Is your auto repair shop or tire store stuck in a rut? Are you struggling to come up with ideas that will drive sales? Are you sticking sale signs in your windows and praying for customers to visit your shop?
If you answered yes to these questions, you should follow any of the tips below. These tips have helped plenty of other businesses spread the word about their products and services.
Have Events
Have you ever noticed how grand openings of businesses attract a lot of people? Having events every so often can help spur interest in your business.
We’re not saying that you need to host a Fourth of July celebration with an inflatable Gorilla on top of your business. However, look to partner with community events and festivities to spread the word about your business.
It’s a great way to show that you’re a part of the community. Best of all, you get to promote your business to tons of customers who live nearby your business.
Make Your Business Newsworthy
Drum up some news about your business whenever you can. Coming up with newsworthy items may not be as difficult as you may think. News can be:
- Participation in community events
- Charitable donations
- New services and product announcements
- Contests
Whatever you decide, be sure to promote the newsworthy items to your local newspapers as well as on the internet. Especially with the decline of newspapers, you’ll want to make a significant push to promote online.
Hosting your news on a blog as well as other community blogs and forums is a great way to spread the word about your business.
Build A Website
You probably already have a website, but can your customers find it? More importantly, can they easily use it to get the information that they need?
A good website is the cornerstone to marketing success in the 21st Century. You’ll want your website to include:
- Contact Information
- Location Information
- Store Hours
- Services
You would be surprised how many auto repair shops bury this information at the bottom of their websites. This information needs to be easy to find. If a customer cannot find it, they will leave your site and look at the competition.
Get On Online Review Sites
Once you have a great website, you’ll want to make sure that you’re on review websites such as Google Places, Yelp and Citysearch. These types of websites provide reviews on restaurants, stores and, of course, auto repair shops.
You’ll want to be sure to claim your all of your online review sites. By doing this, you’ll be able to engage customers who may have had a negative experience at your business. It’s very important to keep your customers happy to protect the reputation of your business.
Use Social Media
Social media is another great area to help market your business. Facebook is the most popular place where your customers probably frequent. Here are the stats on Facebook:
- 750 million users
- 50% of users use site every single day
- Users spend a total of 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
By using Facebook, you can build a better relationship with your customers. You can provide discount information and other promotional messages. By doing this, you can spread the word about your business faster than ever.
Provide Excellent Customer Service
Finally, providing excellent customer service will be key to your marketing success. Customer service is very important because customers will be talking about your repair shop on online review sites and social media sites.
If you want to have favorable reviews, you need to provide top-notch service to all of your customers. By doing this, word will spread about your repair shop or tire store.
Make sure all of your employees are properly trained on how to greet and treat customers.
Summary
These tips will help you market your auto repair shop or tire store. However, this is only half of the battle.
Once you get the customers, they will be expecting quality service at an affordable price. To help lower operational costs, you should consider repair shop software or tire shop management software.
This type of software helps get cars in and out of your service bays faster, so your business is more productive. At FastTrak Auto Shop Management Systems, we specialize in helping auto repair shop and tire store become more productive.
Sign up for a demonstration of by visiting our website.
