4 Basic Benefits of Digital Marketing | Construction Equipment Dealers

Digital marketing can do amazing things for your dealership.

Conveniently, the four basic digital marketing benefits correspond to key positions within your sales funnel – attracting initial attention and traffic, lead generation that converts those visitors into engaged prospects, lead nurturing that converts highly-engaged prospects into buying customers, and the learning that comes from measuring your success.

Are you getting the digital marketing benefits you expect for your dealership? If you’re like many people, you know things could be better, but you’re at a loss to diagnose the problem. Ask yourself the following questions to pinpoint where you need help and how you can improve.

Step 1: Attracting traffic.

First, you have to get them in the door, electronically speaking. You know you’re weak here if:

• You don’t show up in search results. That means the first page of results, because the vast majority of searchers don’t bother with anything beyond that.
• You’re pretty sure you should be using social media, but . . .
• You’ve decided your website needs a redesign. Ah, but beware – visual “design” certainly adds appeal, but it’s your website’s structure and content that keep visitors on your site and keep them coming back.

What to do?

Optimize your website SEO. Start a blog and post regularly. Establish a presence on key social media, and post there, too. Develop a content creation plan that addresses each of your target markets. You need all these things to generate traffic. They provide multiple entry points for searchers – that’s why they’re called portals – giving you more opportunities to capture that critical initial interest.

Step 2: Generating leads.

Once people find you, your website has to be fresh, inviting, genuinely useful. You know you’re weak here if:

• You only generating leads sporadically, or they aren’t steadily increasing in numbers.
• Your bounce rate is high.
• You haven’t updated your content in some time.
• Your sales reps don’t like the quality or number of leads they’re getting.

What to do?

Your website has to offer valuable, informative content – whitepapers, webinars, ebooks and tip sheets are great examples. Your content has to target early-stage as well as later-stage prospects, so it’s important to vary the type and complexity of information.

Email marketing comes into play here, but it also has to be segmented so prospects receive appropriately-targeted messages. And social media really starts to shine, as you use it to turn visitors into friends and fans and begin to build relationships and reputation with them.   

Step 3: Converting leads into customers.

If you’re generating traffic but they aren’t buying, your nurturing process needs work. Warning signs include:

• Everyone on your email list gets the same follow-ups.
• Your sales are behind projections.
• Sales reps claim digital leads are no good.

What to do?

Revise your lead scoring and qualification process. Carefully target emails — automation software can help, and it should interface smoothly with your CRM application.

Step 4: Measurement.

Digital marketing benefits include the ability to track and analyze virtually everything. It’s the only way to know what’s working and what isn’t, so you can constantly refine your traffic-building and lead-generation and nurturing tactics. Warning signs:

• You have no established benchmarks.
• You don’t regularly audit your website’s performance.
• You marketing feels unfocused.

What to do?

Study your results, and use what you learn.

Want to see those four digital marketing benefits faster? Getting professional help can ensure your targeting is tight, your content is irresistible and you’re doing everything you can to convert leads into customers.