5 Effective Marketing Strategy Tips for Truck Dealerships
Effective marketing strategy attracts more and better-qualified prospective customers for your truck dealership. It helps you develop conversations with them, and with existing customers, building relationships that lead to sales. More gross revenue. More net profit.
These five tactics will help you make your marketing strategy more effective:
1. Talk about competitive pricing, if that’s part of your story.
On the other hand, if your branding is strong enough, the perception of superior quality has actual cash value. Loyalty rewards programs can also offset a higher initial cost, especially if your program offers incentives tailored to match each customer’s individual needs, at levels that are easily attainable.
Whether we admit it or not, we all like instant gratification, so the sooner your rewards kick in, the more popular your program will be. Your customers will keep buying from you, and they’ll tell their friends.
2. Does your truck dealership provide top-rated service?
Talk about it. Everyone who purchases a truck from you – or from someone else – needs regular service. Your reputation for great service and how you earned it make great topics for blog articles, social media posts, etc. Any dealership can say they’re good, but you can prove it.
Share testimonials, reviews, customer stories. Explain what it takes to be a top-quality mechanic or body and paint expert. Provide tips to stretch scheduled maintenance or ensure trucks are performing at peak in between service visits. Talk about your speed, too, since downtime costs customers money.
Use social media, email, texting, etc. to alert customers about upcoming scheduled service. Use these same platforms to offer quick tips on related issues such as increasing fuel efficiency. Expand on those themes via your blog or longer whitepapers. Produce short how-to videos that help drivers stay on top of potential service issues.
3. Talk about warranties to build reputation and confidence.
If you offer a great used vehicle warranty or valuable extended warranties, talk about that. The fact that both you and your OEM stand behind your trucks and after-market products builds reputation for quality and reliability. And that increases buyer confidence and peace of mind. It also underscores your desire to help protect customers with a worry-free investment.
4. Talk about your people.
Every product or service you sell is purchased and used by people. And people prefer to do business with someone they know. Someone they trust. Someone who makes them feel at ease. Using your blog to introduce staff members – from sales to the parts desk to your service adviser and your billing folks – allows prospects and customers to get to know you.
It’s not just about putting faces to names. You’re building confidence in your staff’s skills and experience, showing why your dealership is the place to get sound, reliable advice from people who actually know what matters. That’s branding you can’t buy through traditional advertising, and it’s the kind of branding that guarantees customer loyalty.
5. Use technology to its fullest.
Little “extras” like live chat can significantly boost your ability to hold the interest of even casual visitors to your website. You can intercept them in real time, to answer questions and guide them toward what they need, without being offensively in-your-face about it. Live chat reinforces the personal side of your dealership.
And speaking of technology, make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices. No one is more mobile than truck drivers, and if they’re on the road they don’t have time to fool around.
Effective marketing strategy makes it easy for people to interact with you, so they’ll want to do business with you
