From the Editors

Use current events for promotion

Last weekend Elena Myers became the first female to win a professional motorsports event at Daytona International Speedway. Did you know that? Do your customers know that?

On Saturday, Joey Pascarella won the Daytona 200 on his Yamaha YFZ-R6. Did you use that to promote your dealership?

Current events can be a fun way to relate to your audience and promote the riding lifestyle and the products at your dealership. They’re also a great way to fill the content holes you have in your e-newsletter, blog site, website and social media sites.

If you’re a Yamaha dealer, for example, on Saturday, you could have had one of your staffers check the race as soon as it was over and immediately post a note of congratulations on your Facebook page. In the post, you could have mentioned that you carry the same bike that Pascarella won. It could have looked like this, “Congratulations to Joey Pascarella, winner of today’s Daytona 200. Joey rode to victory on his Yamaha YFZ-R6. Check out our lineup of YFZ-R6 models this week.” If you wanted, a discount could have been applied.

Elena Myers became the first woman to win a professional motorsports event at the Daytona International Speedway on March 17, 2012.

Maybe you watched the race, but you’re not a Yamaha dealer. You could have congratulated the best finisher or all finishers from the brands you carry. When Myers won the SuperSport Race 2 Saturday, even non-Suzuki dealers could’ve gotten into the action with a post such as, “You go girl! Elena Myers becomes the first woman to win a motorsports race at Daytona. Congrats!” The wording for the posts can be tailored to fit your audience, but many dealers can use the same news to push the lifestyle or their products. With the posts you can include links to articles about the races, links to the riders’ websites, or even photos of related products, services or promotions from your dealership or OEM.

If you don’t think your customers care about racing, or you need content outside of race day, keep up with other current events by reading your local newspaper, watching the local TV news, checking out local websites, following your OEM on Twitter or in e-newsletters, or setting Google searches for your favorite OEMs or subjects.

For much of the country, this past week has seen unusually high temperatures. If you’re in one of those areas, you should be encouraging your customers to ride. Gas prices are going up. Have you promoted that your vehicles have great MPG (or run on electricity, if that applies)? Have you seen a funny (yet appropriate for your audience) video on YouTube related to your products or the riding lifestyle? Share it!

If you keep up with current events and share the news with your customers, you’ll come out looking like an authority they can trust. Also, your customers will feel like they can relate to you, and you’ll have made some friends before they even walk into your store.

Liz Hochstedler is the associate editor of Powersports Business, a trade magazine for the powersports industry. She reports on the powersports industry through Powersports Business’ varied media, including in the magazine and online. She assembles the brand’s twice-a-week e-news and handles a variety of assignments for the magazine. Powersports Business is known for its exclusive national dealer surveys, in-depth industry analysis and dealership conference, Profit Xcelerator.
Contact: ehochstedler@powersportsbusiness.com
Website: www.powersportsbusiness.com

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