Articles

Arkport Cycles is a family-run business since 1972. They are a Top 100 Dealer and one of the largest dealers in New York State for H-D, Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, & Arctic Cat. 

The Sharp Shooter Program starts by finding every real opportunity you have to sell a unit in your backyard. This is exactly where we started with Arkport Cycles. We call these folks your ‘Dealership’s Buying Base’ and it’s made up of two types of customers 1) Past Customers who’ve spent money with the dealership in one of your departments in the last four years and live in close proximity to the dealership and 2) Conquest Customers, or people who ride what you sell, live in your backyard, but haven’t bought from you. These are competitor’s customers and other orphan owners in your local market area. If you focus all your time, energy and marketing dollars on driving these two groups of customers through the door as frequently as possible, you will grow your business.

Once we identify the Right Audience, we give them up to 12 opportunities to respond to a survey site to capture contact information and generate leads for every department of the dealership, and walk through the dealership’s door on event day. Short-term, Sharp Shooter events do an excellent job of giving dealers a shot in the arm. They generate hundreds of leads from proven riders in their backyard, and typically drive a ton of traffic on the day of the event. But the real secret lies in consistently marketing to your dealership’s Buying Base. Your goal should be to touch your customers 52-104 times per year. At this frequency, you are guaranteed to create affinity with your buying base, increase frequency of visits to the dealership and ultimately grow sales in all departments. How? At the end of the day, your customers are kids in a candy store and they can’t help themselves but to spend money when they’re standing on your showroom floor. Give them more reasons to walk through your door, and they will buy more from you.

This is exactly what happened with Arkport Cycles’ Armed Forces Day Event. They had food, drinks, door prizes and more. After executing thousands of events with over 700 dealerships, we’ve proven that focusing your message on the party is enough to drive a lot of high-quality traffic through the door and create hundreds of sales opportunities.

For this event, Arkport Cycles targeted customers through direct mail, integrated emails, an integrated call blast, event signage, fliers, a web banner and more. Each piece of communication incentivized customers to go online and complete a survey and the results were incredible. There were 586 surveys completed, which created a total of 465 sales opportunities in P&A, Service, and riding gear, PLUS 103 responses for a new or used bike. Anything over a 1% response rate is considered a HUGE success for direct mail, and Arkport Cycles’ campaign resulted in a 23.44% response rate! More than 20 x’s the national average. 

Jenny Swarts, GM of Arkport Cycles said, “It was a great event! Traffic was amazing the day of the event despite the weather looking like it was going to rain. Sold a few bikes the day of the event and are working a few more.”

What’s next? Summer has arrived! July and August mean Independence Day/Patriotic -Themes and Dog Days of Summer Events. These are some of the biggest reasons to market to your buying base. If you don’t already have events on the books for these two, get them planned today. Check out the insert for samples of some proven winners in July and August.

For more information on how the Sharp Shooter Program can help make this the best summer you’ve ever had, give me a ring on my direct line at 877-242-4472 ext: 112 or visit us at www.PowersportsMarketing.com/sample-campaigns. Happy selling.