Boating Industry

May 2014

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www.BoatingIndustry.com www.BoatingIndustry.com 12 | Boating Industry | May 2014 BY JONATHAN SWEET rom websites to social media to on- line reputation management, digital marketing is rapidly evolving. With its recent acquisitions and product re- leases, ARI is increasing its investment in those areas. This month, we talked to ARI president & CEO Roy W. Olivier about what's driv- ing that growth strategy and why it's so important to the company's future. Boating Industry: When you look at the marine industry for 2014, what's ARI's outlook for this year? OLIVIER: We actually look at industry- agnostic numbers and industry numbers and in both cases we see 2014 shaping up to be a pretty good year, barring some sort of unexpected event that would affect the economy. Most of the dealers and manu- facturers that we deal with are reporting increased website traffi c, increased leads and are doing well. I think 2014 is shaping up to look like a pretty strong year. Boating Industry: You're in a number of other industries as well. Does that carry across the other markets ARI is working in? OLIVIER: Definitely, in the consumer spending-oriented industries that we're in, the fact that the economy has continued to expand has lead to more traffi c and lead to more leads and lead to more sales than in previous years. In general, we think 2014 will be an up year for most of the verticals that we're in. Boating Industry: What do you see as major challenges to a continued industry recovery? OLIVIER: The biggest challenge in our minds is consumer sentiment as formed by the mixed economic signals we're seeing. I think if people feel like the economy's doing well and they feel like their house is going up in value and they feel like their job is secure, we're going to see increased spending. If some event or series of events occur that erode that confi dence, that's going to have an impact on the business. Boating Industry: What makes you optimistic about the marine industry? OLIVIER: We're optimistic because the dealers who are still around are much more educated and much more resourceful than in previous years. They're focused on invest- ing in things that will grow their business. Specifi cally, a lot of technology investment to drive leads and create an electronic dia- logue with their customers via social media, email, mobile messaging and other methods. Boating Industry: Last year, you acquired Duo Web Solutions. What made that an attractive move for ARI? OLIVIER: Duo was really an acquisition that directly links to our strategy to provide additional marketing services to dealers and manufacturers. Duo had a suite of services primarily designed to address search engine marketing, online reputation management, email and other services to help those deal- ers have strategies and tactics for creating that electronic dialogue with their custom- ers via social media and other outlets. Boating Industry: They were a big player on the powersports side. Do you antici- pate being able to apply what they were doing to your marine clients as well? OLIVIER: The best practices in the indus- tries are very, very similar, so we believe that a lot of the skillset and a lot of the things that they did in other vertical mar- kets will translate directly into marine. We've done 14 acquisitions in the last 15 years or so and if you look back at all of our acquisitions, [they] were designed to acquire primarily a dealer footprint or a product suite. Duo was the fi rst time that we've done something that really wasn't product or dealer footprint. It was designed to increase our capability in a specifi c area because we believe three years, four years from now, digital marketing will be much more important than it has been historically. Boating Industry: Why is that important to the industry? OLIVIER: Dealers that are not on top of and executing a good digital marketing with Roy W. Olivier, president & CEO, ARI f P12x13-BI14MAY-Q&A.indd 12 4/17/14 10:24 AM

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