Your 3 Step Guide to Selling More Motorcycles
Dealerships and brands, this one is for you… Competition for sales of new models is fiercer than ever. Your prospective customers want increased flexibility with payments and are looking for cool, informative content, as they increasingly purchase higher ticket items online.
8 years ago, already 54% of 18-34-year-olds preferred to shop online, and this number has only increased. If 50% of US bikers are aged 50+ in 2014, this number is even greater now. This leaves you to attempt to win over the millennial majority for great lifetime ROI, but they are less likely to walk through your dealership!
Elon Musk suggested closing most of Tesla’s dealerships in favour of online sales because everyone was buying online, especially in the post Covid era. And it’s no different for motorcycle dealerships. Studies show that people get intimidated by dealership staff who work in lavish showrooms. Meanwhile, with so many brands offering wider ranges of models and getting evermore creative with financing options, the competition means it’s a buyer’s market and customers don’t go to dealerships to spend hours negotiating prices either.
The only advantage to going into the store is to test how a bike feels. There’s nothing stopping customers from trying a bike in your store and then buying it cheaper with your competitor’s easy-to-navigate online store.
You need to improve your digital marketing game.
Let’s find out how…
1) Know Your Audience
Market research helps you understand the things that your target market gets drawn to and what they’ll avoid. Recent studies from Hinge Marketing found that those who do frequent market research will have 2.7% better growth and 9.2% bigger annual profits than those who do occasional research, and a whopping 7.8% larger growth and 9.7% more profit than those doing no research.
For example, many millennials get drawn to the on-trend bikes with an urban appeal or a retro look (like our photographer, Berenger or our content writer, Jasmine with their Café Racer and Street-bike styles!) Or emphasise a better value-price ratio for smaller and better insurance savings for smaller bikes or a minimalist design.
Knowledge is power, and market research like this will give you the power to sell better, grow faster and make more money. Knowing your audience is absolutely key.
2) Marketing Online
Build Trust with Customer Reviews
Reviews are one of the best weapons in your marketing strategy. Think about the times you look at reviews on Amazon before you buy something.
Statistically, 91% of the 18-34-year-olds trust online reviews equally to personal recommendations, with other studies finding that 93% of customers state that online reviews directly influenced their decision to buy.
Build Your Google SERP
One of the best ways to improve your SERP (placement on the search engine results pages) is through regular content marketing, blogs and social media campaigns. You can use SEO keywords in your blogs to get ranked higher by Google and other search engines. This gets more visibility for your dealership store online and subsequently more sales in person.
Build a Better Online Store
Online customers, especially millennials, like convenient online experiences. Every obstacle that stops them from easily and simply purchasing your product will lose you sales:
- 99% of customers abandon their online carts before purchasing.
- 59% of these customers say that it was due to some inconvenience of the website.
- 48% said it was due to extra costs like shipping, tax and fees being too high.
You need to make it easy to buy online. Improving your e-commerce site can give you a 35.26% potential increase in conversion rate if you improve your check-out design! Online customers are fickle and have many other options, and younger customers know how to find alternatives. Try to give them as few reasons to do that as possible by improving your online store and marketing presence.
3) Selling in Person
Know Your Bikes
Almost every advice forum and article online recommends researching thoroughly, such as Cycle Trader and Begin Motorcycling. With 90% of millennials being online each day, let’s assume that they know more than you think they do about specs, price comparisons and reviews.
Promote In-store Benefits
You can do this through your new awesome online presence. You can add extra incentives like discounts and deals for those who are willing to come into your dealership.
There are innate advantages to buying in-person, like test drives, size and weight checks, and that ineffable feeling of “that’s the one for me” as they see the bike romantically from across the room. This provides you with perfect opportunities to interact one-on-one with your customers, who have already been convinced by your online reputation, which is likely to lead to better sales figures.
Create Rapport
This will stop them from buying elsewhere. Once you’ve got them in the door with a good deal, interacting with a human as opposed to an online entity causes better customer retention through building a good rapport with the business. With 81% of customers stating trust as an important factor in making a purchase, you can make sure they buy from your motorcycle dealership and not your competitor’s.
We always look at what Motocorsa are up to, given that they’re widely regarded as one of the best Ducati dealerships in the USA… with the numbers to prove it. They build and maintain an awesome rapport with their audience and customers through in-store events, regular meetups and track days, workshops and MotoGP viewing parties.
Making sure you know your audience and improving your online presence will drastically help you sell more bikes online and in-store.
For further support, get in touch at hello@motorcycle.marketing and don’t forget to check out our other articles to help you with your social media, influencer and content marketing.
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