PMM takes a look at how marketing can be used to grow a business and provides some pro tips!
Dee Blick, an experienced marketer in the automotive trade and bestselling author of several books on marketing, offers her top tips for workshops looking to make use of marketing:
I’m fortunate to work with Darren Darling’s DPF Doctor Network. Last year I delivered five marketing masterclasses to members. Here are some tips I shared that you can use to build your business.
- Know who you want to reach, why and where to find them – your target audiences. They may comprise other workshops, fleet managers and motorists in defined geographic areas. Be detailed.
- For each audience have three compelling reasons why they should use you. Just how are you super customer-focussed, go the extra mile and are a genuine expert? Every statement needs supporting with an example showing the reason in action.
- Use successful case studies of vehicles; why you saw them, the diagnostic process you followed to get to the root of the problem; the reaction from your customer when you delivered on your promises. Case studies show your expertise in action and are interesting.
- Always aim for the WOW factor – exceeding customers’ expectations by one small extra gesture. This leads to “Wow that was amazing service!” It’s the wows that lead to customers recommending you and coming back. List your wows and ensure everyone has the WOW mentality.
- Review your marketing communications in the light of these tips. Are you guilty of serious underselling – using text that’s old, incomplete and doesn’t convey just how good you are? Today’s customer is online. If what they see is old, poorly written, and incomplete they’ll go elsewhere. Those leaflets you had printed years ago – should they be recycled and rewritten?
- Consider a new customer offer – with a close date to encourage prompt responses and likewise a welcome back offer for customers that haven’t been in touch. And a thank you offer to loyal customers.
For more information, click here.
Jane Wright, Head of Marketing for Garage Services Online urges readers to make sure their website is up to the job:
For an independent garage, a website is arguably one of its most valuable business assets. It’s your number one salesperson, answers everyone’s questions and creates that first impression. It’s easily the hardest working member of staff you have. It never complains or rings in sick and works 24 hours a day, every day.
But do you know if your garage’s website is actually working at all? Does it bring in sales? Answer customers’ questions at 10pm? Make your garage look professional at all times? Does it bring in pre-qualified enquiries for the type of work you really want?
No? Then it’s not working. You’ve just identified the laziest employee in your business.
What would you do with a mechanic who wasn’t pulling their weight? Someone who sat at the back of the workshop, not working, not talking to anyone and certainly not earning your garage any money? They’d be on their way out.
So why would you put up with a website that simply doesn’t work? Just because you’re busy and the garage is doing okay doesn’t mean you should ignore the problem.
You might not care whether your website’s any good; but your customers will. Because if your website is not being found and converting, they’ll take their profitable routine service work across town to your competitor or a main dealer – those garages that don’t have any ‘lazy employees’.
There are good bespoke websites out there that cost as little as £4 per day. Websites built to attract the work you want and – here’s the good bit – bring in enough of it every month to cover build and maintenance costs multiple times over.
For more information, click here.
