1) Know Your Audience

Most of us already do this in person. Do you talk to your spouse in the same way that you talk to your kids? Do you talk to your employees in the same way you talk to your customers? Of course not. The best advertisers are great communicators who really understand what makes their audience tick. In order to get the best response from their advertising, they take the time to figure out the attitudes, interests, fears, desires and goals of people who see their ads. That might sound hard, but it’s a critical step to getting success from your auto shop advertising. Here’s an example from California State University, Sacramento, with more details on how to analyze your audience. Don’t worry if that still sounds like a lot of work. It is!

Fortunately, there’s a shortcut. Knowing your audience, and then personalizing your auto shop advertising based on individual info, is what CustomerLink does best. That’s why we built smrt™ technology: to help you know your audience and get the most out of your auto shop advertising.

2) Personalize Your Marketing

Once you know your audience well, you can move on to the next step: personalizing your advertising to get the best response. This is all about getting the right message in front of the right person, with the right offer, at the right time. Something to consider here, based on what you know about your audience, is: what are they most likely to respond to?

For example, offers of a clear dollar-off amount might work better than percentage-off discounts in general, but that’s not always true for everyone. If you’ve done your homework to really understand your customers, use that information to give them what they want and make your advertising as profitable as it can be. Steer clear of auto shop advertising companies that use a one-size-fits all approach!

3) Track Your Results

This one almost goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. If you can’t track results and prove beyond a doubt that your auto shop advertising is making you money, then you shouldn’t do it. Period. There are so many easy and inexpensive ways to track the return on your auto shop advertising investment.

1. Track how many phone calls your ads generate using call tracking numbers from companies like Callfire.
2. Put trackable QR codes on your ads using free services like bitly (read more about using QR codes in auto shop marketing here).
3. Compare your target audience to customers who’ve responded and who’ve actually spent money at your shop.
4. Once you have some new customers coming in, keep track of them for the long term. Did those new customers come in once from a daily deal site and then never come back? Or did they become valued life-long customers? Track those customers over the long term to figure out the real return on investment (ROI) on your auto shop advertising.

In conclusion, the top three tips for getting great ROI on your auto shop advertising: Know Your Audience, Personalize Your Marketing, Track Your Results.

Of course we know that this is all harder to actually pull off than it sounds.  That’s why CustomerLink does all this automatically with every one of our auto shop advertising services.

Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.

Here are a few great reasons why QR codes are critical for creating the best auto shop marketing.

1. They make your shop marketing interactive. QR codes give your customers a chance to really engage with your shop’s advertising and to read more about your shop, sign up for a contest, visit your Facebook page, etc.
2. They’re easy to use. There are many online services that will create QR codes for you in just a few seconds.
3. They’re free! Most of those services will let you build QR codes into your shop advertising completely free.
4. They’re trackable.  If you set up QR codes right, you can use them to keep track of what your customers are seeing and doing in response to your shop’s marketing.
5. Did I mention that they’re free?

We’ve been testing QR codes in the auto repair advertising we do for our clients, and the results have been great. Now, just about every piece of direct mail marketing that we send for our clients includes a QR code.

To learn more about how to use QR codes in your auto shop’s marketing, read this article by Chris “Chubby” Frederick in the February issue of Motor Age.

Leave a comment below, and tell us how you are using QR codes in your auto shop marketing!

1: Ask Them
This is the easiest one. Just ask your customers to like your shop on Facebook when they get home. Heck, if they have a smartphone with them (which they most likely will), they might just do it right there on the spot. So just ask. Say, “Hey, Mr. Jones, don’t forget to like us on Facebook.” How easy is that? Besides being fast, easy and cheap, it works!

2: Give Them a Sign
Literally. Give them a sign. Put one on your counter. Put one in your front window. Put another one in your waiting room. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Something as simple as “Please, LIKE us on Facebook” in big letters will work. Below that, put the URL for your shop’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ABCauto), and maybe include the name of your shop as it appears on Facebook just in case your customer doesn’t know your shop’s full name. If you have a QR code for your shop’s URL, put that on there too. If you don’t know what a QR code is, read number three below.

3: Get a “QR” code
A QR code is basically a bar code, just like every other bar code you’ve ever seen on every product you’ve purchased over the last thirty years, except these are scrambled into squares or other shapes instead of the neat row of thin and thicker lines. The big difference is that these send people to your website or Facebook page, depending on how you set them up. Setting them up is easy, and if you type the term “QR Generator” into Google, you will see that getting one is fast, easy, and free from lots of different sources. Get one, put it on your counter sign (number two above), put it on the back of your business cards, or even put it on your CustomerLink smrt™ service reminder postcards—although you might consider using your shop’s website rather than a Facebook page for that. Either way, it’s totally up to you.

4: Put a “Like us on Facebook” Button on Your Website
Doing this is very simple. Facebook has a code generator that creates the code necessary to do it (it’s so easy that I was able to do it on my personal website, and I am NOT a web developer by any stretch of the imagination). If you have someone who does your website for you, they will know exactly what I am talking about, and you can get them to do it for you in no time at all (assuming they are readily available, etc.).

5: Put a Link to Your Facebook Page in Your Email Signature
This is another really easy one to do. Go into the “signature” section of whatever system you use for sending and receiving email and add a link to your Facebook page. Whether you just slap the URL down at the bottom or actually make hyperlinked text that says “Like us on Facebook,” you will have implemented a quick and simple technique that will help you get Facebook likes for free.

 1.  “New Customer Finder” means marketing that gets new customers, people you’ve never seen at your business before, to come in.

 2.  Customer retention marketing is what many think of when they talk about CustomerLink’s traditional, or  “regular,” program. Customer retention marketing is marketing that gets people who have already bought service from you to come back and keep coming back.

Right away you probably notice the natural relationship between the two. If you get someone new to come in to your business and become a customer, you probably want them to come back. Especially if they are a nice customer, someone who is polite, who listens to your recommendations and who considers your advice carefully when making a buying decision. Oh, and preferably someone who has the money to pay for what they need so you don’t always have to find workarounds or reschedule for bits and pieces of needed service.

While that last bit about having customers who can (and will) pay seems obvious, it’s actually pretty amazing how much marketing material businesses send out to people who can’t or don’t want to pay for a properly performed service. That idea gets us to the point where we need to examine the differences between the two types of marketing in more detail. To really unlock that information, let’s start with your smrt™ report data and how that affects each one in different ways.

How Does My smrt Report Affect New Customer Marketing?

New Customer Finder - find the best ones to target as new customers.

When it comes to finding new customers, your smrt report defines which people out there in the world beyond your business make the most sense to go after as potential new customers. Having this data greatly reduces the randomness of old-fashioned approaches to finding new customers.

Think of it like diagnosing a drivability problem. The customer’s car doesn’t run right, and he wants an answer and an estimate (often they want you to guess what the total cost is going to be the moment they drop it off—think about how unrealistic that is). Obviously you’re not going to just start throwing parts at the problem. You’re going to pull a code. You hook the car up, you find out what part (or parts) aren’t working, and you recommend what sort of new part your customer should consider buying if he wants the vehicle to run better based on the data you have and, of course, your experience.

Your smrt report is essentially that for marketing: it’s pulling codes on your customer database. We look at every customer in it, figure out which ones aren’t working as well for you as others are, and from there we pull a code (in this case a “segment”) and tell you what new “part” we think your shop needs to run more profitably. (“Go after Segment X: they come in more often and spend X% more than your other customers,” etc.)

Just like any drivability problem, there may be more than one issue. But if you are using the right tools, and you are communicating openly with your customer about how the process works from the beginning, the two of you find the right solution to make things run perfectly.

That is how your New Customer Finder program works, and that’s how you should approach it when you begin. It’s not magic; it’s simply a methodical approach to finding new customers based on data, fine-tuned by tracking results and making adjustments until it works exactly how you want.

It’s kind of like trying to diagnose a drivability problem where you have more than one code and more than one contributing factor… and your customer wants you to tell him with absolute certainty what ONE part will fix the problem completely and with no chance he will require any additional diagnostics or additional parts, period.)

How Does My smrt Report Affect Customer Retention Marketing?

Customer retention - Keep your customers by communicating in custom ways.

Customers who have already come into your business are a different matter. That’s because they ARE customers. This means that, by definition, they have already proven they are willing to spend money with you. This is a good thing. We want people to spend money with you. We also want them to come back and do it again. We are pretty sure you like when that happens too, so we use your smrt report data to shape the customer retention (“service reminders”) messages that go out to those people.

Unlike the New Customer Finder program—which focuses only on “best” customers and on getting NEW customers—customer retention marketing tries to keep all your regular customers coming back. Sure some of them are better than others when it comes to visits-per-year or annual spend, but if you’ve already got people who show up and buy from you, why not keep them? So each message that goes out to remind them that it’s time for an oil change again, or to point out that scheduled factory maintenance is due—whatever messages you have your account set up for—they’ll all have a look and “feel” to them based on the smrt report. Retired couples living in upscale neighborhoods don’t get the same service reminder that suburban soccer moms do. Folks who enjoy a country lifestyle don’t see downtown urban imagery. And so on.

We use the smrt report information to customize the pieces that go out to all your customers, regardless if they are your highest spending customer or not. Keep in mind, you can turn off individual customers whenever you want. So if you know Mr. Smith is a cheapskate, shut him off. If you don’t want him coming back, let’s not invite him! (If you’re not sure how to shut off messaging to individual customers, you can see a short video tutorial on how to do that HERE.)

Conclusion

So there you have it, the basic differences between new customer marketing and our traditional customer retention program. Hopefully this clears up any muddy waters for everyone, but if not, please don’t hesitate to ask. Leave a comment, or if you’re shy, call us or send me an email (jdaulton@customerlink.com). We’ll make sure you get the information that you need. Our goal is to make help your business succeed, so please let us know if there is something we haven’t explained properly.

Keep an eye out for next month’s Marketing Manual, where we’ll have a case-study video series for you to view.

LINKS:

How to deactivate customers video tutorial

So, enough set up. Here are five easy ways to get more reviews:

1. Ask for Them

Okay, anyone paying attention from last month’s newsletter may notice this is the same first step as last month’s Facebook strategy. Well, it is, and the reason it’s on this list too is because it works. Think about it, you have them standing right there in your shop, right now (well, “right now” as in when you are billing them out at the counter, or while you are chatting with them in your waiting room, etc.). So ask them. Just say, “Hey, Mrs. Smith, you know that the Internet is very important for businesses these days. Would you review our shop on Google when you get home? Reviews help our business significantly.” Some customers will do it. People are nice, and some will want to help out.

2. Know How to Find Your Places Page

This one kind of relates to the last one. Think about that scenario above, and then add this to the mix: What happens if Mrs. Smith says, “Sure, I’ll be happy to. How do I do it?”  Do YOU know? This gets down to you spending some time and making sure you know how to find your shop’s Google Places page.

Finding a business can seem tricky sometimes, depending on shop name and location, because it doesn’t always pop up on the front page. If you’re not sure, you can find it by selecting MAPS from the options at the top of your Google search page, then typing in the name and phone number of your shop. You can also use the address, city and state, but phone numbers seem easiest. You can also look on the right side of the screen and choose “Places” and do the same thing—you may have to select “More” to bring that option up. Either should get your Places page to show. Spend some time and make sure you can find it; that way you can direct your customers right to it too. Make sure everyone working your counter knows how, too.

In fact, if you are really proactive, you can help your customers place a review right then and there. If you have a laptop, let them use it. Heck, you could even let them come around behind the counter if you are so inclined. If you’ve got a really good customer standing there who is going to say something like, “I came here for the first time back in 1989, and have been coming ever since,” then you definitely might want to make that easy for him to say.

3. Contact Your Best Customers Directly

You know who your best customers are. I guarantee that right now you can name off at least five people who would drop what they are doing and go onto Google and write a review for you on the spot. Your super customers. Can you name them? Yeah, of course you can. So look them up in that computer of yours and call them. Send them an email. Write a letter. Whatever you’re comfortable with. Just do it. (I’ll bet there are a lot more than five.)

4. Give Them a Sign

Yep, just a sign (and yes, this was on the list for Facebook too). Whether it’s on the counter, in the lobby, or on the card you leave on the dash or hang from the mirror when the service is complete, a sign can pay real dividends when it comes to gathering Google reviews. If you’re not sure what to say, go with something basic like: “Google reviews are valuable to our business. If you are satisfied with your service, please consider leaving a review on Google about XYZ Auto Repair. If not, tell us, and we will make it right.” (Include the full shop name, because some people don’t remember that sort of thing.) Some might say this particular strategy is risky, because you might get a bad review, but hopefully you’re communicating with your customers and have a relationship that makes airing grievances comfortable for them. In the end, you have to believe that you will get way more good reviews than bad, so don’t let fear drive your strategy.

5. Let Them Know Your Satisfaction Survey Is Coming

If you are using our smrt™ 2.0 Internet marketing service, then part of the automated customer review gathering we do for you includes the email survey. As you know that part of that survey includes a prompt at the end that invites them to take the nice review they just gave you for your smrt Share Site and put it into Google (or Yahoo) too. So, since you know this is coming, prepare them for it.  “Keep an eye out for our satisfaction survey in your email, Mrs. Smith. And let us know how we did.” This little heads up can sometimes mean the difference between your email being put off until later and being opened right away, since they were expecting it. (If you don’t have Mrs. Smith’s email, ask her for it!!!)

So there you have it, five easy and affordable ways to help build up your Google reviews. If you’ve got something you do at your business that’s cheap and easy too, we’d love to hear what it is.

According to the Consumer Reports survey (see the Consumer Reports article HERE, or a good video on it HERE), independent shops are used more often for service than any other auto repair or maintenance source. The numbers show that 37% of consumers go to independent service facilities as opposed to 30% who go to the dealer and 11% who frequent repair chains. So, for the independent repair shop, victory is at hand!

However, before you pop the cork on one of those left-over bottles of New Year’s champagne, there is another statistic that came out of the report that you should know—at least, you should know it if your bays aren’t always full with the maximum number of cars your crew can possibly work on, every day of every week throughout the year. If that’s the case, if you are always perfectly busy, then you won’t care about what’s coming up. However, if your shop is one that still has slumps, slow spots or outright dead weeks sometimes, here’s something you might be interested in from that report: 40% of drivers surveyed admit to postponing work they know they should get done.

That’s right, 40%. And here’s three essential bits that come out of that 40%:

Some even confess to being embarrassed by their cars.

1. They admit to knowing they have put off service work.
2. They admit they know that not having the work done adversely affects the “value, safety or reliability” of the vehicle.
3. Some even confess to being embarrassed by their cars.

Even worse (or perhaps better for you), this statistic is related to these people’s primary vehicle. PRIMARY. Not the old clunker that’s been parked in the driveway for years and used for training teenagers how to drive or for hauling firewood twice a year. No, not that one. They are talking about the primary family vehicle. The one they need to get to work every day. The one they haul their kids around in. THAT vehicle. That’s the one they know they have missed service or repairs that need to be done. The one with the “adversely affected value, safety or reliability” that they also know about.

And check out this quote from the survey report: “On average, owners have 78,000 miles on their current vehicle, meaning many are quickly approaching major maintenance milestones that shouldn’t be ignored.” I’m not even going to expand on that. Just let it sit there for a minute and sink in.

Here’s where it gets really good for you, the independent repair facility that has won the trust of consumers over the once unassailable dealership: 85% of these people said that they “are confident they would get the right maintenance and repair work done for the right price.”  On top of that, “more than half said they completely trust their shop.”

That’s you, “their shop.”

So, what’s missing in this picture then? Let’s see. Let’s construct a population of 100 consumers for your shop, and put together what was revealed in the Consumer Reports data. Doing so would give us something like this:

A)  40% of people are aware of missing maintenance.

B)  That means out of 100 people, 40 of them know they need service that impacts “value and safety” and that might even embarrass them to have hanging undone.

C)  Of those 40, 85% would come in for the right price.

D)  That means 34 of them would come in if they thought they had the right price.

E)  50% of those 34 trust you implicitly.

F)  So, 17 of them will believe you if you give them a price that you say is fair.

This means that 17 people in every 100 in your database need maintenance they know matters for value and safety (and pride), and, because they trust you, they will come in if you give them a fair price—which according to the survey is what they are waiting for right now. And that number doesn’t even include the other half of the 34 people, the people who might come in if you offered them a fair price too. Those other 17 also know they need the service, and they are looking for a fair price too. They just don’t know you well enough to trust you implicitly yet. However, just because you haven’t earned their unending trust yet doesn’t mean you can’t earn it after a few more visits.

So what’s missing in this picture?

Your offer. That’s what.

Make an offer. Consistently!

What’s the fair price? What’s the “call to action,” the “reason to come in?” They don’t know what it is if you haven’t told them. So tell them. Or remind them. Send them something. Make an offer. And I’m not talking about a give-away-the-farm offer. I’m talking about just tell them you have a good deal on service you know (and they know) they need. Communicate with them. Do it before your competitors do. And do it more than once. It’s about consistency and breaking down the barriers. Of course they don’t want to spend money on their car. But they know they need to. They’re even embarrassed by putting it off. They’re just looking for the reason to get it handled. You have to give it to them.

Helping you do that is the point of the automotive shop marketing we provide. We communicate service needs to people who own vehicles, drive vehicles and who, like all of us, are prone to procrastinate on stuff sometimes. A consistent message from you, the trusted independent shop, delivered to your customers reminds them they have things they need to get done to that PRIMARY vehicle of theirs. Let them know. Whether it’s starting a service reminder program for a shop that hasn’t committed to moving to the next level yet, or stepping up to follow-up programs that get back technician recommendations that aren’t performed during a routine maintenance, messaging is the key. Do it yourself, or let us do it for you. But DO it.

If the average shop’s invoice is $300 per R.O., and they have even 1,000 customers they haven’t communicated with recently, that magical number 17 we just came to above (a 17% response rate) amounts to 170 people who should come in if a good message with a fair offer were made to them. $300 x 170 = $51,000.

Yeah, $51,000.

It’s certainly worth the time, don’t you think?

If you’d like to talk to someone about how our average customers see $71 to $1 ROI (the type of thing these Consumer Reports statistics are suggestive of), give us a call, or fill out the “Request a Demo” form on the right up there. Just look. What have you got to lose? <cough>$51 grand<cough>.

Give us a call.

“Yes,” said the shop owner. “We saw it. We ran the code, and it came up a camshaft sensor. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

The customer, relieved, paid for his brake service and left. This left me wondering though. Was this a good deed from this shop owner? Was it a generous act, or was it something else, maybe a missed opportunity or even a mistake?

The more I mulled it over, the more curious it became. On one hand, the shop owner clearly had no intention of selling that customer anything he didn’t feel was necessary. In the shop owner’s opinion, and based upon his experience, that sensor was a minor issue, at least in the specific case of this customer and vehicle.

On the other hand, I thought, it seemed like that could be a minor but reckless business move. If the purpose of an automotive repair facility is to keep cars and trucks running like they did when they were new, then this was a lost opportunity.

Now I admit, I do not have the authority (or the desire) to dictate or define what “the purpose” of an auto repair facility is, at least not in any kind of big-picture way. And I do know that it ultimately comes down to individuals and personalities—my twenty-five years in this industry has proven that to be the case. However, in this instance, this example with the cam sensor, couldn’t it be said that he would have been perfectly honest in recommending that repair be done?

The shop owner could have said, “Well, sir, that light is because of your camshaft sensor. Your vehicle appears to be running properly, but a problem could be beginning, or the sensor itself may be malfunctioning.” From there he could have quoted a more detailed diagnostic, the price of replacement, or whatever course is best (I am not a technician, so I won’t try to guess). But my point is, I couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t recommend it, even though I know he did what he believed was right.

So what is right? Is there even such a thing as “right” in that instance? Certainly, recommending a service you don’t feel the customer needs is wrong. But isn’t there some value in giving the customer the option to have his vehicle working exactly as it was when it was new? When the man bought it brand-new, there were no dash lights on, so to suggest fixing the problem that triggered the light could not be considered wrong or aggressive sales, could it?

I don’t have the answer. I do know that we work with lots of shops who do battle with competition on every corner. For some shops, letting any single dollar of revenue escape can mean the difference between paying themselves that month or not. For some of them, perhaps for people like the owner of this particular shop, the difference between “over-selling” and providing good service is simply a matter of attitude. But then, where do you draw the line. Where do YOU draw the line? How do you know? What advice would you give?

The reason I ask is simple. One of the services we provide is the ability to send reminders to customers who had additional work they could have had done during a particular visit but didn’t get done at the time (technician recommended services), so clearly this relates.  So, what do you think about the choice to let that go?

He also covers the “how, where, and why” around customer reviews, Facebook and Twitter as these things relate to your shop’s share site, and how that all translates to backlinks for your shop—meaning, how your Share Site works as part of an automotive shop marketing plan to get customers to find you and your shop when they use Google, Yahoo or Bing. Have a look!

Super Basic Explanation: SEO for Automotive Shop Marketing

SEO is the term that describes the tools and techniques used to help people find your shop with a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. There are many strategies involved, but the main parts can be broken out like so:

1. Content: How the text is written for the website.
2. Code: How the code (HTML) and other technical parts are written or designed.
3. Backlinks: How many people are linking “back” to your website (and what kinds of websites those links are coming from).

Each one of those has lots of sub-categories, and what I might be relegating to sub-category someone else might tell you is equally as important as one of those three. Regardless of how we break it down, the point is to explain that SEO is about figuring out how to get YOUR website to show up on the first page of results that come up when someone uses a search engine to find auto service nearby.

1: Content – Satisfying the People

I’m sure you have heard people talking about “keywords” by now. They are a pretty big part of SEO. If you haven’t, well, now you have. Keyword is the official term used to describe, well, the actual stuff people type into a search engine like Google. For example, if you were here visiting my town of Roseville and you wanted to find a restaurant, you might open up Google and type: “restaurants in Roseville.” If you were looking for automotive repair, you might type: “auto repair in Roseville,” or maybe “brake service Roseville,” or maybe just “auto repair.” All of these search terms become keywords in the world of SEO.

Keywords play a big role in how you build and grow your website. Knowing what terms people use when they use Google or Yahoo or any of the other guys (but mostly Google in this particular moment in history) is a big part of an SEO strategy. You want to try to get your shop to show up on the first page of the results that appear when people use keywords and phrases that relate to what you do. (You’ll notice that I am about to type the phrase “SEO for automotive shop marketing” for the third time in this article. That is me using keywords multiple times here on CustomerLink’s website to target that phrase for this article.)

Keyword strategy is a big part of what we work on when we build your shop’s share site as part of our smrt™ 2.0 Internet marketing program, and it’s a big part of your shop’s website, whether we built it for you or someone else did (if someone else built your site, and you aren’t sure, ask them!). It’s even important to keep in mind when posting on your shop’s Facebook and Twitter pages. You want to use words and phrases on your site that most closely relate to what people will actually type when they search for automotive repair.

2: Code – Satisfying the Spiders

What? Spiders! Bleh. Who wants to satisfy spiders? I hate spiders!

Fortunately for us all, these aren’t the creepy kind of spiders. These spiders are computer programs operated by Google (and Yahoo and Bing and the rest). These spiders crawl out over the World Wide Web looking for websites like yours, ours, and everyone else’s.

Spiders gather information about websites and bring it all back to Google. Google can then sort through that information and use it in its secret algorithms (fancy mathematical formulas that nobody outside of Google ever gets to see) to determine where websites show up on the list of search results for any given set of keywords.

The spiders are why building the “back end” of your website is just as important as creating good, keyword-relevant content that people actually see on the front. While your prospective customers will probably not see your website code, Google will. What I am lumping into the term code is a lot of computer language and technical skills that web developers know how to do. For most folks, it looks like a foreign language (and, in a way, it is). Google evaluates the quality of your website, in part, by how well your website works based on that code and how it is arranged; in a way, they interpret a well designed and coded website as a signal about professionalism (quality companies have quality websites—makes sense, at least in theory, right?).

So they look to see if the site works smoothly. They check to see if it really focuses on the terms it claims as its area(s) of expertise. They look for SEO “cheats” like keyword stuffing (jamming in tons and tons of the same keyword to try to trick the spiders into thinking the site is full of content on that topic), and lots of other things.

Sites that are coded in ways that make them easy to navigate, easy to “index” for search engines, and that allow for a variety of content types including text, images, videos, and even links to other pages (both within the website and to other pages), all communicate how valuable your site is as it relates to any given set of keywords. The spiders crawl around and try to figure all that out. And remember, Google’s job is to deliver the BEST results it can to ITS customers: the people searching for information online.

3: Backlinks – Bringing Them Together

Backlinks, in short, are what they call it when someone somewhere links to your website (it’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the core of it). For example, let’s say I’m a blogger (hah, look Mom, no hands!), and I put a link to something I like in my blog. Here, I’ll link the ATI page, since they are one of our partners:

http://www.autotraining.net/. There, that is a backlink for ATI (you’re welcome, George).

So, the next time the spiders are out crawling around, they will crawl over this article and see that link. When they see it, they will think, “Hey, there’s a link to the ATI website on customerlink.com.” The spiders will communicate this to Google as a backlink. Since Google knows that our site is an established automotive industry site, Google will see this backlink as strong evidence that ATI’s website must be a good one as it relates to the automotive industry. That is good for ATI.

The more automotive industry sites that link to ATI’s website, the more good backlinks they have. The more backlinks they have, the more evidence Google has that people out there in the industry are interested in ATI. Remember, Google is using math to decide what sites are good and what aren’t. Having good, relevant backlinks matters. Google can assume that ATI must be pretty decent if lots of people are linking to their site. So, Google will use these backlinks as a way to figure out what to show people searching for a keyword phrase like “automotive training and consulting,” or whatever someone might pick if they wanted to find service like that.

Hopefully, that makes sense.

It works the same for your shop. When you fill your site up with well-written content, nice images, and maybe some videos, and all that content is focused on what you do (say, “auto repair in Your Town” or “BMW specialists in Your Town,” etc.), then, eventually, someone will start talking about you. People mention you on Facebook, people mention you in blogs, we mention you on your share site (with lots of good SEO text and code), and all of it adds up as backlink power, or “link juice,” that helps your shop get found. A big part of this is customer reviews, but that’s another can of worms, which I will cover in another post.

So, there you go. In a very, very basic nutshell, that’s what SEO is, what it means and how it relates to SEO for automotive shop marketing.

(If you noticed what I just did right there, then you were paying attention. Give yourself a gold star!)

In fact, be one of the first ten people to click the link below and tell me what I just did, and I’ll send you a $5 Starbucks gift card.

Click Here to Tell Me What I Just Did

If you are not a video-watching kind of person,  we’ve still got you covered. You can click over to the Getting Your Customer Reviews into Google Places page which covers this same information in text and images.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about this video or CustomerLink’s Automatic Customer Review service you can leave a comment below or call and speak with your account manager at 888.942.5448.  He or she will be happy to help!