Effective marketing is one of the keys to growing any business, but automotive marketing is especially important. It’s all too easy for customers (both existing and potential ones) to forget about your brand until they need you, which makes them susceptible to your competitors. Check out these 8 marketing tips to help you boost sales and keep your auto repair business growing.
Download our Auto Repair survey results infographic for industry insights and tips!
1. Email marketing
Email remains one of the fastest and easiest ways to stay in touch with your customers, no matter which aspect of your business they’re interested in. Available platforms offer numerous tools to help you successfully track emails and analyze opens, click-throughs, and campaign performance, so you can refine your messaging over time and gather other metrics, such as response rates.
You can turn that data into something even more useful: segmentation. Segmentation is a targeting method that enables you to reach customers at every stage of their consumer journey. Remember, your email newsletters are something your readers have opted into, i.e., they’re ready to hear what you have to say. It’s your responsibility to ensure what they’re hearing is most effective at helping them choose your brand, whether for the first time or for continued service.
You should also be using your email lists as a platform for promoting your other content and channels. After all, customers expect a smooth, omnichannel experience, so offer them snippets of your blog, embedded media, and links to social media and news. Use your email marketing to help build a cohesive experience for your customer.
2. Loyalty programs
Loyalty programs help retain customers and sell new services by rewarding repeat visits and service spend. While originally popularized by dealerships, independent auto repair shops can benefit as well, especially when rewards are tied to recurring maintenance. Plus, tracking customer engagement with your loyalty program is key to maximizing its effectiveness.
Indeed, an auto repair business has different needs. Still, the effectiveness of these programs in dealerships is a signal that you should be taking advantage of them too, because customers feel like they have something to gain. They want the added value that loyalty rewards lend to typical maintenance services like oil changes and tire rotations. If you already have a loyalty plan, remember that it, like every vehicle that comes into your shop, needs regular maintenance and tune-ups to remain effective. You should be tracking what customers are (or aren’t) taking advantage of so that you can maximize the value they’re receiving.
3. Saying thanks
Aside from helping the customer feel like you really appreciate their business, saying thanks with a post-transaction follow-up can help you kill two birds with one stone: engender the idea that your business emphasizes the customer experience and engage them in the opportunity to share a review, write a testimonial, and point out any areas you might not realize need improvement. Whether you do this by phone, direct mail, email, or survey doesn’t matter as much as having a plan and following through. It will help cement the idea that they made the right choice by going with your shop over the competition.
4. Reviews and referrals
Speaking of testimonials, reviews, and referrals, they’re more important than you might think. Recent studies show that 75% to 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation from someone they know, and 98% rely on them to inform their buying decisions. While 77% of consumers find online reviews mostly trustworthy, a whopping 84% to 91% consider them quite influential. Point blank, reviews can make or break a small business, and it’s becoming easier and easier for customers to leave reviews thanks to sites like Yelp and Google.
That means that you can’t just hope customers will leave a good review or offer a referral. You need to ask for them. You need to make them a priority, and that probably means you’ll also need to train your employees to ask for them. Bottom line, online reviews matter more than ever: research consistently shows that consumers trust online reviews nearly as much as personal recommendations before choosing a local business. Making review generation a priority and training staff to ask for them to help drive visibility in local search.
5. Social reputation
Having an online social presence is vital, but that’s not just because of the marketing opportunities social media offers. Aside from sharing updates on industry news, special events your shop is hosting, and current promotions, social media is a key aspect of managing your business’s online reputation. That’s because social media, when leveraged properly, gives your business a proactive stance to both negative and positive commentary. You may feel like you’re too busy to handle this social media angle, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore it. Whether you decide to contract a social media director or not, being busy means that having social listening tools is that much more critical.
The effect is undeniable. Of course, that means reacting to bad reviews and nasty social interactions in the right way, i.e., promptly, politely, and with proactive solutions. Of course, you need to keep best practices for engaging online reviewers in mind, especially on social media. You can’t treat customer responses flippantly or ignore them, so make sure you answer them respectfully and refocus the conversation on improving their experience with your brand.
6. Promoting for holidays & community
Keying in on holidays to reach out to and run year-round promotions for your community can open new opportunities to connect with customers. While some major holidays seem obvious, consider more minor holidays that can be more meaningful. For instance, offering a special discount for educators during Teacher Appreciation Week, or for veterans or active military personnel during Military Appreciation Month, is an easy way to show how much your business cares about locals without risking too much of your revenue. You can also use it as an opportunity to support charity, either by donating a portion of purchases or exchanging discounts for customer donations. Take the time to look at who makes up your customer base and find the days that celebrate them. Some other holidays you can build promotions around include Father’s Day, Earth Day, and Veterans’ Day.
Similarly, remember that promotion doesn’t have to mean price slashing, and celebrating the community can be about particular events and causes as much as it is about holidays. Consider whether there are charitable events you can be part of or even sponsor. This builds a positive brand identity, increasing the likelihood that customers will engage with your business.
7. Offer tips and resources
Customers increasingly turn to the internet for how-to information. Obviously, you want people to come into your shop for services, not do them at home, but withholding that information isn’t going to turn into a sale; the customer will find that information somewhere else. Instead, you want to build a relationship with a customer so that they want to come to your shop. This means having the content available to position your auto repair business as a market leader and worthy of consumer trust.
This information can cover all sorts of things, from how to save gas and pre-travel tips to how to tell when various parts need repair, and how to perform certain repairs or tune-ups on your own. While there are all sorts of ways to do this, you definitely ought to take advantage of video when you can. Take high-end motorcycle retailer RevZilla as an example: they saw a 50% increase in revenue over three years by offering videos that demonstrated new products and safety tips. Be brave enough to provide customers with the how-to information they’re looking for, and establish yourself as a leader with a customer-first attitude.
8. Utilize coupons
Coupons are a feature that most consumers have been “trained” to look for prior to getting auto work done. For example, many consumers would not go to Jiffy Lube, Goodyear, Midas, or other big-name auto service centers for an oil change without a coupon. Today, most consumers search online for coupons and discounts.
Just remember that coupons are about value and promoting your business; your coupon offers don’t need to include major price cuts for big-ticket services. Most auto retailers offer coupons, bundles, specials, and other discounts on some of their lower-ticket items to drive more business from consumers toward services with higher margins. After all, your coupon should be what brings them through the door once, and your service and care should be what keeps them coming back.
Start growing your auto repair business through marketing today!
Not sure how to turn these tips into actionable steps toward marketing your auto repair business? Below are some questions and tips to get you started. Remember to consider which ones you can dive into immediately, and which will take a little time to rev up and be adequately implemented.
- Have you developed an email marketing plan? This should involve more than simply the content of your emails.
- By segmenting your email lists, you can better personalize the emails a customer receives, and you can move beyond simple newsletters to take advantage of automated options.
- Always make sure your content, including your emails, is responsive. Mobile-first campaigns are a must and vital for reaching your customers wherever they are.
- Take a look at how auto dealerships are using loyalty programs to retain customers.
- It is essential to do this to keep competitors from stealing your customers, but it’s also because few other loyalty programs address the needs of the auto industry. What tactics can you learn from them?
- Chances are, it will be much more effective to keep your loyalty rewards focused on automotive options. What free services or discounts can you offer that will make your brand look good without hurting your wallet?
- What can you do to bring back lapsed customers? Are you using email marketing and loyalty rewards to do it?
- Develop a plan to ask for more testimonials, referrals and reviews. Be sure you have a business profile on different review and referral sites.
- Are you asking the right questions when you ask for a testimonial or review? Remember, you want them to be as authentic as possible, so make the questions as balanced as possible.
- Find out what their hesitations were, what they didn’t like, and if you were able to turn that into a better experience, as well as what they felt the benefits were.
- Educate the customer on why they should choose your auto brand.
- What do you offer that your competitors don’t? Are your employees knowledgeable about your USP or appropriate accolades? Are they sharing that information with customers on the shop floor?
Rev up your ad engines with Valpak
Just taking advantage of these eight easy marketing tips for your auto repair business will boost your reputation and your business. Take the time to audit your current automotive marketing to identify any changes that should be made when developing marketing plans for your auto repair business. It’s well worth the time to strengthen the areas where your marketing strategy is weakest, offering a competitive edge that puts you above and beyond other repair shops in your market.
Valpak’s advertising professionals will walk you through all the available formats, how to create the best print ad, and how digital ads can extend your reach even further. Contact your local Valpak office today to get started.
