Proudly serving the industry for which it was named for more than 50 years, Outdoor Power Equipment provides dealers who sell and service outdoor power equipment with valuable information to succeed in a competitive market.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/481024
FEATURE SToRy www.outdoorpowerequipment.com OUTDOOR POWER EQUIPMENT APRIL 2015 19 OPE Colleen Malloy is the director of marketing at ARI Network Services. Prior to joining ARI in November 2013, Malloy served as the editor of Motorcycle and Powersports News. She is dedicated to the mission of helping dealers improve their operations through the implementation of ever-evolving best practices paired with ARI's suite of an award-winning data-driven software tools and marketing services that help dealers "Sell More Stuff!" — online and in- store. ARI removes the complexity of selling and servicing new and used inventory, parts, garments and accessories for customers in the outdoor power equipment, powersports, marine, RV, automotive tire and wheel, and white goods industries. More than 22,000 equipment dealers, 195 distributors and 140 manufacturers worldwide leverage ARI's website (www.arinet. com) and eCatalog platforms to "Sell More Stuff!" Google+: 1. Welcome new additions to your Circles. 2. See if any of your Google+ content has been shared by oth- ers in their Circle, and thank them for sharing. Social Media action Plan (Part 2): Social PoSting ARI's digital marketing services team has years of experience managing dealer social media channels, so I checked with Lisa Buller, ARI's director of digital marketing, to find out what con- tent really connects on social media. Buller shared what she calls the 70/20/10 rule: 70 percent of your social content should be entertaining, educational and engaging. Links to your dealership's blog posts, retweets of interesting articles from consumer magazines, and shared content from manufacturers all fit the bill. 20 percent of your content should reiterate your dealer- ship's branding, but should NOT focus on direct sales. Event in- vites, links to videos on new products, and testimonials would all fall into this category. In that final 10 percent of your content, you can more di- rectly ask for the sale. Posting links to your new and used inven- tory, information on your next sale, and manufacturer promos would all be included here. Buller also emphasized that your social media content isn't one-size-fits-all platforms. Personalize your content to match the unique format of each social media platform. Now that you know what to post, the natural question of how often next arises. Socialbakers studied three months of content on Facebook from some major brands, and on average, those brands post once a day. When a brand posts twice a day, those posts only receive 57 percent of the likes and 78 percent of the comments per post. The drop-off continues as more posts are made in the day, sug- gesting one post per day is the optimum posting frequency for Facebook. The Socialbakers team also took 11,000 random tweets from top brands and found that the three-tweets-per-day mark offers the highest level of engagement. While the study didn't cover ARI's third primary recommend- ed social media platform, Google+, we've found that daily post- ing on Google+ is also optimal. Social Media toolS While managing all of your social channels can become a bit overwhelming, there are many popular third-party tools that make it possible to manage all of your social media accounts from a single dashboard. I absolutely recommend taking advantage of one of these platforms not only to simplify your social listening and publishing, but also in order to measure the success of your social media initiatives by utilizing the analytics functionality in- cluded in many of the leading platforms. Here are a few industry leaders to consider: Hootsuite: www.hootsuite.com Sproutsocial: www.sproutsocial.com Buffer: www.bufferapp.com Be sure to talk to your website provider to see if it offers any industry-specific tools to help automate your social media post- ing process. SPonSored Social Media PoStS Now that you're ready to put your daily social media manage- ment plan into action, let's take it a step further. Purchasing sponsored social media posts on your social chan- nels can extend your social media reach, helping you influence potential consumers beyond your follower base. When you create a paid social media campaign, you have the ability to pinpoint the demographics of the consumers you want to target, including data points like age, geography and gender. While the 70/20/10 rule is critical for your organic social me- dia efforts, you want to make sure that your sponsored posts and advertisements have a clear offer with a call to action. For exam- ple, you could take visitors to a landing page to enter your dealer- ship's spring giveaway — don't miss the opportunity to generate hard leads and sales from your social spend. Social coMMerce E-commerce is growing in popularity as an additional profit cen- ter for OPE dealers. If you've introduced e-commerce to your website, be sure to take advantage of your paid and organic social efforts to drive online revenue. Social media commerce is projected to generate 5 percent of all online retail revenue in 2015 — ringing in at $14 billion. Social net- working sites understand this trend and are making changes to make it even easier to purchase directly from within their platforms. Bottom line: The days of social media without the potential for ROI are over. Whether you're using your social efforts to drive online leads or help make the sale, be sure that social selling is a key part of your 2015 social media strategy.