Why Tesla is putting its new Tesla inventory on portals too!

It has never happened in recent years, but Tesla is also investing in automotive portals to sell its inventory. After years of growth and minimal inventory, Tesla’s stocks are also increasing. Even the enormous price reductions have not been able to prevent too many cars from being on the books.

Tesla is not known as a big spender of marketing money, unlike other manufacturers.

Tesla is not known as a big spender of marketing money, unlike other manufacturers. But Tesla also wants to get rid of its already produced and paid inventory, so the brand is exploring options. And so it happens that in America, for the first time, new Teslas are being advertised in stock on portals like Cars.com. And why not? Automotive portals naturally attract the first group of in-market buyers. In America, but also in the Netherlands.

For example, on Marktplaats, we see that 16.7% of buyers use only Marktplaats for their car search. And we know that it is also important for OEMs to place their stocks of new cars on these platforms. I would like to explain why! At Nieuweautokopen.nl, all the cars we sold at that time were new, more than 2,000 of them. On the website, we offered two options: ‘ available from stock ‘ and ‘ new to order ‘. Potential customers requested information about a specific car; we offered them an interesting alternative that was immediately available but might be missing that one option. And it was successful.

Many importers at that time still thought that putting new cars online was the same as publishing a discounted car. That is absolutely incorrect. By putting your stock online, you show what you have and what is immediately available! At Ligier Store Doesburg, we work with the same mindset. We have more than 20 new city cars in stock, all listed online without discounts. That stock generates information requests from people searching through the portals and, therefore, are in-market.

Visibility and recommendations are the main reasons for an OEM to offer inventory on platforms like Marktplaats. Anyone surfing on Marktplaats, viewing cars, and logged in, receives alternatives in their feed and email.

More than 30% of the millions of leads generated by Marktplaats come from those recommendations!

More than 30% of the millions of leads generated by Marktplaats come from those recommendations! Suppose you put 100 new and immediately available Subaru Foresters online. People searching for a similar SUV like a Kia Sportage receive a recommendation the next day that a Forester could be a good alternative to that Sportage, and suddenly, that Forester, a car that was not on their shortlist, becomes top-of-mind.

Despite the fact that new cars may not be immediately searched for on portals, and the mindset is mainly focused on used cars, we see that many people searching for young used cars might be in the market for an attractive alternative: a new car that is immediately available from stock. The fact that Tesla is now active on portals confirms this mindset. And this way of thinking can work for any brand. After all, Tesla does nothing, absolutely nothing, just for the sake of it. They only rely on data. And let the data say that investments in a portal based on Cost per VDP, Cost per Lead, Cost per Click, and Cost per Sale are almost always positive.