Your Dealership Can Generate Online Sales Leads from Twitter

Your Dealership Can Generate Online Sales Leads from Twitter

You can, indeed, generate online sales leads for your trucking or construction equipment dealership using Twitter. It takes some time investment, but all marketing requires time and effort to succeed. Twitter and other social media can be excellent resources, because they help your dealership establish and strengthen relationships with prospects and existing customers.

Experts say you can budget less than a half-hour a day for Twitter and still generate online sales leads, if you follow these guidelines:

• Schedule time every day to manage your Twitter activities, so your presence is consistent.
• For lead-generation, don’t use a lot of hashtags like you might do when sending other types of tweets. Leave more space between links and images. And keep your content interesting.
• Budget some money to back up your organic efforts with paid tweets. Segment your audience and track and measure the results of each lead-generation tweet, so you’re getting the best return on your investment. And always follow up on leads right away.

Think of Twitter as a listening post.

Your social interactions provide priceless insight into your audience. The more you listen to the conversation, the more you can learn about what’s top-of-mind with your people – their biggest challenges and concerns about the state of the construction or trucking industry and about their own business, what they’re saying about you or your competitors or your OEMs.

Think about how you can help them, by answering their questions or linking them with other resources, because that’s the content you should be tweeting. Retweet great information that comes your way.

Every time you tweet useful content, you’re cementing your relationship with existing customers, too. You’re helping them stay up to date and build their business, and you’re keeping your dealership in front of them, so when it’s time to service equipment or buy another truck, you’re their first choice.

Your sales goal is to fill a need. As Twitter helps you do that, you’re reinforcing your dealership’s value and your own as well. You’re building trust and confidence – the cornerstones of lead generation and sales conversion.

Occasionally, it’s OK to tweet about your dealership – who isn’t excited to announce the arrival of a hot new machine?  But remember you’re looking to generate online sales leads. If you think of Twitter as a sales outlet, you’ll drive followers away.

Twitter and LinkedIn are an especially powerful combination for your dealership.

Search for Twitter users who fit your customer profiles, and follow them. Look for people using relevant keywords or those talking about the trucking or construction industry or one of your brands. Comment on their posts, answer one of their questions, retweet their posts or quote them in one of your own social media posts. Attracting their interest is the first step in getting them to follow you back.

As you uncover opportunities using Twitter, you can follow up using LinkedIn to connect with decision-makers. When you follow up with Twitter-generated leads, do it in private. Connect with them individually, whether you do it on Twitter or LinkedIn. You might want to arrange a time to talk with them via phone or even in person, if that’s appropriate. But don’t push, let your relationship evolve comfortably.

Listen closely to what your prospects are talking about on Twitter, and use your customer relationship management software to store these important tidbits of data about your leads. That way, you’ll have timely, relevant topics to start a personal conversation when the time is right.