Computer screen with social media content for dealers

Thanks to your rockin’ marketing team, your brand’s national social channels are serving up awesome content. But your dealers? They may be struggling to fill their marketing channels as they juggle sales, inventory, parts and more.

If you’re a business-to-business (B2B) company that uses channel marketing partners like dealers, distributors, or retailers to sell your products, you’re likely familiar with the challenge of keeping your brand voice and style consistent on dozens or even hundreds of independently run partner social channels.

A lack of social media content could be causing your dealers and distributors — and your brand — to miss out on capturing key customers and sales. Your customers want hyperlocal content like service offers, product sales, and dealership events. And you want a strong brand image and consistent messaging about your company, products, and services.

There’s an easy solution to your problem: Create good, strong social content for your channel marketing partners to share on their social channels.

Here are 10 reasons why your marketing team should supply your dealers, distributors, and/or retailers with a steady stream of brand-approved social content.

Dealers can stay focused on sales and service.

Most dealerships don’t have a fully-staffed marketing department. Providing dealers with professionally crafted content frees up their time to focus on what they do best — supplying customers with quality sales, service, and parts.

Customers trust a local dealership — and local faces — more than a national brand.

Communities are small, and specific industries within those communities are even smaller. Dealers with close community ties often become trusted sources for product advice. Great content can help dealers build relationships with future customers — in person and on social channels.

Dealers will post more social content about your brand — and less about your competitors.

Dealerships often carry multiple brands. So how do you get them talking more about your company than about the other guys? Supply them with a regular batch of on-topic, engaging content that features your company’s products.

You’ll gain more control over dealer messaging and imagery.

Do dealers use your brand name in ways that endanger your trademark? Or post photos that make your safety and legal teams squirm? Offering retailers and distributors approved copy and imagery can reduce cringe-worthy posts and help them get up to speed on your preferred content style.

Customers will have a consistent content experience.

Crafting social content for dealers, distributors, and retailers allows you to give it the same voice and appearance as other marketing campaigns you’re rolling out. A similar look and feel will make your brand’s content more recognizable to consumers.

You’ll build rapport with your dealers.

Social content that grows the local market and sells products benefits your company — and your dealer’s bottom line. Educating dealers and retailers on the importance of content marketing and improving their online presence can strengthen the partnership you have with your dealerships.

Content engagement platforms will make it easy for dealers to post, boost, and track social content.

Publishing platforms geared toward distributors and retailers, such as Promoboxx, Denim, and Lotvantage, make it easy for them to access content. Dealers can log on, view and edit content, preview posts, and schedule content to post that day — or next month. These platforms also allow dealers to boost posts with their own budgets or co-op dollars, create social ads, and track post performance with analytics. An easy-to-use platform will encourage dealer participation. No spreadsheets of social copy needed.

You’ll increase the amount of evergreen content on dealer, distributor, and retailer channels.

Your dealerships probably have customers who make a purchase every year — and customers who only buy every five years (or even less frequently). Dealerships often post sales content on their social channels but skimp on engagement and loyalty-building posts. Sharing evergreen content like customer photos, or posting educational tips that help customers grow their businesses, will keep customers engaged with your brand and the dealership, distributor, or retailer between buying cycles. When they’re ready to buy again, the dealership will be top of mind.

You can gain insights from the type of content your dealerships are posting.

Dealer content platforms allow you to track the posts dealers are publishing and the level of engagement they receive. This data can provide valuable insight for distributor and retailer communications. You can identify areas where dealers may need further education (if they’re never posting about a particular product or service) as well as areas where they could use more marketing support (if they seem to have an insatiable appetite for certain topics).

It’s easy to roll dealer social into your agency’s national marketing efforts.

If you’re already partnering with a marketing agency like Two Rivers Marketing for your content marketing needs, adding in a dealer social component is easy. Your agency will already know your brand’s voice and marketing goals. That makes it simple for them to coordinate social content with other marketing campaigns.

By providing dealerships, distributors, and retailers with social media content that supports their marketing objectives — and yours! — you can ensure that dealers will consistently post on-brand, engaging content that engages current and future customers alike. Get more strategies for strengthening your dealer relationships.