Purchasing new stock can sometimes be a big challenge. Recognizable? In this blog article you will read how to increase your purchasing in 3 steps.
Step 1 | Use your website
The first step to becoming more visible to transport companies and other selling parties is a good website. Of course it comes in handy when displaying and selling your stock, but it’s also important when buying. Transport companies prefer to deal with a reliable and professional party. And a good website contributes to this. Our advice: create a purchase page on your website. A good purchase page contains the following components:
- Benefits you have to offer
Tell what the advantages are for transport companies to sell their used vehicle or machine to you. For example, that you respond within one day and that you have a pick-up service.
- What information you need
Such as the make and type, condition of the vehicle or machine, year of manufacture, miles driven and recent photos.
- Easy to fill in form
Want to make it even easier for transportation companies? Then make sure they can easily fill out all the information you need in a form.
- How you can be reached for questions
To do this, provide multiple options: a phone number (possibly also a WhatsApp option), email address and contact form.
Below is an example for a purchasing page
Step 2 | Put online marketing to use
You have now set up a purchasing page. The next step is to make this page also findable for transport companies and other sellers. How? By using online marketing. You proceed as follows:
- Collect data
Collect information about people or companies that sell used vehicles or machinery. For example, make a list of all transport companies in the neighborhood or consult the national database for this. This sounds complicated, but of course you can also look for a party that already has this data.
- Deploy banners
If you know who your target audience is for purchasing you can show banners to these people. On those banners you put a message like “Vehicle or machine for sale? We will buy it from you.” With some advantages of selling to you such as “We respond within one day and have a pick-up service. If someone clicks on the banner they will be redirected to your purchase page. You can therefore place a banner on TrucksNL to promote your page. Would you like to know more about bannering on TrucksNL? Go to our banner page our banner page.
- Use retargeting
Besides banners, you can go one step further with retargeting. This way you reach people who have already been to your purchase page, but haven’t contacted you yet. They are interested, but just need that extra push. By retargeting these people will see your banner again during 30 days. So they remain reminded of your purchase page, increasing the chance they will come back to this page and contact you.
- Create ads on Facebook
On Facebook, you can use an advertisement to call out to people and companies who want to get rid of their used vehicle or machine and thereby refer to your purchasing page. You can choose who sees your ads, allowing you to specifically target transportation companies, for example.
Step 3 | Use email
Now, your online promotion of your purchasing page is on. Last, but not least, you can use e-mail. Do you have the email addresses of parties you previously purchased from? Then use email to reach these people at once with a message that you purchase and a link to your purchase page.
Do you also send out a regular newsletter to promote your stock? Then you can combine this newsletter with an announcement that you like to buy used vehicles and machines and a reference to your purchase page. You can include this announcement only once, or you can choose to include it in your newsletter by default. You can then describe exactly what type of vehicles or machines you are looking for. A win-win situation, because your potential buyers are often also potential sellers. And that way you stay top-of-mind when they have vehicles or machines they want to get rid of.
Below is an example of a purchase message in a newsletter
Note: you can’t just email anyone. You have to take into account the legislation that exists around the protection of personal data. In the Netherlands we have the AVG legislation, but also abroad they have their own legislation, such as the GDPR. This legislation ensures that you as a company must first have permission from someone before you can mail this person.
An example to get permission is: give your buyers a notification when making a purchase, such as “When making this purchase, I would like to receive your newsletter”. Make sure someone can check this online or sign offline. It is also important that someone can unsubscribe from your newsletter at any time. Therefore, always include an unsubscribe link.
Need help?
Would you like to apply the steps in this blog article, but don’t know where to start? Or are you unable to purchase properly despite your best efforts? We would love to help you with that. Would you like more information on how we can help you? Please contact us.