Suzuki has launched a new dealer marketing initiative to reach out to prospective new trade partners, based on fresh, friendly and informal style and use of language.

The new campaign, which went live at the beginning of April, adopts a more relaxed tone in grabbing the attention across a new range of point-of-sale, direct mail and other marketing material.

About 45% of Suzuki's dealers are actively selling its parts to the trade.

The Suzuki Partners programme is based on six “pledges” to trade customers which are being promoted through the new range of marketing material.

This will initially introduce the programme to prospective partners and then use promotional tools to target specific messages, offers and products.

The resources, which can all be accessed easily and quickly by dealers using Suzuki’s dealer marketing portal, are supported by an on-line central contacts database of more than 50,000 UK automotive businesses, ranging from body shops and tyre centres to air conditioning specialists and breakdown recovery firms.

Michael Le Flay, aftersales marketing manager, said: “We have taken an innovative approach in designing our Suzuki Partners material, using a less formal tone of voice that we believe customers will respond to.

"Suzuki will stand out in a busy marketplace for being brighter and less formal, but at the same time with no compromise in the quality of the strong business propositions we are making.

“We’re confident Suzuki Partners will help our dealerships build new relationships with trade partners, increase awareness of their business in their local automotive trade community and, ultimately, increase genuine Suzuki parts sales.”

A spokesman added: "We understand that there will be a number of smaller, more rural dealers, who will be unlikely to adopt a trade parts strategy. However, there still remains a sizeable number of Suzuki dealers that do have the potential to grow their parts business by establishing and cementing relationships with automotive trade partners.

"All participating Dealers have access to an on-line database of 50,000 trade outlets along with a comprehensive library of on-line marketing trade templates."

He said one of the more important aspects of adopting a trade parts programme is to address and reverse the perception that Suzuki genuine parts are always going to be prohibitively expensive.

"This is most definitely not the case. Through Suzuki partners, we aim to educate, stimulate and thereby create long-term relationships between our dealers and their prospective trade partners. If successful, we anticipate that we will see significant incremental growth in dealer parts sales.

"We’ve adopted an unconventional approach when you compare it to other trade parts programmes, but we’re hoping that this less formal approach will stand out from the crowd and be remembered. This is early days, but we’re already discussing the next phase of Suzuki partners, as we see this as a long-term strategy."