How do you boost sales across diverse target audiences as a market leader in internal transport?

Toyota Material Handling Belgium supplies pallet trucks, forklifts, and accessories to a broad target group. Customers and prospects can order the compact equipment easily online. For advice or the purchase of larger trucks and automation solutions, they can make appointments with the sales team.

Sales figures, both online sales and sales through the sales team were steady. Toyota Material Handling Belgium wanted to support this positive trend structurally and digitally. At the same time, the company wanted to encourage its existing customers to make repeat purchases (cross- and up-selling).

From supermarkets to major players in construction, port, logistics, and industry: Toyota Material Handling Belgium’s target groups are very diverse. Neither the company size nor the sector determines the type of product that prospects are looking for: a giga warehouse can also purchase small pallet trucks.

How do you use your marketing and advertising budgets cost-efficiently? How can you target your (potential) customers to increase your conversions?

Simple: let them tell you who they are and what they need. That's best done with an inbound marketing and content strategy that is aimed at ensuring that target groups 'let themselves be known'.

The online sale of compact pallet trucks has been rising for several years. However, it emerged that only a minority of the buyers were existing customers. To increase that share, we focused on digital data capture. Through advertising, we were able to link contacts to product categories based on their content consumption and place them in a certain decision phase. Thanks to this micro segmentation, we were able to identify the various target groups, retarget them and move them through the sales funnel, resulting in smoother online conversions.

For the larger orders, we set up a clear lead scoring model. We linked this to a smart digital content strategy. With the e-commerce data we collected, we set up multiple automated mailings (such as an abandoned shopping basket email) that attracted visitors back to the online sales channel. Or an NPS email that gauged visitor satisfaction, so that we could adjust the content where necessary. We used the same e-commerce data for our email marketing: we segmented the customer mailings and sent personalised information and promotions specific to the target groups.

We provided consistent, optimised web page templates and compelling gated content, CTAs, and banners to generate more micro conversions such as downloads, click-throughs, and newsletter registrations.

Denis Vandepitte, inbound marketing strategist at iO: 'Anyone who downloads a safety poster or reads a white paper about narrow-aisle trucks leaves explicit and implicit data behind. Not only contact details, but also insights about the size, the sector, and the needs of his company. This allows sales to work in a more targeted way.'