Getting Personal with Prospects With Dealership Marketing

Are you doing everything you can to personalize your dealership’s marketing and customer relationships? By now, we all know that today’s prospects (and existing customers) expect to have a personally-tailored experience with any business, both online and in person.

Studies show that three-quarters of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that knows who they are and makes recommendations based on the customer’s purchasing history. That stands to reason, doesn’t it?

As a construction equipment or heavy truck dealer, it’s what you’ve always done. You greet customers by name when they visit your showroom or service shop or rental counter. You recommend the best machine and configuration based on your knowledge of their business. You suggest useful accessories or upgrades to help them run their businesses more efficiently. You send service alerts to help them keep preventive maintenance on track. Proactively helping them shows you have their back.

So are you doing all that online, too?

Digital marketing enables you to reach exactly the right target audiences to build brand awareness and promote your dealership’s products and services. But, like everyone else, your targets are bombarded by a staggering amount of online advertising and other messaging. No matter how well-crafted your dealership marketing, your messages cannot stand out from all that clutter on their own. The human eye is simply not built for that. With nowhere to focus, we automatically look away.

Just as in person, online personalization involves more than greeting someone by name. (Although that’s a nice touch as well. Hi, Bill, welcome back.) Going beyond using a name shows your recipient you really are addressing them as an individual, not just sending than a digital form letter.

Personalization grabs attention, like a visual tap on the shoulder. Hey, this is just for me. But, in the digital world, achieving personalization requires technology. That seems impersonal, but it’s a fact. Specialized software works behind the scenes and with your customer relationship management platform to gather individual information such as their interactions with your website and their past buying behavior as well as their basic demographics. Then the technology automatically shows content to each prospect that is specifically relevant to them.

It’s called smart content. Pretty smart, yes?

It’s also called dynamic content. The technology is smart because it can recognize individual prospects. It is dynamic because instead of showing the same content to everyone, the system offers custom-tailored content to each person based on who they are and their past history. It works for emails, your website, marketing landing pages, etc.

Smart targeting enables you to keep your dealership’s name in front of a prospect and also to remind them of their interest in a specific product or service. It’s called remarketing. The automated technology uses data about website visitors, email respondents, etc., sorting it by where the prospect is in their buying journey to determine appropriate content.

Even smarter? Customized Calls to action.

We all know that marketing works best when you tell prospects what to do next and inspire them to do that. A personalized call to action has a 42% higher chance of converting. The prospect is viewing your email invitation or that button on your landing page, wondering, “Should I, or shouldn’t I?” but each prospect has their own reason for following through or not.

The right CTA tips the scale in your favor, by matching the content to their specific need. That might be a downloadable e-book or some other educational content if the prospect is new, or it might be a request to speak to a salesperson or see a machine demo if the prospect is getting close to a buying decision.

Personalization can upsell and cross-sell, too

No one purchases a piece of construction equipment or a new heavy-duty truck in a vacuum. Your dealership makes money by selling upgrades, accessories, parts, service, and repairs. Smart targeting enables you to suggestively sell those opportunities that are most relevant to each prospect.

We’ve all gone online to Home Depot or Walmart or any other big retailer and seen a display that says, “You may also like…,” or “People who bought X also bought…,” followed by images of tempting merchandise, warranties, etc. Your dealership can do that, too.

Responsive website design that enables personalized content must also recognize what type of device your prospect is using. Anyone with a cell phone knows that content displayed on that tiny screen doesn’t look like the same content displayed on their laptop. Tablets? Maybe, depending on the size. Showing each person content that fits their device makes it easy to see your offers and respond.

The more you know about your prospects – not just their demographic details but their greatest challenges and needs – the better you can personalize your dealership marketing. By giving them what they need, you’ll be able to keep them engaged and build relationships that turn prospects into customers.