The Problem with Powersports Sales, and How Photography Turns the Tide

What are my Powersports customer’s purchasing decisions based on?

Before entering a dealership, most Powersport and motorsport enthusiasts will morph into online research ninjas. You know the type: Google, dealership websites, and even social platforms such as Facebook, are all avenues that potential customers will turn to in order to compare vehicles, features, and price ranges.

Knowing what an invaluable resource the internet is for would-be buyers, the next logical question any business expert would ask themselves is...

How does online marketing attract potential customers to my dealership?

Your potential customers are scanning the web for whatever information they can get their hands on when it comes to researching a Powersports vehicle. So, to stand out, your website needs to be the best source of information.

Paying for articles and search engine optimization for Powersports can be expensive, though. If I were to tell you that there is a cheaper way to stand out against your online competition? What if I were to also tell you that your customers would appreciate that cheaper content even more than expensive, SEO-driven articles?

That means, one of the biggest challenges in Powersports sales….

While that general tendency may have a lot of advantages, it also has one major disadvantage. A potential Powersports customer who is not moved by what they see online is likely to make up their mind not to do business with your store before they even step foot inside of it.

Pro Tip for photographing Powersports machines: It goes without saying that the best photos can be taken with high quality photography equipment. Better yet, why not use your own mobile inventory app to point, shoot, and automatically upload to your inventory management system for immediate digital syndication? Using the latter, consider staging photoshoots on days that are bright, but cloudy. Bright, cloudy conditions result in better color accuracy, less grain, and more sharpness.

The Benefits of Unique Photography in the Powersports Industry

One of the most powerful forms of content you can produce is photos! High quality, unique photographs of vehicles have several key advantages over generic stock photography images:

• Unique photographs give potential Powersports customers the ability to see the vehicle from different angles.
• Powersports customers can pick out more of the finer details of a vehicle than they would normally see from a stock photo.
• Having unique photography gives potential Powersports customers the feeling that your dealership is more trustworthy, and that you have the actual vehicle in stock.
• Unique photographs often show the machine lines, colors, and textures in a more accurate way than highly stylized stock photos do.
• Having a variety of photographs allows potential customers to paint a vivid mental image of the experience they could have.

What if a real photo isn't possible?

One challenge dealerships in the Powersports industry face is that not every unity they carry in stock is fully assembled. ReplicatorX ensures that every vehicle alternative is matched by vehicle specifications with an actual master photo and pushed to the website Vehicle Details Pages (VDPs).

PSXDigital has resolved this with the release of ReplicatorX; an enhanced feature of the Mobile Photo Capture Tool within the CXMAi +Inventory Management suite. It allows dealerships to stock vehicle easily and efficiently with:

• App-guided vehicle walkarounds and description prompts
• Automatic and real-time post to the website
• Ability to post to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
• Syndication directly to CycleTrader, eBay Motors and Craigslist
• Full management of inventory photos, descriptions and pricing

From the Internet to the Sales Floor: Photography and Inventory Management

An integrated inventory management platform can help a business use photos to enhance customer experience. Taking custom photographs is not only a major asset for your online marketing, but it's also a useful tool for organization and bettering the customer’s experience.

To see why that would be, let’s use a few fun examples...

Larry’s Story: How Larry was able to choose a trustworthy, reputable ATV/side-by-side retailer, with in-stock vehicles, despite all of the nearby Powersports dealerships from which to shop!

Larry is in your city, Georgetown, SC. He is looking for an ATV or side-by-side for his upcoming hunting trip in the Francis Marion National Forest, where he’s hoping to down some fine deer and make his momma proud.

Larry understands the value of scrupulous online research, and he knows most of “them business sorts” can’t be trusted, so he’s on the prowl for the real deal - an expert that has vehicles in stock, and can help him make some important decisions.

Larry is no fool! He knows how to sniff out a snake-oil sales guy like a trusty ol’ hound dog sniffs out a rabbit. That discerning instinct is what
made him choose your business.

It wasn’t just the fact that Larry could compare the features of your ATVs by browsing through all of the high-quality photos on your website. It wasn’t even the fact that Larry could see from those unique inventory photos that “those there SxS vehicles” may be a bit big for the trail he had in mind. It was that Larry knew that your dealership had those vehicles in stock, and with so many Powersports retailers to choose from, Larry felt confident that any business worth their
salt was gonna have the best “dern pictures on th’ big web”.

Allison & Adam's Story: Newly-weds Allison and Adam’s bad customer experience encouraged them to find a more professional boat retailer.

When it comes to getting married, nothing seals the deal like a tour of the U.S. Or at least, that’s how this Hamptons, Long Island couple, Allison and Adam felt when they made the decision to travel from New York down to Florida in a tour of the east coast in their brand new RV. Years of strategic investing and detail-oriented engineering have turned these young entrepreneurs into quite careful customers.

Although they had originally chosen to do business with one of your competitors, Allison and Adam were disappointed by that retailer’s apparent lack of professionalism and organization. When the
couple decided to stop into your dealership, Allison felt the fact that your sales staff was prompt and professional was definitely refreshing.

Browsing Inventory

Adam enjoyed being able to browse through all of the unique photos of the vehicle they were considering, which helped to not only quickly address a lot of his questions, but also served as great talking points to organize your sales person's presentation.

Still unconvinced, Allison and Adam took some time to think over their purchase before returning a week later. They were stunned and amazed when a sales representative immediately greeted them by name, and asked them if they had any questions regarding the model they had inquired about seven days ago.

Sold for life, Allison and Adam went on to purchase and immediately went online to report about their positive experiences with your dealership on Google and Facebook. The pair returned the following year to purchase a trailer and a couple of jet skis.

Making Marketing Materials that Better your Business and
Lower your Costs

Photography is a no-brainer when it comes to establishing a marketing
budget in the Powersport and motorsport industries. From a few personal stories about your potential customers, it’s easy to see how photography can make or break a sale, even before a customer walks in through your
door.

Larry’s decision to choose your dealership over that of your competitors was based on the fact that your use of unique photography helped him to establish a trust-based rapport with your brand.

Allison and Adam were anxious about investing a large amount of their money in a retailer who provided them with a poor customer experience.

Vehicle photos are critical to the consumer’s online retail experience. Studies show that 90% of shoppers on a dealership website prefer real photos of vehicles at the store versus stock photography of the same machine. Actual photos convert 3X higher on websites with no photos or even with stock photos.

So Powersports dealers have options when choosing how to present their dealership to the modern digital consumer:

• Poor Consumer Value - No vehicle photo
• Good Consumer Experience - Stock photo provided by OEM
• Better Consumer Engagement - Actual vehicle photo taken at the dealership
• Best Dealership Option for Shopper Clickthrough Conversions - ReplicatorX fills in the gaps when actual vehicle photos are not possible

Customer Experience Management for the Powersports Industry

Let’s take another look at Allison and Adam. They were impressed by your photography and your sales representatives, but it wasn’t until they returned a week later, were greeted by name, and were asked about the specific model they had been considering, that the couple became your loyal, paying customers, for life. It’s this personal touch that closes the deal for a careful, critically-minded customer.

What IS a Customer Experience Management Platform?

Well, Customer Experience Management (CEM or CXM) is known as the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed customer expectations and, thus, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. It is a strategy that requires process change and technology (sometimes many technologies!) to accomplish.

The PSXDigital CXMAI platform is a fully-integrated system that consolidates data from multiple sources to proactively enhance the customer journey through the Powersports dealership sales process to ultimately drive higher efficiencies and increase ROI (return on investment).

Powered by artificial intelligence, our solution consolidates data and offers dealerships a single dashboard view of all sales and marketing operations. It offers inventory management, collects and organizes customer information, and helps with trade appraisals, among other things.

Other things include:

• CRM
• Inventory Management
• Websites
• Marketing Automation
• Digital Marketing
• Sales Process
• Lead Management
• Market Pricing
• Desking
• Training

What's the difference between CXM and CRM?

CRM comes after the experience. CXM works hard to anticipate it!

In other words, CRM focuses on facilitating your relationship with customers while CXM works through the customer's viewpoint to assess the quality of their experience. A CRM platform is an important investment since it keeps track of crucial data for your inbound marketing and sales efforts and analyzing customer behavior.

CXMAi includes a CRM!

Within a proprietary platform built exclusively with Powersports dealerships in mind, our core products include: CRM, Inventory Management, Websites and Marketing Automation.

CXM is the hands-down solution for building customer trust. There are many CRM, Customer Relationship Management softwares out there, however, most are designed for other retailers in the automotive industry, and aren’t fined-tuned enough to address the needs of Powersports, specifically. That isn’t the case with PSXDigital!

PSX Digital: A Dedicated CXM for the Powersports Industry

PSXDigital has developed the CXM that the Powersports industry is so desperately in need of! Our platform helps you to organize your inventory by using your marketing photos, and because we have features specific to your needs in Powersports, your sales representatives will be able to use the tools to quickly and easily see the status of products, compare products, explore features, and have well-informed sales discussions with potential customers.

Some CRMs have been proven to dramatically increase a business’s efficiency for managing inventory. CXM software allow businesses to boost their sales by managing customer data. PSXDigital does all of that - and more!

CXMAi is the powerhouse of dealership management and marketing. We’ve snowballed all of your needs into one, single login, easy-to-use product. Unlike other software that is designed for the automotive industry, PSXDigital is specifically geared towards the Powersports
industry, which means that a lot of features we’ll provide you with are critical assets you won’t find anywhere else.

If that already sounds good to you, then our last feature will blow you away. PSXDigital actually uses artificial intelligence to put your data in action!

By combining all of your data into one consolidated system, PSXDigital is able to perform algorithms that will help you generate leads, formulate sales automation, and most importantly - close the deal!

It’s no wonder Allison and Adam were impressed. Any customer will be.