Performance auto parts may not be on your agenda to buy, or to sell, but the automotive performance parts industry can still provide the basis for a useful marketing exercise. If you follow this exercise, I ask that you look for ways it can be related back to your industry, whether that is automotive-related or astrophysics.
Challenges of the Performance Auto Parts Industry
The performance auto parts industry, including an astonishing number of retailers, manufacturers, engineers, wholesalers, and users of automotive performance parts have each had a pretty hard time over the past couple years. The economy tanked, gas prices skyrocketed, and the world has tried to become more eco-friendly. The significance of these direct blows to the performance auto parts market makes it a great example of the importance of marketing.
Any of these challenges could single-handedly crush a small or shaky organization, but together, they have created havoc that puts gray hair and wrinkles on business owners. For those who are left while competitors drop off the RADAR, the market gets a little stronger. This creates an opportunity to generate brand loyalty from customers of fallen competitors, and use market failures to increase market share. Without addressing market share, a company will often be just a little closer to falling off the RADAR themselves.
Imagine for a moment that you are in the business of selling performance auto parts. The thought of having heavy financial interest in this market would send a lot of business people screaming and running for the exit, but not you. You are fearless, and you are in it for the long haul. Sure, it is largely a scared market with bad influences from many angles, but you are up to the challenges of looking long-term and setting a course to success. You want the kind of success that uses the lows to come out stronger than before.
Let us think about this as an exercise to stretch our minds and discover new success. I will be your partner in this example, and together we will do some thinking about how to keep our make-believe performance auto parts business bringing in the customers and giving them reasons to tell their friends about us. We need customers, but how will we reach them, and what will we do to place ourselves ahead of the competition? Come on, partner … we are in this together, so let’s get to thinking.
This will require a lot of ongoing work, but I will offer some ideas to get us started.
Maybe We Should Blog About Our Performance Auto Parts
Blogging is popular, and it can bring in a whole lot of valuable website traffic and build brand awareness, but what can we blog about? How much can we really say about fuel injectors, turbochargers, and race-tuned suspension parts? Wouldn’t that get pretty boring?
Something we should perhaps consider is not just blogging about fuel injectors, turbochargers, and race-tuned suspension parts, but rather things like auto racing, race car drivers, automotive events, car maintenance, and a variety of other things car lovers are interested in. Maybe we could do a series of automotive performance “how-to” articles along with diagrams and YouTube videos. Maybe we could publish something about the American Le Mans Series Michelin Green X Challenge and how it is improving eco-friendly race technology. We could discuss how it affects consumers, now and into the future. Maybe we can create something interesting, informative, entertaining, or otherwise useful to our market influencers.
The racing industry and performance automotive engineers do great works to improve “greenness” of the automotive industry. If we get really creative, maybe we can even find some ways to grow our brand recognition for pointing out the good … and even great things our industry is doing to help people, economy, and our planet.
It is starting to seem like there could be a whole lot more reasons to blog than we thought. It seems like a good time to read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” and keep the thinking cap on.
Do Facebook Users Like Performance Auto Parts?
The fact that over five hundred million people are using Facebook seems to indicate that Facebook is useful for reaching people. With half a billion people, there is sure to be a race fan, race car driver, racing team, automotive engineer, ecologist, popular automotive blogger, or speed junkie in there somewhere who would like our company. There must be something there for us!
See reason number 5 in 7 Reasons Your Marketing Sucks.
On the surface, it seems that nobody in our market is doing so great at reaching the Facebook speed junkies. Does this mean Facebook is not a good tool for building a community? After all, it is not working for most of the others in the performance auto parts industry. Maybe it is a waste of time.
Upon a closer inspection, it seems that this is largely because nobody is making significant creative efforts. Most of the performance auto parts people I found are only trying to advertise their performance parts like a bad used car salesman and do very little to create a genuine interest in their brand from people who purchase or influence the purchase of performance auto parts. It seems that since spewing advertisements fails so miserably for the majority of companies, many of the Facebook pages I saw have not been updated much.
Now, doesn’t this start to seem like an opportunity for us, or would we rather let other people’s failures of strategic planning and marketing creativity dictate our success? No? That is what I thought, my fearless performance auto parts selling partner … we are in it for the long haul, and that is why we will win the hearts and minds of Facebook. Let us go there and do something brilliant!
Automotive Performance Meets Twitter
Should we use Twitter to communicate with customers, potential customers, and market influencers? It seems like it may be just a big waste of time. Who is going to do that tweeting, and what will they tweet about? What if they tweet the wrong thing and make us look bad?
Maybe we should do some Twitter searches to see what others in the performance auto parts industry have to say, or what people are saying about them. Who knows, maybe we can pick up some good information and ideas as spectators. Then, maybe we can find an angle to help us build our market and find out what people like. I suppose that may be worth a shot, what do you think, partner? Should we see what Twitter is talking about and think about ways we could do better?
What Do I know About Performance Auto Parts?
I know that it can be hard to think outside of your own four walls, but with a little exercise, it can provide great benefit to your marketing. Most people, and most organizations do not have a really spectacular plan to improve their market. When you do, you can come out ahead, but it means that you have to try harder than them. You have to think differently than them.
I hope that giving a little thought to the performance auto parts industry will be helpful to you, whether it is actually your industry or not. I suppose I could be wrong with my automotive industry suggestions and analogies. Although, considering how many performance automotive parts suppliers’ logos I have put on brand new Corvettes, it would be a shame if I was wrong. 😉
NOTE: There are winners and losers in every industry. Marketing is often the biggest determining factor.
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