Portland, OR, May 09, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Team Mancuso PowerSports, a seven-location dealership group, comes from humble beginnings. It all started with a small gas station turned into a Harley-Davidson dealership, owned by two Houston locals in 1983.
The first on the scene was Harley enthusiast Johnny Mancuso. Mancuso was racing cars throughout the 1960s and ‘70s and motorcycles for many years thereafter. In his “racing” time he would hold multiple quarter-mile records in drag racing motorcycles, including the IHRA and ADBA World Championship in 1998, and the IHRA speed record of 221.52 in 2002.
Mancuso met John Thompson (gaining the nickname of “JT” once in the business) in the early 1980s. Thompson was referred to Mancuso’s shop seeking to have some “go fast parts” installed on his Harley-Davidson Low Rider. It didn’t take long for the two to partner up and start expanding the business into a franchised Harley-Davidson dealership named Mancuso Harley-Davidson. Houston got its first Harley-Davidson Owners Group (H.O.G.) when Houston Area Number One was founded in the mid-1980s. It remains to be one of the oldest and most active chapters in existence, with over 300 current members.
Busy for the first twenty years, a second Houston location dedicated to the Harley-Davidson brand was the first step in expansion of the Mancuso brand. The second store was followed by five other dealerships that carried brands other than Harley-Davidson, all branded as Team Mancuso PowerSports.
“What’s cool about Team Mancuso is that a lot of people have worked here for a very long time and are true enthusiasts themselves,” says Jeff Grant, the team’s Digital Marketing Manager. Grant has worked for Team Mancuso PowerSports for over nine years. “They tend to stay around. We have a mix of Harley fans, people who ride sport bikes, off-road…everyone involved is really stoked about anything that has to do with powersports.” He adds that most Team Mancuso PowerSports employees are associated with motorcycles in some way outside of work, which helps them understand the riding lifestyle.
That passion for the industry stems from the rich history of Team Mancuso PowerSports being a mainstay in the Houston area, not only for Harley-Davidson but also for the other manufacturers as Team Mancuso grew in the other locations. The owners, Mancuso and Thompson, are still involved in the business today.
Even with the popularity they’ve experienced, the Mancuso team knows that advertising the business online is crucial. “Websites are hugely important for powersports dealerships. In these days, you must have a dynamic web presence, and especially on smartphones,” Grant says. “The Internet is so much more accessible than even five years ago. If you don’t have a website – and not just any website, but one that has real-time inventory and is responsive – well, that’s just not even an option.” Grant says that the majority of the Mancuso websites’ traffic comes from mobile.
Grant believes that the Mancuso team has always been a bit ahead of the curve in the powersports industry, especially in having the ability to share inventory amongst seven locations and giving customers the ability to browse through all of it. The team also implements the use of iPads at the dealership to help customers quickly and easily, and at one point developed a custom app to increase efficiency for the service departments.
Overall, Grant thinks that his dealerships do an impressive job of applying new technology. “We’ve also utilized the information we’ve gotten from Dealer Spike in terms of digital marketing strategy, and we leverage that as much as we can,” Grant says.
Grant had been in contact with Dealer Spike before launching in July 2016. “Our past provider was so big, and they had been around for such a long time. But as technology started to change, it seemed like they got sedentary and started falling behind with offerings to clients,” Grant explains. “Dealer Spike understands that it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation for dealerships.” Grant says the “icing on the cake” was when Harley-Davidson released an official statement that the company’s new preferred web provider was Dealer Spike.
Team Mancuso PowerSports has seen an impressive increase in leads since partnering with Dealer Spike, at 281% average increase across the sites.
“We see the online leads coming in daily for all seven of our stores,” says Grant. “And in general, the trend is that the average customer who comes in to buy a motorcycle has done so much online research that they know the details about what they want, what the going price is, and are pretty much ready to buy.” Grant emphasizes how critical it is for the website to look good and be accessible to customers, so information is readily available about the units they are interested in.
“In the past, we had a mobile version of our site and a desktop version. They were separate, and we had to maintain both. For even just one website, that would be a pain – for seven, it was really time consuming in terms of keeping content fresh,” Grant says. In addition to the ease of one responsive website for each dealership location, Grant also mentions Dealer Spike’s layout in terms of general look and feel, with clean design, as a major perk that came out of the switch in providers.
With seven physical dealership locations, Team Mancuso PowerSports has a total of eleven websites with Dealer Spike. The additional sites allow customers to browse used bikes among locations, access information about the dealer group’s motorcycle rider training program, and more.
“Team Mancuso PowerSports is a household name, and the fact that they’ve trusted Dealer Spike to represent them in the digital world is not something we take lightly,” says Jay Mason, CEO of Dealer Spike. “We’re riders in the real world too, and we love that we can identify so closely with the culture of the Mancuso team. We can see that this group continues to be on its way to even bigger and better things, and we’re excited to see what’s to come.”
Visit Team Mancuso PowerSports online:
http://www.mancusocrossroads.com/
http://www.mancusocentral.com/
http://www.mrhridertraining.com/
http://www.hundredsofusedmotorcycles.com/
http://www.mancusoharleydavidson.com/