Garage40

This might be something worth looking into:

http://www.efi101.com/essentials-of-operating-a-shop/

Good luck with the journey!

To add another option to the list for you guys/gals to research:

https://myshopassist.com/

The guys who created this solution are shop owners themselves and have been known to create custom solutions for clients. They also put on an event in association with EFI University called "Essentials of Operating a Shop Seminar". Might be worth reaching out to them. I haven't used the software myself so I wouldn't have any info to share on it besides having heard about it from some other shop owners.

I use Yext. What did you want to know? Yext is a service that enables you to manage all of your local directory listings from one control panel. It is very nice but it's considered by many in the local SEO world to be a quick stop gap - and you cannot manage your G+ listing with it. If you submit to the major local directory aggregators manually (or all of the most popular directories individually) you wouldn't have to pay a company like Yext monthly for their service. An alternative to Yext is Moz Local.

One thing to be aware of with Yext - if you ever discontinue service with them all of your local listing profiles in all of the local directories will go back to what they were before you signed up with them. This is VERY important to keep in mind. They essentially pull all the data they submitted on your behalf. So if all of your profiles were empty before they took control, they will be empty after you cancel service.

And as mentioned above, be consistent with NAP, keyword rich description for services you want to be found for, and add lots of photos (and videos where available). Solicit for reviews on your G+ page too. Make sure you've done general SEO work on your website for your geographical location as well. Keyword research is very important obviously.

I would add in:

- Local SEO/directory submissions and citations. Go through and claim all of your listings in local online directories and fill them in with consistent information and photos for your business. You can do this yourself if you know what you're doing. The main goal here is to show up in Google maps results when people search for services you provide in your area. Part of this work will include soliciting online reviews from your customers - the more reviews the better.

- General SEO and keyword research for your website. Once you identify the bread and butter keyword terms that locals are looking for, start writing some articles on those topics and post them on your website. Write a few more related articles and ask other industry websites/blogs to post them on their site, giving you credit. There are a few more ways to generate some backlinks but it's not really free.

- Social media is having more of an impact for local shops. It takes more effort than some realize, but it can certainly have solid ROI if you put together an effective strategy and remain consistent. And if you do it yourself, it will only cost you your time. Don't expect quick gains though. I always like pointing people to this article:

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-case-study-victory-auto/

- Familiarize yourself with online marketing strategies and how they can result in a positive ROI for your business. This will help you decide what makes sense for you.

Once you can afford it, get the help of a professional to help take your shop to the next level so you don't end up in this position again. As mspecperformance said above, you should always be marketing. You shouldn't just look into doing it when times are bad, as chances are, anything you start today won't show you ROI for months anyway. Don't be reactionary.

DO NOT do it yourself unless you are trained and understand SEO (search engine optimization)

Most shop owners shouldn't be doing it themselves, at least not literally. They should hire someone to do it for them, assuming they don't have a good in-house designer/developer. Though I wouldn't use a one-stop-shop company like Dex, who is really just looking to keep you as a long term customer for their marketing programs, knowing that if they build your site you'll likely stay with them long term and keep paying them. It always seems easier to use a solution like that but it's usually not the effective way to do it.

Crazy that your site is still down. This should be a good indication to anyone looking at Dex to consider other options.

The easiest DIY way to do it would be to collect email addresses and throw them into a email marketing campaign using Mailchimp or Constant Contact, sending them a monthly newsletter with useful tips about maintenance and other related topics.

You could also step up to an all in one service provider for automated life cycle communication. That gets a little pricey but it works well for some shops.

I was very nervous about using the service but I was afraid they would start Filtering my reviews so I went for it. I had 180/mo to spend since a previous Yellow Pages contract expired so that is what I set my budget at. I have noticed a significant increase in business as well as an increase of calls directly from the Yelp app. I will be increasing by budget as soon as I can handle the increased car count.

 

Keep on mind that I'm not a fan of Yelp but my customers surly are. It works for my business in my area. PM me if you want more information

Yelp will not filter your reviews because you're not paying them. They filter based on a lot of factors, but one of the big ones is whether or not a reviewer has more than just a few reviews. If someone signs up and writes one review and doesn't write any more, their review will likely be filtered.

If you get reviewers leaving you good reviews and they're getting filtered, contact those reviewers through Yelp and ask them to write some reviews on other businesses so that their stuff isn't filtered.

Yes we do anywhere from 240-300 brake jobs a month. We don't ask every singles customer where they found us but most say Yelp.

Wonder how many of those would have come to you if you simply had a well optimized "free" Yelp profile. Do you have a way of differentiating the free Yelp traffic from the paid, and the conversion rate for each group?

One year ago we signed a 12 month contract with Dexmedia to build our first website for 140.00 per month. Until recently, we really didn't do much with customizing it with our own pics and new content. I just didn't make it a priority. So now that I am making marketing a part of my day, do you think I should end it and build one myself ? I just wonder if I'm paying too much. The score the site has is 55 out of 100. The rep showed me that the site had 1700 views and generated just over 700 calls. What do you think?

My questions for you would be:

- What is that "score" you mentioned, the 55 out of 100? Is that Dex's score? If so, disregard it.

- How do you verify the stats they're giving you? Is that 1700 views for an entire year? 700 calls? What is the source of that traffic and how can you verify the validity of these numbers? Does the site have Google Analytics or some other known independent stats software installed so you can look at the data yourself and do some real world analysis?

- Are you actually getting 3 more calls a day than before you started with Dex? Are you (or your staff) asking where they found you?

- What was the conversion rate of those 700 calls they say you're getting? Were those quality leads or are you getting worthless calls from out of the area? 700 is a nice number, but what are the results of those calls?

- Where is the traffic coming from? Is it search engines or is Dex feeding it to you? Essentially, are you getting organic traffic or is it part of what you're paying for with Dex? Google Analytics would help tell you this.

- What are your goals for the website? Are you looking to get 10 jobs a month from it?

- What is your competition doing? Do a search for a service in your area that you would like your website to be found for and see what your competitors are doing. If you looked for "Dansville brake service" what sites come up? Does your site come up for any of your other bread and butter services? "your service dansville" - if not, you should be looking to change that.

I was going to look over your site to do a quick check but it's down. Let me know when it's back up and I'll take a look - the fact that it's down is an obvious red flag in itself, that should never happen. It's always best to build your own site and not have a company like Dex build it and manage it for you, but I know that sometimes it's easier for some business owners to do it that way. I'd still probably go in another direction, but that's me.

Yes, for those who aren't aware, posting via your FB page is now a lot less effective for most of us due to FB's new changes. This means that you MUST post content on your FB page that people find interesting enough to engage with (Like, Comment, Share). If you don't, your content will be dropped to the bottom of all your followers' news feeds and nobody who likes your page will ever see it - it's the equivalent of having your website fall from the first page of the search results to the 20th page. Every status update you post should included a photo or video, and calls to action to get people to engage with the content are critical.

This might scare some shop owners off, as many will automatically resign themselves to the idea that they have no chance of getting exposure on FB anymore. That's an understandable reaction. But if you're posting content that people care about it still works and you can still have some success. Keep in mind, this change that FB made affects everyone, including your competition. If you don't know what to post, take a look at what your competition is doing, and/or other shops who offer similar services as you. Pay close attention to those pages that are getting several Likes, Comments, and Shares on the content they post and take a moment to determine why they might be getting the engagement they're getting.

I've found that mixing in some FB ads for certain promos works, even if it's just spending $10-20 for a boosted post. Liking and commenting on anyone who comments on your content now becomes really important too. Like with anything in business you just have to learn to adapt and find new ways to make the system work for you.

The whole advertising industry is changing.

Things that used to work for some people don't anymore and the old things that didn't work are coming back with a new spin.

 

So, before you buy anything. Stop. Think about who you want to communicate with because that's what's going to define your answer.

 

If you're marketing to people 37 and under, Social Media is the best, least expensive answer if you work at being good at it. That said, if you put up automotive content and you're trying to network with women it may not be the thing that interests them enough to like you or comment on Facebook.

 

So, in this day and age, think about how to say something interesting to the people you want to come to your shop and keep the conversation going by facebook, twitter, google and even email. Many companies offer turnkey services for this that will cost you one to two dollars an hour.

 

Since the law says you can't email people without their permission (its called spam) then don't forget direct mail. A good list broker can find you lists to mail letters and postcards to. If you don't have or don't know where to find one, let me know I'll give you some references.

 

Postcard mailers can cost around a dollar each with 4 color printing postage, labeling and mailing. There are turnkey service bureaus who do that.

 

Remember, it's advertising. So don't do anything just once, don't rely on just one way to get your message to the market you want to serve and remember, no advertising you can buy is better than work of mouth.

You have to put a great deal of thought into who your ideal customer is and come up with creative ways to engage them. Create a few segments and engage with them differently. Nobody says you have to post the same content all the time on social media - it doesn't even always have to be car related. It has to be relevant to your demographic.

Here's a great article that everyone here should read, which talks about a shop that started a campaign that targets female customers:

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-case-study-victory-auto/

Once you define your ideal customer and what they're interested in reading about you can create some marketing campaigns to educate them, entertain them, and build a relationship with them.

One thing I would say everyone should do even if you haven't nailed down a solid overall marketing strategy is START BUILDING (or continue to build) YOUR EMAIL LIST. Get people to subscribe to an email list for news and updates from your shop. Even if you don't have anything to send out at the moment, start building that list yesterday. That is one of THE most effective forms of marketing these days, hands down. Think about it, those people want to hear from you. And when combined with social media and other forms online marketing it can be extremely powerful - far more powerful than any one form of online marketing on its own. Add a newsletter sign up to your website, to any electronic communications you send out, etc. Some services (like Constant Contact) even have a "text to subscribe" feature.

 

 

Garage40,

 

My experience with forums is that you can get a lot of exposure especially if you get several fan boys to endorse your business. I have found however that most of the fanfare you get from forums can go south pretty quickly. Forum goers are VERY opinionated and even more so that people who just post reviews. They have no problem breaking you down in a heartbeat if they feel slighted. That alone is not the main problem IMO but rather because forum members generally are DIYers and are very very quick to call out shops on being "rip offs" aka charging too much money. There will always be a guy in his garage, a dealer tech that works on the weekends, or a start up shop that undercuts everyone to be competitive. Basically I find that it attracts the wrong type of customer. Do you attract lurkers that are normal people looking to make an informed decision on a shop? Absolutely. I just don't know if its worth the headache of dealing with the rest of the bunch.

sh

I have personally avoided forums for a long long time, any tips otherwise?

I've found that forums are very much like Yelp - you can avoid them if you want to but the people you mention who will tear your name down will do so even if you're not there to defend yourself. That is the nature of any online community, whether it be a forum or a FB group, or any review directory, it doesn't matter. If you try to steer clear of the places where negative situations will come up, you wouldn't be posting online at all. And all you end up doing is ignoring the problem and letting it fester. It's better to address it and use it as an opportunity to win other customers over.

In my experience the potential upside easily outweighs the potential negatives. The trick is to not engage publicly those who are trying to tear you down:

http://www.garage40.com/dealing-with-forum-complaints/

Spend more time and energy engaging the people in the forums who are working on builds and are in the part of the buying process where it makes sense for you to interact with them (they've already done their research and know what they need). It's good to post some "how-to" articles every now and then too to help those who need help in the research phase but don't spend too much time trying to answer tech questions - you can do that all day every day and it won't always result in business.The people who are working on builds tend to be more in the buying phase.

If your business is centered around local service, then look for the forums that have geographic sub-forums - FB groups are becoming popular for this too. The bigger opportunity in forums is going to be for non-local businesses.

Should you advertise in the forums? Maybe. It depends on the market and the rules of the forums that are popular in your target market. I have some forums where you cannot say anything that will let people know you're a business. Others don't mind so long as you're not pushing products.

KMS, do you do any forum marketing in markets you target? I only ask because I'm a forum owner (for an old Mitsubishi platform) and I know performance shops tend to do pretty well when they target forums.

If you have any questions on the best ways to market in forums, feel free to ask. I have a pretty unique perspective on that obviously, having watched shops do it right and do it wrong over the past 15 years of managing forums. Social media marketing has cast a shadow over forums recently but there is still plenty of opportunity for using forums to generate business, grow your audience, and improve branding.

Thanks, I do it all myself right now and run the shop as a manager and the only service advisor lol. That is all changing within the next few months where I will be transitioning more of my time toward marketing efforts as we grow.

 

I would say that both reviews, actually any reviews help. We hear feedback from yelp reviews, google+ reviews as well as our website which is managed by kukui that has a lot of internal reviews on it (I think up to 180 5 star reviews now?). I would say the boost in yelp reviews has really helped us gain confidence with new customers. I will still go as far to say that in todays world its rare that it is 1 marketing/reputation effort that causes a prospective customer to call or buy. I truly believe there has to be a complete effort all around. My goal is to be on a persons mind and for them to be able to see great things about our shop any which way they search. In fact this exactly how I am when I am looking to choose a service.

 

As for Facebook, we do not boost our posts. We have tried that in the past and the only posts I will potentially boost is if I am running a campaign for a new hire. I don't particularly think it is a good method of marketing UNLESS you have a very broad offer (like a $69.99 4 wheel alignment or something comparatively ridiculous). At that point you may get a good amount of responses however you also may be left with a lot of the wrong type of customers.

By the way, how are you going about generating the reviews on your website? You're getting a great amount of reviews. Emails going out to your customers after service?

Thanks, I do it all myself right now and run the shop as a manager and the only service advisor lol. That is all changing within the next few months where I will be transitioning more of my time toward marketing efforts as we grow.

 

I would say that both reviews, actually any reviews help. We hear feedback from yelp reviews, google+ reviews as well as our website which is managed by kukui that has a lot of internal reviews on it (I think up to 180 5 star reviews now?). I would say the boost in yelp reviews has really helped us gain confidence with new customers. I will still go as far to say that in todays world its rare that it is 1 marketing/reputation effort that causes a prospective customer to call or buy. I truly believe there has to be a complete effort all around. My goal is to be on a persons mind and for them to be able to see great things about our shop any which way they search. In fact this exactly how I am when I am looking to choose a service.

 

As for Facebook, we do not boost our posts. We have tried that in the past and the only posts I will potentially boost is if I am running a campaign for a new hire. I don't particularly think it is a good method of marketing UNLESS you have a very broad offer (like a $69.99 4 wheel alignment or something comparatively ridiculous). At that point you may get a good amount of responses however you also may be left with a lot of the wrong type of customers.

I think you're on point for everything you've touched on.

Though you never know with Google, I really feel the more reviews you have on Google+ the more it helps you with the local SEO rankings, which is HUGE. Yelp is big too, but your Yelp link listing is always going to get less exposure than your Google Maps marker. That's why I asked about where you felt you were getting the bigger benefit.

But you're right, a complete marketing plan is always going to be more important than trying to focus on one specific effort. You have to focus on several efforts and prioritize them, and it all has to tie into an overall strategy.

As for the FB boosted posts, the only reason I would disagree a little bit there on it being a bad marketing method is because with the recent FB page algorithm change (well, it's been a few months now), company pages have almost been forced to use boosted posts or FB ads to get their status updates seen in the news feed. Page updates have been relegated to the bottom of all news feeds. It's extremely difficult to get much engagement without at least a small monthly budget. And if you're not posting an update with a photo or video it's become almost pointless to even post an update at all. Spending time commenting on other pages and interacting with people in comments tends to be pretty effective too.

I've always been fascinated with this stuff though, and it's always cool to see someone doing it well.

Most would probably say word of mouth. But it's also important to consider what word of mouth means these days - how are people actually "telling" their friends, with as much as people talk via texting, FB messaging, email, in addition to just talking in person? And how will the person they tell look you up after being told about your shop? If they share your shop name via text will the person jump on Google to find your address/phone number? That means you need a good SEO and local SEO presence. If you're recommended on FB, are they going to look for your FB page? Hopefully you have one. You get the point.

Word of mouth takes place just as much online as it does offline these days, which means you have to cover all your potential entry points. You can no longer assume that people will always share your phone number when they're talking to people, or that the referral will call you.

I think the better question might be, who is your ideal customer and where are they hanging out on a regular basis? That will tell you where your opportunities are to get exposure.

Update on Yelp and my experience. I have currently 33 reviews and a 5* overall rating. We are in the higher range of reviews for most shops around me. I have seen a BOOM in business and a very high frequency of customers coming in and commenting on our Yelp reviews. Nowadays if say you send out a direct mail campaign a lot of these folks are going to do some research on you. Once they see my reviews its the final push to get them to buy. Now I just have to figure out how to keep my production up!!

Do you attribute the increase in business to that higher Yelp review count or your Google review count?

Nice job on the social activity too. Looks like you're consistent in your posts and are getting fairly decent engagement. Are you also doing boosted posts to help get more views on your FB activity? Do you do any forum marketing at all? You doing this all yourself or do you have an agency doing it for you?

Nice job

I hear so many mixed opinions about yelp. And not just from the auto repair shops. There are restaurants that love Yelp, others say it did nothing. I also read that the laws suits against Yelp was found in favor of Yelp, and that their business practice does not extort businesses.

 

I know this is an old topic, but does anyone have a solid experience they can relate to me. A real-life experience, not hearsay. Thanks in advance.

Hey Joe, just keep in mind that regardless of whether you choose to advertise with them or not, your listing is still going to show up there for people to post reviews on and it is VERY IMPORTANT to claim your Yelp listing and pay attention to your reviews so that you can reply to negative reviews - and you will most likely receive a negative review at some point because people love to complain - positive reviews deserve replies too.

Personally, I've found that just having the free listing there and monitoring it is all you need to do. You can do very well organically on Yelp and other directories without paying those directories for advertising.

And when responding to negative reviews, just be diplomatic with your responses and show empathy. Do some Google searches on "responding to negative reviews" for more info on that. Here are a few good reads:

http://www.krusecontrolinc.com/classic-example-right-way-wrong-way-to-respond-to-negative-reviews/

http://www.garage40.com/dealing-with-forum-complaints/

http://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-handle-negative-online-reviews-of-your-business/

My issue with Yelp is I don't like their automated filtering - they want you to send your people there to post reviews, but unless the people you send post several other Yelp reviews, the review they wrote for your business stays hidden and is essentially worthless. Having worked for a "consumer review" website company in the past, I understand why Yelp does that, it just doesn't make much sense to to a business owner. I also don't like their strict policy against you asking customers to post reviews on Yelp - they will remove reviews if they find that you're asking your customers for them. The closest you can get to asking people to write a review for you on Yelp, according to their policy is by telling them to "find us on Yelp". Again, I understand they're pushing for organic reviews, but seriously, that makes little sense to a business owner.