Car Count Daily
Click Here For The Calendar List Of National Holidays
Hi shop owners. Thank you very much for joining me on this edition of Car Count Daily. My name’s Ron Ipach, but you can call me Captain Car Count because that’s all I’ve done for the past 20+ years, is help thousands of auto repair shop owners, just like you, to get and then keep all the top-quality customers that your shop can handle.
Today I have kind of a fun episode for you and it’s also a teaching moment at the exact same time, so let me explain here a little bit. We always run some sort of a special to entice our prospective customers to come to our shop. I mean, I’ve talked about this on past episodes about the need to have some sort of auto repair offer to get somebody excited to come to you, but just as a quick review, you’ve got to have an offer. Without an offer you don’t have an advertisement, you don’t have a marketing plan. You have to do something to get somebody that is not sure if they want to come to you, something to \ tip them over the edge, and that offer is what’s going do it for you.
Now, I’m not saying to give away the store, I’m saying make it enticing enough that somebody decides that they want to do business with you. With that said, what you want to do is have a little fun with your offers. Stack on the offer a little bit more, so that people get a little bit more excited about coming to you.
For example, lets say you’re offering customers $25 off their very first service. That’s your basic offer that’s out there. Now, if you just say, “We’re offering our clients and prospective customers $25 off,” it’s okay, but it’s kind of a wimpy offer. Let’s try to jazz it up a little bit.
There’s a really cool page where you can find National holidays that most people don’t know about. In other words, what we want to do is we want to give somebody an excuse of why we’re offering the $25 and we want to tie it in with not the usual holidays like Christmas, and Easter, and New Year’s, and Valentine’s Day, and things like that. What we want to do is have a little bit more fun with it.
For example, did you know that on September 19th, it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day? You’re probably wondering, “What the heck can I do with that?” Well, ask somebody to preform some sort of a task for you in order to get the $25. In other words, have a little fun with it. Tell your customers: “Just come in and talk like a pirate and we’ll knock $25 off your next service.” You can also understand that some people may not want to do that, but hey, if they don’t decide that they don’t want to talk like a pirate then that’s perfectly okay, but you want to try and have a little bit more fun with it. This will add personality to yourself and your business.
But there are all kinds of these really strange, unusual holidays. So, for another example, October 31st is National Knock-Knock Jokes Day. Okay? So, maybe somebody may not want to talk like a pirate but they may tell you their favorite knock-knock joke for $25. Now you’re having a little fun with your clientele and people will then start talking more about you and saying, “Hey, you wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get $25 off,” and that word-of-mouth marketing is really going to help you along the way. Plus, it lets everybody else know that you’re not that normal, stuffy, auto repair shop that’s out there.
When February 26th rolls around, you can let everybody know that you’re going to give them a $25 discount, or whatever it is, whatever your discount, whatever your offer is, but on February 26th the reason why you’re giving that is because it’s National Tell a Fairy Tale Day. You can just have somebody make up some sort of fairy tale for the $25.
Or how about April 15th? We all know what that is, and everybody is talking about tax day. Well, let’s go a little lighter on there and did you also realize that on that day, April 15th, it’s National Take a Wild Guess Day. Now, everybody is thinking about taxes and everybody hates taxes, why not have a little fun with it and say, “You know what? Come in and just take a wild guess at what your bill is going to be and we’ll knock $25 off whatever that’s going to be.”
Or maybe July 9th, it’s National Sugar Cookie Day. So, “Today when you come in, not only will we give you $25 off your service, but we’re going to give you some of these awesome sugar cookies that we picked up at the local bakery.”
You get the idea, here? We’re going to have a little fun with our auto repair offers. It’s not just a matter of giving somebody a discount, you’re going to give them a discount with a purpose. You’re going to have a little bit more fun with them when you do that. People are going to start talking about it, they’re going to realize you’re not the normal shop that’s out there, and they’re going to be a customer for life.
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