Scroll Top
6060 Butternut Drive, East Syracuse, NY 13057

Understanding The Online Sales Funnel for Construction Equipment

Understanding The Online Sales Funnel for Construction Equipment

You don’t just wake up one morning and say to yourself, “I’m going to buy a new grader today,” hop in your truck, zip over to the nearest construction equipment dealer and plunk down your money. Neither does anyone else.

When it comes to shopping, no matter what you’re buying, the decision-making process follows a predictable process. It’s often compared to a funnel. Think of each prospective customer as a grain of sand, searching for information about construction equipment.

Successful marketing sifts those grains through your funnel.

The funnel is wide at the top, because there are a lot of folks out there doing initial research. Not everyone is a realistic prospect for your dealership, but your basic online content will quickly weed out the weakest. Maybe they have their heart set on an OEM brand you don’t sell. Or they’re located in Texas, and you don’t sell to that market.

Now you’re left with a smaller group of better-quality prospects. Your funnel is narrowing. These are potentially your grains of sand. They’re interested in the specific construction equipment you sell, or they’re at least looking for information to help them make that determination.

Having attracted them into your funnel, you can begin to engage with them, providing the broad information they need to guide their early decisions. Content that uses your website and blogging to offer lots of facts and specs, maybe a whitepaper, but also success stories and photos from existing customers that demonstrate the on-the-ground value of the construction equipment you sell and also reinforce your dealership as the best place to buy.

The ongoing engagement process bolsters interest in your strongest prospects, and of course some will drop by the wayside. It’s the nature of sales that not everyone buys. But even with those people, your content is planting seeds that could sprout renewed interest in the future.

And you’re developing a deeper relationship with those top prospects, augmenting your content with videos, social media, webinars, etc. You’re learning more about their wants and needs, to ensure your content clearly shows why you and your products can help them complete every job on time and on budget. You’re building trust in your dealership as a go-to resource.

You’re guiding them toward a final buying decision – the tip of your funnel.

Understanding The Online Sales Funnel for Construction EquipmentExisting customers refill your funnel.

Like turning an hour-glass upside down, existing customers re-enter your funnel. Having already purchased from you, they have a standing connection with your dealership that you can continue to nurture, using essentially the same process as you did to secure that first sale.

The content you’ll provide existing customers to fuel ongoing engagement may be a bit different. They may want early-stage information if they’re considering a piece of equipment they’ve never used before, but by and large they’re looking for parts, service, attachments. Maybe a rental. And tips on how to grow their construction company using your equipment.

You have to be easily found, or your funnel might as well be sitting upside-down.

Your website and blog must have top-notch SEO to drive successful online marketing, because very few people bother to look past the first page of search results. If you aren’t near the top, it’s a good bet you won’t attract those all-important prospect-grains to the top of your funnel.

Gearing your dealership marketing toward the sales funnel helps attract the strongest leads and immediately secure their further interest. Smartly nurturing those leads with content directly aligned with their needs will widen the tip of your funnel, giving you increased sales.

Understanding The Online Sales Funnel for Construction Equipment