Get FinancingOurisman Ford Of Manassas: Successful Cross-Marketing With Truck Paper & Tree & Landscape Equipment Trader
Posted On: September 26, 2024
Johan Smit chooses a “best of both worlds” approach to advertising new Ford work trucks with Sandhills Global . He’s using a blend of Truck Paper ’s mass appeal and Tree & Landscape Equipment Trader ’s outreach to a specific audience, both in print and online, to get his commercial Fords in front of the maximum number of likely buyers.
“It’s been good,” says Johan, a commercial manager for
Broad Presence, Targeted Focus
At Ourisman Ford, Johan relies on the vast audience of Truck Paper to get the word out about his Ford service-body trucks, box trucks, flatbeds, and dump trucks. Each week, he runs a full-page ad in Truck Paper magazine , which nets him 20 or more online featured listings in the top tier of search results on TruckPaper.com .
“It’s been pretty straightforward, which is nice,” Johan says. “That’s what we like about it.”
At the same time, Johan also targets buyers of chipper trucks, landscape trucks, and stake body trucks through Truck Paper niche brand Tree & Landscape Equipment Trader. His consistent presence in its nationwide magazine with a half-page ad puts his specialty trucks in front of the right buyers at their workplaces. His ad spend also ensures he always has half a dozen or more featured listings on TreeTrader.com , where his trucks can stand out without getting lost in the crowd.
“It’s a fairly specific vehicle, a chipper body, so when a chipper body lead does come through you guys, it’s a fairly accurate lead,” he says. “The customer knows what they’re looking for, they see the picture, they see the price, it’s pretty straightforward. So we’ve been happy with the way that you guys do advertising.”
Free Cross-Platform Marketing
Moreover, all assets listed on TreeTrader.com benefit from cross-marketing on TruckPaper.com and other Sandhills sites, depending on the industry. This replication of online listings allows Johan to pursue arborists, landscapers, and municipal customers through the focused Tree Trader marketplace without giving up access to TruckPaper.com’s larger user base and more general reach.
High-Quality Sales Leads
Each featured listing online can have multiple photos and videos of a truck in addition to the single, color image in its print ad. “It’s good,” says Johan. “The cool part is the leads that we do get from you guys are normally pretty solid leads because the customer sees a decent picture of the truck.”
Johan says he continues to invest in Truck Paper’s print advertising despite the fact that Ford only supplements digital marketing outreach these days. “We saw the benefit in it,” he explains. “We’ve been pretty happy with the leads that do come through from you guys.”
Moving Aging Inventory
Ourisman Ford of Manassas provides sales, service, financing, and more to its customers throughout northeast Virginia and southern Maryland. The massive dealership has advertised in Truck Paper for at least two decades.
Johan is in his eighth year with Ourisman, where his purview at the Manassas location runs the gamut of new Ford medium-duty and light-duty trucks. It includes upfitted F-Series and Super Duty models from F-750 chassis cabs on down to light-duty F-150 work trucks, plus E-Series models and Transit cutaways. “Anything on a Ford chassis,” he says.
Truck Paper and Tree & Landscape Equipment Trader help Johan move commercial vehicles that need to find the right buyer. “A lot of times when I advertise some of our old, aging inventory on your sheet at a big, discounted rate just to get the phone calls, that’s my go-to spot for advertising the kind of hard-to-sell units,” he says. “It’s been helpful. That’s kind of our go-to spot for the old-age inventory that sometimes can be kind of unique.”
Personal Service
Just as Truck Paper has proven a worthy partner to Ourisman Ford over the years, so have the people who made it possible. Johan’s main point of contact at Sandhills is veteran sales representative Chris Wollberg.
“Chris is very straightforward, really nice to work with,” Johan says. “He responds almost instantly whenever I’ve got a question.”
With excellent customer service and a steady flow of quality leads, this is one partnership on the road to continued success.