings using typical filters like price, model, and mileage. After a shopper views a vehicle, it will be advertised to them again in their news feed, as well as newly-added similar vehicles. This is a cost-effective way to keep a dealer’s inventory in front of in-market shoppers.
Once an action is taken by a shopper, Facebook Messenger starts a 1:1 conversation which can include video messaging.
The company sent out its initial communication to their customers last week and have had several inquiries from dealers who would like to begin using the syndication immediately.
Dealer Specialties serves over 3,000 dealers nationwide and is one of the only franchised vendors in the automotive space.
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Dominion Dealer Solutions