It’s not easy to sell large machinery. And deciding which equipment listing sites are worth the time and effort against which aren’t. Many construction equipment businesses have difficulty selling their products via the internet. With that in mind, here are nine of our best online tips for selling heavy equipment.
Heavy equipment is a niche market—few individuals shop for quarter-million-dollar construction machines, and even fewer have the funds to make a purchase. Even if you discover a few interested people and have the financial means to buy a $100,000 excavator or a $300,000 bulldozer, they may not live in your area and be unwilling to bear the price of transporting the machine across the state or nation.
Selling heavy equipment is similar to selling real estate in that you must be willing to play the long game. The average 972M wheel loader, for example, waits on the market for 105 days before being purchased, according to MachineryTrader.com. So, keep trying if you still don’t have any sales. The suitable buyer will eventually discover you if you do your best to get your equipment listings seen.
1. Place an ad on Machinery Trader for your equipment.
Intestate Heavy Equipment is still one of the most popular websites for heavy equipment shopping. At the top of Google search results, it routinely appears for high-volume search terms such as “excavators for sale” or “heavy equipment sales.”
2. Place an ad on Craigslist for your equipment.
Although you might not think of Craigslist as the first place to look for expensive construction equipment, it does have an entire heavy equipment category dedicated to it. The Craigslist Heavy Equipment page for Las Vegas, for example, featured 1050 local sales listings at the time of writing.
Pros:
Equipment owners’ listings are free. Furthermore, “heavy machinery for sale Craigslist is an online classified ad service”is a popular Google search word. It indicates that many individuals are looking for heavy equipment on Craigslist.
Cons:
Sellers are discouraged from offering equipment outside the city where their business is situated on Craigslist. For example, if your company is based in Las Vegas and you try to list your equipment in other cities, such as Los Angeles or Phoenix, your listing may be marked for removal.
Don’t include your email address when listing your equipment. Scammers and hackers have used Craigslist to send phishing emails. However, if someone is interested in purchasing something, they will call—so all you need to include is your phone number and website.
3. Post your machines in Facebook Heavy Equipment Groups.
Pros: Some advertising packages include comprehensive data and analytics. You can track the number of impressions and clicks an ad receives, as well as the number of phone calls it produces. You may even record incoming phone calls so that a supervisor can listen in and provide salespeople input on improving their lead-to-conversion rates.
Cons: Listing equipment on Machinery Trader might be costly. Their pricing plan is still based on their print magazine, which explains why their advertising expenses are more significant than expected.
Machinery Trader does not currently allow equipment dealers to list their equipment online—you must also pay for a position in their print magazine if you want to market your equipment on their website(s). Ad packages that include unlimited inventory listings start at $295 per week and start at $50 per week per machine.
Over two dozen Facebook groups buy and sell agricultural and construction equipment. Some are broad “heavy equipment for sale” groups, while others focus on a specific machine category—forklifts, for example—or a specific geographic area—the Southwest United States.
Pros:
Using Facebook groups to advertise equipment is free, and the platform allows you to send a single item to dozens of groups at once. The procedure of listing a piece of equipment takes only a few minutes.
Thanks to a recent modification in the newsfeed algorithm, Facebook groups may also prove to be a terrific way to get equipment spotted by potential clients. The admin altered Facebook’s algorithm at the time of writing to “prioritize the Pages and groups we anticipate an individual may care about the most,” resulting in postings from groups being at the top of many people’s feeds.
Cons: Many Facebook heavy equipment groups have thousands of members, and new listings post multiple times a day on each group’s page. It can be challenging to break through the clutter and notice your listings.
Pro-Tip: Use high-resolution photographs and provide a link to your website in the article description. Even if no one from Facebook buys your machine, including a link on your page can assist drive visitors to your site and raising brand awareness.
4. Build an email list of people who are interested in what you have to say.
Email marketing may be a powerful tool for selling heavy machinery when done correctly. Encourage individuals to join your email list by adding an email capture plugin to your website. For example, you could run a Facebook ad that targets your Facebook fans and people who have previously visited your website.
5. Make contact with local vendors.
Why not contact an equipment sales rep directly instead of posting a Facebook ad, commercial, or billboard and hoping someone finds it? For example, if you have many Caterpillar machines for sale, search for CAT dealers in your area and contact them by email or phone. First, of course, you’ll need to obtain the person’s name and direct email address. However, many equipment websites have their sales agents’ contact information displayed on their directory page.
Pros: Making a phone call or sending an email is quick and straightforward. Even if the sales agent doesn’t have money to buy your equipment right now, you’ll have gotten on his radar, and he could remember you the next time he needs something.
Cons: Because salespeople phone heavy equipment firms all day, they may be cautious about accepting a cold call without an appointment.
6. Email Marketing
Pros: Email marketing systems like Mailchimp offer a free basic package if you sign up for it. Unlike Gmail or Outlook, an email marketing platform provides specific information. For example, when your email subscribers opened your email and clicked on your email links. It will allow you to send follow-up emails to individuals who clicked on your listings.
Cons: Building a targeted lead list takes time and planning. It also necessitates skill, as getting it wrong could result in your account being marked as spam. We recommend taking an email marketing course if you’re new to digital marketing. Many of the courses are available for free.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of ranking your website for specific search terms that your potential purchasers could type into Google. For example, “caterpillar motor grader” or “wheel loader for sale.” If you sell a lot of the same equipment regularly, it can make sense to develop a page on your website dedicated to that keyword. Though it may take years of persistent effort before your website begins to rank on Google’s, it’s a long-term approach worth pursuing.
Pros: You’ll be able to reduce the amount you spend on Google or Facebook advertisements if you rank organically in search results for popular search terms. In the long term, this could save you money.
Cons: It can take months, if not years, for SEO to pay off. Other solutions, such as auctions or ads on Machinery Trader, can be considered if you need to sell equipment quickly.
7. Use LinkedIn to connect with potential purchasers.
LinkedIn is a business-to-business social media site. So if you haven’t logged on in a while, it’s worth doing so. Because LinkedIn has worked hard to style its newsfeed after Facebook, making it the unofficial “Facebook for business owners.”
8. Create Facebook Advertisements
Facebook is the world’s largest social networking platform and the third-most visited website, with 2.3 billion users.
- Here are some interesting Facebook statistics:
- Facebook users are mathematically counts by 68 percent of Americans.
- Every month, the average Facebook user clicks on 8 ads.
According to statistics from our equipment advertisements, a national Facebook ad targeting people who work in the construction and heavy equipment industries has a potential reach of 350,000 people.
Pros: Facebook advertising is inexpensive. If done correctly, you may create website views for as low as a few cents per click.
Cons: While Facebook advertising is excellent for raising brand recognition, it might be challenging to employ to get rapid results. People use Facebook to catch up with old pals and watch cute kitten videos, not shop. The trick is to use Facebook advertisements to collect email addresses. And you can use these leads for remarketing them via email or Facebook retargeting ads later.
9. Make contact with your current clientele.
When you “follow” (or connect) with a new person on LinkedIn, they automatically follow you back. This implies that you can easily quadruple your number of followers in just a few days. On the other side, you could follow a hundred new individuals on Instagram. But you may only get one or two of them to follow you back.
Pros: Because everyone’s job titles are given in their profiles, you can be pretty specific about who you connect with; for example, only friending people who work in the sales department of organizations you want to sell to. According to a HubSpot study, LinkedIn generated 3X more conversions than Twitter and Facebook.
Cons: Many people create a LinkedIn account and then never use it, making it difficult to maintain meaningful connections regularly. However, this appears to be changing. Two hundred sixty million people are using LinkedIn monthly as of March 2017, up from 106 million in 2016.
Let’s connect on LinkedIn, shall we? Follow our business page on LinkedIn and connect with our marketing department.
Source: HeavyEquipmentRentals