Get FinancingIllinois Lift Equipment Maximizes Advertising Impact With LiftsToday
Customers of Illinois Lift Equipment are well aware of its extensive inventory of new and used forklifts, boom lifts, telehandlers, scissor lifts, and related machinery. But even those who haven’t (yet) bought or rented a lift from the Chicagoland dealership are familiar with its strategic advertising in all the right places, including Sandhills Global’s niche marketplace, LiftsToday.
Unparalleled Selection
Located in Cary, just northwest of Chicago, Illinois Lift Equipment is an authorized dealer for JLG boom and scissor lifts, Viper forklifts, and Dieci telehandlers. That said, the company lists practically every brand and type of lift equipment among its more than 1,000 used models in stock.
Illinois Lift Equipment specializes in sales of late-model equipment, both new and used, as well as rentals by the day, week, or month. The dealership supports its customers with attachments, parts, and even on-site repairs with fully equipped service vehicles.
A Brand-New Plan
Getting the word out to the right audience has been key to Illinois Lift Equipment’s success in the industry. For years, it ran a 5-page spread and key priority pages in Machinery Trader magazine, earning premium placement for its machine listings on MachineryTrader.com, plus a digital banner ad touting its telehandlers on the spinoff marketplace LiftsToday.com.
It didn’t take long to notice that LiftsToday’s well-defined niche market allowed more of Illinois Lift Equipment’s featured listings to stand out from the crowd and appear on the first pages of buyer search results online. The resulting influx of customer attention prompted the dealership to pivot much of its ad spend to LiftsToday in March 2024.
“We revised our whole advertising plan,” says Tezen Mathew, Illinois Lift Equipment’s director of IT. “So we’re still seeing how this one works, but we have noticed . . . more calls.”
Seizing The High Ground
As it had done in Machinery Trader, the forklift dealer staked its claim to various priority pages in LiftsToday magazine, such as the back cover, centerfold, and the final two pages of the magazine. Lifts appearing in priority page ads receive some of the top billing available online.
Advertising with LiftsToday also costs less, so Illinois Lift Equipment wisely expanded its 5-page spread to eight pages in the biweekly LiftsToday publication. This gives it the space to display up to a whopping 192 machines in print—each with its own featured listing on LiftsToday.com. The dealership’s status as a consistent advertiser with Sandhills allows it to list the remainder of its massive inventory online as general listings at no extra charge.
Bringing In New Leads
Another strength of LiftsToday is its ability to bring in buyers outside the usual circles of wholesale customers familiar to most forklift dealers. This dovetails nicely with Illinois Lift Equipment’s focus, which is primarily on clients who buy at retail. The dealership gave Sandhills’ email blast marketing a trial run in its quest to reach new customers.
In addition, all machines on LiftsToday.com are cross-posted on MachineryTrader.com, so Illinois Lift Equipment’s new emphasis on the niche marketplace doesn’t mean it’s giving up its broader exposure to a more general audience on the larger site.
Auctioning Lifts On AuctionTime
Illinois Lift Equipment also frequently lists forklifts and other machines for sale on AuctionTime. “The experience has been good,” says Mathew, with the caveat that not all auction equipment is quick to gather a bidder audience. “But most of the time, it does sell pretty well, so that’s not bad.”
A Dedicated Rep
Sandhills representative Kelby Roberts helps Illinois Lift Equipment take advantage of the opportunities that platforms like LiftsToday have to offer. “She’s awesome,” Mathew says. “She checks up on us almost every other week. She basically tells us, you know, all the stats, like what might be good and what might not be.”
Mathew says Roberts’ communication all the way up the food chain pays off. “She actually takes the time to get on the call and talk with the owners, like just basically detail everything out, so I’d say it’s been pretty good.”
If plans come together for Illinois Lift Equipment to expand a bit and bring on more sales personnel in 2024, Mathew says, “most likely we’re going to do more ads when it comes to that point.”