10 Digital Marketing Strategies for the Heavy Equipment Industry
Heavy Equipment marketing strategies!
If your company sells heavy equipment or machinery, marketing isn’t quite as simple as it can sometimes be for companies that market directly to consumers. Instead of only having to appeal to one specific person, your marketing tactics often have to resound with an entire team of decision makers. Many business to business, or B2B, marketers face this challenge, but it certainly isn’t impossible to do.
There are many digital marketing strategies heavy equipment companies can use, but choosing the best ones can be challenging.
So how can you be sure that your strategy is targeted enough to reach the right potential businesses, but not so targeted that it alienates part of your demographic? The following marketing ideas for heavy equipment and machinery should help get you pointed in the right direction. If you’d like to speak with an digital marketing specialist, call us at 888-601-5359.
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1. Have a robust, responsive website
Your website is likely to be the first place potential buyers who are investigating your equipment go to find information about your offerings. In order to provide everything they are looking for and improve the chances that they make a step to contact you or make a purchase, your website should be robust, responsive and thorough.
It should be optimized for search engines to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to find. Some of the elements your website should contain include:
Clear navigation
You should have a strong homepage that gives viewers a complete understanding of what you offer, as well as clear links to more specific pages. Most people skim through copy on web pages, so add bullets and call-out boxes for clarity and ease. Be sure to keep your navigation as simple as possible, and use responsive design to ensure that it is accessible on all devices.
Comprehensive product listings
If a business is looking into buying a piece of heavy equipment, it’s critical that they know the specs of the equipment you offer. That means that although it may be easier to just list broad product categories and hope that people will contact you for more information, you need to include every product you offer on your site. Make sure to add any additional items that can be purchased to modify the equipment for the needed purposes.
Photos
Images speak much louder than words, and can add a great deal of visual clarity to text. Invest some money in high-quality, professional photos, and include them on your site. Be sure to include descriptive alt tags to let site visitors know what the images are in case they can’t be displayed.
Purchasing information
Make sure to make it 100% clear how your sales process works. Do you accept orders online? Do you offer equipment rentals? Do you work with businesses directly? The more straightforward your purchasing information is, the more like it is that site visitors will make the effort to take the next step.
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Heavy Equipment Dealership
2. Optimize your site for search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making your site easier to read and organize for search engines. Then, once search engines can read it, they can show your site to users who want to become customers.
There are a lot of fine details that go into SEO, and we can’t cover all of them here.
If you’d like to learn more about it, check out this page to learn how your heavy equipment company can get more leads with SEO.
3. Run PPC campaigns
You may also consider running PPC campaigns to attract qualified traffic to your site.
Heavy machinery is a competitive industry, and whether you’re a manufacturer or distributor, you know that reaching new customers can be a challenge.
PPC advertising allows you to reach your most qualified prospects where they’re already searching online. And one of the major benefits of PPC is that you don’t have to wait for results. If you’re looking to quickly increase traffic to your website and increase revenue, PPC is a great option.
4. Adopt content marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating blogs, articles, downloads, videos, photos, graphics, and other informative products for your website.
The content you create should be based on keywords that you identified during your research in order to get you as many new leads as possible every day.
The most popular way to create new content is to start a blog. You can use your blog to discuss common questions you get, company news, industry developments, and any other information that’s relevant to your business.
You can use articles to provide similar solutions. Articles are often better places to answer questions that require long, in-depth explanation. You can also use them as pricing pages, category pages, equipment pages, and more to round out your site.
For downloads, you can provide user manuals, specification sheets, usage histories (if applicable), and condition reports for potential customers looking at certain equipment. Beyond that, you could also write a downloadable guide on how to choose equipment for first-time contractors or customers just entering the industry.
Videos are great sources of content that let you show off your equipment in action. If you have the chance to film heavy equipment — even if it’s just with your phone — you should do it. It’s a huge help to digital marketing, especially for such a competitive industry.
Next, photos are ideal for showing your equipment in its best condition. Once it’s cleaned, inspected, and ready to sell, take a few photos from every angle to show it off. You can even jump in the cockpit or under the hood to make sure customers can see everything they want.
Last, graphics let you discuss statistics, ideas, and other concepts in engaging ways. At WebFX, we use infographics a lot, and they’re great for getting people’s attention. But content is valuable to heavy equipment digital marketing for another reason. It helps with SEO.
5. Maintain your social media profiles
If you think that social media is only for B2C companies, you’re mistaken. In today’s world, maintain a presence on top social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, can help your business connect with potential customers. Regardless of the fact that your company is in the heavy equipment industry, you should still have an active presence on social media.
In fact, these are the three social networks that could be the most valuable to your business.
Facebook lets you connect with nearly 2 billion people worldwide. That means no matter where you are, there are definitely some potential customers in your area who can find you through Facebook.
Using Facebook for your business means talking with those potential customers, sharing content from your site, responding to their questions, and building relationships with them.
That lets you engage your primary customer demographic and get them on your site. Once they’re there, you can turn them into new leads.
Twitter is also a useful tool for your digital marketing strategy.
Twitter lets you promote your site’s content quickly and easily. It also lets other Twitter users like it, retweet it, or respond to it.
No matter what kind of content you share, it’s always good to provide your potential customers with interesting or useful information. That lets you open up the conversation to talk about your business, what you offer, and how you can help someone.
LinkedIn is the world’s biggest professional social network. It’s so big that most of its users are actually decision-makers in their businesses or homes. That means you can appeal directly to people with purchasing power at businesses.
That makes LinkedIn exceptionally valuable to your heavy equipment dealership. You can post content to LinkedIn that directly relates to their interests, gets them to interact with you, and eventually gets them to your site.
Ultimately, that process turns them into a lead, and you have yet another customer from your digital marketing strategy. But after you turn those social media followers into leads, you’re still not done!
This means you should post on your social media pages regularly. You can do this by linking to your products, adding testimonials, talking about the history of your company, or simply sharing articles from other sites that your target audience might find interesting. If you don’t have time to update your social media pages yourself, delegate the project to someone you trust within your company.
6. Start a YouTube channel
If you’re planning to add any videos to your website (which you should), it’s wise to create a YouTube channel. A channel is the perfect platform for you to clearly illustrate what your equipment is capable of, and can be much more interesting than images.
You can show videos of your equipment in action, post video testimonials from happy customers, and share basically any other kind of content in video format. Not only will this allow you to address important aspects of your equipment, as well as educate consumers, but YouTube is a convenient platform for hosting the videos you want to share on your site and social media accounts.
7. Write for relevant publications
Every industry has its own unique professional publications, and many people see them as a go-to resource for staying up to date with industry news and trends. Try to build connections with these publications, and reach out to the editorial staff and see if they are looking for guest articles or columns.
You may be surprised to learn that they are open to this kind of arrangement. Usually, you cannot talk about your product as being better than another, but you’ll at least get your name and company some visibility. Plus, if the publication is online, it can be a great way to build high-authority links to your site.
8. Offer your expertise
If your company is well-known enough, you may be seen as an expert in your field. If this is the case, be sure to make it clear that you are open to interviews.
Writers for industry publications may want to speak with you about your company or the field in general. If so, be willing to offer your expertise. No one wants to read an unhelpful or generic article, so you have to be prepared to share useful, insightful information.
9. Attend conferences and conventions
Do you attend the major conferences and conventions in your industry? Certainly, this costs money, which is why some heavy equipment manufacturers are hesitant to do it. However, it’s definitely worth setting aside some of your marketing budget.
These events are a fantastic way to build connections with buyers and dealers, and they can also be a great source of content for your site and social accounts.
10. Use email to stay in touch
The heavy equipment industry has a long sales cycle, and it’s important to stay in contact with each of your leads as they make their decisions. Email marketing campaigns are a great way to do this.
You can use newsletters, drip campaigns, and lead nurturing emails to make sure that your leads don’t forget about your business, and see your brand as a helpful source of information.
If you don’t think your heavy equipment company’s marketing strategy isn’t as strong as it could be, feel free to contact us! Our dedicated team of digital marketing professionals is more than happy to help you start using to web to grow your business today.
Find out how WebFX can create an effective digital marketing strategy for your website. Call 888-601-5359 or contact us online today for a free evaluation.