WHY ISN’T MY MARKETING WORKING FOR ME?

By David Rogers

It’s really interesting to me how time after time, repair shop owners fall for the same couple of marketing “tricks” to try and fill their bays.  The truth is, if there are “tricks” to marketing your shop, they’re about how you run your shop and who you’re marketing to…not about tricking people into bringing their car to you…

One thing that is true of all advertising is that your offers and claims must be sustainable…the customer must experience everything you promised, or you’ll lose trust faster than you can say “coupon.”

Small businesses are especially at risk here because they cannot afford to advertise at the level of the large chains and outlets.  Burning customers through mediocre or even poor service that you brought in through advertising is truly suicidal.

The other thing that I see so many people doing today, is trying to undercut each other with cheaper service and lower prices…this too will absolutely kill your business! The more people you bring in on cheap offers, the more money you lose!

Why? Because consumers who consistently shop for the cheapest prices are the least loyal…they do not typically respond well to the “loss leader” style of marketing. (“Loss leading” is where you offer a service or item at lower than your cost, in order to lure them in and try to up-sell them on other items. This works well in grocery stores, but in auto repair, it’ll kill a small business!)

Training your customers to come in for cheap things can absolutely fill your bays…fill them with NO-VALUE cars, and NO-VALUE customers!

I prefer targeting the more intelligent consumer, and I don’t try to “up-sell” them. Instead, we teach them the truth about what’s in their best interest and how to get more miles out of every dollar. We use visual aids and take them into the shop and SHOW them what’s going on and explain how it could’ve been avoided…then we show them other items on the vehicle and teach them what else they can do preventatively to avoid ending up again in the same situation they’re in now only with another system on the vehicle.

We use a much longer-term approach to our marketing and advertising that results in longer relationships with our customers. Instead of using gimmicks or trying to trick them with offers that are too cheap to believe (or to be profitable for either of us…i.e. using cheaper parts to give a cheaper price ruins the experience and the chance of them trusting you over the long term, even though you capture the sale today), we focus on an ethical, educational, and sincere approach.

If you want to know more about the advertising we used to take our little $1.2 million operation to a $3.2 million business in under three years, check out our marketing solutions for repair shops. It’s all available there, and we’re still using it.