Having worked with marketing and communications teams in the heavy vehicle sector for the more than 16 years, I’ve gained a unique insight into the purchasing process and what informs that journey. But how can we use our wider agency insight and modern day marcomms strategy and tactics to help our clients in the sector reach their target audience?
The current landscape
It’s no secret that the heavy vehicle purchasing market has been more challenging in recent years. The shift towards alternative powered vehicles is well underway. There is still uncertainty about the best route to go – whether that’s electric or gas-powered vehicles. The sector has also found it tough since the pandemic, with many of the yearly trade shows and events struggling to attract the same numbers of visitors as they may have been attracting ten years ago. However, road transport and heavy haulage remains big business and many of the firms who may have delayed fleet renewals will need to invest in the coming years.
Heavy vehicle buyer profile
Heavy vehicle purchasers range significantly from smaller family-owned operators to major mainstream haulage companies with their own purchasing departments. The key is to understand who is responsible for the decision making and how they like to consume information. More traditional methods involve sales calls and building up personal relationships. There is definitely still a role for this type of sales. However, it also needs to be supplemented and supported with hard evidence on mpg or charge range, vehicle technology, cab comfort and safety information. Sometimes this information can be more subtly targeted at key individuals over a longer period of time.
Reaching the audience
There is no hard and fast rule for how to reach every person in a purchasing role. As outlined above, some will react better to personal sales visits, calls or a discussion at a trade event. Many of these relationships have been fostered over a really long period of time. However, a newer generation of buyers might potentially be more receptive to email marketing campaigns, social media targeting and wider creative activations such as advertising or viral videos. This takes research, insight, planning, strategy, tactics and evaluation in order to determine the budgetary success of a campaign. This is where experts such as CWA can support, whether it’s reaching the audience through an online article, running a radio advert, putting a creative message on their social media feed or setting up an interactive advert at a petrol forecourt, we’ve done it all before!
Influencing the audience
Of course, we know purchasing comes down to much more than a clever strapline or message, it’s down to finance, dealer locations and previous experiences much of the time. However, our aim as a partner agency is to help businesses influence that B2B audience over a long period of time. Therefore, when the sales activation occurs, they already have a pre-conceived notion of what that the brand or business is about.
Measuring success
Ultimately the measure of success for us is if vehicle sales increase over a set time frame. We may look to increase brand awareness, click throughs to the website or increase social audience, but in the end it’s about the overall objective we partner to achieve.
If you want to partner with a company who understands your objectives and works with you to achieve them, then reach out to our talented CWA team and we’ll have a coffee and discuss how we can help.
David Leatham
Media & Communications Director
