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How to Attract and Retain Customers for Your Auto Service

Here are 6 effective tips on how to attract and retain customers for your auto Service.

Place Outdoor Advertising

Driving is a time-consuming activity that requires the driver’s concentration. You can take advantage of this by placing your billboards and signs that will catch the eye of potential clients for your auto service. Bright advertising for an auto service or tire shop will immediately attract the attention of a customer-facing an unexpected breakdown or stick in their memory for future reference.

Place your advertising in the area of your tire shop, design the billboard with directional arrows and vibrant colors that are visible in low light, and ensure that no one will miss your business.

Surprisingly, combining outdoor advertising with social media marketing (SMM) is very effective. Research by “Posterscope US” and “Nielsen USA” shows that the simultaneous use of these technologies can increase reach by 203%. Additionally, 46% of people turn to search engines to learn more about the outdoor advertising they’ve seen.

Develop a Referral Program

Experienced auto service owners know that even in the pre-internet era, one of the leading marketing channels for promoting auto services was word of mouth. In the service sector, personal recommendations are still one of the most effective methods of attracting new clients and retaining loyal ones, and marketing methods help manage this process centrally. For example, an email campaign with a referral code to the auto service’s client base.

Offering regular customers rewards for inviting their friends and acquaintances to the auto service will be an additional incentive to recommend your services. However, it should be noted that referral programs will only be effective if you truly offer high-quality services and are focused on having your clients return time and again.

Add a Customer Service Department

A common mistake made by auto service owners is forcing their technical staff to handle calls, first contact with clients, or even feedback. A customer service department at the auto service would be much more productive. The customer service department’s activities aim to build a trusting dialogue between the auto service and its clients. The department processes initial requests, responds to positive and negative feedback and suggestions, and is generally aimed at retaining previously attracted clients. This can also improve the quality of the technical services provided, as employees will no longer be distracted by unnecessary communication.

Implement a CRM System

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a strategic approach to managing customer relationships. It helps attract new clients, retain existing ones, develop relationships with them, and improve overall customer satisfaction. In general, it is a more technological alternative to a full-fledged customer service department, as it involves automating many aspects of the auto service’s operations.

Implementing software designed to automate CRM tasks using data from various sources allows you to:

  • Reduce administrative costs by 10-20%
  • Increase sales volumes by 10-30% per manager per year
  • Increase the number of concluded deals by 5-15%

CRM provides a comprehensive view of the client and allows the auto service to collect, analyze, and use customer data. Within CRM, special software solutions can be used to automate client interaction processes, from creating a client base for the auto service and maintaining their records to planning and managing marketing campaigns, sales, and service provision.

The main advantages of using CRM include the ability to book appointments online at the auto service, maintain order records through a virtual booking journal, and enable automatic reminders of bookings or promotional offers.

FixIQ offers a comprehensive CRM solution for auto services. With it, auto service owners in Ukraine can easily control and edit employee schedules, track the list of cars for repair, and maintain accounting and documentation for serviced cars. Moreover, you can test this software absolutely for free!

Be Online

Global analytics company Morning Consult presented the Most Trusted Brands 2022 study. The study’s results showed that customer loyalty to a business is determined by trust in the brand and that customers are more likely to trust companies that demonstrate both good value for money and reliability and ability to deliver on promises.

Forming a concise and precise brand strategy can play a crucial role in attracting customers to your auto service, building their trust in the brand, and becoming a launching pad for comprehensive marketing. Here are the main ways to implement this:

  • Create a website: The website should not only serve to offer services or allow online appointments at the auto service but also convey the core idea of your business and your approach to customer relations. Having a website increases the visibility of your auto service through organic searches on Google. With proper optimization, the results can be impressive! For example, according to Ahrefs, the average traffic to the Oiler website is 29,000 users per day!
  • Maintain a blog: Diversifying your auto service or tire shop’s website with valuable information for car enthusiasts is very useful. Not only will your customers appreciate new car care tips, but such content is also the basis for SEO promotion of the site to higher positions in search engine results. Statistics show that over 25% of users click on the first result in the search, and the difference between the first and 10th position is more than tenfold!
  • Social media pages: Running social media pages makes advertising for auto services or tire shops more contextual, organic, and therefore attractive to potential clients. Promoting auto service services on social media, accompanied by stories about, for example, the socially responsible side of your work, encourages customers to support your business financially. Channels such as YouTube and TikTok are also becoming increasingly popular. For instance, according to “Ain-Business,” a video blog on TikTok alone gives a 10-15% increase in clients regardless of the business direction.

Use PPC Advertising Online

It takes at least six months to see the results of organic promotion of an auto service website. How can you speed up getting client applications for your auto service? Set up PPC advertising. Within the PPC model, the auto service’s advertising will be targeted at your audience, yielding visible results that can be easily adjusted almost immediately. Additionally, you will only pay for each actual click to your auto service’s website.

With contextual advertising in Google Ads, you can target by geographic criteria, age, interests, and other parameters. This tool also allows better budget control and analysis of results after each application. This will help achieve marketing goals and attract customers to the auto service or tire shop.

Conclusion

There is a wide range of advertising tools available for marketing auto services. Classical advertising methods are significantly improved in modern realities thanks to digital technologies. Referral systems compared to word of mouth, online image alongside personal reputation, and CRM technology versus customer service departments – these are reimagined well-known approaches that have proven their effectiveness in practice.

The FixIQ CRM system is a promising software solution, as it allows automating a wide range of business processes and eliminating the human factor. It saves time for both the client and the business with the chat function and accurately calculates employee schedules, their standard hours, and even salaries. FixIQ allows you to use one program to both order spare parts and attract new clients without additional advertising budgets.

The prospects of implementing CRM cannot be overestimated in terms of working with auto service clients and comprehensive marketing. Without consistently effective use of SEO optimization and PPC advertising, you cannot hope for the first click from a potential auto service client. We hope our tips will be useful to you and ensure a steady influx of new clients to your auto service. 67% of clicks in search engine results go to the top 5 results.

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