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Top Marketing Strategies to Boost Your Auto Repair Shop
Top Marketing Strategies to Boost Your Auto Repair Shop
Auto repair shops have numerous marketing options. Which ones are the best? To fully answer this question, you have to think first about your most important marketing goals. In the auto repair business, key goals usually boil down to:
• Attracting new customers
• Maintaining customer contact for repeat business
• Generating referralsHere are tried-and-true marketing strategies that will help you address these goals within a budget you can sustain for the long term.
PPC Advertising
PPC (pay-per-click) advertising displays your ad on Google when people are searching for auto repair services. The biggest advantage of PPC is that your ad appears at the exact time someone is looking for repair work. For attracting new customers, PPC may be your top online marketing option.
One of the most important factors in a PPC campaign is the offer. If your ad mentions a discount, free merchandise or some other incentive customers want, then they are far more likely to click on your ad and make contact with you.
Perhaps the second most important factor is establishing your credibility. It’s the nature of the business that people tend to be skeptical of auto repair companies. A blurb in the ad that states your high BBB rating, years in business or some other strong credibility statement should boost results. Give more attention to your credibility content in the landing page you’ve designed for people to land on after they click on your ad.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great option for auto repair because it allows you to tackle two of those key goals, repeat business and referrals. Email allows you to “touch” your past customers on a regular basis (once a month is a good benchmark), so they remember you when they or someone they know needs repair work.
Successful email hinges on high-value content. Luckily, as an auto repair specialist, you have a tremendous wealth of knowledge in which people are interested. How much should it cost to fix a dent? How do you match colors to do it yourself? How can you make sure you’re getting a fair estimate? If you’re not sure what to write about, ask your customers. When they’re in the shop, ask them what they’d like to know about auto repair. You may have a year’s worth of great email topics in a week.
Email marketing requires you to get the email addresses of customers and their permission to send them emails. The best way to do this is when they are in your shop — have a simple form on hand for them to fill out. You should also have an email signup form on your website, and perhaps mention it on your business cards and any printed brochures you may have.
Local SEO
As a provider of Chicago SEO services, we’ve seen local SEO (search engine optimization) work extremely well for local businesses, even in competitive urban markets. With so many people searching on Google for local businesses — more than ever because of mobile phone searches — local SEO is becoming a near necessity.
The goal of SEO is to make your shop’s website pages appear prominently in Google’s search results for people doing searches for auto repair. There are many little tweaks and tactics that go into it, and you’ll need an agency or freelancer to execute a campaign properly. A few of the most important elements of local SEO are to make sure your name, address and phone number (NAP) appear on each website page; to get your shop mentioned in local news and commerce websites; and to have positive customer reviews on Google My Business (GMB) and other reputable, relevant review sites.
Having a strong organic presence on Google certainly helps attract new customers — but also helps secure repeat customers who may have forgotten about you. It may take a few months or longer for a local SEO campaign to start generating results, but your patience will pay off.
Author Bio:
Brad Shorr is Director of Content Strategy at Straight North, an online marketing agency headquartered in the Chicago area.
#autorepairshopadvertising
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