With an SEO strategy keeping your business visible and digital advertising campaigns generating high-quality leads, you’re bound for year-round success.
Here are the paid and organic tactics that heavy equipment dealerships can use to level-up their digital marketing and grow sales in 2021.
Paid Search
1. Full-coverage search advertising
Digital advertising is a great way to generate net-new leads across all profit centers within your organization. Build individual search ad campaigns for new equipment, used equipment, dealer terms, branded terms, rental, parts & services, and any other business units your organization possesses. Ensure that you're advertising on all applicable low-funnel keywords, and write ad copy that features relevant information that your customers need to know. Drive users to relevant landing pages on your website with up-to-date inventory for a quality user-experience.
2. Sales-based geo-targeting
In general, we recommend limiting geotargeting for new equipment, rentals, and parts & service campaigns to 60-80 miles around each location. For used equipment campaigns, you can push geotargeting out to 80+ miles, especially if you’re bidding on inventory specific terms (e.g. “2007 john deere tractor”) and see results.
Geotargeting is one of the few components in a digital advertising strategy that can make or break your success, and you should combine these general best practices with your own sales data. Using a combination of historic sales-by-zip code data and OEM territory boundaries, you can create a targeting strategy that’s custom-fit to your customer base.
3. Test and expand into new strategies
There are ways to expand your current search advertising through tactics like dynamic search, audience ads, responsive search ads, and smart bidding. But if you’re looking to expand your digital advertising efforts into new mediums, there are a number of strategies to explore.
Display advertising is an inexpensive way to generate brand awareness for in-market or near-market shoppers. Display advertising can also be a lead driver through tactics like remarketing where you’re able to serve specific ads to users who have previously been to your website.
Social media advertising can be used to reach in-market shoppers and previous website visitors as well. A relatively new tactic called lead form advertising, is also available within Facebook which allows users to submit a lead directly into your CRM without ever leaving the Facebook website or app.
Lastly, video advertising has been around for quite some time, but there are new features emerging regularly. With video advertising, you can now use machine learning to target users who are in-market and likely to take immediate action. Once they’re served a video ad, a lead form opportunity or a link to your website will be present for them to take action.
Search Engine Optimization
4. Google My Business
Your Google My Business (GMB) profile is an effective tool to reach customers in organic search results and maps. Information from your GMB profile populates the Google Knowledge Graph and Google Maps, enabling customers to contact you, get directions, and see customer reviews.
If you haven’t done so already, claim a GMB profile for each location. Fill out the company name, address, phone number, website, and categories, as well as any additional information you can provide. Complete the verification process with a phone call or postcard from Google to access your complete profile and ensure it’s eligible to show up in search results.
On an ongoing basis, you should manage the content submitted by the general public. Report any spam reviews and be sure to upload your own photography. We’ve seen more than one equipment dealer account with a picture of a driveway as their primary business image.
5. Video
YouTube is the second largest search engine, making video an effective marketing tactic for equipment dealers. Video is especially important in the ag and farm industry, where 44% of farmers watch videos to acquire information on products and services, and over 50% of farmers use YouTube every month.
While video may have been cost- or time-prohibitive in the past, creating video content is now easier than ever. Smartphone cameras are perfectly adequate for video creation and the finished product doesn’t have to be perfectly edited or scripted. Consider creating walk-around videos of new or used equipment, how-to videos for basic repairs, or instructional videos for operation. These videos can be used on your website and social media, as well as featured in video ads and email campaigns.
6. Onsite optimization
To rank well in search results, consider the needs of both search engines and users. Optimize the technical aspects of your website so search engine bots can successfully crawl and comprehend your website. Then, optimize your copy, navigation, and onsite resources with your customers in mind.
Spend some time clicking through your own site to see it from a customer’s eyes—is it easy to find inventory? Can you quickly contact the location nearest you? Is the website quick and easy to navigate, regardless of whether you’re browsing on a tablet or smartphone? Google aims to serve only the best and most relevant search results for users, and the way that customers interact with your website can impact your rankings. Make sure you keep them in mind and optimize your site for user-friendliness.
Equipment Digital Marketing Strategies for Sales Success
Digital advertising and SEO can increase paid and organic traffic to your website and help generate more business in 2021. Get a head start on the new year with a free digital analysis from Adpearance. Our team of digital strategists will assess your market and current rankings to identify specific opportunities for your business to stay ahead of the competition. Reach out to learn more.
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