Car Count Daily | Edition #38
Welcome to 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 over the past 20 years, is help auto repair shop owners just like you to get, and then keep all the top quality customers that your shop can handle.
Now, if you’ve been with me on the past two episodes, you know this week is all about videos and how to use videos for marketing your business. On video number one, we talked about the importance of it, and why you wanna be using videos in marketing. Yesterday, we talked all about the very, very inexpensive, if not free equipment that you’re gonna need in order to actually shoot the videos.
Now, today, as promised, we’re gonna talk about what the heck are you gonna talk about on those videos? That seems to be the number one thing, the biggest hang up that most shop owners have is, “Okay, I get the idea that you should be using videos.” Chances are, you’re watching videos online too. Well, guess what? So are your perspective customers.
What the heck are you going to talk about? Let me just give you some ideas to kind of get the creative juices inside you flowing to say, “Okay, that makes perfect sense.” Okay? The first thing you can do is, you can talk about yourself. You can talk about your company vision of why you do what you do. It’s not just a matter of, I’m out there just to fix cars. You talk a little bit about, you know, how you built the company, and what your company really stands for. You know, the company vision of why people wanna do business with you versus somebody else, based on your why of doing business.
This isn’t where you say, “Well, we’re better than everybody else.” No. We’re talking about … As a kid growing up, I grew up with a wrench in my hand, fixing cars with my dad. That kind of a story, if you have something like that and just really connect with your audience. People like to know who they’re doing business with. They wanna know why you do business. They wanna know your back story, so that would be a great way to start. Talk a little bit about your business, your company vision, and then get people feeling good about doing business with you. Okay? That would be one idea.
Another one would be to introduce your team. This is where you have all your team members, your technicians, your service advisor, your bookkeeper. Whoever there works with you, just get together, and just introduce them. Just let them know who they’re gonna be dealing with. Just tell, again, a little bit about the employees, cause people like to do business with people they trust, and that they know, and they feel like they’ve kind of grown up together, even though they never met before. Okay? Just introduce your team on a video.
Oh. By the way. I should probably mention, these videos are no longer then what I’m doing here. Typically, if you’ve been with me on Car Count Daily videos in the past, they’re about two to three minutes long. That’s all these videos need to be. They can only be, if you want, 45 seconds, or 30 seconds long if you want. I wouldn’t go too long. I wouldn’t put together a 10, 15, 20 minute video. These are very, very quick, short, little videos that you can get out. See. I could have done this entire video training in one giant, long video, but I know I would have lost a lot of viewers, if I didn’t cut it into five separate videos. This is why I’m talking about what to talk about, today, on this, so it’s not a super long video. Again, introduce your team, just tell a quick little blurb on everybody that they’re gonna be meeting when they come to your shop.
You can do some, “How to” videos … Real basic stuff. You’re not gonna tell ’em how to rebuild an engine or anything, or do a brake job, but you’re gonna show them how to safely change a tire, how to check their oil, how to check their air pressure on their tire, just very simple little things. Those little, helpful videos, not only are gonna help the people that are watching it, but the more videos you have out there, the chances are better that you’re gonna get seen. When you get seen by a perspective customer, you get those phone calls, which then turn into business. Okay? You wanna have a lot of little videos out there. Just do basic, “Do it yourself” kind of services out there.
You can even do a video that’s all about … This is everything we do. You just kind of go through the list of, here’s the kinds of services you do, when you do business with us. Now, these are all different videos. They’re not the same video. You wanna have a lot … it’s quantity and quality of those videos, but it’s not a really long video that you want to have to have. Again, talk about all the different services that you perform, so they know that you can handle the service that they need.
If you add a new service, let’s say you get this cool little whiz bang machine that you can start doing some really nice things. You just talk about the machine, “Do you realize, we’re the only one in the area that can do this for you.” Tell ’em why they wanna have that done. I don’t know what it is. I’m just kind of taking this off the top of my head. If you do add a new service, by all means, shoot a quick video about it. Let everybody else know about it.
Now, you’ve probably had customers come in, where they just totally neglected their car. Right? The maintenance is well overdue and maybe a timing belt broke, or a fan belt belt broke, or hose, or just … You know exactly what I’m talking about, where you look under the hood and you’re like, “Oh my God. I gotta tell other people about this. As a fair warning, don’t let this happen to you.” Whenever those cars come into the shop, you don’t have to reveal who the car owner is. You wanna talk about this. Grab your phone and talk about it, and kind of show what you’re talking about on there, so that, as fair warning to anybody that’s watching the video, ” If you don’t want to let this happen to you, and here’s how this could have been prevented by simply coming, and we could have checked this out. This repair might be a 2,000 dollar repair versus a 20 dollar thing if we had seen it when it initially happened.” You know. I don’t know … You get the idea of that.
You can do special holiday greetings. Don’t forget the weird holidays. You can do the standard ones, of, you know Christmas, and Easter, and New Years, and Memorial Day. You know, all those. There are some really weird holidays. There’s, Talk like Pirate Day. You know, you can, if you want, get dressed up as a pirate and start talking in your best, or worst version of a pirate and just shoot a video about it. “Hey, today’s talk like a pirate day, and yada yada yada.” Okay? You can do things like that.
If there are safety issues, safety concerns that you’re find out that people are neglecting, talk about that and why it’s important. Not only do they wanna be safe in their own car, but they have kids, and their kids are driving in cars. You wanna make sure that everybody’s safe. Talk about the safety issues. Maybe you can even do something if you have a lot of young parents that are doing business with you … Take a class on the proper way to install a baby seat, and then you do a video to show them the proper way of doing that. The grandparents, and the parents … Actually that would be the grandparents would be the ones that need that refresher, if they’re gonna be taking their grand baby around in their car, and they’re really gonna appreciate that too, as well as any sort of other information you wanna give. Okay? If you have specials going on, shoot a quick video. Again, the more videos you have out there, the better.
The final thing is, if all else fails, you don’t know what to talk about, think about the most frequently asked questions that people ask you. That’s where I get a lot of my content here, is I look at what most people are asking me. The overwhelming number of people recently have been asking about the future of marketing. How do I prepare to make sure that I’m not being left behind with the marketing. That’s the reason why I’ve got this five part series all about using video in your marketing. That’s where it came from. Just listen to what people are asking you, and then go and create a video on that. Sometimes it’s just a spurt of the moment. Boom. Here it is. Just think about it. Turn on the camera and shoot the video. Okay? That’s all it is. Okay?
As I mentioned, this is a five part series on using video to market your business. On day one we talked about the importance of using video and why you wanna do it. Day number two, we talked about the very inexpensive, if not free equipment that you need to shoot those videos. Today we talked all about what to say on the videos. Now, tomorrow we’re gonna talk about, how to say it. How do you put together a good video? How do you get what’s in your mind out of your mouth and in maybe an entertaining, or informative way where it doesn’t bore your audience to tears. Okay? We’re gonna be talking about that on tomorrow’s video. Then, the day after that, video number five, we’re gonna talk about, how do you get this up online, where it can get seen, and get you more customers.
I really hope you’re enjoying this series as much as I am, recording it. I love doing this kind of stuff. Drop me a note. Let me know how you like the series, or the rest of the Car Count Daily videos. Just go down below this video and leave your comment below, and I respond to every one of them.
scott santos says
Great video series Ron, especially the video portion. We are already doing video’s so we may be a little ahead of the curve. Could you share more reasons or ideas about what to do a video about? I think this is a reason why most people do not do video’s and also why people that do video’s do not do more. Lack of idea of what to do. I like the Holiday idea and will do a quick Memorial day video today!
Thank you
Ron Ipach says
Scott, if you and your staff keep an eye out, you’ll find more subjects to talk about on these videos will drop into your lap every day. Listen to what your clients are asking. Listen to what prospects are asking on the phone when they call. Start asking yourself, “What should they be asking instead?”. I have a whiteboard in my office and keep a list on my mobile phone that I add to every day.
Some subjects are so big, you can make several videos from a single idea (like this 5-part series on making videos).
Best of luck and keep cranking out those videos!
Gee Cee says
It is a great series and the wheels are spinning with ideas : One question: What if you have a face only for radio 😉 LOL
Ron Ipach says
Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you won’t scare anybody away.
William thibault says
I enjoy your videos. great ideas keep them coming.
Ron Ipach says
Will do!