A 30-tonne excavator is not an impulse purchase. Equipment buyers research for months, talk to operators, compare specifications line by line and then stay with a dealer for years of parts, service and hire. Marketing built for a quick sale burns money against how these buyers actually behave. I’ve marketed equipment from CASE, Hyundai, Sandvik, BOMAG and ASV across two equipment groups, and these are the lessons that held.
Win the research months, not just the purchase week
By the time a buyer sends an inquiry, the shortlist is usually set. The comparing happened earlier, on websites, in trade media and in conversations with other operators. If you’re invisible then, the quote request goes to someone else.
So the website has to answer the questions buyers ask while they compare: which machine suits the application, what it costs to run, which attachments it takes and who services it locally. That is the work behind my AdvanceQuip organic growth case study: useful content on a site search engines could properly read.
Show the machine working
Operators and fleet managers can smell generic copy. “Industry-leading performance” means nothing to someone who runs machines for a living. What persuades them is evidence: the model, the specification and the machine doing a real job in conditions they recognize.
At one equipment business, our social channels had built a following on videos of trucks delivering machines. They were easy to make and people engaged with them. I moved the content to the machines at work instead: what each one did on a job and why that mattered to the person buying it. Engagement dropped, the work got harder, and I needed the sales team’s help to film. Then the sales team started meeting customers who had already seen the machines in action. Content that looked weaker in the feed became material the team kept using in sales conversations.
Stay present between purchases
Machines are replaced every several years, but much of the relationship happens in between: parts, servicing and hire. If you only talk to customers when you want to sell them a new machine, you’re absent for most of it.
At Porter Group, that was the job of Porter Press, the group’s quarterly magazine. It already existed when I joined, but it was demanding to produce and had no one to run it, so I took it on and wrote, designed and produced it from then on, mailed to more than 9,000 recipients. A well-made print piece on a workshop lunchroom table keeps the dealer in view between purchases in a way a banner ad can’t.
Win local search
Equipment is bought and serviced locally. When a machine breaks down on site, the first search is for parts or service nearby. At Porter Group I looked after more than 50 Google Business locations, and every one of them was a front door: correct hours, the right number for parts or service, and accurate information about what each branch did.
Measure inquiries, not clicks
Nobody buys an excavator through a checkout, so judging paid search on online sales tells you almost nothing. Value the inquiries, work with sales to learn which ones become real conversations, and report on that, even when it makes the numbers look smaller.
The long game looks less exciting in a monthly report. But the brands that plan for the decade beat the ones playing for the quarter, because they’re already on the shortlist when the buyer is ready.