Want more cars, more customers, more sales?
Then you need to take action, and a marketing plan for your auto repair shop is the map that gets you there.
If you’ve never made a marketing plan before, don’t fret. You’re in good company.
Marketing Approaches That Don’t Work
A lot of shops take a let’s throw mud at the wall and see if it sticks approach to marketing. Maybe you’ve even tried one of these methods:
- Try a bunch of random things. You make a website, create a Facebook business page, post on social media, run radio ads, rent billboard space, send emails, sponsor events, send postcards—and then try to see if any of it actually gets you customers. The problem is that it’s hard to measure what works and what doesn’t when you run multiple campaigns without a clear message or consistent offer.
- Imitate successful shops. You find a shop that’s killing it and do what they do. They run an oil change special? You do the same. They send postcards? You do the same. What works for them, though, may not work for you. There’s a good chance they’re in a different market with different customers, different competitors, and different financial needs. Apples vs oranges.
You can waste a lot of time and money like this. And it might make you think marketing just won’t work for you.
But good marketing can get cars in your bays—when you do it the right way.
What goes into a winning marketing plan?
A marketing plan gives you a strategic approach to getting the business results you’re after.
A winning marketing plan brings clarity, sets boundaries, gives you direction—it defines what you’re trying to achieve and prepares you to get there. It’s the map that can take your business from average to awesome.
Here are the essential ingredients of a successful auto repair shop marketing plan:
- Measurable goals
- Appropriate budget
- Clear focus on your market, message, and media
- Simple scheduling
- Consistent execution
Let’s look more at each of these pieces.
Measurable goals
A successful marketing plan starts with defining what success will look like.
Maybe you want to increase your car count by 20% this year. This gives you a baseline so you can see how your efforts are working.
Goals work best when they’re SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Is increase my car count by 20% this year a SMART goal? Yes—here’s why:
- Specific – increase car count by 20% is concrete and tangible
- Measurable – if you know your car count now, you can measure a 20% increase
- Achievable – a 20% increase might be a stretch but you could do it (a 20000% increase would be impossible)
- Relevant – if your overall objective is to grow your business, a 20% increase in your car count will help
- Time-bound – you’re giving yourself the year to reach your goal
This is a good goal. By contrast, “We want more cars” isn’t an effective goal and won’t move your business forward.
Next you’ll need to define your marketing budget.
Appropriate budget
Your marketing budget is like rocket fuel. Too little and you won’t get off the launch pad—but with the right fuel in the tank you can clear the atmosphere.
How much should you spend on marketing? You’ll see estimates ranging from 5 to 20% of your revenue, and those numbers depend on the size of your business.
Clear focus on your market, message, and media
With your goals in place, you can take the next step: identifying who you want to reach, what you’ll say to them, and choosing the methods to reach them.
We call this the three Ms: market, message, and media.
- Market – Your market is the who. Who is your ideal customer? What do they want? Where do they live? What do they drive? What do they care about? What problems do they have that you can solve?
- Message – Your message determines what you’ll say to your customers and shows how you’re different from the other shops in your area. Why should they choose you compared to the shop on the next block? You’ll have more success when customers clearly understand what you offer and how you’re different.
- Media – This is where you choose the places you want to show up: website, SEO, blog posts, podcast, Facebook ads, organic social media, Google ads, direct mail, email marketing, billboards, TV, newspapers, etc.
This step is important because it defines some boundaries for your business. If you intend to niche in a specific area (like Euro, Asian, diesel, or a specific brand), your market and message need to be focused on those kinds of customers. And your media choices need to be consistent with your market—you need to show up where your customers will see you.
This seems obvious but a lot of owners don’t want to turn away business. They’ll say Everyone’s our customer—and then they’re frustrated when the wrong people visit their shop.
When you get the right message in front of the right customers, everyone wins.
Simple scheduling
Your marketing plan is starting to take shape—you’re nearly done! Now you’ll need to organize your messages and media for the year.
Decide when you want to promote your messages and identify the media you’ll use to promote them. Set out the ways you intend to show up on social media, your website, blogs for SEO, Facebook ads, Google ads, direct mail, email, and your other media. Then put everything into a month-by-month plan. Make it easy to see and use with a spreadsheet or calendar.
Don’t overthink this part. The plan is here to serve your business—make it easy to follow.
Which leads us to…
Consistent execution
“Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time” – Mike Tyson
You have a great plan. Don’t let it sit in a drawer or languish in a folder on your computer. You need to work the plan to get the results you want.
As you work your plan, evaluate the results and make adjustments. Pay attention to the results. Track the conversions you’re getting when someone calls in response to a promotion. Marketing isn’t a “one and done” affair. Make changes to your offers and media to see what happens.
Your plan will take unexpected “hits” from time to time, so you’ll need to be flexible. Test, measure, adjust—then repeat.
A consistent plan that you act on and regularly evaluate will give you better results and the confidence to know you’re doing it right.
Create a winning marketing plan for your auto repair shop with Turnkey Marketing
At Turnkey Marketing, we create marketing plans for auto repair shops all the time, and we help them execute them.
We follow the approach outlined here—plus we add our own secret sauce so our clients get amazing results.
Schedule a call today and let’s explore how we can help you create a winning marketing plan for your shop.
