Equipment Marketing: 4 Digital Strategies That Drive Machinery Sales & Buyer Engagement

Equipment dealer marketing cover

 

Equipment dealers like you could be missing out ­– on what? Gaining new leads and customers through digital marketing.

While there are plenty of solutions for businesses of all kinds, BRICK decided to break down the four essential strategies every equipment dealer needs for converting more leads online.

Whether you’re learning how to market equipment or need a different perspective on the job, keep reading to find out these tools and how to maximize them for your dealership.

Table of Contents

  1. Website
  2. PPC & Digital Advertising
  3. Equipment Email Marketing
  4. Google My Business

Design & Optimize Your Website

The digital home base for your business and marketing efforts

Equipment marketing always starts with a website. Not only is it the place where customers can engage your dealership online, it’s also where you can measure results of generally all digital efforts.

Heavy equipment dealers can use their website to start receiving orders online, boost local and national web presence, and reach new customers that wouldn’t have known about them otherwise.

What should you include on your equipment website?

  1. Logo and images
  2. Featured product
  3. Business address and contact information
  4. A shop of products available for purchase and rental
  5. Links to social media, email, and other channels
  6. An “About Us” page that details your business story
  7. A blog with articles relevant to your niche or local area
  8. Resource pages with documentation
  9. Terms and conditions page

Once your site is up, it’s important to implement data tracking technology provided by Google or another platform.

Google Analytics is a free platform that you can embed to track reach across different regions, the number of new users coming to your domain, and behaviors made across all pages.

Google Analytics is absolutely essential to both your website and heavy equipment marketing because it allows you track reach and engagement across all platforms.

You’ll be able to see audiences from social and email to organic channels interact with your content.

Having these data sets allows you to benchmark efforts across platforms. The one thing every equipment dealer, let alone business owner should know, is how marketing is performing.

Start Digital Advertising

Paid media to get more leads

Digital advertising is an awesome solution for directing new traffic to your website and getting more heavy equipment buyer leads.

This practice involves investing in paid media across different platforms such as Google, social, and display networks.

Here’s a breakdown of three digital advertising tactics heavy equipment dealers should use:

Paid Search

Paid search is a form of advertising on Google or Bing that shows ads at the top of search engine results pages (SERP) for specific keywords.

Equipment dealers select keywords based on cost per click (CPC) and create a text ad relevant to that term. BRICK also recommends creating specific landing pages on your website for these type of ad campaigns.

The Pros:

  • It allows businesses to target with precision, selecting terms that are highly-relevant to leads and adjusting ad reach to be local or nationwide.
  • Traffic is lead-focused and comes quickly.

The Cons:

  • Ads are not visual. They only show text. This is why great copy and website landing pages are essential for maximizing leads.
  • Competition can make it costly. You might encounter keywords that other equipment dealers are trying target. The cost-per-click rates could be too high for deploying ads. Make sure to find terms that fit within your budget.

Display

Display ads are either graphic, video or interactive advertisements that are distributed across websites within an Ad Network platform like Google or Xandr.

The Pros:

  • Ads are visually-engaging. Display gives you the opportunity to design ad creative and deploy to prospects.
  • Cost-per-click can be lower – sometimes up to 30% versus paid keywords.

The Cons:

  • Display is less relevant to buyer intent.  Ads typically shown on sites relevant to your customer interests versus terms, which can be aligned with specific buyer actions.

Retargeting & Remarketing

Although retargeting (also known as remarketing) is more a tactic than a type of ad, it’s definitely worthwhile for equipment dealers that have traffic coming to their website.

This form of advertising only displays ads after a user has visited your site or a specific page within it. Ads can be displayed across social media and online ad networks to help recapture prospects back onto your website.

The Pros:

  • Target customers that already know you. Retargeting focuses on prospects (potentially warmer leads) already aware or interested in your services.

  • High conversion and engagement rates. Remarketing conversion rates are 70% higher than typical display ads. Retargeted ad engagement can also be up to 400% greater than non-targeted ads.

The Cons:

  • You need traffic. Retargeting works best with equipment dealers who already have considerable amounts of visitors on their website. 
  • Beware of ad fatigue! Remarketing shows ads repeatedly to website visitors, which can cause them to be annoyed and drive prospects away. Read here for addressing ad fatigue in digital retargeting.

Create Equipment Email Marketing Campaigns

Direct contact to qualified prospects

When heavy equipment buyers are interested in your dealership, you want to have a way maintain their engagement and reach them with more directly. 

Email is one of the best channels to achieve that. Equipment dealers can use email marketing in a variety of ways to engage customers. 

Newsletters are a great type of email for sending resources, posts, and current events that align with your business and equipment industry niche.

They’re typically sent on a weekly or monthly basis and cover a broader scope of information that’s relevant to equipment industry.

For example, a construction equipment dealer might send a marketing newsletter on the best machinery for home development and news related to any major industry trends.

Lead Nurture Campaigns include emails that target sales-ready prospects or leads qualified within the pipeline.

These emails are deployed only to identified leads with content and an offer that matches the specific lead interests.

Drip Campaigns are a series of emails geared more towards educating prospects and providing value to lead them further down the sales funnel.

Establish Your Google My Business Profile

Increase visibility in your region

Equipment dealers can use Google My Business (GMB) to manage and promote their business on гидра Google Search and Maps. GMB profiles contain valuable information on a business:

  • Website 
  • Address & directions 
  • Hours
  • Phone number 
  • Category 
  • Products
  • Customer Reviews 
  • Questions & Answers 

Optimized Google My Business profiles show up in regionally-specific google search queries called the local three pack.

For example, when people type in ‘heavy equipment dealers near me’, the top three businesses that are align with that query are displayed.

Therefore, optimizing your GMB profile can help with local marketing, SEO, and lead-generation because it makes your services more visible to new customers in the area.

Take a look at this graphic below to see how to improve your profile.

Image from Chatmeter (2019) 

You can track customer engagement in Google My Business dashboard. The platform shows how many users click on your website, call your business phone, or find directions to your storefront.

Looking to get leads as quickly as possible?
We’re here to help!

BRICK is a digital advertising firm with proven results in getting more leads for equipment dealers. Schedule a free consultation with us today.