Current Report Details Slow But Steady Industry Improvement

Things are looking up. That’s the overall impression cast by the just-released 2013 SEMA Annual Market Report. The new study provides a composite view of the automotive specialty-equipment industry and new-vehicle sales, and is packed with information and background that businesspeople from all market segments will want to access. The study is available now and can be downloaded here.

The report’s major findings include a return of growth for the industry overall. The street-performance niche continues to drive the rebound with a 15.3% year-over-year increase, but the light-truck niche also experienced the first growth in four years with a 1% increase in sales. The appearance and accessories segments are growing based largely...

Sales of automotive specialty-equipment products continue to climb, reaching $31 billion in 2012, according to the 2013 SEMA Annual Market Report. The figure represents a 4% increase over the previous year and marks the third consecutive year
of growth.

The automotive specialty-equipment market began to see an upswing in 2010, when sales totaled $28.60 billion—a 2% increase over the previous year’s total. Sales reached $29.99 billion the following year, representing 5% growth over 2010.

For Many Businesses, Better Candidates at Reduced Cost

Social media is now a serious player in employee recruitment, in many cases significantly reducing the cost per hire for companies while simultaneously bringing in higher-quality talent, according to many recruiters.

“Underneath the iceberg of vacant jobs advertised on job boards and newspapers, a strong, invisible current of talent is ingeniously using social media to identify and strategize their next career moves,” said Charles Van Heerden, general manager at WaveBox Consulting.

Know Your Customers to Build Your Business

From manufacturers and distributors to jobbers and retailers, the automotive specialty-equipment industry is built around meeting consumers’ demands. Understanding which goods and services those consumers are actually interested in requires study of the marketplace, interaction with customers and attention to detail—and that is a pretty fair synopsis of what was done to create the latest offering from the SEMA research team and the Modellers Inc.,a market research and analytics company.

Bettering Your Business With Apps

The words “there’s an app for that” have become somewhat of a cliché—and with good reason. Not long ago, many businesses pursued mobile applications mainly as a gimmicky exercise in marketing. Having a cool branded game or similar whiz-bang app was considered a trendy way to burnish a company’s image with smartphone and tablet users. But times are changing, and the world of apps is maturing.

Last year about this time, we noted that SEMA was ramping up resources dedicated to providing members with best-in-class research. We beefed up personnel, we increased the budget, and we looked for ways to take full advantage of outside resources.

Given that Facebook has become critical to any serious social media strategy, it’s no surprise that a number of tools, software packages and apps have sprung up to give businesses a leg up on maximizing their marketing campaigns on the service. Here’s a sampling of some of the most promising:

With the explosion of smartphones and mobile devices, this may be a question you’re asking yourself. After all, apps are fast becoming one of the latest marketing trends, offering significant branding and revenue opportunities for a company. Unfortunately, they can also prove to be a huge boondoggle. So how does a company decide whether and how to jump on the app-development bandwagon?