Happy New Year, trucking industry friends!

Hope you all had an excellent holiday season. I definitely did, but not for the reasons you might expect. In the name of social distancing and taking the strictest of pandemic precautions, I bunkered down in the basement of an undisclosed location with nothing but a high-speed internet connection and plenty of black coffee. My holiday lights were the glow of multiple computer monitors streaming real-time website analytics, and on Christmas morning, I gleefully opened a file full of data—the treasure trove of engagement reports pulled from fleet usage of the Fleet Equipment website in 2020.

Why would I do this? Some might say I’m obsessed with data (and they’d be right), but the more important reason was to bring you the top heavy-duty fleet engagement trends from 2020 and how that relates to the stories you want to tell in 2021.

This is Heavy-duty Marketing, a new blog that will chart the possibilities in the new digital frontier. Let’s get started.

The top five content topics that grabbed fleets’ attention in 2020

1. Electrification
2. Engines
3. Tires
4. Telematics
5. Vocational

The biggest surprise?

Vocational. The segment took a hit during the worst of the pandemic, but engagement was strong during the back half of 2020. Beyond the market improvement, engagement was driven by a number of product launches and supported by Fleet Equipment’s exclusive Executive Interviews that we expanded into interactive digital stories.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Here are the 10 headlines that drove the “Vocational” topic into the top five:

1. Unpacking the Cummins EPA 2021 X15, X12 engine details
2. Hands on with the Western Star 49X
3. Automated and automatic transmissions for heavy-haul
4. Where you see DTNA’s renewed vocational focus in the Western Star 49X
5. Goodyear introduces three new commercial tires during virtual conference
6. Peterbilt GM Jason Skoog charts today’s truck support, tomorrow’s truck solutions
7. Pre-assembled kits offer an efficient driveline rebuild
8. How to spec the right axle configuration
9. Cabover offerings for medium-duty vocational fleets
10. International Truck unwraps the new HX Series trucks

That’s great for the ‘what,’ but how about the ‘who’?

Crafty marketers know that pageviews are all well and good, but that’s old digital hat. Today’s digital engagement can report just as deeply on who is engaging, and we have that fleet data in spades. For that, let me turn it over to Bruce Kratofil, our mild-mannered Audience Insights Manager and diligent data cruncher to make sense of it all. Take it away Bruce:

Taking a deeper look into fleets who engaged with “Electrification” content, here is the makeup of applications those fleets indicated they undertake:

Further, I looked at the types of vehicles these fleets indicated they manage:

Thanks Bruce, very cool.

So what does this mean to you?

If you play in any of these segments, fleets are engaging. While Electrification is relatively new, I can tell you that engines, tires, wheels and telematics stick around the top 10 annually. More importantly, we (mostly Bruce) can tell you what types of fleets are engaging what specific content—and that’s the difference in how you, as a marketer, can approach your messaging.

The fine folks in FE sales have noted that this is where I should insert a “call to action” to tell you that we’re happy to help you with marketing to help get your message heard. So if you want to dive deeper into the data or just talk trucks, you can connect with me at [email protected] or drop Bruce a note at [email protected].

Bonus content for data nerds

Here are the top 10 stories on the Fleet Equipment website in 2020, all in—every story, every traffic source.

1. Detroit driver training video available
2. New ways to help your trucks maintain the proper tire pressure
3. Understanding truck tires and air pressure
4. Truck air suspension ride height measurement procedure tips
5. The skinny on thinner gear oil
6. Detailing diesel truck engine programmers: An FAQ
7. Here’s what’s next for Navistar: Executive interview with Persio Lisboa
8. The great debate: aluminum vs. steel wheels
9. Matching axles, ratios and loads to increase fuel efficiency
10. The pros and cons of truck driver-facing cameras

Until next time, keep creating.

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