If you own an auto repair shop, then simply waiting for customers to come to your shop is an outdated and business-degrading technique. You have to be proactive in auto repair marketing so that your competitors don’t get away with customers that would have otherwise arrived at your shop. It is not difficult to market your auto repair anymore as we have listed promotion strategies that are 100% bound to work provided if you implement them. These auto repair business marketing ideas will be great only if you start implementing them, just reading them and getting informed alone won’t get you any results.
Some of the auto repair advertising ideas given here are do-it-yourself type while some may require a specialized agency to handle it. Nonetheless, they will grow your auto repair business much better than the present state. So let’s start with these ideas:
1) Service Reminders
Your current customers are one of the best resources that you can utilize to grow your auto repair business. If you are making an average of $100 from each customer, you can make $400-$600 from each customer by getting their email and phone number so that you can send them service reminders for an oil change, general maintenance, and/or new offers. To utilize each of your customers to the maximum potential, making a connection by establishing a direct line of communication works the best.
2) Loyalty Program
You can come up with a customer loyalty program to get more clients to your auto repair business for their auto service needs. For this, you can create discounted packages for repair and maintenance of the most common issues. Since physical loyalty cards are more prone to get lost, you can utilize a digital loyalty program for your auto repair business. There are plenty of options online to create such loyalty programs.
3) Website
Your entire online presence and visibility will revolve around your website as it is your digital shop that will send customers to your physical shop. All other online channels will link back to this website, so having a well-organized professional website for the auto repair business is a necessity. If the website is cluttered or looks unprofessional, it will make the visitors anxious and confused which will prevent you from getting the full benefits of your website. Your website must have an online scheduling feature to capture leads that need urgent solution. All core things like testimonials, contact number, booking options, key achievements and awards must be present on the homepage itself so that any customer must get plenty of reasons to trust your business.
4) Working on Online Visibility
As a good location is required for a physical store, similarly good ranking is required for your digital shop. If people don’t see your website on the front page of Google when they type “auto repair in [name of your city]”, then it is definite that one of your competitors is going to get that customer. To ensure a front-page ranking in Google for your auto repair business, it is necessary to optimize your website (Search Engine Optimization). To take care of this element, you must get the task handled by an SEO agency that will work towards putting and maintaining your website on the first page. You can also handle it yourself provided if you have that much time to learn and implement SEO techniques yourself.
5) Dominating Local Pack
Google selects 3 businesses in its local pack on the front page whenever a user types something that Google feels is a local level (city, town oriented) query. The competition to appear in this segment is also big as many businesses are there. The first step for being eligible to show up is the creation of a “Google My Business” page that contains various details about your business. As the factors involved in determining the selection of business are big (reviews, authority, citation, relevancy, etc), it is better to get it handled by an online marketing agency.
6) Social Media
Social media marketing for an auto repair business cannot be neglected. It is just a huge phenomenon that can be utilized not only to increase the brand value of your auto repair shop but can also give you plenty of leads if utilized sensibly. The only thing to note here is that you must not fully get in marketing mode on social media platforms as people don’t engage well with such business pages and groups. On social media platforms, you must ensure a fair balance between promotional and non-promotional posting to get a good following and engagement.
You can put before-after photos of vehicle repair, funny images of vehicle driving, driving safety tips, etc along with promoting your business side by side. Another thing to do is to join local groups on Facebook and connect with local profiles on Instagram. Facebook groups are great for networking and generating leads.
7) Press Release
If you want your auto repair business to appear on news portals, then a press release is the way to go. By using press releases, your business announcement will get distributed on 100’s of sites as a result of which it will generate traffic and links. It will also boost the reputation of your business because whenever someone trying to know more about your business will type the name of your auto repair business in any search engine, he will find your business name covered on many news sites that will increase the trust of the user and will also enhance conversion rates.
8) Email Marketing
Every person who visits your website is a prospect who can be converted into a client with the right marketing strategy. Email marketing is one of the less used but potent marketing methods to establish a connection with prospects. Since people generally won’t give away their email address just because you have asked for it on your website, you will have to come up with incentives to let the user give his/her email. This incentive can be a discount, free or discounted oil change offer or any other thing that you think can incentivize the user.
Once you have made a good email list, you can send them new content periodically like benefits of regular maintenance, oil change, etc along with your marketing promotions and offers. You can also segment the emails into various categories to fine-tune the content that you are going to send to your prospects.
9) Direct Free Pickup and Drop
Instead of customers bringing their vehicles to your shop, you can get a step ahead by offering a free pick up and drop of vehicles so that they do not have to spend extra time. You can promote this feature on your website, on social media and on all other marketing materials that you will be using. This will serve as a powerful incentive to use your auto repair service.
10) Big Clients
You can partner with people and businesses who have many vehicles so that these can become your commercial and high-worth clients. This can include limo service providers, transport vehicle owners, Tour and travel business owners, etc. You can come up with a different package for such businesses so that they can get service at a low price and you can get big partnerships.
11) Ads
To get started with more auto repair leads quickly, nothing can be better than running paid ads on platforms like Google, Facebook, Bing, etc. Out of many advertising platforms available, Google is the best followed by Facebook. However, if you have no knowledge of creating ads and setting bids and targets, then you may soon find out that you have spent much more money than you have gained from such ads. It is therefore advised to either learn and use these ad platforms or get any specialized marketing agency to handle auto repair advertising for your business.
12) Pixel Marketing
People are mostly not quick decision-makers, so if they arrive at your website, they might be having many mental blocks that might prevent them from using your service. You can make good use of these website visitors by pixel marketing which involves adding pixels on your website to track and follow visitors to all sites that they visit. This way they will be informed of your site many times which is proven to boost conversions. Since this involves some technical knowledge, you can get it done by any online marketing agency.
13) Targeting Your Competitors
As an auto repair shop owner, you must definitely be knowing the most successful auto repair businesses in your location. You can use their name to your business advantage by bidding on their business name in Google. By doing this, every time someone types the name of your competitor in Google, they will also be seeing ads of your business which will help to carve out some customers from your competitors.
You can also apply this same principle for content marketing on your website. You can do it by creating posts targeting your competitor brand names and then whenever anyone searching for your competing business types their name in Google, they will land up on your site which will be having your auto repair business mentioned as an alternative.
14) Powerful Sites
Many online directories and sites that have established their brand authority tend to rank very well in Google. You can utilize the authority of such websites and can put the details of your business on such sites to get your business another source of leads. Some of such sites are Yelp, Manta, Crunchbase, NextDoor, etc.
15) Partnerships
You can partner with other services and businesses in your area that are more likely to have a good number of prospects interested in your service. Some of such partners can be auto spare parts dealers, garage door repair people, companies providing driving lessons, auto insurance agents, etc.
16) Rewarding Social Posters
Customers who agree to share or mention your auto repair business on their social profiles or website must be rewarded or incentivized with discounts and offers. This way their network will also know about your business and since it is promoted from social media profiles, they are much more likely to remember your business name and take your services later. It is a simple yet effective way to promote your auto repair shop on social media.
17) Before and After Photos
Before and after photos have a positive impact in many industries that have the possibility of such a scenario. Though it is more common in the health industry, especially weight loss, it is warmly received in other industries too. You can regularly share before and after photos of your completed work to increase your following on social media and to generate more engagement online.
18) Free Driving Lessons
You can announce free driving lessons and can utilize this as an opportunity to showcase and market your auto repair shop. You can do it either in partnership with any other business (to keep costs down) or can do it solely.
19) Rewarding Referrals
Referrals can be a great way to grow your auto repair business. You can give a two-way offer to boost referrals. You can give a discount or offer to the person who refers a new customer along with a discount card or offer to give to the new customer who will be using your service for the first time. This way the chances of conversions will increase many folds.
20) Free Custom Auto Accessories
You can get low-cost auto accessories with custom names printed on them to market your auto repair business. You can giveaway these accessories carrying your business name and your phone number for free to your customers so that your business would remain in their memory for long. Apart from auto accessories, you can also use this custom printed model for calendars, mugs and other low-cost things that you can give away for free. This method can also be used for incentivizing customers to share your business on their social networks.
21) Encourage Reviews and Track Mentions
One common habit people have nowadays is to search for the authenticity of a business online before trying their product and service. If your auto service business has little or no reviews, then it is most likely to create a negative perception of your business which will bring down the number of customers that would have potentially taken your service. You must also set up Google alerts to get notified of any mention of your business online so that you can be aware of positive and negative talk related to your business. Setting up a Google alert is very easy and hardly takes 5-10 minutes and you can find video tutorials on Youtube to set it up.
22) Offline Marketing
Traditional offline marketing methods though being old are useful in marketing your auto repair business. These include newspaper ads, flyers, brochures, banners, billboards, etc. One drawback is that the results are not easily measurable and the cost of offline marketing is generally more than online marketing.
23) Supporting Local Events
Local events are a great way for participating and letting people become aware of your services. However, this is more of an awareness generation type of marketing and less potent in generating quick leads as compared to online marketing of your auto repair services.
This completes our list of powerful auto repair shop marketing ideas. We expect that you can find many insights on techniques to get more clients to your auto repair business with these tips. For any question that comes to your mind, you can ask it below.
