Car Count Daily

Hey shop owners. Thank you very much for joining me on today’s 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 thousands of auto repair shop owners just like you to get and then keep all the top quality customers that your shop can handle.

Now today I’m going to answer a question that was posted by one of my YouTube subscribers:

Well “G ALPUCHE,” you’re not alone. I’ve worked with a lot of clients in the exact same situation. I’m going to tell you how I’ve helped them in the past.

First and foremost, I’m going to tell you the best way to increase your car count. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a great location or a bad location, so I want to cover this first. Number one you should be paying more attention to your current clients. For you, you have a very unique situation were new customers don’t know where you are, but your current customers they know exactly where you’re at. Plus, you have the added benefit that they know, love and trust you. Don’t underestimate how powerful marketing to your own customers can be because if you just got one more visit from every one of your customers that you have in your database, that could be worth five hundred or a thousand or fifteen hundred more visits to your shop in just one year alone. Okay, so don’t discount that, but now onto the direct question that you asked.

How to get more people to your shop when they don’t even know that a shop’s there? Well, here’s what you want to do. Pay attention to mobile marketing and what I mean by mobile marketing is more searches are done right now, the numbers are anywhere between 60 and 80% of people are searching to find a new business to do business with on their mobile phone. Okay, I’m holding this up like I have a mobile phone in my hand, okay I don’t know why I’m doing that, but we want to make sure that you look good on a mobile device.

Walk outside your shop, drive down the street, grab your smartphone and type in the words auto repair and we want to see if you’re coming up at all in that search grid. If you’re not coming up in the search grid, that’s a problem. You need to get onto Google. You need to get on Yelp. You need to get found by all of these places, so we want to make sure that first and foremost they’re finding you on that mobile device because the majority of people are looking for you while they’re on the go. So, if they’re not finding you, big problem.

Second, if they are finding you, how do you appear online? In other words what do your reviews say about you? Do you have a five star review? Do you have a one star review? What are other people saying about you that’s going to help those people make a good decision to choose you versus somebody else? If you got really crappy reviews and a real low star rating, that’s again a problem. We have to fix that and this goes for everybody. Whether you’re in a great location or a really bad location. It doesn’t matter, what you look like on that mobile phone is extremely, extremely important.

Remember – people are looking for new businesses on their mobile phones. When they find you, what are they seeing? Now assuming you pass that test, you have a lot of good reviews, a five star, a four star, a three and a half star rating, whatever it takes to get those eyeballs to come to you. Now the next cool thing about mobile marketing is all they have to do with that phone is press a button and now they’re calling you. See people are more likely to call you first before they just try to stop in.

Now you have a great advantage here because again it’s mobile marketing it’s a telephone. They’re calling you on the phone, now what you pay attention to is how are you answering the phone? Are you doing a good job answering the phone? Are you getting the appointment and if so, if you get the appointment then and only then do you need to address the location issue that you have. So, then you just very simply explain that you look like you’re an office not a typical auto repair shop, so they know what to look for. You give them landmarks to look for and what’s even better when you get that appointment, get their text number. Get their mobile phone number, so that you can text them a pin locator on their phone that all they have to do is press that button. It activates their GPS and now the phone is walking them through finding your shop.

I hope that answers your question because don’t let location harm you, because technology is an amazing thing right now and it’s really leveling the playing field for everybody that has a bad location, because people aren’t looking for your location. As long as you’re nearby let the vice guide them to you. You do a good job when they call you because more people are more likely to call first than just stop in. No excuses anymore. You got a bad location, so what? You don’t look like an auto repair shop, so what? Deal with the battle that you have in front of you and let’s win the battles that we can win and this is one sure-fire way to get that done.