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Marketing Makes Me Crazy

The big question concerning starting an auto repair business, besides what you will work on, is how you will market what you are selling.  Marketing is the way that business owners turn their products and services into the “need to know” name in the business.  Learning marketing takes a serious effort and the sheer volume of information available can be overwhelming.

All of the aspects of marketing these days that are available can have your head spinning in no time.  What do you do first?  What is the best kind of marketing for your business?  How do I go about niche marketing?

It seems that the more you read, the more questions you have.  When are the answers supposed to come?  Marketing can be intimidating when you are just starting out and it is all a bunch of foreign concepts.

What is the first thing you think of letting people know about your business?  Take an ad out in the local newspaper.  Well, you can take out ads on the Internet too.  Advertise on another person’s website.  By using an affiliate program, they will advertise on your site as well.

Do you write?  If you have a way with words, you can parlay that into another marketing area.  Good web content on your website will keep people coming back to read what you have to say.  But that content can be read and turned into a podcast or filmed and turned into a video to be marketed.

To do all of this, you need to read some more.  It seems like everyone knows the strategies but you.  In fact, they had to read and ask questions and learn just like you do.  There is no shortcut to learning marketing.  Everything that you learn builds on everything else.

One way to not go so crazy is to learn one area and learn it well.  From a brief description of each marketing strategy you can judge if it is right for you to start.  After you've gained confidence with one strategy, begin on another and another.  Taking marketing one step at a time is a great way to accomplish what you want to do with your business without losing your head.



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  • Have you checked out Joe's Latest Blog?

         5 comments
      I recently spoke with a friend of mine who owns a large general repair shop in the Midwest. His father founded the business in 1975. He was telling me that although he’s busy, he’s also very frustrated. When I probed him more about his frustrations, he said that it’s hard to find qualified technicians. My friend employs four technicians and is looking to hire two more. I then asked him, “How long does a technician last working for you.” He looked puzzled and replied, “I never really thought about that, but I can tell that except for one tech, most technicians don’t last working for me longer than a few years.”
      Judging from personal experience as a shop owner and from what I know about the auto repair industry, I can tell you that other than a few exceptions, the turnover rate for technicians in our industry is too high. This makes me think, do we have a technician shortage or a retention problem? Have we done the best we can over the decades to provide great pay plans, benefits packages, great work environments, and the right culture to ensure that the techs we have stay with us?
      Finding and hiring qualified automotive technicians is not a new phenomenon. This problem has been around for as long as I can remember. While we do need to attract people to our industry and provide the necessary training and mentorship, we also need to focus on retention. Having a revolving door and needing to hire techs every few years or so costs your company money. Big money! And that revolving door may be a sign of an even bigger issue: poor leadership, and poor employee management skills.
      Here’s one more thing to consider, for the most part, technicians don’t leave one job to start a new career, they leave one shop as a technician to become a technician at another shop. The reasons why they leave can be debated, but there is one fact that we cannot deny, people don’t quit the company they work for, they usually leave because of the boss or manager they work for.
      Put yourselves in the shoes of your employees. Do you have a workplace that communicates, “We appreciate you and want you to stay!”
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