Car Count Daily | Edition #40

Hey, shop owners. Welcome to this edition of Car Count Daily. My name is Ron Ipach, but you can call me Captain Car Count because that’s all I’ve done for the past 20 years is help auto repair show 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 the past four days, you know I am at the very last video in a five part series of how to use videos to market your shop. I honestly believe video is the future of marketing your shop. Now, I get it; videos have been around forever, but I’m really here to tell you that most shop owners are not utilizing this very awesome asset to get found online. I want you to get started on it right away.

This week, I’ve dedicated five videos to show you not only why you should be doing it, but the equipment you need, which is very inexpensive, if not free, what to talk about, how to talk about it. Then, today, we’re going to talk about how to get it up online or where you should get it up online so that most people are going to find it.

Before we hop into that, let’s talk about editing the video. As I mentioned yesterday, when you record the video, sometimes you’re going to mess up. You don’t want to have your voice … Well, like right now. I’m at a loss of words and I say things wrong. Sometimes you may want to go ahead and edit that video. Feel free to do that, but just remember, stay natural. Very few people can get through a two or three minute video without screwing something up. Forgive yourself. It makes you a little bit more human if it’s you. If you mess up a word or two, that’s perfectly fine. Unless you accidentally say a cuss word instead of the word that you really meant to say, just let it in there. If you feel compelled that you have to get rid of that or edit the video, go ahead and do that.

If you don’t know how to edit the video, then don’t try. As a show owner, you’ve got enough going on, you don’t need to figure out how to edit your video or how to figure it out yourself, but you can ask somebody. I will tell you this, I always make this joke about anything online that if you don’t know how to do it, just ask the six year old next door. Well, it really is true. Even if it comes to editing your videos because it is a very simple process. Look, I get it. It’s very difficult if you have no idea how to do it. Somebody’s that’s done it before like the six year old next door, chances are has done that, they can do it for you really quick.

Just ask somebody to do it for you if you don’t want to do it yourself. It’s really a very simple process. Even on the iPhone, which is what I use, there’s software built into that where you can do pretty robust editing. I rarely edit anything that I do. We just cut off the very beginning and the end and you get it as you see it. I believe on the first 40 videos that I’ve recorded, I’ve probably made four or five edits in the middle. Past that, it’s just been me and if I screw up a word I just leave it in there. It’s more natural. You may want to go ahead and edit that video. If you do, no problem at all.

Now, let’s talk about uploading that video. What are you going to do? Where are you going to put this? Well, the 800 pound gorilla is YouTube and you’ve, no doubt, have heard of YouTube. YouTube is extremely easy to upload your videos. Again, this isn’t meant to be a How To so I’m not going to show you exactly how to upload to YouTube. Suffice it to say, it literally is click the button that says “upload” and then click the video and it starts doing it for you. I’m not going to walk you through that. By the way, if you go to YouTube, they have tons of six year olds that have recorded a video to show you how to upload the video onto YouTube, okay? You want to make sure you upload the video to YouTube.

I also suggest if you have a Facebook page, and you really should have a business Facebook page, make sure you upload it directly onto Facebook as well. That’s a great way to stay in contact with all of your current clients and your prospective clients. When you upload videos, the internet loves videos, people like looking for videos to watch because they prefer watching videos than to read. Think about everything you can do when you’re doing a video, your personality can shine through. Hopefully, you have one, right? Let your personality shine. Like I talked about on yesterday’s video, be a little bit more animated and a little bit more natural on the video and people will stay engaged. Now, remember these are only two to three minute videos so you can plow through it and get your two or three minutes out, and then get it uploaded on YouTube and again Facebook.

Now, there’s a lot of other places you can, but these are the big places that I’m going to suggest that you get that thing uploaded to. Don’t forget to upload it to your website. It’s very important that you put this on your website so that when people are searching, they’re also finding your website. Remember I mentioned in one of the earlier videos, Google owns YouTube. Google is the 800 pound gorilla. More people go to Google to search. YouTube is owned by Google so of course they’re going to give preferential treatment to people that are using YouTube and putting YouTube videos onto their website. It really is a win-win situation where people are searching for a local auto repair shop, you’ve got a video that’s on YouTube, and that happens to be on your website, so Google saying, “Hey, win, win, win. We’re going to move these people to the top.” You want to make sure that you, at very least, use YouTube and make sure you have that video on your site.

Pretty soon, after you’ve gone through this … Remember, a couple days ago we talked about all the different things you can shoot videos with, you’re going to wind up with 10, 20, 30, 40, if you just stay at it. If you make a promise to yourself you’re going to shoot one video a week for an entire year, now you’ve got 52 videos online. Let me tell you a secret, most other auto repair shops are never going to do this. Now, you have 52 more videos than all of your competitors. Chances are, 52 more videos than your competitors combined because most people are going to be afraid to be in front of the camera. I’m going to tell you, nobody died from being in front of the camera. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it actually becomes very fun to shoot these videos. I’ve actually enjoyed this a lot and loved shooting these five videos.

As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you a little secret, I’ve recorded all five of these videos all at the very same time. I start the video, I stop it, I start another video. Each one of those things, first take, whatever comes out of my mouth is exactly what you got. I’ve recorded all five of these videos in less than a maybe 30, 40 minute span and now I’ve got an entire weeks worth of videos in order to show you. It doesn’t take a lot of time to prepare, it doesn’t take a lot of time to record the videos, or upload, but the returns are amazing. They’re amazing. People will find you. They feel like they know you when they walk in. You become that little local YouTube star. People recognize you. I’ve had people recognize me from the videos that they’ve seen that I’ve put on Facebook and things like that. They recognize me. If you want to be the recognized expert in your area, not only will they recognize your face, but they’re going to recognize your expertise because you’re the one shop in the entire area that’s actually putting it up on video and letting everybody else see it for free.

There’s this law call the Law of Reciprocity. You do things for free, people are going to reward you for it. That really is true when it comes to these videos. As a matter of fact, it’s worked very well for my business just recording these car count daily. I’ve had a lot of people reaching out to me and saying that they didn’t know this about me or they feel like they know me. When your customers and prospective customers feel like they know you, they’re more likely to do business with you. I’d love for you to do business with me, but I’d even love it more if you just go down below this video and let me know what you think about these videos. Give me some suggestions as what you’d like me to see record other videos in the future. Let me know if you have any questions. I answer every one of the questions that are down below these videos, even the crazy ones. I especially love those crazy ones. I’m here to serve you any way I can. Just let me know how I’m doing and how I can serve you even more.