5 Trends in Construction Dealer Marketing

In January 2014,  EDA (a Randall-Reilly data product) and AED (Associated Equipment Distributors) partnered on a survey investigating construction equipment dealer marketing practices.  The following is an abstract of the survey report, 2014 Benchmarks and Trends in the Construction Industry. To download the complete report, click here.

  1. More than half of dealers surveyed plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2014, compared to 5% who plan to decrease their budgets.

  2. 90% of dealers plan to shift more of their budget to online marketing, but only 9% spend 50% or more of their budget online.

  3. 50% of dealers reported “Measuring Return on Investment” as their greatest marketing challenge.

  4. More dealers ranked Google+ “most effective” than any other social media channel (26%).

  5. 90% of dealers use co-op advertising while only 60% report some level of satisfaction with it.

For half of all dealer respondents, measuring ROI is the biggest challenge. Lacking time, marketing expertise and sometimes data, the quandary continues about where to spend marketing dollars. Nowhere is this more evident than in Yellow Pages/Directory Advertising usage. Seventy-two percent of the 134 dealers surveyed still use it, yet more than half of those who do find it “ineffective.” No one surveyed found it “very effective.” It’s an indication of just how difficult it can be for dealers to let go of traditional marketing methods.

While there is no substitute for the due diligence of tracking where leads come from, the AED|EDA Marketing Study provides a good starting point for dealers to evaluate their current marketing efforts and learn from their peers.

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