3 Ways To Encourage Dealers To Market Your Product

If you manufacture a marine product or are a main distributor, you need your dealer network to market and sell your product. Whether you are selling through a chandlery, reps or marine service centres, having a dealer network that is actively marketing your product makes it easier to reach more people.

If you are lucky enough to have a product that is unique and niche, you might find it easy to find dealers and they might be approaching you for the dealership. In this instance, having a dealership agreement that includes their marketing responsibilities is important. In all too many instances, I find websites of dealers who are supposed to be marketing my client's products, and the product is not even listed on their website let alone mentioned on their social media pages. Of course, if you are expecting your dealers to market your product, you need to be doing a good job of it too, and giving them access to consistent and good content.

The big mistake manufacturers or distributors make is allowing their dealers to copy and paste content from their websites. This is not a great idea. The Google search algorithm is looking for unique content when search terms are used. If it detects groups of text either the same or very similar on different URLs and domains, it gets confused and does not know which to show up in the search. This may affect your website negatively.

So, you have your dealers in place and you want them to be more proactive in marketing your product. Here are three ways in which you can encourage this.

1. Give dealers access to a content library - Dealers are often small regional businesses with little staff in their team and sometimes they are one-man-bands. When you create your social media, web, or YouTube content pop it in a shared drive and give them access to it. 
2. Send regular email updates - this does not have to involve creating a time-consuming newsletter, just send an email when you have something to share. If you have been mentioned in the press, let them know. If you have created a new video, send them a copy. If you have added a new batch of graphics to the drive, tell them and send them the link. Make sure the emails have links to all your social media pages too.
3. Make Social Media work for your network. When you are creating and scheduling posts for social media, think about your dealers. It is a good idea to create posts welcoming new dealers and give all your dealers a mention from time to time. Encourage your dealers to tag/mention your social media usernames when they are creating posts mentioning your products so that you can share them. Also, if you want to ensure your dealers see your posts and have the opportunity to share them, tag/mention their social media usernames. I would recommend that whoever is carrying out your social media always has an updated list of your dealers, their web addresses, and social media usernames.

If you would like to improve your reach using digital marketing techniques and a FREE no-strings-attached consultation sounds good, get in touch with heidi@spcmarinemarketing.com