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The Digital Dealership: Integrated Website

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The Digital Dealership: Integrated Website

Tonight, guest blogger Mets Kramer continues to educate us on all the digital aspects of our business with The Digital Dealership: Integrated Website.

In my last article, “The Digital Dealership”, I painted a picture of what the digital dealership looks like.  What defined the digital dealership was information and a continuous flow of that information.  In this week’s article, I want to take a closer look at this, primarily because “Going Digital” has a particular assumption many people in our industry struggle with, especially around websites and sales. This struggle assumes “Going Digital” is about website shopping carts and electric payments, but this is not true.   You do not need to have a shopping cart or checkout function on your machine listing page to be a digital dealership.  What you need to do is have a connected flow of information that anticipates your customer’s needs.

Here are three things to consider when developing your digital dealership

First, stop separating your e-commerce customer portal solution from your main website.  Create a website that transitions from information site to portal seamlessly, and treats every visitor as a customer.  Do not make them search around for the portal login button and drop them into a different environment.

Your physical dealership doesn’t have a sign over one door labeled “Visitors” and a second door labeled “Customers”, so why do it at your digital dealership.

Using analytics platforms, you can monitor your site visitors. It won’t take long to realize a large percentage of your visitors are repeat visitors and existing customers.  These visits are often to learn more about the products they own, or products they are considering.   Your integrated website should present information on products, connect your available inventory, and create a sales connection.   Your website should integrate to your CRM, automatically creating new leads and generating Quotes in your CRM quote system.   The days of contact forms via email are over.

This brings up the second point to consider, recognize your visitors.   Without getting technical, your website can learn to recognize repeat visitors and customers.  These are visitors who may have done business with you and are in your CRM.  Yes, I’m talking about using Cookies and CRM integration.   When customers return to your site, you should know about it, and the site should recognize them.  The site should build on the existing knowledge of that visitor. Make sure your site can say “Welcome back!”.

Your physical dealership does not treat returning customers like strangers, so why would your digital dealership.

Presenting returning visitors with information about items they last viewed makes their visit more relevant.  For a known customer, show them as already “signed in” to customer areas.   Do they own a Model XYZ? Make sure they know their price on a new one or place a custom offer on the page for them.  No one else will see it because your digital dealership knows who the visitor is from your CRM.

Finally, when your customers enter your digital dealership, make sure their fleet data is available. Your customers and prospects do business with you for one reason.  They own equipment and you sell and service it.  Link services, knowledge, parts, and more to the customer’s known fleet.  Fleet data should be a visible function and updated easily.  Make sure it can capture, and save to your CRM, all brands of equipment, even if you’re an OEM dealer.

In implementing these 3 ideas your digital dealership moves beyond a billboard website or a machine advertising site, it becomes a digital dealership application that meets the needs of your customers. It engages them, provides them with ways to make doing business with you easier, and gives them the information they need.

While this may seem difficult, Modern CRM platforms like Vizybility are built to integrate with website applications and connect your digital dealership to daily operations.   Vizybility handles all your customer and prospect information and can store detailed fleet data for each.   Our complete API makes it easy and secure to connect your website to your sales and support teams.

If you would like to learn more about how we can help you build a digital dealership platform, contact me at mets.kramer@strategicevolutions.ca

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The Digital Dealership

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The Digital Dealership

Tonight, guest blogger Mets Kramer continues to educate us on all the digital aspects of our business with The Digital Dealership.

Over the past months I’ve covered various digital aspects of sales and marketing.  We talked about shifting our mindset from Digital Billboarding to Engagement Marketing.  We looked at how your website is more than just a confirmation of your existence, but a key part of your growing digital presence.   Research shows your customers are now completing up to 85% of their new purchase research before calling your dealership.

Let’s face it, we live in a digital world!  Almost everything we do is digitally enabled, even our most hands-on team members, technicians, open laptops and connect to machines prior to most repairs, and they certainly open them to execute their work at some point.  Our sales teams do digital quotes, get digital contracts signed and transact a sale in a digital system.

In our last conversation, on Ron’s podcast, Ron and I started to look at the general idea of a Digital Dealership.  A dealership not bound by the analog world, but one that recognizes our perpetual digital interactions. It shifts its thinking by starting from a digital perspective.  Imagine a green field dealership – a virtual one.

So, what would a digital dealer look like?  Here are some thoughts

A digital dealership starts by recognizing information is the driving force behind the digital change in how we live and work. The internet is often called the information superhighway and we are all connected.  Access to information is what drives each of us to “Google” something each day, just out of curiosity.  Information is what brings value to an interaction, it connects us with the knowledge we need to execute our work and businesses.

The digital dealership looks at how information flows through the business, from marketing and sales to service and support programs.  It looks at how the information of a customer’s engagement or transactions flow into the business, and then, it does one very important thing.  It looks at where that flow gets broken or disconnected.  Discontinuity, in our digital information flow, kills transactions, so the digital dealership makes sure it doesn’t happen.

In a practical sense, this means the digital dealership looks at how marketing efforts lead to sales, then to initiating and even closing a sale.  Customers have the option to change medium, but the flow doesn’t stop them if they know what they want, it uses information to enable.   On the parts and service side information powers a digital transaction in the same way.  The digital dealership no longer asks its customers for the machine serial number when they call for parts.  The Digital dealer recognizes incoming calls, remembers the customer’s equipment, offers them a digital purchasing options or creates automatic parts carts for common jobs.

In service, the digital dealer has analyzed what is the likely problem via telematics and service history to determine a possible cause, and solution, prior to driving to see the machine.  This is a scenario we have all talked about, but how many of you are working out how to make it happen?

Customer Portals provide customers with 24/7 access to fleet information.  Equipment is linked to product data so customers can determine if it fits their next project.  It provides historical information on service, links to past financial transactions, provides service recommendations for the future and a replacement unit when the hours get too high.   It offers online chat or a button to get a call back immediately so they know someone will be on the line to help them.

In the end, the digital dealer connects all the information about a customer, and their business, together in a seamless process which captures the customer needs and makes it easy.  The dealership’s customers appreciate it, because they get the same treatment in so many other interactions in their personal lives.

The digital dealer uses bricks and mortar, where needed, to deliver a real product to their customers in a digital way, removing many of the traditional limits of territory, and possibly capital requirement limitations too.

Taking your dealership into the digital future may seem like a lot of work, it may seem too futuristic and technical, but each of the items I’ve listed is already available and being done in our industry to some degree.  The difference is the digital dealership combines them into a single experience.

Finally, it is also important to remember that the digital information doesn’t replace the knowledge and experience your team has.   The digital connections merely enable your existing relationships and empower them, making the knowledge gained by your team available to support your customer.   At the same time, the digital connection also enables you to reach more people and expand your presence.

Our industry is on the verge of these transformations.  Closely related markets are already seeing this change.  Will you be one of the first digital dealers in our industry?

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We All Engage in Social Media

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We All Engage in Social Media

In this week’s post, guest blogger Mets Kramer shares that we all engage in social media and this blog is just one example. Other platforms include Facebook, LinkedIn, and of course, the large number of websites we all visit for information.  

As the digital world grows, we understand it is necessary to have a social media presence for our dealerships. We want people to see us and whatever online presence we create, we want it to have a positive impact on our business.  In my last article, we looked at how to use metrics for your website, with a specific focus on using the information collected to understand your customers’ and visitors’ engagement with your digital dealership.  Our goal for investing time and money into our online presence is to increase the engagement we have with our audience.

I’d like to look more closely at social media strategies. Each platform has its strengths and can contribute to your website traffic and engagement.  There are 3 main things to consider when building your strategy: who is your Intended Audience, what kind of Content do you want to post, and lastly, a call to Action, or in other words, how do you want them to respond?

Your audience consists of both active and prospective customers, in addition to a large number of people who many have no need for your services.  When developing your strategy, it’s important to consider who will see your social media posts on each platform and understand the demographics of these audiences. For example, joining small contractor groups on Facebook may get you a large audience of owner/operators who love equipment and are busy each day on site.  LinkedIn has a more professional and corporate audience, with larger business decision-makers or influencers.  It’s important to understand who the audience is when determining what kind of content, you want to show them. We all can appreciate the effort in personalized messages, on a card or in an email greeting; this is no different for social media, be personal.

The second aspect to consider is content, which can include product images (equipment for sale), application content (showing the product at work), general information to educate your audience or pure branding content so the audience becomes familiar with your company’s “face”.  Remember social media is social. This means that all the content you post, needs to also focus on you or celebrating people in your business. When you can associate a person with your online content, it helps your audience build a social connection with your business. In your digital marketing strategy, the goal is to build a virtual experience between your dealership, you and your audience; both active and prospective customers. All this to say, if you’re only posting images of your inventory with no links to your website, you are not successfully building a social connection within your online presence.

This brings us to the final aspect of engaging in social media: the call to action. What is the action you want your audience member to take after seeing your content? This is where the strategizing comes in. It is imperative to create content that motivates potential clients to move away from “doomscrolling” and drive them to your website. Doomscrolling can be defined as mindlessly scrolling through news articles, social media posts, or other content on sharing platforms.

So, what is your call to action?

Decide if you want your viewer to click on the content and be redirected to your website so you can further engage with them, or do you want a direct response? An example of a direct response is posting an image of a machine you have for sale, with pricing details and contact information. Here, the call to action is “Call me to buy this machine”. This type of strategy has been shown to be very effective on platforms like Facebook where you have groups of contractors, but it’s generally frowned upon on LinkedIn. A more strategic approach on a platform like LinkedIn, would be to have the viewer click on your post, directing them to your website. Now, you have the opportunity to present your dealership fully, presenting all the aspects of your business and focusing the user to think about how your dealership can meet their needs.

In conclusion, the main objective for any strategy should be a call to action. We invest time and money in social media platforms to redirect our audience members to the right place: generally, your website. If you can construct each post with the knowledge of the kind of audience you are marketing and a clear expectation of what you want their response to be, it will help you determine the kind of content you should post.  If your audience is full of buyers, show them something to buy. If your audience is full of influencers, build a connection, build your brand and drive traffic to your website so they get the full picture.

One last note.  Find a social media management app to execute your strategy.  Check out Hootesuite, Social Pilot, Buffer, Sendible and others.

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Metrics For Your Website

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Metrics For Your Website

Metrics For Your Website

Today’s guest blog is from Mets Kramer, sharing knowledge about the metrics you need for your website, and understanding your digital traffic to better engage your audience.

You use metrics for every other part of your business, so it’s time to learn more about them for your digital marketing, specifically your website.  This is a continuation of my previous blog on Engagement Digital Marketing.

Growing up and working in the equipment business, we are all familiar with metrics.  My first experience with them was the measurement of invoice days, or rather days between last labour and invoice date.  As service supervisor, I learned it was a good indication of one aspect of our operational efficiency.  Later, I would learn invoice days was one of several metrics which would provide a complete picture of the efficiency of the operation.  For example, I found receivables days was a complement to invoice days, and if we invoiced too fast, with poor quality, receivables lingered.

Your digital marketing work is no different from your other business operations.  Metrics, or measurements, help you understand what is happening with you digital marketing efforts.  What each of us need to do, is understand what the metrics mean, how they relate, and how you can affect them.  It is also important to pick a set of metrics that drive to something valuable for your business, not just target numbers that seem good.

In this blog I would like to look at a few common metrics for your dealership website.  They are Visitors, Bounce Rate, Average time per page/session and Conversions.

Visitors are great!  Of course, we want traffic to our websites, if no one visits, does it really exist? But what does it mean?  Think of Visitor traffic as the top of your funnel (or crusher if you prefer).  It tells us how many people have visited the website and had a look at the pages they landed on.  Visitors can enter the site through the main page, or directly to specific pages using links on other sites.  Either way, it is the starting measurement.  Having high traffic levels sounds great, and is certainly better than very low, but the other metrics will tell us more about what happened when those visitors viewed the site.

Bounce rate: this is a very common metric used by internet people, partially because it sounds fun.  Bounce rate measures the number of people who landed on your site and then left without looking at any other pages.  This means bounce rate, on its own, is not a great measure of success, or of a good website.  A very high bounce rate is generally an indication that people have low engagement with your site, and so warrants investigation.  However, if you are bringing people directly to your site, targeting specific pages, a high bounce rate needs to be viewed alongside a metric such as Average time on page to understand what it means.   For now, consider bounce rate a measure of “are people clicking to other pages on my site before they leave”

So that’s the first two, we have people coming to the site, and we know if they are clicking around or not.

The next measure is average time per page or per session. How long are people spending on each page, and how long is each session.  For Bounce rate, a high rate is often considered bad, but if you are driving traffic directly to a page, like this blog, and the visitors are spending enough time on the page to read it, average time on page can be a measure of success, even if they bounce after reading.   Remember our Digital Marketing strategy is a strategy of engagement, so more time spent on your site means higher engagement, even if they only visit one page. For other visitors, look at how long they spend on the site or pages, it should match the content on the page to determine what a good metric target is.

Finally, Conversion Rate.  In the end, for equipment dealers, your websites should be more than just information sites.  Our sites should be designed for action.  This is often called a “call to action” when reading about website performance.  Just like we talk about a complete set of metrics for other business areas, Conversion Rate is important final goal for measuring website engagement.  Conversion Rate can be determined using a contact form, a button to call your dealership or generating a lead in your CRM.  Typically, an average conversion rate is 2%, but as with all these metrics, it depends on numerous other factors of your site.  It is important to see your engagement digital marketing efforts in relation to conversion rate, a tangible result.

Collecting these measurements can be done with numerous tools.   The most obvious is Google Analytics, but there are WordPress plugins that do the same, and other content systems have their own dashboards as well.  The important thing is to get them set up and use them.

Obviously, this topic is extensive, and I can not provide a comprehensive explanation in one blog.  I hope each of you understands a little more about what website metrics mean, how they relate and how they can guide your digital marketing efforts.  If your dealership has a website, and you are investing money in your digital marketing, it is important to understand the value you are getting for your investment.

All these metrics apply to all forms of traffic, including referrals, organic and paid.  In my next blog I will look at these topics from the perspective of paid traffic.

If you would like to learn more, or want to get some help with these topics, please contact me and I would be happy to explain or put your in touch with some trusted people that can help you execute.

For more information on our classes and assessments, please visit us at Learning Without Scars.

Dealer Websites

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Dealer Websites

This week, we have a new guest blog from Mets Kramer.

Dealer Websites

In my last article, I discussed the difference between Billboard Digital Marketing and Engagement Digital Marketing. With the world and our industry becoming more digital everyday, I wanted to expand on the topic of websites and why it’s worth building your own site to engage your customers.

Websites are the easiest way to present your dealership and explain to visitors who you are, what you do and what sets you apart from the industry. Additionally, a custom domain, with emails to match, is a simple way to gain better control over your brand and manage your team. (i.e. Company name: Strategic Evolutions, email: mets.kramer@strategicevolutions.ca).

However, for equipment dealers, it is a little harder to present your company, your team, services and products. This is because our products, or inventory, are always changing. Our products tend to be serialized construction equipment, so listing your inventory requires a more complex website and should include an easy, quick way to update your information.

While this is a challenge, it is possible! It will give you better control over your digital presence and, also, help you build your brand, developing stronger relationships with your customers.

Here are 4 reasons why you should build your own website:

  1. Present your dealership and team the way you want. Focus on the strengths and values that you feel are important. Add content that brings value to your clients, expand on the services you offer and present your inventory in the style you feel has the greatest impact. Just like you design your dealership lobby to focus on your customer’s experience, a website is a digital representation of your company’s “face” and its physical building.

When creating your website from scratch, focus on engaging the customer, drawing them in.  Then, present your value proposition or promotions.  Consider metrics like bounce rate, time on site and pages viewed as a measure of engagement.

 

  1. Add a blog, picture gallery and of course, VIDEOS. These features are great to post on social media using Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. Each social media post links visitors back to your website. Increasing the links and traffic to your site helps you rise to the top of internet searches when people are looking for equipment or services. Additionally, this type of content improves your content score, also improving your search position.

To understand this better, assess your own online experience.  Do you use TikTok, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook?  What do you prefer to view?  Research shows visitors engage more often and longer with video content more than pictures.

 

  1. Present your inventory without directing customers to an external advertising site. Capturing customers and their engagement is the name of the game. Once you have people looking at your equipment, hold them there and answer their questions. Throughout this year, digital presence and selling has become that much more important. Current research suggests customers are doing 90% of their research PRIOR to contacting any dealers about a machine. Make sure your inventory is presented well and contains all the information your customers would initially ask for. You want to provide everything they need so picking up the phone is easy!

When you build your own site, present your inventory with video, images, detailed descriptions, links to specs and any support documentation you have to prove to visitors “This is the machine you want!”.

Building your own site prevents them from ending up on an advertising platform where other options are presented to them.  FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a REAL thing! It has been shown to motivate people out of fear to keep clicking, if they weren’t satisfied by what they found.

  1. Analytics Systems. Take advantage of the market’s best analytics from either the website platform, Google or others. Understand who’s visiting your site, where they came from, what they saw, and how long they stayed. Understand how to improve your Bounce Rate (Users that leave without clicking anything on the site) and Conversion Rate (Users that act by clicking a contact button). Understanding this aspect of Digital Marketing helps you change and update your site to improve your visitor engagement.

A website visitor is the equivalent to a person visiting your dealership.   During an in-person visit, it’s communication and addressing their needs that closes the sale, so use the same approach for your website. Engage!

For more information on our training programs, please visit us at Learning Without Scars.

For more information about Mets Kramer, please visit his website at Strategic Evolutions.

 

 

Digital Marketing

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Digital Marketing

Mets Kramer

Digital Marketing: Billboard vs Engagement

“At the moment, our research shows buyers making 90% of their purchase decision before contacting the dealer.” And there it was. I had been having thoughts like these swirling around in my head for a few months now. But when Charles Bowles at Trader Interactive spoke with me, I had no idea how much our industry had shifted.

I have a theory about Digital Marketing in our construction equipment industry and I believe it can be considered in two ways.

  • First, is what I’d like to call Billboard Marketing, which refers to digital strategies geared towards establishing and maintaining digital visibility. These approaches are often additional marketing strategies, while continuing the existing methods of communication.
  • The second approach is called Engagement Marketing and includes digital activities to connect and develop engagement opportunities with your target audience. Dealers who implement Engagement Marketing consider their digital marketing presence as transformative and suggest these methods could replace most, if not all, past marketing approaches.

There are three aspects of Digital Marketing that I would like to look at and compare Billboard and Engagement strategies. They include Websites, Email Marketing and Advertising campaigns.

  1. Websites

Most dealers have a website today, which is a great start, but the buck doesn’t stop there. Listing your equipment, providing contact information and location falls under the Billboard approach: you present your information to visitors and hope they contact you. However, for Engagement Marketing, your website should provide a virtual visit to your dealership; images and videos of your inventory, and related documents showing the quality of the equipment and records of its health and maintenance. The icing on the cake would lead the visitor to a button they can click on to take them onto the next step. (Replace “Contact for more information” with “I’m interested in Buying”) But let’s be real, this call to action isn’t the icing, it’s the entire cake! How do you measure whether you are leading your visitor into an engaging relationship? Make sure you provide ample information about the machine so they can decide on the spot. If there’s not enough detail, Bowles says 90% of visitors will go to check out another listing to find what they need. Hop onto Google Analytics to help you assess whether you’re Engaging or Billboarding.

  1. Email Campaigning

The next common aspect of Digital Marketing is email campaigning.  Email campaigns are a great way to stay connected to customers and present new products. To use email campaigns effectively, it is important to consider your audience and develop strategies in order to create a continuing conversation. Mail programs such as Constant Contact or Mailchimp provide the tools to send information to tens of thousands of people.  A Billboard approach sends the same message to everyone who drives by it – no matter who they are or what they are looking for. We don’t want to use email campaigns the same way. Instead, consider a more strategic approach, engaging different segments of your audience based off their interests. Provide a mixture of Equipment For Sale messages and industry, fleet focused education. Use the tools provided by the email platforms to understand who is interacting with your campaigns and change the messaging and frequency for each segment to further engage your audience. While email campaigns can feel like a one-way communication, change your mindset and remember, email is most effective as a conversation tool. So, create campaigns that encourage your audience to talk back!

  1. Digital Advertising

Finally, Digital Advertising, whether Google, Facebook or others, are designed to bring visitors to your digital dealership: your website.  The Billboard approach will stop at bidding on generic words (ex. Caterpillar excavator, Komatsu bulldozer, Case backhoe, etc.)  which will hopefully bring visitors to your website to see what your dealership has to offer. But let’s keep in mind that digital advertising can be expensive, so the set up and focus of your advertisements should be focused for an Engagement approach. Let’s milk every opportunity! How about bidding on specific machines that are in your inventory? Specific combinations like Komatsu D65EX, for example, will have less bidders, making them cheaper and bringing visitors exactly to what they are looking for, the machine on your website.

The digital marketplace is real and becoming the source of future sales.  All leading industries are showing signs of transformation into the Engagement model of digital marketing.  Automotive sales, Commercial trucks are some but do not forget about Amazon and similar services. We are all proof that Engagement Marketing and Sales keeps us coming back for another slice.

We will continue this discussion soon.

To continue to develop your expertise in Marketing, please visit our website at Learning Without Scars.