Today in marketing, two of the biggest buzz phrases going around are “customer engagement” and “relevant content.” What this means for you is that you need to communicate in meaningful ways in order to get, and keep, your customer’s loyalty. If you don’t provide content that speaks to him or, even worse, make a mistake by sending him the wrong message, he’ll never believe that you “get him” or that you care enough about him to handle his automotive service needs. And he certainly won’t be talking you up to his family and friends. If you want to consistently win and hang on to great customers, it’s essential to understand the importance of personalization in your auto shop marketing efforts.
The Value of Personalization in Auto Repair Marketing
To connect with today’s consumers, it’s necessary to optimize your communications so that your customer feels you are talking directly to his own values, needs, and interests. This is the value of personalization, and it’s essential information to have for your new customer finder and customer retention marketing to succeed. To achieve it, you need a lot of data to tell you exactly who is in your database and your neighborhood. This is the good stuff that’s going to allow your auto repair service to compete with the big boys who, until now, have been able to out-spend you and take advantage of every marketing tool in the book to help them succeed.
And that’s where our exclusive smrt™ technology comes into play for you. Not only does it drive our auto repair direct mail, email and Internet marketing programs by helping you choose the right messages to send, it can be used to guide your extra-curricular auto shop marketing activities too. Can you imagine how easy it would be to make business decisions about community involvement, advertising, or shop atmosphere if you knew your customers almost as well as you know yourself? Or do you think that’s an unachievable dream? Well, feel free to wake up, smell the coffee, and LIVE that dream because that knowledge is available to you in the form of your smrt™ report.
Consumer Intelligence That Translates into Targeted Auto Repair Marketing
Your smrt™ report will teach you almost everything you need to know about your customer: what his income and occupation are, his probable likes and dislikes, and his marital and family status and buying habits. You also gain valuable information about where he lives and works, and which of those places he’s traveling from when he visits your business.
With that kind of understanding in your possession, you can truly engage with your customers so that your shop stands out from all the rest. To get you started, we’ve listed several ways your smrt™ data can help you.
1. You might discover that most of your customers have kids involved in little league baseball or peewee football, so you choose to sponsor one of the local teams.
2. You can use your smrt™ intelligence to help you design your waiting area. If you’ve got mostly business people using it, then you can provide Wi Fi access and a quiet work space. On the other hand, if you know your customers are parents with small children, you can furnish your room with lots of toys and books and lay down a kid-friendly floor.
3. If a lot of your customers are into the local art, theater, or music scene, you can use this knowledge to decide which programs to sponsor. Know whether you’d choose productions of Shakespeare in the park, a special museum exhibit, or pop music festivals…or all three!
4. You can more wisely spend your newspaper, radio and television advertising dollars by knowing which papers your customers read and which stations and programs your customers are probably watching and listening to.
5. If you know that many of your customers participate in charity activities or contribute to scholarships, you can get your business involved in one of those efforts.
6. Decide what kind of car care clinic to hold based on the types of consumers living in your service area. For instance, you could have one that’s for women only, or hold one for young adults who are just starting out with their first car.
7. Take advantage of your smrt™ mapping to determine the best place to open a new location. Now that your current shop is a huge success, maybe it’s time to expand!
Have you made a business decision based on your smrt™ data that’s not in this list? Leave a comment below, and let us know what you’ve tried in your auto repair marketing that’s been especially effective.
