Digital marketing for a 4wd shop to grow sales of tours, products & services
Marketing consultant for small to medium business in Sydney
- over $40,000 in tour bookings sold
- More than 280 tracked website form leads
- Over 1,000 visits to their contact page
- 10,000+ page views, 65% growth for Sydney visitors in 60 days
- over 900 new or improved google search positions
- 3x increase in page views to 4wd tours within 90 days
- 140% growth in organic search visitors within 5 months
- 130% growth of visitors within Australia
As I sit here, fingertips kissing the keys, a burning desire to share a revelation courses through my veins. A revelation not of mystic prophecies but of a simple, yet profound truth that I could turn your 4WD store into the talk of the town – nay, the entire Australian 4wd community!
I am the bearer of a message; a herald if you will, of the digital dawn that awaits to cast its golden hues upon your business, illuminating paths to riches you’ve only dared to dream of.
You see, I’ve danced this dance before. Walked this treacherous path where the terrains of the business world are as unpredictable as the rocky, untamed paths that only a 4WD can conquer. You, the revered 4WD store owner, are a master of equipping adventurers to tackle the wildest terrains of the Australian wilderness. But I ask you this – are you equipped to navigate the wild, untamed frontiers of the digital landscape?
I, my friend, am a Digital Marketing Consultant, a cartographer of the digital terrains. I’ve delved deep into the mystic lands of SEO, wrestled with the enigmatic creatures of social media marketing, and soared the expansive skies of content marketing. And now, I bring this arsenal of skills, not as a boastful conqueror, but as a humble servant to your cause.
Why should a craftsman like you, who has mastered the art of equipping off-roaders with the finest gear, venture into the uncharted lands of digital marketing alone?
The Internet is a beast, wild and untamed, but within it lies a treasure trove of customers, as vast and infinite as the starry Australian skies. Each click, each search, is a potential goldmine, waiting to be tapped. Without a seasoned guide, this landscape can be as unforgiving as the rugged terrains your 4WDs are built to conquer.
In this post, I’ll unveil secrets, not of ancient lore, but of digital strategies, tested and honed in the crucible of experience. Strategies that will transform your 4WD store from a local gem into a national treasure.
So, saddle up, brave soul. A journey of discovery, of conquest, of unimaginable growth awaits. Hand in hand, with your mastery of the 4WD world and my digital acumen, there are no frontiers we cannot conquer, no peaks we cannot scale.
Why did this 4wd shop want small business marketing consulting?
The owners of this 4WD shop in Sydney contracted my marketing consultant services for a six month period to grow the number of website visitors to their site, increase the volume of enquires for services and sell more 4WD tour bookings. After doing an analysis of their business operations I created a simple digital marketing strategy that included updating their WordPress website, improving the depth of information that was on their site, defining their unique point of difference vs other 4WD shops, adding new content & creating a framework they could use to continue adding tour, service or product information to their site.
The results speak for themselves, literally the most website traffic they have ever had to their site, the most they have ever sold online for their tours and the highest conversion rate of visitors placing enquiries about their 4WD shop services. Australians are obsessed with their four-wheel drives, with SUV/4WD-category sales accounting for more than half of the million vehicles sold across the country in 2021, and more than 5.5 million 4WDs currently on our nation’s roads.
I’ll explain below how I used various marketing tactics to achieve these outcomes.
Quite simply, they wanted to use a marketing consultant to find out how they could grow their business.
The owners of this 4WD shop in Sydney had left the franchise banner brand they had been trading under & decided to establish their own independent operation. They were enjoying good success with a loyal customer base, great looking 4WD retail shop in Sydney’s south west supported by a community of enthusiasts that loved doing tours.
When they left the franchise group they paid an automotive digital marketing agency to build a new website for the new brand they were creating, choosing them based on their experience in the 4WD industry sector. There are more than 2,100 4WD related businesses operating in Australia and according to the Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association the category is estimated to be valued at $6B.
After approximately six months they began to feel like more was possible and their website wasn’t generating lots of enquiries for their tours, the products they sold or the broad range of 4WD services they provided.
So they made the decision to hire a marketing consultant in Sydney to audit their website, local marketing, eMail campaigns and advertising to then make some recommendations on what could be changed to grow their website visitor numbers, sell more tours and get more enquiries about 4WD upgrades without spending money on ads.
What did my marketing audit highlight for this 4wd shop?
My marketing audit showed them how much potential website traffic and new customers they were missing.
An audit can give any business owner an external perspective on their marketing activities. By having a marketing consultant look at all the different aspects of their business it can highlight areas for improvement that can be rectified to create new ways to grow sales and profitability. What a lot of business owners don’t realise is beyond any physical audit that is done on their retail shop, staff or traditional marketing activities, there is an absolute gold mine of information available via their own website.
By conducting an audit on the performance of your website you can uncover lots of information about consumer behaviour, figure out whether it is generating new visitors and many other aspects that can be used to make smart decisions about what to do to improve the situation.
Doing an audit also creates a baseline to work from for any future work so that you can compare any before or after results to know that any money being invested is generating a clear return.
The Website didn't have a lot of 'new' traffic
Between July 2021 & July 2022 the site had achieved 13,000 visitors, but nearly 50% of that came from their eMail database and 'Direct' traffic e.g customers that already knew them. Nearly 12% came from their social media profiles which meant there was only about 4,900 people or about 400 people a month finding them via organic search.
Of the people coming from organic search nearly all of that was people searching for their name, meaning they already knew the brand and were probably looking for their website or directions.
So essentially they were not getting found by 'new' people who didn't know about them. This can be the biggest source of growth for any business to expand beyond their existing customer base.
It wasn't clear what their unique point of difference was
This aspect is one of the hardest areas for any business owner to clarify. Nearly every website talks about 'being the best', 'being experienced' etc but if you think about it, every business in every niche or sector is therefore the same.
So you have to figure out what makes you different or unique and in the case of this 4WD shop they had three key ingredients that weren't being communicated;
a) They had a retail 4WD shop in Sydney
b) They provided workshop services, upgrades and 4WD modifications
c) They offered a range of 4WD tag along tours
So for many visitors, all of these aspects were not immediately clear and presented in an impactful way and they also didn't rank on Google Search for any of these types of relevant search phrases.
The website didn't have a lot of content or on site seo
The automotive marketing agency they were using had created a website that had some information on it, but none of the main landing pages, service or product pages had a lot of content. In fact the 'blog post' area only had screenshots of completed 4WD upgrades that had been copied from their social media profiles.
Combine this with the lack of SEO set up across the site and it means you literally have no chance of getting found online via organic search. This is why the majority of organic traffic was for their business name and not a lot else.
The opportunity? Well they sell tours to different locations, hundreds of products and a wide range of upgrades to many different manufacturer 4WD models. So there are literally hundreds of thousands of potential organic search keyword queries they could get found for when people are looking online for help with their 4WD.
The wordpress website was complex and hard to manage
The website was built using a theme which was being used by other 4WD shops and then adapted to suit this business. This approach sounds good in theory but in practice it can lead to mixed results because a single theme or set up might not work for different business types.
In the case of this 4WD shop they had a WordPress website with 27 different plugins, many of them out of date and some not even activated. The more plugins you use on WordPress site, typically, the harder it is to manage as there are more chances for conflicts to be created.
A lot of the functionality could be simplified with plugins that offer more than one function and this would make the site easier to manage, faster to use and more intuitive to make changes with.
Lots of pages sent people to other websites
One of the strangest things was the product and service pages had images of famous brand names to try and promote what they sold, but the clickable links took any visitor to the manufacturers website. That's right, took a visitor away to another website instead of trying to keep them engaged on the 4WD shop's site.
On one hand this made sense if someone wanted to see what that brand was about, but it also meant lots of people were leaving the site and finding what they needed elsewhere, so it was counter intuitive.
On top of that the content was so thin that there was no way any of the pages would get indexed and they didn't really 'sell' the potential that this 4WD shop was offering to either buy, install or use any of the gear.
What digital marketing strategy did I recommend for this 4WD shop?
After I completed the marketing audit the owners were given a very practical list of recommended actions to carry out that could improve their marketing execution. It was very easy for them to make a decision on what needed to be done because all of the information was provided using data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console and 3rd party reporting tools like SEMRush.
This provided the 4WD shop owners with the confidence to use a marketing consultant because they could see what was happening & the steps needed to change the results. The focus on the marketing contract was to make improvements to the website so the brand could be presented as unique & attractive to new visitors, sell more of their tours & better showcase their range of services to generate more leads.
There is no real ‘secret’ there, like many businesses who want to grow their website visitors this one needed;
- More pages on their website to explain each specific service or product sold. Grouping them doesn’t really work because there is so much competition online for every individual topic.
- More unique content in news or blog posts showing off what they did, proving their expertise.
- A website structure that was easy to navigate and view on both computer or mobile phone.
- SEO development across the website so that all of this could be indexed by Google so they could compete for organic search.
So these are some of the marketing tasks completed for the 4WD shop
- Develop the existing website with a new layout using the current design language.
- New dedicated pages that explained each service, product or tour type they sold
- Add deeper levels of copywriting that would explain what was available from their shop in more detail.
- Create a revised page structure so that WordPress posts could be written to showcase tours, services or products better.
- Carry out competitor research on their nominated competitors to see who was ranking in Google.
- Keyword research to identify keywords and topics suitable to use for new content & to achieve local search rankings.
- Come up with a way to show off their unique selling proposition and brand positioning so it was clear to any visitor.
- Update all pages to have a more 'ideal' SEO set up for each page.
- Create new content for 4WD vehicle builds and 4WD tours to show off some of the things they do.
- Make adjustments to Google Analytics & Google Search Console to provide better information about website visitors.
- Provide reporting to show the changes being created after all the work was completed.
Did I manage to grow this 4wd shop's business with digital marketing consulting?
2023 - their highest website visitor numbers ever.
Once the small business owners approved my revised marketing strategies and recommendations the hard work began. Every page of the website was updated, every word adjusted, every heading on the pages changed & every aspect was focussed on achieving very clear outcomes;
- Make the 4WD shop more appealing and differentiate it from all the others.
- Improve the content across the website using SEO to improve organic search traffic.
- Show off the work and tours this 4WD shop was delivering.
- Put in place a framework that could be built on and developed over time.
This result was driven by;
- 8 x new specific service landing pages with search engine optimised content
- 15 x new individual product category pages that could highlight what they sold in the shop. This included a framework that could be built on over time to either add eCommerce functionality or separate product pages.
- 11x new vehicle build pages or ‘blog posts’ that went into great detail the work they had carried out on different 4WD’s which explained product and situation usage.
- 3 x new tour stories to show examples of recent tours.
- New ‘About’ page that gave people an insight into the business and people behind it as well as what they stood for.
- Revised home page that made it much clearer what they did and what the brand was about.
- Revised 4WD tour pages with more information, visuals and search engine optimised content.
- Stunning, colourful, visuals throughout the website to make it enticing to get out and use your 4WD.
Organic search website traffic growth within 60 days
The changes that were made to the website were so extensive that the business achieved more organic search traffic within 60 days compared to the previous 400 days. Thousands of people were finding this 4WD shop when they were searching Google for common things like 'lift kit installation' or '4WD tag along tour'.
The year on year comparison was even more impressive, with just over 1,000 people clicking from Google compared to less than 300 the previous year, so a 3.7x uplift within 90 days. That's right an extra 700 people finding this 4WD shop and discovering what they have to offer. While impressions don't mean anything in real commercial terms, they increased 6x as all the new content on the site helped it get found for thousands of different keywords.
Between October 2022 and the end of February 2023 website visits from organic search had increased year on year by 140% to just over 5,400 people visiting the 4WD shop's site. This accounted for 58% of all their traffic meaning it was mainly 'new' people discovering the business for the first time without spending any money on advertising.
As you'll see in a later section the average time on the site increased, number of pages per visit went up & page views reached record high levels. What did it all mean? The growth in organic search was reaching relevant, potential, new customers as the 4WD shop began outranking local competitors online.
Nearly instant proof of performance as the 4WD shop was getting found online for new search terms.
Organic search growth for non business name search terms
One of the critical performance benchmarks was to compare the proportion of business name related organise search to non. This would indicate how many people were finding the 4WD shop when searching more broadly for options and ideas relating to products or services. So in other words potential new customers that didn't already have a preference in mind.
With all of the changes I made to their website the SEO work was quickly paying off with a 3x improvement in non business name search clicks for products or services.
More proof that the marketing consulting was worth it to improve visitor traffic.
page views tripled to 10,234 views & viewing time up 40% within 90 days
The website content was made longer and more meaningful with new pages, new sections as well as improved layout. What I did was to add loads of happy people, colour and life to the website by using photos taken from the shop, on the tours and from the suppliers of the products they sold.
The site went from having no warmth or personality to being vibrant, fun & full of character which started with the custom made home page intro video I created. All of the changes not only helped organic traffic volumes increase to record levels but it also meant it was easier for people to navigate and consume the information on the site.
The results of making these changes to the website were very quickly proven with a;
- 38% increase in average session times for each visitor coming to the site
- More pages per session also increased nearly 8%
- Overall page views increasing nearly 200% to just over 10,000 views
- Most of the growth coming from people living in Sydney where the 4WD shop was located.
All the changes from my marketing consulting delivered the highest engagement they'd ever had before.
page views reached more than 20,000 within 150 days
Was all this website traffic a fluke or was it real? Well the growth trend in page views continued on and by the end of February the site had achieved 20,257 page views from people coming from organic search. Up 112% on the previous period, an increase of nearly 11,000 views.
So all of these potential new customers were discovering this 4WD shop for the first time reading lots of content on the site.
The new website content creation was driving page view growth across the site.
Over $40,000 in tour bookings sold via the website
So with all this extra website traffic what was one of the huge outcomes?
One of the priorities for this 4WD shop was to sell more tour bookings via their online store. In a very crowded market segment with thousands of existing tour operators, information or travel websites to compete with, not to mention other sources of information for holidays, we still managed to sell over forty thousand dollars worth of tours within 90 days.
This was done with a combination of new website content, better presentation of each tour and more information on all the relevant pages which created a huge increase in organic search traffic (yes even 1st page positions for 4WD tours) that was complimented with an excellent eMail database campaign execution.
From October to the end of February the tour pages had achieved a 169% increase year on year, reaching just shy of 5,400 page views, the highest ever recorded in their Google Analytics history.
If your are a 4WD shop owner you will also realise that selling tours also drives vehicle upgrades, servicing and modifications. So the revenue generated from tours will drive even more business growth for the shop and the workshop over time.
They sold the most tour bookings they had ever achieved in their history.
The highest volume of website enquiries they had ever received
The other thing that was growing quickly was their volume of enquiries that were coming from the forms on the website. The previous agency delivered just four online enquiries in September and within 60 days I was able to increase this by more than 3x with October and November seeing around 15 coming through each month.
These enquiries were for quotes to get 4WD products, upgrades and tour questions answered. The volume of enquiries continued into December and beyond as you can see in the table below with more than 280 tracked leads recorded via the website.
This doesn't include visits to the contact page to get the store's location or phone calls to the shop. Between October and the end of February there was another 1,155 visits to the contact page, up 231% on the previous period.
Their website was getting the highest volume of enquiries they had ever received.
improvements to more than 900+ google search keyword positions
Obviously the shop was using tour booking revenue and enquiries as their performance metric for the new website. Although the other aspect that I was looking at was their SEO results in terms of the breadth of search keywords they were either getting recognised for or achieving first page positions.
The data extract below was taken towards the end of 2022 with more than 900 search phrases showing improvements vs the previous year. This was a result of the improved content on the site including stories about the jobs they had completed on vehicles, information about their tours etc.
The trend continued into 2023 and doing a 6 month comparison to the previous period there was nearly 8,000 people clicking directly from a Google Search to one of the pages on the website with lots of different phrases on the 1st page of a search.
A 4WD shop website getting on the first page of Google for the first time.
A WordPress website that was easier to manage
I reduced the number of plugins from 27 down to less than 15 to make it easier to manage the site. In the graphic below you can see highlighted in yellow the ones that were removed. For example, there was a plugin being used to generate a sitemap, but RankMath can do this plus provide other functionality including hosting the Google Analytics code. While Elementor has its own built in form creation tools so Contact Form 7 wasn't needed.
The previous agency basically copied the whole framework from the old site they had replicated from but didn't consider whether any of the items were still needed or if the set up was efficient.
A more efficient website that was easier to manage & faster to use.
Continued growth a 2.9x increase year on year to More than 14,000 visitors
All of the short term website visitor growth looked promising although looking at it over a longer period would be more relevant. A year on year comparison shows organic search remained the primary source of all their traffic and it has ended up delivering a 196% increase year on year to 14,000 visitors and 44,000 page views in total to the end of September 2023.
Yes a marketing consultant was able to deliver a 196% increase in website traffic within a few months compared to what an automotive agency was able to deliver.
How can a marketing consultant grow website visitor traffic for a 4WD shop?
Home page introduction video
Every consumer is watching more video content than ever before whether that’s on YouTube, TikTok or other platforms. To elevate the brand and ‘wow’ people as soon as they landed on the site I created a custom made ‘hype reel’ video for their home page.
Using a mixture of stock library footage and videos from the 4WD shop, I spliced together the ‘idea’ or ‘feeling’ you’d get if you joined one of their tours or came to their shop.
Instant impact to attract a customer.
the right website content and pages
Too many businesses think that putting a paragraph on a website page with a photo will help them get found or convince people to choose them. Wrong.
For every service, product or thing you offer within your business there are probably thousands of online competitors. Therefore each individual thing has to be represented on your website with in depth information and content, which is exactly how this 4WD shop enjoyed a huge increase in website traffic.
You can’t take shortcuts to get found online.
Competitor and consumer keyword research
A marketing consultant has access to loads of data that can be used to make smart decisions that in turn drive strategy or execution.
Once I listed to the focus areas for this 4WD shop I could quickly determine what people are searching for online, what information they wanted & then create content pages on the website to get found for those topics or service requirements.
This is how you win the online battle.
detailed information and help for customers
Just talking about what you offer and making promises isn’t enough these days. Customers will want to see proof and validation to help them build trust before they decide to engage with your business.
To support all the product or service landing pages I created a range of blog posts that showed off the work being done by this 4WD shop as well as explaining where or how different items could be used.
Helpful content will convert more customers.
Get found online by people that don't know the brand
I mentioned in the beginning of this case study that most of the website traffic was coming from people who knew the brand already.
The digital marketing strategy that I implemented has helped them go from over 70% down to less than 40% of ‘branded’ traffic to their site. A flow of new customers coming to them everyday.
More people are finding or discovering this 4WD shop.
A content marketing consultant for 4wd shop owners can get more website traffic
What all the information above shows is how much potential is available. If you own a 4WD shop you can engage a content marketing consultant who can create strategies to add even more helpful information to the website to keep growing the website volumes. Every service, product or solutions that 4WD owners face could be talked about at length on the website. Content marketing can not only help potential customers be help a 4WD reach new people that have never heard of the brand before.
So while all the results above look pretty impressive on face value, the 4WD shop could have had even more website visitor growth during the time period. The work that was done was only scratching the surface because the amount of content added to the site covered the basics for services, were short introductions for products & there was less than 30 new blog style posts added about tours or 4WD vehicle builds.
If more content was added it would have improved results even further.
How?
This is a 4WD shop that sells products in multiple categories e.g lighting, recovery equipment etc that can be used on different vehicle brands or models in various situations. That combination alone means pages could be added for each one to go deeper into that niche or category to ‘win’ local search for that specific topic. The same theory applies to the services which included engine upgrades, 12V set ups and more.
Look at the example in the data above for ‘Lift kits’, there is a possible volume of more than 200,000 searches each month in Australia around the topic. People are searching for general information all the way through to specific brand or vehicle model related information. So pages could have been added for each one to then beat local competitors.
At a guess there would have been more than 60 possible niches that could have been developed to have deeper content, blog posts or other information that would have grown organic search volumes even further. The extra information would also help towards converting visitors into making an enquiry, so any additional time or effort would have been rewarded.
The other layer to this would have been the different tour locations. While some people were searching generically for ‘4WD Tours’ others were looking for specific destinations, states or lengths of tour. So in this respect there was another batch of niches that could be explored with deeper content to win even more organic search positions.
Unfortunately the owners didn’t want to continue the marketing retainer after the 6 month contract was up, even though the results above were achieved.
what happened when the 4wd shop owners made changes to the website?
It is a cliche but just because you can change something doesn’t mean you should.
One of the simple mistakes a lot of business owners make is to go and change things on their website thinking it won’t have any impact. Unfortunately there is so much more to website design, SEO and conversion rate optimisation than you may think. Below is proof positive where you can see the website visitor volumes before my digital marketing work was actioned vs when the 4WD shop owner made changes.
What they did was to rename URL’s, remove some content, change headings and create lots of broken links on their website. This has lead to various search keyword position losses that have never been made up. It means their execution actually ruined some of the digital marketing actions that was helping them achieve their record sales volumes for tours.
You can see the trajectory of growth I had created, this was destroyed within a matter of days after various changes to the site were made.
What else could this 4wd shop do to increase website traffic and sales?
A 4WD (four-wheel drive) shop in Sydney can employ a variety of marketing tactics to attract more customers and grow sales. Here are some strategies and tactics tailored to the niche market of 4WD enthusiasts:
- Local SEO and Online Presence:
- Google My Business: Ensure your shop is listed and has positive reviews. Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews. In the absence of doing letterbox drops or local newspaper advertising, the other way to reach people in the local area is to use Google My Business. I updated this business profile with new posts, but you can then regularly share any type of content just like you do on social media that can help with local search results.
- Local Directories: List on local directories and niche-specific directories related to 4WD and automotive services.
- SEO: Optimise your website for local search terms, such as “4WD shop Sydney” or “off-road accessories Sydney”.
- Content Marketing:
- The focus on this project was to get the new website created and running prior to Christmas. There is a huge opportunity for any small business to create content around all the topics related to their services, tours or products. This could be anything from 4WD tips to information about product features that can help in certain situations. If crafted correctly it can help attract new visitors to the website via organic search to help with brand awareness & creating new customers.
- Blog: Write articles on 4WD tips, off-road trails in and around Sydney, vehicle maintenance, and product reviews.
- Videos: Create tutorials, product demonstrations, or feature local 4WD excursions.
- Online communities
- Engage on Platforms: Use platforms popular in Australia, such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Post regular content featuring new products, customer testimonials, and off-road adventures.
- Community Engagement: Join and participate in 4WD and off-road groups or forums.
- Email Marketing:
- Offer a monthly newsletter with tips, product promotions, and news about the 4WD community.
- Loyalty programs that offer discounts to returning customers or a referral program to incentivise word-of-mouth marketing.
- Events and Workshops:
- Off-road Days: Organise or sponsor local 4WD days where enthusiasts can test products or simply have fun.
- Workshops: Offer workshops on vehicle maintenance, off-roading basics, or other related topics.
- Local Sponsorships: Support local events, races, or festivals, positioning your brand at the center of the community.
- Partnerships and Collaborations:
- Collaborate with local businesses (like camping sites or car dealers) to offer package deals or co-marketing opportunities.
- Paid Advertising:
- Local PPC: Use Google Ads or Facebook Ads targeting Sydney and surrounding areas, ensuring you’re using keywords relevant to 4WD enthusiasts.
- Retargeting: Use retargeting ads to bring back visitors who’ve interacted with your website but haven’t made a purchase.
- Interactive Showroom Experience:
- Design a portion of the store where customers can touch, feel, and understand the usability of products. Consider a simulation area where they can see how products might function in off-road situations.
- Customer Testimonials and Reviews:
- Display genuine reviews and testimonials prominently in-store and on your website. Consider video testimonials for added impact.
- Promotions and Deals:
- Offer seasonal promotions, bundling deals, or special offers on popular products to drive purchases. Be clever and get supplier support with rebates, discounts or bulk discount purchases.
- Updating your existing website:
- WordPress website had given the business owners a great platform to build on which included making their own adjustments the Elementor Page Builder. If this is done correctly it may contribute to the growth of the website’s traffic. There is a risk that changes may remove the elements that generated results in the first place (like the example above)
Should a 4WD shop use a digital marketing consultant to grow their business?
Whether a 4WD shop in Sydney should use a marketing consultant to help grow their business depends on various factors, including the shop’s current situation, its goals, and its resources. Although there are lots of reasons why hiring a marketing consultant could be beneficial as you can see from the results above, but here are the things to consider:
- Save money on staff: If you compare the end to end costs of hiring a full time staff member you will find it makes more sense to hire a consultant either on a retainer or for ad-hoc projects. You could spend $50,000 to $70,000 to hire a marketing manager who has maybe one or two years experience, but for less than $20,000 a year you can hire a marketing consultant with twenty years experience and save money.
- Expertise and experience: A marketing consultant brings specialised knowledge and experience that may not be present within your business already. You might have a marketing manager on staff that might only have one or two years of experience. This can be particularly useful if the business owners or managers are not well-versed in current marketing trends or strategies.
- Fresh perspective: An external consultant can offer a fresh and unbiased perspective on the business’s marketing approach. This can help identify areas of improvement or new opportunities that might have been overlooked.
- Tailored strategies: Marketing consultants can help create a customised marketing strategy based on the specific needs and challenges of the business. This ensures that the strategies are relevant and effective for the 4WD market in Sydney, so in the case of this 4WD shop the focus was placed on getting the website digital marketing improved.
- Resource allocation: A consultant can help identify the most cost-effective ways to spend the marketing budget, ensuring that resources are allocated in areas that will yield the best return on investment. So instead of wasting money on advertising, other fundamentals can be improved first.
- Up-to-date with trends: The world of marketing is constantly evolving. A consultant will be up-to-date with the latest tools, technologies, and strategies, ensuring the business remains competitive.
- Time efficiency: Instead of spending time trying to figure out marketing strategies on their own, the business can leverage the expertise of the consultant. This allows the business to focus on its core operations.
- Training and development: A marketing consultant can also train the existing staff on best marketing practices, ensuring that the team is equipped to handle future marketing challenges.
However, there are always considerations to keep in mind like the additional cost, so hiring a consultant can be an investment. It’s essential to ensure that the potential return justifies the expense which is why I am very transparent with the results I share with my clients, you can see that it is working. That is also why it is important to have measurable outcomes that have clear expectations and ensure they are measurable outcomes to gauge the effectiveness of any consultant’s efforts.
If a 4WD shop in Sydney believes that they lack marketing expertise, wants a fresh perspective, or feels that their current marketing strategies are not yielding the desired results, then hiring a marketing consultant might be a wise decision. You have to ensure there is aa good fit between the consultant and the business but most importantly make them show you real results or outcomes that have been delivered previously, not just pretty pictures.
