Car Count Daily

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Hey shop owners. Welcome to another 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 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.

A lot of people ask me:

“Where do you get the inspiration, or the subjects for these Car Count Daily videos?”

My answer is, every day life. See, I look at everything as marketing. Marketing will determine what will attract people to you, or detract people from you. Okay. Whatever you do in your business, it’s not a matter of advertising all the time. It’s how people perceive you. This idea came from every day life. Let me just tell you the little back story.

A few days ago, my wife was making some preparations for after care because my mother-in-law has to have some minor surgery. The preparations were for the therapy that’s gonna be required after this minor surgery. She called my mother-in-law’s doctor’s office to get some forms emailed over, so my wife can fill them out. The answer that she got back from them astonished her. It astonished me. It blew me away, and it blew my wife away. The answer was, “We don’t do email. We don’t have email, and we’ve never had email. The only way we can get those forms to you is either by fax or by US mail.” Now immediately my mind went exactly where my wife’s mind went. We need a new doctor. If this doctor’s office doesn’t even have email, what else are they staying so far behind on all this technology that’s out there. What else are they doing that could potentially harm my mother-in-law, or at the very least, not help her as well as they could.

The same thing happens with auto repair shopa. This applies to you 100%. Now I know I’m probably speaking to the choir when we’re talking about using email, because chances are, you’re already on my email list and you’re getting these daily notifications of these videos. I may be speaking a little bit to the choir here, but bear with me because it goes a lot more than just using email. I mean, email’s been around forever it seems. Most of the millennials that we have out there weren’t even alive when there was no email. It’s not a matter of just having email. It’s a matter of using text message with your business. Are you texting your clients on updates or texting them for marketing purposes? If you’re not doing that, you’re pretty far behind the times. If you’re not using video, sort of like the one above, to attract people, let people know that you’re an expert in what you do. You know, people watch millions of hours of videos online. If you’re not creating videos for your shop, that’s a problem, as well.

Use social media. Social media’s been around for a very, very long time now. If you’re not using those strategies in your shop, a lot of people that are looking at you are saying, “Boy, you’re behind the times on that. What else are you behind the times on?” It’s really important that you don’t look at this and brag about, “Oh, I’m not on social media. I don’t have a Facebook account,” or, “I don’t do any of that silly text messaging,” because it’s actually hurting you. See, our clientele is getting younger and younger and younger. There’s more and more millennials that are coming around. Before we get into the discussion of, “Well I don’t want any millennials. They don’t have any money,” I’ll tell you, you’re dead wrong. We’ll speak on that in a separate video.

You want to attract good millennials to your shop. Just like the baby boomers. There’s bad ones and there’s good ones. It’s the same thing with the millennials. But you’ve got to stay up with the times. You’ve got to do the things that are expected if you want to attract people to your shop. You want to make them feel really good about doing business with you because if you’re … The technology that you’re employing to either help your business or market your business or get out there and get your name be found, that’s all seen as something that’s really important to work on your cars. Let’s face it, the cars, they’re run by a computer. That’s the way everybody knows it. If you’re not keeping up on the technology that your prospects and customers are seeing now, that little thought process is going on in their heads, saying, “In the back of the shop, what are they not keeping up on that’s going to not maintain my car properly, or fix my car the right way?” You’ve just got to be very, very aware of those things.

Look, if you’re confused about using social media and text message marketing and videos, learn. Spend the time to catch up. YouTube has probably tens of thousands of hours, maybe hundreds of thousands of hours of tutorial videos to show you how to do just that. How to send out text messaging. How to record a video. As a matter of fact, I did a five part series on how to do a video. If you didn’t catch that, look back on the blog and you’ll probably find some videos on how to do videos for your shop. See, ignorance is not an excuse, okay. There’s plenty of information that’s out there. I just don’t want you to be left behind. The ones that are the Luddites, that refuse to move into the 21st century and embrace the new technology are the ones that are going to be left behind. Just keep that in mind.

I get it. It may be confusing in the very beginning, but it’s only confusing in the very beginning. It was confusing for me in the very beginning. Everybody else is confused in the very beginning. But once you learn it, it’s very easy. It’s very intuitive. It’s not so scary anymore. Once you start embracing these things, now you can start attracting people with the confidence that they know they’ve found the right place to do business with.