Firstly, a special thanks from Bobcat to Bensheim’s own Gilbert Schwartmann for his insightful contribution. At Bobcat, we value the expertise and dedication of our dealers, and Gilbert’s contribution exemplifies the qualities we admire in our team members. We’re grateful for his ideas and are excited to share his knowledge with all of you. So without further ado, let’s explore Gilbert’s ideas and what’s behind his latest success. You can check out his amazing article regarding spring maintenance here.

Based on his efforts and well-led campaign, we decided to prepare a short interview for our readers. This way, they can better understand the value behind these campaigns and perhaps even inspire others to follow in his footsteps. But let’s hear directly from Gilbert.

How long have you worked for Bobcat, and what is your funniest story so far?
I’m still very new to Bobcat! I started in January of this year, and there are already so many stories to tell about this fantastic team. But I have to say this: For the first time in my 20-plus-year marketing career, all of my friends and even my kids know “my” brand. And that’s a great thing!

How did you come up with the idea to create a campaign focused on spring maintenance?
Setting up a regular newsletter was a top priority for me. After all, such a newsletter guarantees regular brand touchpoints with our customers with relatively little effort. There’s always something interesting to share. And since it was February, I naively thought: maybe we can provide our customers with some useful information about the season…

What were your expectations and do you have any feedback from the customers?
To be honest, I had few expectations. I mainly wanted to use the small campaign to collect data and research the reading habits of our customers. So I was very pleased to see that almost 500 customers clicked on the article, and now I can even see that the article has been shared on social media – that’s a gratifying experience!

How did you gather your resources – like data, pictures, and the content itself?
As a newcomer to the company, I had to figure out who could provide insights. Our HR team offered great tips and referred me to a service technician. I scheduled an appointment with him at our office and let him share his experiences while taking pictures with my iPhone. This formed the basis of an article, which I then passed on to other colleagues for additional input and corrections to ensure it was a well-rounded piece.

How long did it take you to create such an article?
All in all, one day, maybe an hour for the interview, and some time for follow-up, correction, editing the website, etc.

What is your target group and how did you build your database?
My target audience is the users of Bobcat machines – our existing customers. I have set up a newsletter distribution list for this purpose.

How often do you prepare other aftermarket campaigns?
My goal is to have an aftermarket article in the newsletter every month. We would also like to do a major aftermarket campaign on a specific topic once a quarter. The spring check was more of a “knowledge article”. In future reports, we will try to link this knowledge transfer to specific service offers. Stay tuned!