Auto Repair Shop Marketing That Works: Where to Start, What to Avoid, and How to Grow
Small businesses face many challenges when trying to get off the ground. As your business grows, so do your challenges. You may be at a point where your marketing needs must be reevaluated. The days of word-of-mouth referrals have given way to technology, but this gives us a smarter, more strategic approach to marketing.
Why Bigger Shops Need Smarter Marketing, Not Just More Marketing
Higher overhead is a pain point for many businesses. As a manager, part of your job is keeping overhead under control. You consider additional team members, a larger space, specialty tools, equipment, and even software needs, which add to your overhead.
When managing this type of growth, you are beyond referral marketing. You need more strategic auto repair shop marketing. Yes, people still talk to one another and share happy stories of an auto repair shop that did an excellent job. However, many more people are doing their research online. The nice thing about this is that the technology has provided us with not only a way to reach our target market online, but it also gives us the data so we have ROI-backed strategies that tell us what we need to know to make data-informed decisions about our repair shop marketing.
Target the Right Customers—Not Just All of Them
The nice thing about needing more strategic marketing for your auto repair shop is that we can target the ideal customer. When setting up your audience, you can filter your campaign by vehicle history, ticket size, and visit frequency. Based on this valuable information, you will know how to maximize your sales.
Direct mail and digital campaigns can work hand-in-hand and align with your shop data. For example, when winter breaks and warmer spring weather appear, antique vehicle owners want to take their prized possessions out of storage and get ready for antique car shows. A clever digital campaign paired with direct mailers can get those customers calling your shop.
Maybe you want to reach these customers, and your repair shop marketing is what you will need to remind them that it’s been a year since they had their routine maintenance check.
Use Promotions Strategically, Not as a Crutch
You give your customers excellent value by giving them a job well done, great customer service, updates, reminders, and answering all their questions, among other perks. So, do you need to offer discounts? Yes, and no. Discounts are often misused and don’t serve your brand well. Use discounts strategically, not as the norm.
When your booking calendar has some gaps, you can use marketing for auto repair shops to reengage lapsed customers, seasonality repairs, urgent service needs, and reminders to fill slow days. Use your repair shop marketing to create systems so you don’t miss that golden opportunity.
Turn Your Reputation into Marketing Fuel
Earlier, we touched on technology impacting your referrals and people doing their shopping online. With a cell phone in nearly every automobile owner’s hand, it is easy to check for reviews from your customers.
We look for higher reviews, current reviews, reviews that have responses from the business, and the volume of reviews. Each of these adds trust and builds confidence with your potential new customers.
How can you leverage this? Simply ask for reviews. Make it part of your ongoing marketing. Recent surveys show that people look for reviews on search engines, social media, and local news, among other sites. They even watch videos to learn about a repair shop before deciding.
Consistency Beats Complexity Every Time
If all of this is overwhelming, one thing is certain. People like consistency. They like to get to know you through your online reviews, videos, social media, and website. They want to see you interacting with your customer reviews. They check your social media accounts and look to see how often and when you post new content. If you can’t do it all, pick a few types of marketing and keep them regular.
Try simple, repeatable campaigns. Thank you emails, loyalty follow-ups, and seasonal promos are all great ways to stay in touch with your customers and keep you at the forefront of their minds.
Conclusion: Start with a Strategy That Pays Off
Big shops don’t need bigger marketing budgets—they need better alignment between customer behavior and marketing actions.
Want to get more from your marketing without reinventing the wheel?
