Seasonality: How to Guard Yourself During the Winter Months

Seasonality is like a dirty word in our industry. The weather turns cold and riders across the country roll their bikes into the garage for the season. Not only are they not riding - they aren’t buying - which can put a strain on the bottom line of your dealership.

If we had a solution that could completely remove seasonality - we would definitely be your favorite people around. But since that magical power doesn’t exist yet - hopefully Elon Musk is working on it - we can at least provide you with some tips to help you get through the slower months of the year.

Don’t stop your advertising campaigns
We don’t have to tell you that buyers are passionate about riding - so they don’t stop thinking about it when the weather turns cold. They are shopping year round trying to decide what bike they want to be on come spring. And here’s the cold hard truth - if you stop advertising during the winter months, these buyers may have already decided on another dealership by the time you restart your campaigns - solely because they didn’t know your dealership existed since you weren’t present where they were searching.

Engage your current community
The off-season is a great time to build brand awareness within your current community. You know they won’t be distracted by nice weather or the promise of a great ride - so help fuel their passion for the industry and your dealership while you can capture their attention. Think about hosting a DIY workshop with one of your mechanics or have any first-time buyers come by the dealership for some riding advice. This is a really powerful community for you to engage because they chose to buy from you - instead of someone else - making them ideal candidates to be true brand advocates for your dealership. Spend the winter months showing them how much you appreciate their business and how you will continue to serve them post-purchase.

Plan for busier months
Once warmer months roll back around - your dealership will be busy and it gets harder and harder to continue with your engagement and marketing plans because you are focusing on sales. We get it - that’s what keeps your dealership afloat. Take advantage of the quieter season to build out as many plans as you can - so when the busy season rolls around, you can just “pop them open”, so to speak, and they’re ready to go.

Think about creating evergreen content that you can easily use when the time is right. You could write a number of generic unit descriptions for popular makes and models you carry so that they can be adjusted slightly for a specific piece of inventory - taking some of the work out of putting up listings during the busy season. Or work on developing a content repository for your social media efforts so you have some of your posts already scheduled.

You can also take this time to evaluate the pictures you’re using on your inventory. If most of your imagery is stock photography - take the time to update those with actual pictures of your units. Then as you receive new inventory in - you can photograph those on the fly. By doing this work ahead of time - it will alleviate some of the stress come high season - so you can focus on implementation and selling.

By viewing seasonality as a time to build and refine - you’ll see that these quiet months can actually be some of the most beneficial for your dealership. It’s your time to distinguish your dealership against the competition and get ready for the inevitably busy season to come. If you back off during the colder months - you’ll lose momentum - and that will put you behind the competitor who capitalized on seasonality come selling season. It’s hard to catch up once you’re behind. Don’t take the risk.