Talkin’ ‘Bout an Evolution: Modern Buying Demands Trigger Inbound Marketing Movement

What does your website say about your company? Does it position your brand as a thought leader on the needs and issues that confront your clients? And what do your clients say about your dealership when they leave your site? Do they say anything? More importantly, what do they think about you?

OK, so that’s far too many questions to digest at once. But they’re aimed to cultivate a conversation about marketing in the digital age, inbound and outbound strategies, as well as website optimization that enables customers who are pondering their next purchase to consider your firm at the top of the list.

After all, this is not 1999. The internet is a bottomless reservoir of information that has armed buyers sufficiently well before they even bother to pick up the phone or shoot an email to a rep. The initiated among us can find all the detailed spec information and do our own cost comparisons and analysis. The drastic changes of the last 20 years, or even two years, have prompted dealers to revisit their marketing strategies to demonstrate a complete understanding of the talking points and evolving needs of the office end user.

Bringing visitors to a dealer’s website and keeping them engaged with compelling content is a chief driver for marketing departments across the country. We’ve canvassed a number of dealers to learn how their content marketing strategy, combined with search engine optimization (SEO), online ads and social media, have played a role in their evolution.

Digital Tools

Marketing in the 21st century calls upon any number of these tools. It has proven to be an evolving process for Impact Networking, headquartered in Lake Forest, Illinois. According to Karlee Ricks, marketing manager, one of the most significant changes in its approach was to focus more on inbound marketing as opposed to traditional outbound strategies. The inbound approach attracts customers with relevant content across multiple channels, among them blogs, social media, educational videos and digital advertisements.

In 2020, Impact will grow that strategy with the addition of email marketing, automated bots, marketing automation, account-based marketing and lead management. “We understand that many of our customers want to educate themselves on a product or service before speaking with a sales rep,” Ricks said. “Content marketing has been a big focus for us over the last year, and to make it successful, we brought on a content writer who is fully dedicated to providing content for the blog.”

Impact develops a monthly content plan that focuses on the timely topics and trends in the industry. The dealer produces at least two to three blogs per week, in addition to video case studies, eBooks, infographics and other content.

Having a unified SEO strategy across all channels is an effective way to increase search volume and drive results.

Karlee Ricks, Impact Networking

“I think this strategy has been effective because we are establishing our brand as a thought leader in the industry by providing valuable, educational content,” Ricks said. “We are excited to be launching a new website in Q4 that will have a more-extensive resource library.”

Impact incorporates SEO in every facet of its digital presence, and Ricks says it is not only an effective tool for websites, but is also optimal for video search, social media and Google Ads. In one of its most recent reports, Impact’s YouTube search views increased 71% month over month via an SEO keyword strategy.

“Having a unified SEO strategy across all channels is an effective way to increase search volume and drive results,” she said. “Additionally, Google Analytics is an incredibly effective tool that can provide so much data about who is interested in a business. We are constantly monitoring reports to see any changes in our audience demographic, and where they might be losing interest on the website. Data from Google Analytics was a key factor in driving the strategy for our new website.”

Buying Journey

Much like Impact, Loffler Companies of Bloomington, Minnesota has in recent years amped up its inbound marketing strategy. According to Mary Steffl, marketing manager for Loffler, the company began creating educational content to help clients and prospects in their buying journey, from awareness to consideration and then decision.

“Depending on where they are in the process, we create different types of content to consume in varying ways,” Steffl said. “This might start with a blog, then offering a video to learn more and then a case study that explains how someone else was helped by that solution. The challenge is determining what those pain points, issues and concerns are, then building content for each stage to answer those questions and bring value to the online searcher.”

The challenge is determining what those pain points, issues and concerns are, then building content for each stage to answer those questions and bring value to the online searcher.

Mary Steffl, Loffler Companies

By addressing the most common issues and questions that confront a buyer in every step along the path, it forges trust with the dealership as opposed to pushing a given product or service. That underscores Loffler’s expertise in the buyer’s eyes.

Loffler has carefully cultivated and grown its website presence and success through SEO with various tools, augmented by the content created on its site, which bolstered its search rank. “In the first few years, the number of warm, qualified leads grew significantly, and revenue generated by the website grew by 500%,” Steffl added.

Technology and Marketing

The evolution from a traditional to digital marketing approach at Prosource essentially walked hand-in-hand with its strategic growth as a complete business technology solutions provider, which dictated the need to add new tools and tactics to the dealer’s marketing program. Amy Mersch, marketing manager for the Cincinnati-based firm, explained that the focus has centered on building expertise, authority and trust while creating value for prospective clients.

“It’s no longer about blasting a single broad message to as many people as possible,” she said. “That can be especially hard for a sales organization, which naturally takes on a ‘push’ approach. So, a key to our success is ensuring our whole team understands the purpose and the benefits of the digital approach, including better targeting in both message and audience, tracking to know what is working and what isn’t, and the agility to make changes as priorities shift.”

It’s no longer about blasting a single broad message to as many people as possible.

Amy Mersch, Prosource

The challenge with many websites and marketing in general, according to Mersch, is that they tend to focus on who the company is and what it offers rather than prioritizing customer needs. Content marketing has helped invert the equation by answering customers’ most-frequently-asked questions, addressing their pain points and recognizing industry trends.

The firm has invested in marketing automation that allows it to see how prospects and current customers interact with the various forms of content. As a result, Prosource can nurture those relationships through content marketing.

Prosource employs the full spectrum of tools—SEO, Google Ads and analytics—to enhance the effectiveness of its digital marketing efforts. Mersch notes that SEO is an essential ongoing effort that can yield impressive returns, “but it’s also a marathon.” Google Ads offers great potential and can support a specific campaign or drive users to take a specific action.

“For example, when we introduce a new service, we use Google Ads to drive traffic and build awareness while we optimize for organic search for the long term,” she said. “Data from analytics gives us insight into how our users are interacting with our site, helps us adjust our content strategy based on what is resonating and provides a foundation for future marketing decisions as we continue to evolve.”

Measurable Results

The conversion from a traditional to digital marketing strategy can be a lengthy process. When Constance Barbian assumed the role as director of marketing and communications at Benchmark Business Solutions six years ago, its main thrust consisted of TV, radio, billboards and even the Yellow Pages. One of her primary goals was to convert much of the Lubbock, Texas firm’s efforts to the digital domain in order to get a more robust, measurable return on investment.

Barbian noted that it took more time than she expected for the digital evolution to be embraced internally. “Often, when someone sees a billboard, it will personally make them feel your brand is being represented,” she said. “However, it can be challenging to track ROI through traditional methods. (But) with a digital strategy, you can follow your prospect throughout the lifecycle of their interaction with your brand. Our team members are now seeing the benefits of an online strategy and benefit from the additional information we can provide about a prospect before they reach out.”

…it can be challenging to track ROI through traditional methods. (But) with a digital strategy, you can follow your prospect throughout the lifecycle of their interaction with your brand.

Constance Barbian, Benchmark Business Solutions

As a whole, Barbian has noted that today’s consumers are much more armed with information when they reach out to Benchmark, so it uses blogs and white papers to help continue the conversation and address many of the talking points. Thus, the leads that are captured are more substantial, especially as prospects view the dealer as a subject-matter expert. It also bolsters Benchmark’s SEO ranking for relevant searches.

Benchmark partners with an agency that provides assistance with SEO, Google AdWords and Google Analytics to track the efficiency of its website. The dealer is also in the process of refreshing its website, and is keen to analyze the changes in its audience as well as the closing rate of its online leads.

“Through these methods, in addition to utilizing HubSpot, we can track visitors to our site with more accuracy, which offers much warmer leads to our sales team,” she said. “Through our digital advertising, we have also used methods to record calls coming in directly from our ads for better tracking and testing. We have noticed a considerable number of leads that come in from online efforts, and these leads frequently ask for a very specific product when they call. This provides leverage to our sales team when initiating contact with these prospects.”

Third-Party Boost

A number of dealers have enlisted the help of third-party providers to give their inbound marketing strategy a shot in the arm. One such example is Blue Technologies of Cleveland, which earlier this year sought out the services of Amplify, a division of Clover Imaging Group (see Aaron Dyck’s companion story on page 36), to redevelop its website. The project included implementing HubSpot to aid in lead generation.

According to Cyndi Konold, marketing director for Blue Technologies, Amplify walked the dealer through the process step by step, providing training on HubSpot and WordPress so that Blue Technologies could maintain it in-house. Amplify has facilitated each update and edit the customer requested.

“Our old website was static and did not engage; it was an education tool that didn’t drive activity or create any lead generation,” Konold said. “In addition to our partnership with Amplify, we implemented a vertical marketing strategy. Each week, our territory managers learn about the verticals we service followed by their prospecting efforts, an email campaign based on who is prospected and follow-up conversations helping to drive our business. The email campaigns redirect our audience to pages on our website, such as our blogs, or relevant information that would benefit them.”

Our old website was static and did not engage; it was an education tool that didn’t drive activity or create any lead generation.

Cyndi Konold, Blue Technologies

Blue Technologies has a regimented schedule that features eight blog posts per month, touching on each of the eight primary vertical markets and its four business units—hardware, productivity solutions, MPS and managed network services. Discussing trends in the industry has positioned the dealer to be more relevant to its audience.

The dealer incorporated SEO/SEM into its online presence, beginning with building metatags into its website. While Blue hasn’t utilized Google Ads, it has created social media ads on Facebook and Instagram. These were primarily aimed at recruitment, and it resulted in a surge of applications.

Online Brochure

When he assumed the role of marketing and operations manager five years ago, Tim Manuel observed that Hendrix Business Systems’ website was essentially an online brochure that detailed who they are and what they do. The dealer’s main thrust was still knocking on doors and other more traditional ways of doing business.

“Previously, we were talking about ourselves in the first person, saying we can do this or that,” he said. “Now we’re focusing and talking directly to the visitor. Slowly but surely, we’ve been changing our content, so when someone comes to our site, the content is more personal to them and they’ll know they’re in the right place. It’s more customer focused.”

To get from traditional to digital took a few measured steps. Hendrix refreshed its website and made it responsive to mobile phone and tablet viewing. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based dealer also focused on SEO, ensuring key words were on all its pages, with particular emphasis on the home page. Functionality was added for customer convenience to be able to order service and supplies.

Previously, we were talking about ourselves in the first person, saying we can do this or that. Now we’re focusing and talking directly to the visitor.

Tim Manuel, Hendrix Business Systems

Hendrix has also experienced geographic growth, with three new locations added. Manuel used Google My Business to help build on the visitor’s ability to find each location accurately. That made it easier for the dealer to get better (and more) search results when using Google Ads and geofencing. While Manuel could not provide detailed figures, he has been pleased with the page visit increases shown by the analytics.

“When we assess what we’re going to do digitally, it’s either to improve our brand or get our name out there, and most importantly, generating leads for those people who might be in the market for our products and services,” Manuel said. “We’re quick to embrace new technologies. The goal is to determine what kind of ROI we can get on an investment, and ensure that it justifies the expense.”