Times have changed. The rise of digitalization has brought about a revolutionary period for all industries, and the automotive industry is no exception. The tech boom and everyone following its path also changed how the dealerships work and conduct their business. People are now more conscious of the user experience, forcing dealers to shift to online retail. This opened a new horizon, which we call Car Dealership Photography.
The need for alluring car catalogs has spiked over recent years, and thus, dealerships are looking for high-quality auto dealership photography providers. In this blog, we take you through the journey of car photography dealerships and their benefits for them.
What is Car Dealership Photography?
Car Dealership Photography is professionally photographing vehicles in a dealer’s inventory ready for sale. As a subset of Automotive Photography, it showcases cars for commercial branding and enhances sales. Car photography is a skill, and not everyone can excel in it. It involves certain intricacies like backdrop settings, appropriate lighting, and ultimately deciding how your end output looks.
Why Car Dealers Need Professional Dealership Photoshoots
The question arises: Why is there a need for Car Dealership Photography and professional photoshoots? A professional photo brings more credibility to dealerships and attracts many eyeballs. Therefore, when a potential customer views it on the platform you listed, a high-quality image makes them subconsciously trust the dealership and the vehicle, ultimately leading to good business.
As a dealer, your top priority is winning customers’ trust and maintaining constant business. So, high-quality professional auto dealer photography supports your VDP page, brings in more leads, and establishes your name in the dealership market.
Explore Top Tips for Impressive Car Dealer Photography
Every Car Photoshoot involves some critical steps that must be followed judiciously without fail before and during Car Dealership Photography tips. Let us have a look at a few major ones :
1) Car Photoshoot Location
The location preset matters most because it defines the photo’s appearance. A background location with ample lighting, no frame hindrances, and a clear display of the car’s shadow make it look elegant and leave almost negligible room for improvement in the output.
2) Choosing The Right Equipment
A good car has a good location, but a poor output seems odd. Well, this is where choosing the right equipment creeps in. Many times, it’s noticed that even though everything is near perfect, the photos could be more attractive and suitable for listing. One of the main reasons for this is poor equipment. You can always maintain quality, so investing in high-end cameras and necessary accessories like tripods and lenses is needed to get a luring image.
3) Interior and Exterior Photography
Dealers often need to catch up on the trick and upload exterior and interior photographs while listing the vehicle. But this is different from how it works. A buyer not only sees the exterior and checks the condition of the car’s body but also the interior, how the dashboard looks, and whether the seats are in good condition because it ultimately impacts how practical the car is for them. Therefore, both interior and exterior photography should be prioritized from different angles.
4) Updated Inventory
It’s essential to maintain track of inventory. Suppose a car has not received enough leads for a long time. Delisting it and presenting several other options to the buyer would be better. It would also be better to cater to the public’s needs and manipulate your inventory accordingly.
5) Invest in AI and other tech
Use the magic of AIi and editing to enhance the quality of your images further and remove any glitch that spoils them. Remember not to use tech to hide the shortcomings of the vehicles, like dents, because the complete motive is to give the customer every information they need to know about the car but with a better-visualizing experience.
How Car Dealership Photography Benefits Dealerships
We saw how Car Dealership Photography is practiced and what has made it an established vertical in the automotive industry. So now, let’s explore its benefits for dealerships.
1) Inspire Clicks
As we know, a site cannot be visible on the Internet without SEO. A good-quality image supports a website’s high CTR, an essential automotive SEO metric.
2) Cost Efficient
Since it has already improved the CTR, the cost of improving the SEO is reduced, and the marketing cost also goes down because the money spent on driving clicks is almost negligible.
3) Faster Inventory Turnover
The time required for the dealer to publish the images of the car and then sell it goes down significantly because of the high visibility and, therefore, faster inventory turnover.
4) Competitive Edge
It is said that the more visible you are on the internet, the more recognized you are. High-quality images drive sales, keep you relevant, and leave a long-lasting impression on users, solidifying your brand image.
How Spyne Enhances Dealership Photography
For automotive dealership photography, Spyne is a one-stop solution for all needs. With its AI-powered platforms and features, Spyne has revolutionized the industry and has been the preferred choice for all dealerships. Let’s see how Spyne assists dealerships, specifically automotive dealers, with car photoshoots.
Consider you are a dealer with a lot of inventory. Hiring a professional photographer for every car is a big hassle and expensive. How does Spyne solve this issue? Instead of hiring someone to take photos, a dealer can conduct a self-serve photoshoot, i.e., take the pictures and videos on their own with any device at any location without worrying about lighting.
How do we get the quality? Well, this is where Spyne has its expertise. With our advanced AI, we enhance the quality and increase the aesthetic appeal of all the images by automatically removing backgrounds and applying various edits, streamlining the capturing of high-quality images. To make it more manageable, you can take photos from the in-house developed app of Spyne, and not only that, you have 360-degree car photography interior and exterior views of the car, which gives you a whole visualization and immersive experience of the car.
Therefore, Spyne helps you build a state-of-the-art catalog, and its integration with all the car listings and automotive platforms also makes it relatively easy for you to keep track.
Types Of Photography Services Provided By Spyne
As mentioned earlier, Spyne has various features that cater to replace traditional photographers for car dealerships. Let’s know a few of them:
1) Quality Post-Detail Photos
Spyne clears the blurry images and gives them a high-quality version, which attracts more clients to your dealership.
2) Background Replacement
Spyne provides you with more than 100+ backgrounds of studio setups and outdoor places to choose from, depending on your needs.
3) Photo Branding
Spyne also empowers dealerships with features that solidify their branding; it seems like something else. The dealership name is on the license plate frame, both front and back; the decal is on the back, and we even changed the latent background.
4) 360 View
How does it sound that you can view your desired vehicle from all angles? Interesting, right? Spyne makes it possible, as consumers can have a 360-degree view of the vehicles and check how the car looks in person without even going to the dealer.
5) Additional Features
In addition, Spyne is constantly improving to ensure the best possible experience for its clients and customers. The recent updates provide short-form videos that provide all the features and necessary details about the cars.
Key Photography Challenges for Dealerships
In any industry, threats to efficient working or challenges make it difficult for those working there. Even car dealer photography is full of that. Let’s have a look at the few significant challenges that are faced.
1)Â Exorbitant Prices
Dealers are generally faced with a significant roadblock in the name of high pricing when they want to move to digital merchandising for their inventory. Professional photographers charge a lot, and with a massive inventory, the cost incurred is pretty high. The solution to this is what Spyne provides to these dealers. Have a self-shoot of the vehicle; the rest is on Spyne. It also proves to be very cost-efficient compared to the traditional methods.
2) Scalability
The second major hindrance is scalability. If you expand your inventory at a perfect pace, making the necessary arrangements and having a car dealership photographer take photos of every vehicle on time so that they get listed will be a massive headache.
3) Hidden Flaws
It’s common for dealers to hide the flaws of the cars and not give all the necessary information that the buyer needs before making any decision. This is a challenge for this field because it’s being misused, which is a discouraging factor, and the credibility of these shoots cannot be trusted if someone notices them.
Conclusion
Considering the exposure dealerships have to tech, car dealership photography has become an essential aspect of the automotive industry and will continue to grow. With the evolution of this field, the benefits are clear, like enhanced presence and faster inventory turnover. However, the industry must still resolve significant challenges, like scalability and cost issues. Spyne comes in with its ground-breaking AI-powered tech and cost-effective methods that maintain transparency and solidify dealership branding.
