Appealing to As Many Customers as Possible in a Shrinking Market

It’s no secret that RV sales are slowing. You may have already noticed this downward trend in your store. And while troubling, it doesn’t have to spell doom and gloom for your dealership. It simply means you must adapt and explore other avenues to appeal to even more customers—including marketing to new demographics and leveraging new ways to attract traditional customers.

Understanding the Current RV Economy

Following years of steady growth, a perfect storm of persisting economic factors is finally catching up to the RV market. Consistently high interest rates on RV loans, rising product prices, increased competition, and changing consumer preferences have all slowed demand. In fact, RV sales dipped to their lowest point in nearly a decade in 2023 and sales are down even more in 2024.

• Economic Pressures

• In recent years, inflation has soured consumer demand for making big purchases on credit. A combination of rising interest rates and rising RV costs due to high manufacturing costs, parts shortages, and other economic factors has made buying a recreation vehicle less practical for many people.

  All of this has led to an excess of inventory for RV dealers, increasing costs and producing even slimmer margins. Of course, with more inventory on more RV lots, competition for sales has increased in recent years too.

• Changing Consumer Preferences

• The high cost of owning a recreational vehicle has caused some consumers to pause before pulling the trigger on a new purchase. These costs include purchasing and financing costs, high fuel costs, and high insurance costs—to name just a few.

  In addition, millennial and Gen Z consumers are entering the market with significantly different expectations and buying habits than older generations. They want to research their purchases thoroughly online and may prioritize different RV features, including more environmentally friendly recreation options.

Building a Broad Customer Base

With more competition and slowing consumer demand, it’s important to make sure that you’re capturing as much of the RV market as possible. One of the best ways to do this is by widening your potential audience online. Make sure your business is enabling and empowering all types of shoppers to interact with your website.

Diversify Your Offerings

RV sales may be your bread and butter, but diversifying your sales approach to include other recreation and outdoor equipment can help offset slowing RV sales.

According to the IDS 2024 Trends Report, there is growing interest in non-motorized RVs, such as trailers and fifth wheels, due to their affordability and ease of maintenance. Adding options for budget-conscious buyers can help you build revenue during a season of RV recession.

You can also diversify your offerings through the services and types of inventory you make available to your customers. Again, according to the IDS 2024 Trends Report, adding additional revenue streams through service offerings, accessory sales, and customer-tailored F&I offerings is a great way to bring in more revenue to your dealership, especially with more RVs on the road in recent years.

Having a professional website that includes these diverse service and inventory offerings will help your dealership appeal to a wider audience.

Enhance the Customer Experience

Just by virtue of being online, your website has the ability to cast a wider net and bring in a bigger audience of buyers, even those who may be willing to travel greater distances to take advantage of all your dealership’s offerings. But your website is only as effective as your ability to prioritize the customer experience.

Display your new service offerings in a way that appeals to today’s online-savvy customers. Make your website easy to navigate and mobile-friendly, and give them all the details they need (and want) to know about your various inventory offerings.

Don’t just tell customers about what you offer, let them experience it for themselves by going through the buying steps on your digital storefront—including buying online and scheduling post-purchase service visits.

Give your customers modern shopping tools like shopper guides, tow guides, advanced search filters, and more. Give them high-quality photos of all your inventory and dedicated pages to browse in a way that helps them learn more, progress through the shopping journey, and feel like they’re in your physical showroom.

Of course, the best way to give customers the digital shopping experience they expect is by teaming up with a professional website partner—one that designs websites specifically for RV dealers. Your website partner will create a digital storefront that’s catered to your customers, and helps you market your offerings and track your success.

Why Act Now?

As the RV market continues to slow, the time to act is now. Taking steps to make your business appeal to more customers can give you a competitive advantage during a time when advantages can be hard to come by.

It can also help you build customer loyalty by expanding your audience and giving them more of what they want—by way of more diverse inventory and service options. Most importantly, when you give your customers the digital shopping experience they expect, you build brand loyalty and create lifelong customers that will be there for your business through good times and bad.

In a slowing RV market, the key to success lies in adaptability and taking proactive measures to bring in new customers and create new revenue streams. By understanding current market forces and taking steps to appeal to a diverse customer base, you will not only survive times of slowing sales, but set your business up to thrive, in spite of adverse economic conditions.