Car Dealer Video Reels From Your Live Inventory

Your lot already has the footage. Every unit on your website has a gallery of real photos, and Video Reels turns that gallery into a short MP4 for stories, feeds and your website, with the price, the terms and your logo in place.

A reel is the short vertical video that stories and short video feeds put in front of shoppers, watched with a thumb ready to swipe. Car dealer video reels have one job on top of that: show a real unit, at a real price, before the swipe. Video Reels is the Design Studio tool in LeadLocate CRM that makes them from what the store already has: the photo gallery of each vehicle in inventory, the OEM offers for the brands you sell, and your store specials. Pick a unit, a style, a shape and a length, press Create video, and you have an MP4 file.

No camera, no editing app, no one standing in the lot with a phone. The photos come from your inventory, imported from your website through Inventory Link, so the reel shows the actual car, and the price and terms come from the same place. These are inventory video ads in the plain sense: one unit or one offer, told in ten to thirty seconds, with the store's logo on it.

This page is the product side. Which videos return the most for a store is covered on automotive video marketing, and filmed walkarounds have their own guide at inventory walkaround video marketing. Reels sit beside the walkaround: they cover every unit on the lot, and the walkaround goes to the cars that need a person to show them.

Monday, 8:30. A trade from Friday went through recon over the weekend and is on the website with two dozen photos. The internet manager opens the Inventory page, clicks the unit and presses Make a Video in its photo viewer. Video Reels opens with the car loaded and its gallery ready. She picks the Just Arrived style, the vertical Reel shape and 15 seconds. The preview plays on the screen while she works: she trims the selling points to three, moves the logo to the top corner, and leaves Photo fit on Smart so each photo is filled or framed as it suits.

She adds a track from the studio's Stock Library, sets where it starts and how loud it sits, presses Create video, and the MP4 is ready to download in moments. She posts it to the store's Instagram story and TikTok herself, then makes the Square shape of the same reel for the Facebook page. By nine she has a reel, a square post and the rest of the morning.

In the afternoon the sales manager makes a Price Drop reel of a new unit, with the struck price labelled MSRP, and a lease offer reel from the brand's program, whose terms get their own card in the reel. He saves both to the File Library, so any rep can share the link in a text to a customer who asked about that model.

Leave your number and a lead specialist calls you back to answer your questions about pricing, coverage, and setup. Mon - Sat, 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.

Video Reels carries a full shelf of styles, each with its own opening, middle shots and end card. Showroom, Just Arrived, Walkaround, Price Drop, Feature Countdown, Luxury Launch, Hook Reel and Billboard are among them. Walkaround wants four or more photos, Billboard makes a reel with no photo at all for an offer or a special, and Just Arrived also reads New Offer or Store Special when the source calls for it.

Four shapes cover every place a reel goes: Reel at 9:16 for stories and short video, Feed at 4:5, Square at 1:1, and Wide at 16:9 for your website and YouTube. Lengths are 10, 15, 20 or 30 seconds. The Design panel sets the logo size, spot and plate, the lettering and text size, the photo fit (Smart, Fill frame or Framed), the motion, the background and the selling points. The caption builder writes the post caption to go with it.

Sound is optional. Pick a track from the Stock Library, set its start, its volume and its fades, and it is mixed into the finished MP4. The preview plays the music locked to the same timeline, so what you hear while you edit is what the shopper hears. Leave it off and the reel saves silent, which suits a feed that plays muted.

Design Studio opens from the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM on the desktop, and Video Reels has its own place on the studio's rail beside Image Ads and GIF Ads. Make a Video sits in every vehicle's photo viewer on the Inventory page. The logo you pick under Your logo is shared with Image Ads, so the reel and the still ad of the same unit carry the same mark, and Show our logo in the video turns it off when you want the reel clean.

Every reel is kept in My Videos. Download it as an MP4 for the store's social accounts, the website or a showroom screen. Save to File Library puts a copy in the File Library with a link a rep can paste into a text or an email from the customer's thread, and the File Library is also in the LeadLocate app for the rep on the lot.

Video for a whole lot usually comes three ways. A videographer shoots the hero units and bills by the day. A walkaround app and a salesperson with a phone cover the cars someone remembers to film. Or someone builds slideshows in a generic editing app, retypes the price, and exports in one shape that fits one feed. Each way leaves most of the lot without a video, and each goes stale the day a price moves.

Video Reels starts from the store's live inventory, so the photos, the price and the offer terms come from the same place your website does, and any unit with photos can have a reel. A franchise store builds reels from the brand's offers, an independent or buy here pay here lot from its own units and specials, and an RV or boat dealer gets the same styles around a fifth wheel or a bowrider. The walkaround still goes to the car that needs a person to show it.

Video Reels is part of Design Studio, which comes with the LeadLocate platform subscription. A LeadLocate bill is made of the plan subscription, users beyond the login each plan starts with as an add-on, and usage credits for metered work like bulk texting, validation and voicemail drop deliveries. The plans are on the pricing page.

A reel that states a payment is a finance or lease ad, and the trigger term rules of Regulation Z and Regulation M follow it onto every screen. In Video Reels, a finance offer with a term, or any lease, locks the fine print on and gives the terms their own card in the reel, and the full disclaimer goes into the caption as well. Fine print on a vehicle reel stays editable for the store's own wording.

Prices are shown, never animated. They never count up or spin into place, so no frame of the reel shows a number the store is not offering. A struck price appears only on a new unit and is labelled MSRP, so the reel never implies a former store price.

Music comes only from Stock Library tracks whose licenses allow reuse, and if a track is later removed from the library, the reel saves without it and tells you. Photos are the unit's own; a photo shared by several units or supplied by the manufacturer is badged Stock image, so the rep knows what he is showing. And the logo is the store's own, from the account or uploaded by the rep.

There is nothing to switch on for a user who has Design Studio. Open it from the dock and choose Video Reels, or press Make a Video on a vehicle on the Inventory page. Pick a unit, an OEM offer or a store special, then a style, a shape and a length. Adjust the words, the logo and the photo fit while the preview plays, add a track if you want one, and press Create video. The finished reel lands in My Videos.

A good first week: pick the ten units that have sat longest and give each a 15 second vertical reel, then make one reel of the brand's offer of the month in the Feed shape. Jax, the bilingual assistant on the dock, answers how to questions about Design Studio's screens. A store that wants reels made for every new arrival, or a style built around its own brand, can ask: that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership.

Video Reels is the social member of Design Studio's ad family, and the other two use the same inventory, offers and logo. Image Ads makes the still post and the print flyer of the same unit. GIF Ads makes a short loop sized for a text or an email, for the one to one conversation where a video file is too heavy. The Business Kit makes the rep's cards and vCard.

Outside the studio, the OEM incentives showroom is where brand offers come from, and the all features page lists the rest of the platform.

How is a reel different from a walkaround video?

A walkaround is filmed on the lot by a person and shows condition and sound. A reel in Video Reels is built from the unit's photos, price and terms in minutes, so every unit can have one. The two work best side by side.

What shapes and lengths can a reel be?

Reel at 9:16, Feed at 4:5, Square at 1:1 and Wide at 16:9, each at 10, 15, 20 or 30 seconds. Make the vertical reel first, then the square or wide version of the same unit in a couple of clicks.

Where do the photos come from?

From the unit's photo gallery in your inventory, imported from your website through Inventory Link. Reps can add their own photos too, and stock photos are badged Stock image so everyone knows which is which.

Can I add music to a reel?

Yes. Pick a track from the Stock Library, set its start, volume and fades, and it is mixed into the MP4. Only tracks licensed for reuse are offered, and a reel can just as well be saved silent.

Can I send a reel to a customer?

Yes. Save to File Library gives the reel a link a rep can paste into a text or email on the customer's thread. When you want motion that plays right inside the text, make a GIF of the same unit in GIF Ads.

Do reels show finance and lease terms correctly?

A finance offer with a term, or any lease, locks the fine print on and gives the terms their own card, and the full disclaimer goes in the caption. Prices never count up, and a struck price on a new unit is always labelled MSRP.

Video Reels comes with Design Studio in LeadLocate CRM, month to month. See a reel made from a live unit in the pre-recorded demo, or compare plans and start with the photos already on your website.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.