Ron Ipach

Car Count Daily | Episode 14 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Car Count Daily | Episode 14 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox TRANSCRIPTION: Hey Shop Owners. Captain Car Count here, sometimes known as Ron Ipach. Welcome to yet another edition of Car Count Daily. Now, on a previous episode, I talked about the number one group of people that you should be marketing to. Now this is the low hanging fruit. The people that know, love and trust you, and people that are willing to give you more money, more often. As you might have guessed, it's your current clients. These are the people you should be spending your money, time and effort to get back to your shop, so they come in more often. But as I suspected, I knew I was going to get a lot of push back because I typically do from shop owners. Because, look, you do a great job for your customers, you do exactly what they want you to do, and provide a phenomenal repair and you maintain their car, so, of course they're going to come back to you, right? That's the argument I get all the time, and I'm here to tell you, no, that's not enough. Okay? I'm going to take the viewpoint of a customer here. Now I get your business, okay, I know all you do to do a great job and maintain the vehicles and fix the cars, and all the busted knuckles and the bloodied hands and all the stuff you go through to do a great job for your customers. But the customers don't see that, you see that. If I'm Joe Customer here, and I'm bringing my car to your shop and it's broken, I am paying you to fix it. So, when you bring it back to me fixed, you've done the job I'm paying you for. Okay? I paid you to do that job. I don't know how difficult it was. I don't know how awesome you were at doing it. I paid you for a service and I got the service. So, that's what Joe Customer thinks, or Jane Customer, is it's ... You're doing what I paid you to do. So, of course, you should do it right. Of course, it should be fixed. Of course, it should be maintained 'cause that's what we're exchanging the dollars for. I'm giving you money, you just give me what I asked for. So, the fact that you did a great job means absolutely nothing to me because I don't know about the bloodied knuckles and how difficult it was to do that repair, or how well trained you needed to be to do that repair because I paid you for that. Okay, now don't get mad at me. I'm just taking the viewpoint of your customers. So, doing a great job, and simply just saying you did a great job is enough to bring them back, I'm going to argue with you all day long because if they're just paying you for that, you're providing a service and that's it. Write this down, and you might want to remember this at all times, it's not what you do, when it comes to repairing the cars, it's what else you do when it comes to repairing the cars. Okay? I'm paying you to fix my car. What else are you doing to develop a relationship with me? What else are you doing to ensure that I'm going to come back to you versus going to the next shop down the street. Because, again, Joe Customer here, all I want is my car fixed and maintained. I'm paying for that service. So, no matter how difficult it is, I'm going to assume if it was real tough, it's going to cost me more money. Okay? It's what else are you doing. What else ... Why are you inviting me back to your shop? Why do you want me to come back to your shop? What offers are you going to give me? What incentives? Why should I come back to you versus going anywhere else? Now, keep that in mind when it comes to your marketing. Understand the most important person you can have in your shop, as a customer, is one that's already been. It's that repeat business that will build your business. Simply doing a good job isn't good enough anymore. It's a matter of what else you're doing. Impress me, give me outstanding customer service. Market to me, let me know that you care to have me back in your shop, and I will come back to you. That's why it's the most important group of people that you want to market to. Keep that in mind and you will blow your car counts through the roof. I guarantee it.

I released a video on my blog yesterday that seems to be causing a bit of a stir. Some shop owners are saying my idea is brilliant - others say I'm totally wrong. In a nutshell, I'm advocating giving away $100 in services for a new client referral. The last thing I want to do is give away bad information, so I'm asking for some help to set me straight if I'm way off base. You can watch the video here for my full explaination: http://www.captaincarcount.com/auto-repair-marketing/is-this-a-crazy-idea-or-what/

Car Count Daily | Episode 13 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Car Count Daily | Episode 13 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inboxv The people that have just given you money are the best group of people to get the money from the next time. It's the low-hanging fruit, and I want you to really start paying attention to marketing exclusively to them instead of trying to get a new customer in the door to replace them.It costs a lot of money to replace a lost customer, so we want to make sure that we stay in contact with all of our good customers all the time. So that's actually what we're going to be covering today on today's video. We're going to be talking about how often do you market to them? And I'm going to give you an answer that you may not be expecting. I'm going to say that you need to market to them every single week.Now you might be saying, "That's too much." Once a week is what I want you to be in front of them so they remember you, so they ... because you don't know when they're going to need service, right? There's no way you know exactly the time that they're thinking about auto repair, so you need to be there when they are thinking about it. So every single week you need to be hitting them with some sort of a marketing message.When you think of it, the average consumer right now on a daily basis, I've seen estimates as high as ten thousand marketing messages every single day that they're being bombarded with. So don't think that you're going to be marketing entirely too much to them by touching them one time per week, four times per month. That's hardly going to make much of a dent in the universe of how many people are trying to market to them. So four, don't get carried away and say that, four is entirely too much because chances are they're not going to see most of the marketing messages.It's important we stay in contact with them as often as possible, because when they're looking for auto repair, that's when they're going to notice that you're there, so I suggest you mail at least twice a month to them. I like mailing a newsletter on the first week of the month, and some sort of a postcard mailer or something on the third week of the month. Then use the power of the new kind of marketing, the electronic marketing, either, and it's not new, the emails. But send them an email on the second and fourth week, or send them a text message on one of those weeks, or maybe pick up the good old phone and call them.That's how often you need to stay in contact with them. You don't want a week that goes by where they lose sight of you. You need to be there when they're ready for you, and there's no way you know when they're going to be ready for you. So don't think this is too much. You know, I actually have clients that are marketing to their clients a lot more than that. But on a minimum, once a week you should be marketing to all of your clients, okay?You either take the information and run with it, because I know it works, or think I'm totally crazy, and I'm marketing entirely too much, but I can tell you, I do know, when you get in the habit of marketing once a week to your current list, your car counts do go up substantially. So take my advice, don't take my advice, either way I wish you the best of success.

Car Count Daily | Episode 12 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Car Count Daily | Episode 12 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox TRANSCRIPTION: Hey shop owners, Ron Ipach here, sometimes known as Captain Car Count, and welcome to yet another episode of Car Count Daily. Now on today's episode, I'm going to be covering the most frequently asked question that I get as an expert marketer for auto repair shops. And that question is, "Who should I market to?" The answer I always give seems to disappoint shop owners, because it's a lot simpler than what you might think. Everybody thinks there's some secret society, or this secret group of people that you have to really attract to your shop to be successful and get more customers to your shop. And it's not anything special. Really, it is your own customers, the people that you've already done business with, the people that know, love and trust you. The people you've already done good service for. Those are the best people that you should be marketing to. Why? Well, let's face it. They're not coming back to you as often as they really should. Most shop owners tell me that the average car should be in the shop at least three times a year. But I'll bet, if you look at your database and count how many times each car's been in your shop, it's not three times. So what I'm telling you is you need to encourage them. You've got to give them a reason to come back to you more often.And let's face it. There are more cars sitting in the driveway than that one car you might be seeing. They may have two or three other cars sitting in the driveway that you're not seeing. They're being taken somewhere else, and maintained or repaired. They're not happening, it's not happening at your shop. So by marketing to the people that you already know, you know what they're buying habits are, you know if they're good customers or if they're bad customers. You just need to get your message to them. I mean, think about it. You can go and spend a lot of money to attract somebody new to your shop, and you have no idea if this person is interested in fixing and maintaining their car. You have no idea if they're willing to spend the money it takes to keep their car running properly. You do know that about your current customers. So why not take any money that you're spending to attract a new customer and start paying attention to your own customer. You know, I've heard the only reason why you're going to lose a current customer is because you're not paying attention to them. You're allowing other people who are advertising to spend more time and energy and effort and market to them than you are. You're just kind of letting them go. Don't let that happen any more. The best customer to get in your shop is the person you already have a relationship with.So take all those marketing dollars that you're using to attract new customers and start marketing to your own customers and I absolutely guarantee you're going to get a lot more car count. That's going to do it for today's episode. I hope it helped. If you like what you're seeing, if you like what you're hearing, leave me a comment down below this video.

If you are currently texting your clients and are using one of those potentially expensive services that charge a pretty decent monthly fee, and then in some cases, up to an additional dollar per text to send automated and group texts to your clients, you'll probably want to check out a service that I've been recommending to my clients for several years - and it's totally FREE for your first 250 texts, then only .05 cents for each text after that. https://www.eztexting.com/ Sure, it doesn't have a direct link to your client list, requiring you to export/import your mobile numbers into their system (a 10-minute process) - but once your client's mobile numbers are uploaded into EZtexting you can pre-schedule your individual and group texts to go out whenever you wish. Happy texting!

Car Count Daily | Episode 11 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Car Count Daily | Episode 11 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox

Car Count Daily | Episode 10 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Car Count Daily | Episode 10 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox

Let me start off by asking you a very important but very quick question: what BS story are you telling yourself? Let me repeat that: What BS story are you telling yourself? We all have these stories and shop owner excuses that we keep telling ourselves that we think are true, that when you really look at it, they're really utter bullshit, but we've been telling ourselves the same story over and over that we actually believe it's true. Case in point, now if you've ever been on one of my live webinars, you know that because I'm live, I can have a conversation with some of the people that are on the webinar. The other night, a gentleman was complaining about car count. He said because cars are made better (another thing I hear A LOT), there are no cars out there and there's a lack of car count, and that's a big problem. I took that as an opportunity to tell him what I've probably told you before, if you've been watching these videos, that I don't believe that there's a car count problem out there at all because in every city all over the United States, all over Canada, there are cars sitting on lifts right now in your own town, dozens, maybe even hundreds of them, every single day that are being repaired and maintained by other shops, other shops collectively, but on any given day, there are tons of opportunities to repair cars. The problem is they're just in somebody else's shop, they're not in yours. It's not a lack of cars out there to be repaired, there's just a lack of cars in your auto repair shop. It's a marketing problem, it's not a problem caused by cars being made better. Now I've told that story before. In case this is the very first time you've heard that, please believe me it is a marketing problem, not cars are made better. That's the reason why you don't have enough cars. Now we're past that. Because I can go back and forth with them, I told that same story. He'd so believed that it was a problem that he wasn't able to fix, that he told me about the shop owner that was less than a mile away from his shop that said the very same thing, that his shop was down with cars as well. I guess the two of them got together and commiserated about the car count being down, and now both of them believe that there's a car count problem out there. That's an example of the BS story we keep telling ourselves that simply isn't true. I want you to go back and think of all the things you say on a daily basis, maybe, "I can't find good techs," or, "There are no good techs out there anymore." There are good techs out there, they're just not working for you. What you look for, you're going to find. It's just the truth. Let me give you an example, and this is a story I've told my clients over and over. It's a great example of what you look for, you will see in abundance right there in front of you. A few years back, we bought a beach condo down in Florida. We thought it'd be fun to have a Jeep, to be on the beach, and just the perfect car to have down there. I never owned a Jeep before, but guess what? As soon as I decided I was going to buy a Jeep, I saw Jeeps everywhere, all shapes and sizes and colors driving everywhere. I've been seeing them every single day go by, but I didn't see them until I decided I want to buy a Jeep. Did everybody all of a sudden go out and buy a Jeep when I decided? No. It's because I was looking for Jeeps, all of a sudden I saw them. There was an abundance of Jeeps driving by me every single day. I just didn't notice them because I wasn't looking for it. Then I decided I was going to buy a blue Jeep. You guessed it; pretty soon everybody was driving a blue Jeep. There were blue Jeeps everywhere. Everybody didn't go out and decide that they're going to buy a Jeep, and then they didn't decide if they're going to buy a blue Jeep. It's just I started focusing on it and I started finding exactly what I'm focusing on. If you're saying that there are no good techs out there, you're going to focus on all the bad hires that you've had, you're going to focus on all the bad interviews you've been on, and you're going to say, "See? I told you so. There are no good techs out there." The same thing with your car count. If you're going to constantly complain and look at the lack of cars that are out there in your own shop, you're going to keep seeing the same problem over and over and over. It's going to become etched in your mind. It's going to be a BS story, but if you start looking around, start driving around and realize there are dozens, if not hundreds, of cars sitting on lifts every single day in other people's shops and not in your shop, you'll realize you have a marketing problem and you'll start to tackle the big problem that you have right there. I hope this helps. Go and think of all those things that you tell yourself so often that it's now etched in stone and it's true, and see if you could find the opposite. I guarantee you'll find it everywhere. Thanks for watching. Oh, by the way, I really appreciate all the comments.

Car Count Daily | Episode 9 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Car Count Daily | Episode 9 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox -------------------- Welcome to today’s issue of Car Count Daily. Now, you’re probably wondering why am I driving a car, and not only doing something so stupid as driving a car and recording a video, but I’m drinking an iced coffee at the exact same time. In other words, why am I multitasking here, doing something vitally important which is driving a car safely, while talking to you, and sipping on a coffee? Well, it’s actually to talk about something that you’re probably doing every single day, which is multitasking during probably one of the most important things that you could ever be doing with your shop every single day, which is marketing your business.I’m Captain Car Count, so of course I’m talking about auto repair marketing. This really goes into all areas of your business. I mean think about it, how many times are you being pulled in all these different directions. As the auto repair shop owner you’ve got a lot of things that you need to do. You have a lot of employees talking to you, you have customers, parts vendors, the phone’s ringing, and you’re trying to do a lot of things at once. Oh by the way, you’re going to try to squeeze in a few minutes here or there to do your auto repair marketing. I’m going to tell you, stop doing that. That is a recipe for disaster. You’re never going to do everything really, really well.Now fortunately I’m at a red light here, so I can stare at the camera. When we start rolling, I have to focus on the one thing, the most important thing, which is right now, which is navigating this beast down the road safely so I don’t hurt anybody, or hurt myself. Think of it that way when it comes to your marketing. Focus on marketing, and nothing else. The best way to do that is get the heck out of the shop. Chances are you’re going to be really busy in the shop, people pulling you different directions, and asking questions, and the employee comes in with that one really quick question that turns into a half hour task that you just put on your back. Then if you get time, you get back to doing some marketing.I hope you understand what I’m talking about, is just get focused on the most important task, which is marketing. Now, how do you do this when you’re in a busy environment? Well the best way I know, is get the heck out of that environment. Get away from the shop, and get to a quiet place. If it’s a matter of staying home, if you can be left alone at home, then by all means stay at home. If not, go down to the public library, or find some place, a hotel lobby where you can be left alone to work on your marketing. If you’re trying to multitask while you’re doing your marketing, just like I’m trying to multitask and drink my coffee here doing this, you’re not going to do really well at any of that stuff. Marketing is extremely important.I hope I kind of drilled that idea into your head for today, so you do find the time to focus on marketing, and be 100% present with just marketing, and not doing everything else at the exact same time. You’ll get a lot more done, you’ll get a lot more cars coming to your shop, which is going to help you make a lot more money, okay? That’s going to do it for today.Before you discontinue reading, please, I’d love to hear your feedback. What do you think about car count daily? Do you like them, do you hate them, are there some suggestions you have for me other than not driving while I’m recording a video? Which okay I get, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to say never, but I’m not going to do that a whole lot. Leave a comment below this video, shoot me an email, send me a carrier pigeon. However, just get the message to me. Let me know how you like these videos, and if there’s anything else you want me to touch on with these videos in the future.

What's New In Automotive Marketing? A lot. I'm addressing a question from a shop owner named Dave who's been in business for 28 years. He asked, "Is there anything new in the automotive repair industry?" In a word, yeah. A lot has changed in these 28 years. If we look at the car itself, obviously, you know the cars are made a whole lot better than they used to be. You're more in a maintenance business than you were in a repair business. That has changed drastically over these 28 years. Also, what's changed is the consumer, the consumer habits. The way of contacting them has changed enormously. The buying habits of the consumer have changed drastically. Your share of their attention, trying to grab their attention when they're being bombarded by all the advertising that's out there has changed drastically. When we think about it, millennials, which is now the largest group of people that are out there, they grew up with cell phones in their hands. Everything is online. They're doing mobile searches instead of looking through the yellow pages. They buy things differently and at different times. You and I have changed a lot as well with that. When was the last time that you did some online shopping? I know I did a lot of my Christmas shopping last year online. I didn't even have to leave the house to whittle down that Christmas list. A lot of people are driving less because they can simply go on Amazon and have it delivered in a couple hours. That's changed drastically, the amount of miles that people are driving as well as people are using services like Uber and Lyft for other people to drive them. It's very inexpensive for people to get driven around. Their driving habits are changing a lot. The one thing I can tell you is the marketing principles have not changed. The way we contact people have changed. The messages we give them have changed. The people we're marketing to have changed. All of those have changed drastically over the past 28 years, but the main principles, the core competencies of marketing really haven't changed much at all. What am I talking about? First off, we got to find the right person to market to, the person we want to attract to our shop. Second, we have to give them a very compelling message. We got to grab their attenton. As I said before, there's a lot more competition for those eyeballs. People are looking at email, they're online. They're seeing advertisements bombarding from all these different areas. We have to be a lot more savvy in how we try to attract their attention. That hasn't changed. Then we need to give them a very compelling offer. That's a good core competency and make sure that you have that in all of your marketing as well as you got to give them a sense of urgency. We got to have the right target. We have to have the right message. We have to have the right offer, and we have to give them that sense of urgency, so that they come in right now. That all has been the same. Everything else about running the business has totally changed. If you're not keeping up with that, you're going to be left behind. Again, the marketing, the core competencies haven't changed, but everything that layers on top of that, how we deliver that message, that's changed drastically. Who we're delivering it to has changed drastically. -- Ron Ipach (a.k.a Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

Car Count Daily | Episode 8 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION Hi, shop owners, Ron Ipach here. Sometimes people call me Captain Car Count. Welcome to yet another edition of Car Count Daily. Now before I get started did you know that you can go down below this video and leave me a comment, leave me a question, maybe a suggestion? Yes, you can. As soon as this video is done, please go down and tell me what you think about these episodes, ask some questions, maybe even give me some suggestions for what I should be covering on future episodes. I would really appreciate that. As soon as we're done with this, please go down and type something in that bar down there, so I could read it. I will respond to them. I try to respond to every one of the questions, comments and suggestions that I've been given. On today's episode we're going to actually be addressing a question from a shop owner named Dave who's been in business for 28 years. He asked, "Is there anything new in the automotive repair industry?" In a word, yeah. A lot has changed in these 28 years. If we look at the car itself, obviously, you know the cars are made a whole lot better than they used to be. You're more in a maintenance business than you were in a repair business. That has changed drastically over these 28 years. Also, what's changed is the consumer, the consumer habits. The way of contacting them has changed enormously. The buying habits of the consumer have changed drastically. Your share of their attention, trying to grab their attention when they're being bombarded by all the advertising that's out there has changed drastically. When we think about it, millennials, which is now the largest group of people that are out there, they grew up with cell phones in their hands. Everything is online. They're doing mobile searches instead of looking through the yellow pages. They buy things differently and at different times. You and I have changed a lot as well with that. When was the last time that you did some online shopping? I know I did a lot of my Christmas shopping online. I didn't even have to leave the house to whittle down that Christmas list. A lot of people are driving less because they can simply go on Amazon and have it delivered in a couple hours. That's changed drastically, the amount of miles that people are driving as well as people are using services like Uber and Lift for other people to drive them. It's very inexpensive for people to get driven around. Their driving habits are changing a lot. The one thing I can tell you is the marketing principles have not changed. The way we contact people have changed. The messages we give them have changed. The people we're marketing to have changed. All of those have changed drastically over the past 28 years, but the main principles, the core competencies of marketing really haven't changed much at all. What am I talking about? First off, we got to find the right person to market to, the person we want to attract to our shop. Second, we have to give them a very compelling message. We got to grab their attenton. As I said before, there's a lot more competition for those eyeballs. People are looking at email, they're online. They're seeing advertisements bombarding from all these different areas. We have to be a lot more savvy in how we try to attract their attention. That hasn't changed. Then we need to give them a very compelling offer. That's a good core competency and make sure that you have that in all of your marketing as well as you got to give them a sense of urgency. We got to have the right target. We have to have the right message. We have to have the right offer, and we have to give them that sense of urgency, so that they come in right now. That all has been the same. Everything else about running the business has totally changed. If you're not keeping up with that, you're going to be left behind. Again, the marketing, the core competencies haven't changed, but everything that layers on top of that, how we deliver that message, that's changed drastically. Who we're delivering it to has changed drastically. -- Ron Ipach (a.k.a Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

This is something that I'm hearing from shop owners constantly when we're talking about car count levels in their auto repair shop: "Car count is down in my shop because cars are made better." If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times, and chances are you've probably said it yourself. Look, I'm not going to tell you cars aren't made better because that would be sheer stupidity. The fact is that cars are made better. Cars are made to last much, much longer than they used to. But... That's not the reason why car count is down in shops. How do I know that? Well, a recent study came out that said the average car on American roadways is over 14 years old. Let me say that again... The average car is over 14 years old. That's not a new car. The average. That means for every brand new car out there, in order to have an average of fourteen years, that means there's a car that's 28 years old. There is a balance there. If the average car is 14 years old, those are the cars you work on. Right? 14 years ago the cars weren't made as good as they are now, and even if they were, they're 14 years old right now, odds are that they're going to need a lot of maintenance now or in the near future. It's important to make your shop available for those repairs. Don't get caught up in the thinking that the car count is down simply because cars are made better. Those cars that are made better are not your business. Those aren't the ones that are going to give you more cars in your bays and increase your profitability. The most of a shop owner's profits is going to come from the cars that are older, and the average car is much older than it used to be. Clear the "cars are just made better" excuse out from your mind, understand that there are plenty cars out there, it's just up to you to go focus on your marketing and attract more customers to your shop. -- Ron Ipach (a.k.a Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

Car Count Daily | Episode 8 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION Today, I'm going to show you how to make at least $1,500 an hour. Would you like to know how to do that? It's not enough? How about $3,000 an hour? How about $5,000 an hour? Still not enough? Okay, how about I should you how to make $15,000 an hour? Would you like to know how to do that? I bet you would. Simply and easily make $1,500 an hour on up. It's totally up to you. Depends on what it is you're doing. What that is that you're doing is marketing. Of course. What else would I be talking about? I'm Captain Car Count after all. What I mean by that is you can make $15,000 an hour simply by spending two hours of your day just 100% focused on putting together a kick-butt offer and sending it to the right people using the right kind of media. In other words, do some really kick ass marketing today. If you just put your nose to the grindstone and worked on this, figured out what's going to really get people excited to come in and do business with you, how are you going to get that message to them, and what is that message going to say. If you would spend two hours putting that together, and then you sent it out and you brought in let's say $30,000 worth of business, which is not unheard of if you know what you're doing. If you know good marketing, you can bring in $30,000 from just one marketing campaign. If you spent just two hours working on that campaign, and it brought in $30,000, that means each one of those hours you spent marketing brought in $15,000. You might be saying "There's no way I'm going to do $30,000 off of one campaign." Let's cut it in half. Let's say you only made $15,000 off of that marketing campaign, and you worked two hours. That means you made $7,500 per hour. Or let's say the whole campaign only brought in $5,000. Okay. A very modest sum, but totally achievable and totally believable that you can make $5,000 by putting together a marketing campaign. If you spent two hours doing that, that means you made $2,500 an hour. See, all the work is done upfront when you're doing your marketing. It takes time to find a really good offer that's going to excite people and choose the list of people that you're going to send that offer to, so whoever see it so they can respond to it. That's where all the work is. It's all the way up front. Putting that together. But you know what? It only take a couple hours out of one day to put together a marketing campaign. And when you send it out, then the marketing starts working on its own and it starts bringing people to you. So if you only made $5,000 from that marketing campaign, yet only spent two hours, effectively, you've made $2,500 per hour doing the marketing. I hope you're getting a little excited about this because you sure as heck can't make $2,500 an hour turning wrenches. You're not going to make $2,500 an hour managing the store. You're not going to make $2,500 doing anything else in your store other than working on the marketing. That's how you make a lot of money because without the marketing, you don't have the customers. Without the customers, you don't have the business. So just find two hours today to start putting together a really good marketing campaign and get it out. Look, the worst that's going to happen, if you make $500 from that marketing campaign, and you took two hours to do it, that's still $250 an hour. There's still nothing else you could do in your shop that's going to make $250 per hour. I hope I've got your greed glands and your juices flowing over getting this marketing done because I love marketing, and I can show you a lot of ways to market, and that's what this Car County Daily video series is all about, is to give you a lot of ideas on marketing. All you need to do is take action on it so that you can start reaping the rewards of being an auto repair shop owner. Take this information, spend those two hours, and make thousands of dollars every single hour. -- Ron Ipach (a.k.a Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

I’d like to officially welcome you to the second half of 2017. That’s right, the year is half over. Let me ask you a question; How’s your business doing? Is it exactly where you thought it would be right now? Are you on track to meet your goals? Or do you need to tighten up the bootstraps and get rocking and rolling on there to get the year to where you really need it to go? I’d like to wind the calendar all the way back to January 1st. You know, the day that everybody comes up with all those great New Year’s resolutions. They have resolutions about how the business is going to go, how much time they’re going to spend with their family, how much vacation they’re going to take this year, how much money they’re going to make, how much weight they’re going to lose, all of those things. Do you remember that day? Do you remember actually sitting back and making another New Year’s resolution? Well, if you’re like most people, yeah. You figured this year was going to be the year, the year that everything is going to get on track. And I really, really hope it is for you. But if it’s not, well, it’s half over with, and I want to point that out to tell you that it’s okay. It’s okay if you’re not nearly where you thought you would be, because we have another six months to go to be able to pull it out. So don’t get discouraged if you’re not where you thought you would be. Congratulate yourself if you are exactly where you think you’re going to be, or where you should be. So you’re doing great this year, fantastic. Go out and celebrate. Celebrate the victory. And if you’re not where you need to go, it’s time to tighten up those shoelaces and get really rocking. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s okay. We have a full six months to pull this out. It’s time to start taking action on everything you’re learning. If car count is your problem, and for most shop owners it is, get going on all these strategies that I’m giving you here for free. Every single day in your email box I’m giving you tons of strategies to help you move forward and keep plenty of car count coming in the door. If it’s about profitability, if it’s about finding that technician, look, we have lots great information, lots of videos that we can share with you, if that’s where the problem is. Don’t let it be an impending storm. The second half of 2017 is going to be a great year, but you need to start taking action. If you need information, fantastic. We’ll be here to give it to you, but in most cases it’s just a matter of you needing to go and take action. Time to really start rocking and rolling to get this 2017 to be everything you thought it would be; to lose the weight you want, get the car count you want, make the money you want, have the dream shop that you always knew your shop could be. You got a half a year left. Let’s get rolling.

We all know as local business owners how important it is to get those online reviews because most potential customers read those things before they make a decision whether they want to do business with you. As a matter of fact, 90% of consumers read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business. Because of this, auto repair shops should want to collect as many positive reviews as possible to stay ahead. In the automotive industry, for getting new customers in the door, there might not be a more essential tool than positive online reviews. It can make or break a business plan. From a consumer's point of view, Google will almost always be the resource used to find an auto repair shop in each area. Not only this, some potential customers will view online reviews for the sole purpose of ranking shops, or choosing one over the other. The auto repair shop with the most positive reviews and best Google ranking is most often going to be the one the consumer decides to go to for their car repair needs. The same goes for reviews on both Facebook and Yelp. Some shop owners may be asking clients: "Hey, if you liked our service, please give us a review." And this is a proven strategy as 7 out of 10 consumers will leave a review for a business if they're asked to. However, if they're not giving reviews, how can they expect to get reviews back? There's something maybe a little karmic about that, right? If you're not doing it, how can you expect other people to do it for you. Aside from that, if you're not writing reviews, how can you tell them how to do the review? In other words, if you've never given a Google review, or a Yelp review or a Facebook review, and you've never physically done it yourself it's going to be hard when you ask somebody to give your a shop a review. A shop owner may say - "Sure, I'll give you a review, just show me how to do it," now you're scratching your head and saying, "I have no idea how to do it. I've never given one myself." What are the chances that they're actually going to give you a review? Get in the habit of writing as many reviews as possible using all of the local review sites, so you know how to navigate the waters, and you know how to actually write the review. Secondarily, sitting down to write a review is not easy. If you get in a habit of sitting down trying to figure out what you're going to say in your review, chances are when you do it more often, you'll get better and better at it. It will start to flow a little better. When you're asking a client to write you a good review, not only are you going to be able to show them how to do this, but you're going to give them some suggestions on how to write a good review for you because, after all, that's what we want to do. We want to get as many good, positive reviews from our happy customers as we possibly can. Getting in the habit of writing two reviews per week, will ultimately attract more online reviews for your shop. -- Ron Ipach (a.k.a Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

There’s been a ton of changes to the way you should be marketing yourself and your business. Personally, I’m a lot more ‘out in front’, human, and personable. Not only have I been sending out daily Car Count blogs, but I’ve been using social media a bunch more too in order to assist any way I can in the improvement of your repair shop marketing. I’m on Facebook giving everyone an inside peeking into my personal going-ons. I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn with informational messages and links. I’m posting previous episodes of my Car Count Daily series on YouTube and AutoCareVideo using online videos to deliver a lot of my tips & marketing messages. I’m maximizing opportunities to release valuable content to potential customers and further establish Captain Car Count and Repair Shop Coach's online presence with social media (you may have been directed to this very blog through a social media platform). Marketing Your Auto Repair Business I’ve been working on my client and prospect lists much more efficiently with social media marketing. I’ve stopped the constant bombardment of “Hey, buy something from me” messages to everyone because as my friend Ron LeGrand says, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” If your business has been negatively affected by this economy and that hasn’t been enough of a wakeup call for you, I’ve realized that no amount of my poking and prodding is going to be able to snap you into action. Why am I telling you all this? Because in regards to management and operations of your auto repair shop, that’s EXACTLY what you need to be doing right now in your own business. We’ve entered a whole new phase of running a business that you’re either going to have to adapt to as a repair shop owner, or be left behind. It's About The Relationships, Not The Sell Folks are watching every dollar they spend and they’re closely watching who they give it to. They don’t want to do business with businesses – they want to do business with people. You’re going to have to make you and your auto repair shop a much more inviting place for them to spend their money, or you will suffer the consequences of doing business as usual. Instead of attempting to present social media messages through push sells, promote yourself and your shop's personality. Clients want a reason to trust you and constant advertising messages are going to steer them away from your business. Share meaningful content, interact with your customers, and personalize your business. 80% of your sales will come from only 20% of your clients. Identify who your top 20% of clients are and focus your money, time and energy on them. That’s where the money is. Clone them. Ask for and get more referrals from them. Target prospects just like them. Next Steps Get very active in social media. Let your clients and prospects get to know who you really are on Facebook. Start recording videos (LIVE) with quick tips and meaningful messages and post them on YouTube. Watch your shop and personal profitability rise and let your personality shine. While you're at it sign up for my seven critical marketing mistake video series that are keeping customers away from your shop. -- Ron Ipach (a.k.a Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

Car Count Daily | Episode 7 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION Today, I'm going to talk all about collecting the right information from every one of your customers while they're in your shop. What do I mean by that? When we're talking about marketing, it's important that we collect all the current information that we have on our customers so that we can continue to market to them. Marketing to your current customers, it's like picking the low-hanging fruit. It's the easiest group of people to get back into your shop, so we want to make sure that we collect all the data that we can from our customers while they're sitting right there in our shop. Obviously, what you want to do it get their correct name. Make sure their name is spelled correctly. Have that in you database. Then, also, we want their mailing address. Everybody's got a place they're living. They're not living in their car, chances are. So we want to make sure that we get their home address so that we can mail something to them. The next thing on the list is we want to make sure we get their e-mail address. We want to make sure that we're getting the right e-mail address. Not the e-mail address the junk e-mail that a lot of people, including me, I have a junk e-mail address that I give to everybody because I don't want them to contact me. We want to make sure that we get their actual e-mail address. The one that they actually do check. It's very important you do that. Then, the next thing that I want to make sure that you get is the two phone numbers that they have. One is their home phone number. Some people don't have home phones anymore. I happen to still have a home phone number. If they don't have their home phone number, certainly, they have a cell phone. You want to make sure that you're collecting that data as well. What you're going to be able to do with all this, if you have a home address, you can send them a piece of mail. If you have an e-mail address, the good e-mail address, you can send them an e-mail. If you have their home phone number, not only can you pick up the phone to call them, I call it dialing for dollars when you're on your slow days to see if you can get some of them to your shop, but you can also do something. It's a technology called the voice broadcast where you record a message, and it blasts it out to everybody's home phone number and leaves a message just like you would've left a message on their voicemail by calling their home if you called them one by one. This is different, where you just record it one time and it blasts it out to everybody. Then, if you get their cell phone number, you can send them a text message, and 99% of text messages get read, and 95% of them get read within the first five minutes. So it's a very valuable way to be able to market to them. But none of this is going to work for you if you don't have the accurate data in your database. So here's a suggestion that you start right now, today, with the very next customer that walks through the door and you start collecting that data. Think of it like when you went to the doctor's office the last time. What they did is they handed you that clipboard and said, "We're updating our records. Please fill all this out." You can protest all you want, but they're going to make you fill those forms out every single time you go in. Why? They have insurance forms that they need to fill out, and they got to make sure everything's accurate. You, you need to market to them. You got to run your business off of this data. So require that they fill out each and every one of those lines. Their name, their e-mail address, their phone number, their cell phone number. You want to make sure that you collect all that data so that you can market to them. Just assume that they're going to give you that data and no questions asked. If you just ask for an e-mail address, now there's a dialogue that kind of goes back and forth. If you simply hand them a form that says "We need all this information for our database, for our records," they will go ahead and fill that out. Make sure that you get that done.

All auto repair shop owners should know the importance at this point of having an auto repair website for the shop. This idea was brought to me by a client who sent me an e-mail letting me know that she's going to be updating her website, which is a really good idea - If your website is old or if you don't have one, you really do need to have a newer updated website. I suggest that for everybody. Her question was really to the point, how much should she spend on a website and how important, really, is having a website right now? Let me go ahead and cover the second question first: How important is having a website? It's important. You really do need to have a website. It's not nearly as important as everybody makes it seem, especially with the guys who want to sell you a website, but the reality is, you doneed to have a good website. Most people will go to your website and check you out a little bit before they choose to do business with you. It's similar to people reading reviews. Everybody looks at a review before they decide who they want to do business with. They're going to review you. If you've got good reviews, chances are they're going to check out your website. If you have an auto repair website that's made by a six year old, ten years ago, and it looks like crap - chances are that's going to turn them off. It doesn't take a whole lot of time, money, or effort to have a professional looking website, an updated website. It is important that you do have it because people will check you out online. Ever since I started doing my Car Count Daily videos, I've had a lot of people checking out my website. It just goes to show, when people find you they want to know more about you. That's why it's important you have that good, and updated website. How much should you spend and how much time should you spend doing it? Not a lot because the reality is, most people aren't going to find you by searching for an auto repair shop in their area. There's just too much competition. Unless you really want to jump into that fray and work with search engine optimizers so that you're at the top of the page all the time - most shop owners don't have the time or money to mess with that. You just need to have a good looking website. You can get a cheap website. You can get one made for $500 and that's pretty much all you need to spend. I know it will be easy for most people in the industry to argue with me on this, especially with the people who are providing websites as a service. The reality is, you want a good professional looking website, but the majority of people are never going to find it. The only people who are going to find your website are the ones that are actually typing in, doing a search for you. On the other hand, you can get some beautiful made websites for thousands of dollars and then spend hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of dollars every single month to keep them optimized, to keep them on page one. If that's the game you want to play, that's perfectly fine. Me? I'd rather you just have a nice looking website so when they do look and check you out, they're going to find something really nice. I wouldn't spend a ton of time on there. The reason why I talk about this in the way that I do is I find that too many of my clients are spending entirely too much time putting together the perfect website. They spend hours, and hours, and hours with their designer and back and forth, back and forth for the perfect website that the majority of people are never going to see anyway, or it will be difficult to get it in front of the right customers, at the right time. Put your time, and effort, and money where people are really going to find you. I'd suggest market more to your current clients than market to people that have never seen you before, which is what your website is essentially doing in the automotive repair industry. You're marketing to people that don't know you and chances are they're never going to find you anyway, even though you have a beautiful, well-made site. The better looking your site is, doesn't get you to the top page of Google or the main search engine. Put your money, and time, and effort in things that really matter - like your marketing. Have a good, professional looking website, but you don't need to spend thousands of dollars and hours putting that together. -- Ron Ipach (a.k.a Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

Car Count Daily | Episode 6 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox TRANSCRIPTION: As most of you probably are well aware, the iPhone is the dominant player in the market, so more people have iPhones than most other phones. Argue with me on numbers, but there are a crap-load of iPhones out there. I want to talk about what's happening on the iPhone and how you can use it to your advantage to get more customers to your shop. There is this app on here, and hopefully you can see this, it's that, right there, it's that little map, it says underneath it, it says maps.That is the Apple Map app. There, I said it right, it's difficult to say. The Apple Map app. When, people are searching for local businesses to do business with and they have their iPhones, they're clicking that three and half times more than the Google Map. Google is the dominant map software but not on the iPhone. We know a lot of people have iPhones and three and a half times more people are searching using the Apple Map software that's on there.Now why is that important? Well let me go ahead and open up by phone again here, and show you why that's important. When, I click on that, if I type in auto-repair, which I did just before I started this video, look what's happening here. Can you see that? Can you see those start ratings underneath there? You can see that word Yelp right next to it. See, Apple is using Yelp for their review software. So, if you don't have a good review on Yelp happening for you, you're missing out on more business.Now, look, we always get into these wild conversations when I'm doing this live in front of auto-repair shop owners. They're telling me everything they think about Yelp, doesn't really matter, because if you're not playing ball with Yelp, and if you don't have a lot of really good reviews on Yelp, it's hurting you. Remember the majority of people are searching, for a new place to do business with, on mobile phones. More people use the Apple iPhone than others, and if they're using that, they're using the Apple Map app, which, is now showing only Yelp reviews.That's just something, I wanted to, no judgment on anything, I just want to let you know that, that's happening. If you're not paying attention to it, if you don't have really good Yelp reviews, it's definitely hurting you with iPhone users, of which, there are plenty of them. If you don't personally have an iPhone what I want you to do is go look and see what your shop looks like when somebody searches on an iPhone.Find somebody that's got an iPhone, type in auto-repair in your area and see how you look. See how you rank in there. If you rank really high, fantastic, you're probably getting a lot of calls that way. If you're ranked really low I guarantee you're missing out on a lot of business. Go check it out, do whatever you can to get as many great Yelp ratings as possible, so you get a lot of stars and you get a lot of phone calls.

Car Count Daily | Episode 5 Click Here To Subscribe For DAILY Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox This is something that I'm hearing from shop owners constantly when we're talking about car count levels in their auto repair shop: "Car count is down in my shop because cars are made better." If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times, and chances are you've probably said it yourself. Look, I'm not going to tell you cars aren't made better because that would be sheer stupidity. The fact is that cars are made better. Cars are made to last much, much longer than they used to. But... That's not the reason why car count is down in shops. How do I know that? Well, a recent study came out that said the average car on American roadways is over 14 years old. Let me say that again... The average car is over 14 years old. That's not a new car. The average. That means for every brand new car out there, in order to have an average of fourteen years, that means there's a car that's 28 years old. There is a balance there. If the average car is 14 years old, those are the cars you work on. Right? 14 years ago the cars weren't made as good as they are now, and even if they were, they're 14 years old right now, odds are that they're going to need a lot of maintenance now or in the near future. It's important to make your shop available for those repairs. Don't get caught up in the thinking that the car count is down simply because cars are made better. Those cars that are made better are not your business. Those aren't the ones that are going to give you more cars in your bays and increase your profitability. The most of a shop owner's profits is going to come from the cars that are older, and the average car is much older than it used to be. Clear the "cars are just made better" excuse out from your mind, understand that there are plenty cars out there, it's just up to you to go focus on your marketing and attract more customers to your shop.

You might be thinking I'm going crazy, right? Talking about advertising in the Yellow Pages in this day and age, but for some shops, advertising in the Yellow Page still makes sense. Now, bear with me. Don't stop and think I've gone off my rockers. Let me explain what I'm talking about: Everybody's clientele is different. What is the average age of your clientele, of your better clientele? You want the people that are coming in and spending money with you. If you're finding that you have an older clientele, chances are, most likely, they're still using the Yellow Pages. Admittedly, I had to go over mom and dad's house to get a Yellow Pages because I don't have one at my home, but look, I'm not of the age demographic that is off of the internet. A lot of people are on the internet but quite a few people are still intimidated by the internet, and they're more likely to grab a Yellow Pages and search for a business to do business with. We don't want to alienate them, and if you're staying out of the Yellow Pages, you have a 0% chance of them ever calling your shop. This isn't for everybody. I mean, All I've been doing recently is broadcasting the importance of getting found online and getting referrals. Look, I get it, and I can't wait to hear the comments down below the post after this. For some, as a matter fact, for a lot of auto repair shops, advertising in the Yellow Pages still makes sense. If you recall, if you go way back depending on how long you've been in business, when I first started working with auto repair shops about 20 years ago, Yellow Pages was the dominant place where everybody advertised. If you remember what it was, it was very expensive and there was just page after page after page after page of display ads, and your chances of getting noticed amongst all that noise were pretty slim and none. Everybody hated the Yellow Pages because it was so expensive, but I found a way, and a lot of my clients found a great way to put in a really good ad and get a lot of business from the Yellow Pages. If you've been with me for a while, you know my style of advertising is a lot different than what most other people will do. The ads that we put in the Yellow Pages actually got a ton, and I do mean a ton, of phone calls, from perspective clients. If you put together a kick-butt ad now you could get the same results. I currently have a Greater Cincinnati Yellow Pages book here with me. I'm in a suburb just north of Cincinnati. There is an entire auto repair section. It starts on one page and it ends on the very next page, and that's it. A front and back of one page is all it is. Remember, this used to be pages and pages and pages of display ads. Right now, display ads, this one has one, two, three, four, five. Five display ads on this side, and we've got a small ad right here and an even smaller little in-column ad, a couple over there, and that's it. That's for all the auto repair shops that are in this area, and there are quite a few of them, by the way. Everybody else has decided to stay out of the Yellow Pages. Remember the problems with the Yellow Pages before. They were busy. There were too many, too much competition. They were expensive. Right now, that's not the case, so that's the reason why I would encourage shop owners to maybe look at using the Yellow Pages if you're trying to attract an older clientele. Again, if you find your older clientele are not the demographic that you're going for, then the Yellow Pages is the wrong idea, but if you're in a retirement community, if there's a lot of elderly people around you and you want to attract them to your shop, this could be a really good place because they still use this. They're not walking around with their mobile phones looking for a shop to do business with. They're actually still using the Yellow Pages. There's a lot less competition. The ads have gotten extremely cheap compared to what they used to be. The Yellow Page reps, the reality is since everybody's shying away from the Yellow Pages, they're giving great deals. I mean, they're giving away everything possible to get you to advertise in the Yellow Pages. Leave no stone unturned. Investigate the possibility. Look at the clientele that you have. You might even start asking people, "Hey, do you still use the Yellow Page, Pages?" and if a lot of them do, that might be a really good place for you to start advertising again. -- Ron Ipach (a.k.a Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

Let's say you're looking at your shop's appointment book, and you could stand to use a few more cars in the shop today. You need to know how to get cars in the shop right away. I'm going to give you three very quick, easy, and cheap ways to get the phone ringing, and get that appointment book filled: Idea Number One It's not earth shattering. It's using email marketing. If you've collected and have current email addresses for your clients, all you have to do is just come up with a terrific offer. Now, remember, we're trying to get them in your shop today. So, we want to give them a great offer, to show up today. Let them know that they're getting this special offer, because you need more cars in the shop today, you need them to respond right away, and you need them to bring their car into your shop today. So, the offer is very, very important. A wishy-washy offer isn't going to get somebody to respond. Come up with a kick-butt offer, and email it to them. Now, the problem with email is, not everybody looks at their emails every single day, and you don't have emails for everybody in your database. But, hey, it's easy, it's simple, it's cheap, so go ahead and do it. And hopefully, some people are going to see it, and they're going to respond today. For idea number one, if you've sent emails before, then marketing via email shouldn't be a difficult thing to do. Idea Number Two This is the way that I love more than anything else, is using a mobile phone and text message marketing your offer to them. So, if you've been collecting and getting permission to send them texts (which you should be doing), you can just simply send a kick-butt offer to them, and get them to respond immediately via text. Now, you can do them one by one, just grab your phone and start texting people individually, or there are some services out there that you can group text everybody, and get them all done in one sweep at a time. But the important thing to know about text message marketing is, it's a brilliant way to contact people, because 99% of texts get opened. And even more importantly, 95% get opened within the first three minutes [Forbes]. So, you send out a text, people are going to look at it, and they're going to respond within five minutes. Now, if you put together a kick-butt offer, you will get your ringing right away. I love that idea, and on a separate video we'll kind of go into detail on exactly how to do your texting and everything. That's a much larger subject to cover. Certainly not one I'm going to be able to cover here. Idea Number Three You're going to hate this idea. I know you're going to hate it, but it's a tool you already have, and most people under-utilize the tool. And that is using one of these. A phone, okay? Just a regular, old-fashioned, home phone, and you start dialing for dollars. I mean, think about this. How many people have been in a shop that declines services? Well, wouldn't it be a great idea to call them up, and just kind of look at all the people that decline services, and come up with a kick-butt offer to get them in the shop today. Let them know: "Hey, we have a few slots open, I'd like to fill it." "This is once in a lifetime offer." "I'm going to give you an offer you can't refuse." Dial for dollars, and that will get people in shop. Now, I know you hate it. Let's face it nobody, especially an auto repair shop owner, wants to get on the phone and start cold-calling people. But, hey, you want to put people in your shop today? You've got their phone numbers, you've got their buying history, you've got their unsold service history. Dial for dollars, and people will come to the shop./ Now, those are three quick and easy, down and dirty, inexpensive, almost free ways, to get people into your auto repair shop. Pick the one you want, and do it. --> Ron Ipach (a.k.a Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

Car Count Daily | Episode 4 Click Here To Subscribe For Daily Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Click Here To Subscribe For Daily Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox We all know as local business owners how important it is to get those online reviews because most potential customers read those things before they make a decision whether they want to do business with you. As a matter of fact, 90% of consumers read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business. Because of this, auto repair shops should want to collect as many positive reviews as possible to stay ahead. In the automotive industry, for getting new customers in the door, there might not be a more essential tool than positive online reviews. It can make or break a business plan. From a consumer's point of view, Google will almost always be the resource used to find an auto repair shop in each area. Not only this, some potential customers will view online reviews for the sole purpose of ranking shops, or choosing one over the other. The auto repair shop with the most positive reviews and best Google ranking is most often going to be the one the consumer decides to go to for their car repair needs. The same goes for reviews on both Facebook and Yelp. Some shop owners may be asking clients: "Hey, if you liked our service, please give us a review." And this is a proven strategy as 7 out of 10 consumers will leave a review for a business if they're asked to. However, if they're not giving reviews, how can they expect to get reviews back? There's something maybe a little karmic about that, right? If you're not doing it, how can you expect other people to do it for you. Aside from that, if you're not writing reviews, how can you tell them how to do the review? In other words, if you've never given a Google review, or a Yelp review or a Facebook review, and you've never physically done it yourself it's going to be hard when you ask somebody to give your a shop a review. A shop owner may say - "Sure, I'll give you a review, just show me how to do it," now you're scratching your head and saying, "I have no idea how to do it. I've never given one myself." What are the chances that they're actually going to give you a review? Get in the habit of writing as many reviews as possible using all of the local review sites, so you know how to navigate the waters, and you know how to actually write the review. Secondarily, sitting down to write a review is not easy. If you get in a habit of sitting down trying to figure out what you're going to say in your review, chances are when you do it more often, you'll get better and better at it. It will start to flow a little better. When you're asking a client to write you a good review, not only are you going to be able to show them how to do this, but you're going to give them some suggestions on how to write a good review for you because, after all, that's what we want to do. We want to get as many good, positive reviews from our happy customers as we possibly can. Getting in the habit of writing two reviews per week, will ultimately attract more online reviews for your shop. -- Ron Ipach (a.k.a Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

Maybe this has happened to a number of you auto repair shop owners out there… you put together an offer to send to your prospects and clients. Not just any offer, I mean a really, really killer, can’t-miss deal like "$50 off any service that you perform." Now you know that there will be skeptics out there looking for the hidden strings, so you announce that there is no minimum purchase required and no restrictions on what they can buy. And to prove that you won’t jack up the price first and then take the $50 off the total later, you tell them not to produce the coupon until after they’ve been presented with the bill. Oh, and for the icing on the cake, you offer a 100% refund if they aren’t totally thrilled with their experience with your auto repair shop. The timing is right. Folks are always looking for the good deal. They need what you are offering. You send your no-fail offer to the right list of folks, and then you get ready for the bundles of people beating a path to your door… but they never come. What the heck happened? Did you miss something? Was the offer too good to be true? Wouldn’t you just love to ask every one of them why they didn’t take you up on your offer? Even the most experienced of marketers aren’t immune to this phenomenon to a certain degree. A couple years ago, I offered to give away copies of a brand-new marketing course to the first 200 shop owners that wanted them. The offer was (I thought?) brain-dead simple. Invest $197 to get the course. Take 60 days to go through the course then call my office and get all of your money back. (WOW!) I also added a 30-day, no-excuses needed, 100% money back guarantee too. And to cover what I thought was the final hurdle, I assured everyone that there were no more payments and nothing else to buy. While I still ended up doing very well with this campaign, even though I was a bit short of my goal of 200. What went wrong? Was the offer too good to be true? Was it too complicated? Did I miss something? The point of today’s message isn’t to commiserate about the lack of response to our advertising efforts. Nope, it’s to tell you about a free online site called Survey Monkey that we can use to help us find out where we went wrong with our offers. With Survey Monkey we can set up a quick 2-minute survey and ask our prospects why they didn’t respond. And then, based on their answers, hopefully we’ll be able to craft or edit existing offers that will get a much better response the next time. Because I was able to survey clients who the deal was offered to, I was able to improve upon my course offer and fill the last few spots to hit my 200 goal. Hopefully if your shop can start surveying clients and prospects more often, you'll have a better handle on what they want and what offers will get them more excited. - Ron Ipach (a.k.a. Captain Car Count) President/Founder of Repair Shop Coach More articles and content like this and originated through Ron Ipach's Car Count Daily campaign Auto Repair Shop Owners, Managers, and Automotive Industry Professionals are invited to join 'Car Count Daily Boosters' LinkedIn group to provide resources and gain insight on boosting car count DAILY and filling up the bays in their shops.

Car Count Daily | Episode 3 Click Here To Subscribe For Daily Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Welcome to Car Count Daily. Today we're going to talk all about being a star shop owner. Before you think that's a good thing, let me show you what I mean about being a star shop owner, specifically when it comes to your marketing. Trust me, you don't want to be a star shop owner.... See what I mean by watching the video above...