Marketing and promoting your auto repair shop can be quite a daunting task at first glance, but even small and manageable steps can make a large positive impact on your shop’s business.
Here are 5 easy tips that can help you take your shop’s marketing efforts from 1st gear to 5th in record time!
1 – Read Customer Reviews and Reply to Them
By reading the reviews that your customers give you, and responding to them in a timely manner, you are keeping yourself engaged in what’s important to them. They took the time out of their day to leave you feedback, so at least acknowledge their effort in giving you their opinion of their experience at your shop (good or bad).
If you’re worried that you can’t respond to EVERY review, be sure to at least thank any customers who left you a 5-star review. Think about what it took for someone to come to your shop and receive such a great experience that they felt compelled to leave you a 5-star rating. That deserves at least a simple “Thank You” at the very least because they are likely to continue to come back to you again as a trusted automotive service provider.
2 – Check the KPI Report Regularly
This report is constantly changing, day-by-day, week-by-week, and is based upon invoices closed and the revenue generated from them. SocialCRM auto shop marketing software provides you the sales projection at the beginning of the month based upon last year’s performance. As you get towards the end of the month you will see any positive or negative variances. Having this data helps you to work with your team and come up with ideas to generate business if needed before the month closes out.
This is also the only report in the dashboard where the data is not archived on the site since it changes daily. If you want to keep the past month’s information for your records, just set a reminder for yourself for the last day of the month after closing. Go to the last invoice to save it as a pdf, print it and store however you like to keep your records. If you forget to save it before rolling over into the next month just give a quick call to Social CRM’s Tech Support so they can help you collect those past reports.
3 – Measure Yourself Up Against the Competition
Within the Benchmark Report you’ll get an idea of how you are performing compared to other shops within your state as well as on the national level. There are three areas of data that we can provide: Average Invoice Dollar Amount, Average Invoice Count and Percentage of First Time Vehicles. It can take a little while for the SocialCRM team to pull and gather all the information and date from every shop that utilizes SocialCRM auto shop marketing, but the wait is well worth it as this can be a great metric for you and your shop!
4 – Give Your Subscribers Special Incentives Through Texting
If your shop is registered to take advantage of the appointment reminder and ‘thank you’ text messages that are sent to your customers, then they also receive an invitation to subscribe for any service promotions that you want to offer along with it. The feature is included in your SocialCRM auto shop marketing service, and is a great way to connect with those customers who signed up for possible service discounts. Your dedicated SocialCRM agent can show you how to send them out straight from the dashboard.
5 – Low Response Numbers? Time for Some Marketing!
Every time you log into the SocialCRM dashboard, all of the information you need is right there at your fingertips! If you are noticing a downward trend, you might consider reaching out to your SocialCRM support agent to help to put together a service promotion campaign via email.
We can also include up to five coupons in a campaign, complete with artwork, and generate business with an exciting offer or offers. You might be surprised to see just how much positive response you will get from these offers! You never know – maybe there was that one customer who was holding out in hopes of a brake discount, a free safety inspection or other.
Taking some time out of your day to acknowledge, reply and engage with your customers before, during and after their service goes a very long way to KEEPING them as YOUR customer! With Mitchell 1’s SocialCRM auto shop marketing and its dedicated marketing expert team by your side, the road to success has far less bumps and dips ahead.
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