Toyota Material handling

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

When you want to serve different audiences, it's best to make sure those audiences all feel addressed in their own way. And that's exactly how we grew Toyota Material Handling Belgium's online B2B sales channels, with full-service inbound marketing tailored to their needs.

  • Growth in B2B leads

  • Blended expertise

  • Several target audiences

  • Stimulate cross-selling and upselling

  • +50% newsletter opt-ins

  • +30% email open rate

Toyota Material Handling and iO

Toyota Material Handling Belgium wanted to boost the online sales of its compact warehouse trucks and accessories. The company also wants to generate more quality leads for its sales team. iO’s answer? A strong inbound marketing strategy with content that identifies and responds to the target groups, their buyer journey, and their needs.

Contact
Challenge

Generate qualitative leads and increase online conversion

Solution

Content strategy and copywriting, design and development, production and campaign management, media planning

About Toyota Material Handling

Toyota Material Handling is a division of Toyota Industries Corporation, a group operating in 5 industries. For more than 100 years, Toyota Material Handling has offered a wide range of warehouse trucks and forklifts.

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).

Hmm, beautiful numbers!

+50%

opt-ins newsletter

+30%

email open rate

+10,5%

click-to-open rate

+16%

visitor to MQL conversion

Get to know your target groups

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'.

'iO's sophisticated content strategy provided a new source of qualified leads, that were ready for us to work proactively.'

Jelle Van Brandt

Jelle Van Brandt, Digital Marketing Specialist at Toyota Material Handling

Toyota

Customer identification: from workshops to data model

For our approach, we made a distinction between online buyers and clients who — due to the nature of the product — need the support of a sales advisor. We based our content on the basis of these specific target groups, with topics that matched the situation and buyer journey of clients (or prospects). We promoted these in a targeted way through inbound campaigns.

The goal? Using relevant content to reach the right person at the right time in the buyer journey and encourage their progression through the sales funnel.

To streamline this digital identification process, we mapped out the needs and buyer journey of all target groups with input from sales and customer service from Toyota Material Handling Belgium. We drafted a smart data model and created a database structure in HubSpot.

More online conversion through microsegmentation

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.

Identify qualitative leads through microconversions

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.'

'We offered every target group the content they expected at every step in their customer journey so we could guide them through the sales funnel and increase conversions.'

Denis Vandepitte

Denis Vandepitte, inbound marketing strategist iO

toyota iO

Increase online conversion, stronger leads

Once the strategic framework for a segmented content calendar was in place, Toyota Material Handling Belgium was able to offer each specific target group the blogs, whitepapers, or supporting content that it expected at a certain stage of the customer journey. 16% of the visitors then converted into a marketing-qualified lead: a contact that we could address in a targeted manner. That content promotion, advertising, retargeting, newsletters and (automated) mailings clearly paid off, the figures showed. Toyota Material Handling Belgium Belgium scored an open rate of more than 30% and click-to-open rates of more than 10.5%. The relevant and hyper-targeted content resulted in an opt-in rate of more than 50%.

Do you want to generate more qualified leads and grow your online B2B sales channel?

Talk to iO’s inbound marketing experts.

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