Digital Marketing for Fleet / Commercial Departments

[Ryan Everson]

Curious if anyone knows of any dealers with commercial truck departments that really stand out with their digital marketing efforts? It seems to be a fairly untapped market, almost everyone uses a bland non-customizable Work Truck Solutions website (as we do too).

We’re getting ready to launch a new commercial truck site that seamlessly iframes in our Work Truck Solutions website and injects a bunch of CSS to remove unnecessary navigation elements while leaving our Work Truck Solutions website intact. I’m usually not a fan of iframes due to the negative UX and SEO issues but we tried to minimize these through the use of the css injection and custom seo text on each page.

I know commercial business is primarily a relationship business, so we featured the staff on every page and working at building out bios and a satisfied customers page.

Here’s our preview link - https://garberfleet.wpengine.com/ , I would love everyone's thoughts and any guidance you can give as to what other dealers are standing out that I can get additional inspiration from. Joe Basil (basiltrucks.com) was where we got our initial inspiration from.

 

[Brendan Dolan]

Our Ford store had a rocking fleet department, and you're right on the relationship selling. I used to layer in some Geotargeted campaigns for the companies we wanted to target and we found some good success with that.

 

[Alexander Lau]

I used to work with Basil from a digital marketing / attribution standpoint. They do some good stuff. I like where you are going and it's smart to build it on WP. For the longest time, I've said that Fleet industry marketing services and products have been lacking. Most dealers bury it under their commercial inventory, but it should be brought to life via own platform, similar to fixed-ops. At the end of the day, that's what search engines want to see, specifics.

 

[craigh]

I just love this:

 

[Jeff Kershner]

@reverson you have obviously put a lot of work into the website. At a quick glance, I really like it! And I like how you've brought your commercial sales team into the mix on the website. I would be sure all future marketing focuses more on your team vs the trucks. I've seem some stellar results utilizing social (facebook and instagram) and targeting commercial business owners.

 

[Ryan Everson]

I just love this:

Thanks!

I used to work with Basil from a digital marketing / attribution standpoint. They do some good stuff. I like where you are going and it's smart to build it on WP. For the longest time, I've said that Fleet industry marketing services and products have been lacking. Most dealers bury it under their commercial inventory, but it should be brought to life via own platform, similar to fixed-ops. At the end of the day, that's what search engines want to see, specifics.

Yes, that was our goal with this site! Make it less of an afterthought and really make an effort to market the fleet department online.

@reverson you have obviously put a lot of work into the website. At a quick glance, I really like it! And I like how you've brought your commercial sales team into the mix on the website. I would be sure all future marketing focuses more on your team vs the trucks. I've seem some stellar results utilizing social (facebook and instagram) and targeting commercial business owners.

Thanks! Yeah we recently gained access to some additional Oracle facebook audience targeting options that I think will be really powerful at generating fleet business.

 

[ra6209]

Don't know if this is a separate thread, but how do most commercial fleet departments handle the CRM portion of what they do? Can Vinsolutions be bastardized into handling fleet, or do some vendors have CRMs geared more specifically to fleet sales?

 

[Ryan Everson]

Don't know if this is a separate thread, but how do most commercial fleet departments handle the CRM portion of what they do? Can Vinsolutions be bastardized into handling fleet, or do some vendors have CRMs geared more specifically to fleet sales?

We have separate Vinsolutions processes built out for fleet lead sources like Commercial Truck Trader and Work Truck Solutions. That being said, a lot of our fleet guys are old school and still work their book of business relationships manually.

 

[Justin Rindos]

Curious if anyone knows of any dealers with commercial truck departments that really stand out with their digital marketing efforts? It seems to be a fairly untapped market, almost everyone uses a bland non-customizable Work Truck Solutions website (as we do too).

We’re getting ready to launch a new commercial truck site that seamlessly iframes in our Work Truck Solutions website and injects a bunch of CSS to remove unnecessary navigation elements while leaving our Work Truck Solutions website intact. I’m usually not a fan of iframes due to the negative UX and SEO issues but we tried to minimize these through the use of the css injection and custom seo text on each page.

I know commercial business is primarily a relationship business, so we featured the staff on every page and working at building out bios and a satisfied customers page.

Here’s our preview link - https://garberfleet.wpengine.com/ , I would love everyone's thoughts and any guidance you can give as to what other dealers are standing out that I can get additional inspiration from. Joe Basil (basiltrucks.com) was where we got our initial inspiration from.

We do a conquest email blast 2 times per month by SIC code. We also separate our google PPC for commercial. We have also in the past used a 8.5x11 direct mail targeting specific businesses by revenue. Also look into the WP all import plugin. You would be able to manage your own feed that way right into the site. We are one of the largest volume commercial dealers in the northeast.

 

[Ryan Everson]

We do a conquest email blast 2 times per month by SIC code. We also separate our google PPC for commercial. We have also in the past used a 8.5x11 direct mail targeting specific businesses by revenue. Also look into the WP all import plugin. You would be able to manage your own feed that way right into the site. We are one of the largest volume commercial dealers in the northeast.

Nice! Yes, we're very familiar with the WP All Import plugin and use it on some of our other sites.

Would you be willing to share the URL of your site? I'd love to check it out.