This is Your Year: Growing Your Strengths and Identifying Your Weaknesses

Wednesday, March 22, 2023 | Spring 2023

BY MATT WAGG

THIS IS YOUR YEAR TO DO SOMETHING GREAT, something exciting, maybe something new! Marketing may sound like a huge undertaking, but I assure you, the work is worth it and YOU can totally do it. I am a firm believer that nearly all shops should be engaged in some form of marketing. We need to be focused on attracting new clients, but also working just as hard to keep existing clients.

A little backstory about us: My wife and I opened our shop from scratch in September of 2020. Just the two of us and a dream. We only had four months of savings and come January 2021, we had to be taking a paycheck home or we would be in bad shape. Now, we didn’t go into this blind. There were at least three years prior to this spent researching how we were going to grow and we built a plan. Was our plan perfect? Not at all, but we tried! We just finished our second full year in business and did over seven figures in revenue, a major milestone. This is proof that marketing works!

With marketing, there are so many avenues to take and a lot of money that can be spent. It’s hard to know what’s going to work best for you and that really depends on the geographics of your area and demographics in your area. Sometimes you just have to try it to see if it works. We have done the common things over the past two years such as: Website with SEO, Google business profile, direct mail, and social media. These are the things people typically think of when it comes to marketing.

I read a great marketing book prior to opening up. It’s called Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith. This book is a must-read, in my opinion, for all involved in shop marketing and can be found used on eBay for only a few bucks. This was my catalyst for doing things differently and finding different ways to market. So, let’s get to the fun part and talk about some non-typical things that have had a monumental return on investment for us. Try one of these out!

Join a Chamber of Commerce: If you have access to one, join it and attend meetings. It’s a great way to get YOUR face out there and educate others about what you do and why you do it! This had an immediate return for us and is a very powerful. Our chamber also does a quarterly postcard where members can buy an advertising slot for a minimal amount and it goes to over 8,000 homes in the area — it’s a huge return on investment. Our chamber also has monthly happy hours that we as a business can sponsor and we do so.

Join a business networking group: This is our most recent adventure and holy cow, what an opportunity! I was able to join a group that only lets one person from each profession in. My group is particularly large, with nearly 90 members all in different types of business. Our group does “craft talks” and meets each week for lunch. Our goal is to do business with each other and promote each other. This has brought in a huge return on investment! Many communities have these groups.

Matt WaggSolicit reviews: Feedback helps you grow, identifies strengths, and also areas of improvement. Reviews in a public forum are awesome. I call this digital word-of-mouth and it has huge strength. I cannot tell you how many times a first-time guest has come in and brought up our reviews or the fact that we respond to each and every one of them. People are reading these and they use these to help get a glimpse of who they are working with — it builds trust. Also, a CRM tool is a huge asset for retention marketing to existing clients and asking for reviews. You’ve already done the hard work of bringing a customer in, now give them a great experience and ask them to share it with the world!

As my friends Brian and Kim Walker say, people want to do business with those they “know, like, and trust!” Get out there and meet people, share your story, share your WHY, and have a blast doing it. These are the fun parts of marketing, try it! This is your year!

Matt Wagg is an ASE certified Master automobile technician and Master medium/heavy duty truck technician with 16 years of experience in the automotive and diesel repair industry. He is presently the owner of Accelerated Diagnostic & Automotive in Bennington, Nebraska.

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