Ron Ipach

Somebody recently sent an email to me asking the same question that I get dozens of times every single month. Basically, it says, "Ron, how much should I budget for my marketing?" I have a very simple answer to that. One that actually a lot of people are gonna totally disagree with me... My answer is, throw out the marketing budget. You do not need a marketing budget, and here's the reason why: A lot of times, I've heard five, six, or even three percent of your growth sales should be used towards advertising. Now, that might be a good number for some months, but it's a horrible number for other months. But if you're budgeting and you're only gonna have a certain amount of money for marketing every single month, your business is gonna be going to be heading on a downward slope. For a lot of our clients, the summer months tend to be their busiest month. They don't need to be spending a lot of money on marketing at all during those months because they're just naturally busy. But then when the kids go back to school in August and September, everything screeches to a halt. So I'm gonna say throw out the marketing budget and spend it where and if you need it. You don't need to spend a lot of money on marketing if you're naturally busy. You do need to spend a lot of money on marketing if you're gonna be slow. Now, this goes to ... I guess I should mention, it's not a matter of just throwing a bunch of money out there on marketing. You have to do good quality marketing. You have to have the right message sent to the right market at the right time using the right media. In other words, a way that they're actually gonna see your marketing. You have to get all of those things straight. So I'm going to probably guess that if you follow me and participate in my Car Count Daily campaign by watching my videos, you're getting a good idea, a good sense of what good quality marketing is. I'll assume that you're doing good quality marketing. Now, if you're spending money on good quality marketing, you're gonna get good results. If you don't need it during the summer months, slow it down. If you're gonna need it in the fall, you need to raise it up. I don't like marketing budgets for that reason, because everybody gets used to spending the same amount of money every single month, whether they need to or not. Pay attention to your numbers. Pay attention to what your shop is telling you. Pay attention to what your car count's telling you and spend the money when needed. Also, if you're running short of your numbers, you may need to spend a lot more money and put in a lot more effort on your marketing for those specific months. Don't look at marketing as an expense. Look at it as an investment. A marketing budget is something to be spent. Marketing investment, your marketing dollars if it's done right, is actually an investment. It's not taking money, it's actually attracting more money to your shop.

What The Marketing Budget Should Be For Every Auto Repair Shop Owner Somebody recently sent an email to me asking the same question that I get dozens of times every single month. Basically, it says, "Ron, how much should I budget for my marketing?" I have a very simple answer to that. One that actually a lot of people are gonna totally disagree with me... My answer is, throw out the marketing budget. You do not need a marketing budget, and here's the reason why: A lot of times, I've heard five, six, or even three percent of your growth sales should be used towards advertising. Now, that might be a good number for some months, but it's a horrible number for other months. But if you're budgeting and you're only gonna have a certain amount of money for marketing every single month, your business is gonna be going to be heading on a downward slope. For a lot of our clients, the summer months tend to be their busiest month. They don't need to be spending a lot of money on marketing at all during those months because they're just naturally busy. But then when the kids go back to school in August and September, everything screeches to a halt. So I'm gonna say throw out the marketing budget and spend it where and if you need it. You don't need to spend a lot of money on marketing if you're naturally busy. You do need to spend a lot of money on marketing if you're gonna be slow. Now, this goes to ... I guess I should mention, it's not a matter of just throwing a bunch of money out there on marketing. You have to do good quality marketing. You have to have the right message sent to the right market at the right time using the right media. In other words, a way that they're actually gonna see your marketing. You have to get all of those things straight. So I'm going to probably guess that if you follow me and participate in my Car Count Daily campaign by watching my videos, you're getting a good idea, a good sense of what good quality marketing is. I'll assume that you're doing good quality marketing. Now, if you're spending money on good quality marketing, you're gonna get good results. If you don't need it during the summer months, slow it down. If you're gonna need it in the fall, you need to raise it up. I don't like marketing budgets for that reason, because everybody gets used to spending the same amount of money every single month, whether they need to or not. Pay attention to your numbers. Pay attention to what your shop is telling you. Pay attention to what your car count's telling you and spend the money when needed. Also, if you're running short of your numbers, you may need to spend a lot more money and put in a lot more effort on your marketing for those specific months. Don't look at marketing as an expense. Look at it as an investment. A marketing budget is something to be spent. Marketing investment, your marketing dollars if it's done right, is actually an investment. It's not taking money, it's actually attracting more money to your shop.

I want to talk 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. You May Also Like: Putting An Auto Repair Ad In The Yellow Pages 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. You May Also Like: What's New In The Automotive Repair Industry? 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. You also, at the bottom of that form, you want to have like a little disclaimer that by singing below, and you want to make sure they sign it, by signing below, you are allowing Ron’s Auto Repair to contact them by mail, by phone, or any other electronic means necessary. You want to have that little catch-all, cover-your-butt legalese on there so that when they sign it, they literally have given you permission to market to them using all of those means.It all starts with good information if you want to be able to market to your current customers. Your current customers are your best source of income, and we’ll cover that on other videos like this. You got to make sure that you have the data first so that you can market to them in the future. note: Be sure to watch the replay of my Live Webinar

Hi Shop Owners! I wanted to come over shop owner forum for this special edition of Car Count Daily and offer you an exclusive invitation to join me TOMORROW NIGHT on my Free Webinar - Registration is now open for my free Auto Repair Webinar - I'm going to be talking about what it takes to go from just being an ordinary shop to an EXTRAORDINARY shop. What do I mean by ordinary? It's where 95% of shop owners lie. Car Count numbers aren't nearly where they should be The shop is not meeting their financial goals. Their time is being sucked up. They're working entirely too many hours. They're not getting a chance to spend time with their family. In other words, the shop isn't exactly what they thought it was going to be when they started it. What I'm going to be talking about is what it takes to be in the top 5%, where it's making money hand over fist, where you're being able to take time off. You're going to be able to spend time with your family, go do what you want to do with whoever you want, whenever you want to do it. Those things that if you roll back to the day that you started your business, you thought you would be able to do. If this sounds like you, click here to learn more and register now... (** WARNING: Spots are filling up FAST, Click here to Reserve NOW **)

Hi Shop Owners! I wanted to come over shop owner forum and offer you an exclusive invitation to join me TOMORROW NIGHT on my Free Webinar - Registration is now open for my free Auto Repair Webinar - I'm going to be talking about what it takes to go from just being an ordinary shop to an EXTRAORDINARY shop. What do I mean by ordinary? It's where 95% of shop owners lie. Car Count numbers aren't nearly where they should be The shop is not meeting their financial goals. Their time is being sucked up. They're working entirely too many hours. They're not getting a chance to spend time with their family. In other words, the shop isn't exactly what they thought it was going to be when they started it. What I'm going to be talking about is what it takes to be in the top 5%, where it's making money hand over fist, where you're being able to take time off. You're going to be able to spend time with your family, go do what you want to do with whoever you want, whenever you want to do it. Those things that if you roll back to the day that you started your business, you thought you would be able to do. If this sounds like you, click here to learn more and register now... (** WARNING: Spots are filling up FAST, Click here to Reserve NOW **)

CAR COUNT DAILY HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY! After a long weekend, I know how hard it may be to find the motivation to get back in the swing of things tomorrow. However, for you and your shop’s success, it’s essential to dedicate your time in doing everything it takes to be a successful business owner. And to think like a successful shop owner. Also, I wouldn’t be Captain Car Count, if I didn’t mention the importance of focusing on your marketing. Watch the video above for a mindset jumpstart. “As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has a meaning.” – Barbara Sher

Car Count Daily | Episode 2 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 Hey shop owners. Captain Car Count here, sometimes known as Ron Ipach, and welcome to yet another edition of Car Count Daily. Today I'm gonna get a little serious with you, because I need you to understand one very, very important concept. This concept is so important that the survival of your business and shop management hinges on you understanding what we're talking about here today. What we're gonna be talking about here today is the number one thing, the number one most important thing you could possibly do for your business every single day that's gonna make you more money, give you more time off, make this business a success. Do you know what that is? Let me give you a little bit of a hint. Captain Car Count. What is it that I talk about every single day? Car Count. Marketing is the number one thing you gotta do, because whether you realize it or not, and I'm sure you do realize it, if you don't have a customer in your shop that's giving you money, guess what? You're not making money. You need to focus on getting customers in the shop, because that's what's gonna make your business happen. It doesn't matter how good your technicians are, doesn't matter how good you are, doesn't matter how awesome your location is, or how nice you are, and how you bend over backwards for customer service. That doesn't matter if there's not a car in your shop. You can't make any money on a car that's driving past your shop. You have to do something every single day within your shop management to get that car that's driving by your shop to stop at your shop and get it up on a lift, because then you have a chance of making money. If you're not making money, you're not in business. Right? So that's why I say the most important thing you need to focus on every single day is your marketing. That's why we have this Car Count Daily thing going out to you every single day, because I need you to focus on it. There's a lot of ways to get customers in your shop, but it all starts with you. You have to have focus, you have to understand how important it is to get those cars in your shop first before you can actually get those cars in your shop. So this is a daily thing. Every single day, focus on this number one thing. Now I get it. There's a lot of other things to focus on, but that all comes later on after you get a car into the shop. You need to get enough cars in the shop, so it's focus, focus, focus on the most important thing. Every time I go to a conference and I'm asking shop owners, "What's the number one thing you need in your business?" They all say, to a tee, they all say, "I need more cars in the shop." If that's the number one thing you need, and I'm telling you it's the number one more important thing for you to have, that's why I'm saying it's the number one job you need to be focusing on every single day. What gets focused on gets achieved. Focus on that marketing, and the rest of the business and shop management can fall into place after that. Let's work on the marketing. I'm gonna be here to give you a lot of ideas day in and day out. Stay with me, stay with me day in, day out, and watch these videos, and I'll give you plenty of ideas on how to boost those car counts every single day.

Car Count Daily | Episode 1 Click Here To Subscribe For Daily Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox Hey shop owners! Welcome to Car Count Daily. I'm Captain Car Count, sometimes known as Ron Ipach. Let's say you're looking at your appointment book, and you could stand to use a few more cars in the shop today. That's probably most of you that are watching this video right now. You need to know how to get cars in the shop, like right away. Well, I'm going to give you three very quick, easy, and cheap ways to get your phone ringing, and get that appointment book filled. Would you like to know what they are? Well, great. Hang on. Idea number one, it's not earth shattering. It's using email. 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, look, 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. So that's idea number one. It's nice and easy, you've sent emails before, so this shouldn't be a difficult thing to do. The second way, which is the way that I love more than anything else, is using a mobile phone and texting your offer to them. So, if you've been collecting and getting permission to send them texts, 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 messaging 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 five minutes. 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. Now, the third way, and 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 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. Nobody wants to get on the phone and start 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 you will get people in your shop today. Now, those are three quick and easy, down and dirty, inexpensive, almost free ways, to get people into your shop. Pick the one you want, and do it. You will get the phone to ring today. You will fill up that shop today. Click Here To Subscribe For Daily Car Count Daily Tips Straight To Your Inbox

Every day during your work week I'm going to deliver to you one tip, trick, tactic, strategy or insight that you can put to use for you right away to immediately start to boost the car counts in your shop. That means over the next year you're going to get over 250 videos, audios, and blogs that you can consume in less than three minutes per day and then act on them in less than two. INTRODUCTION TO CAR COUNT DAILY CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE TO CAR COUNT DAILY (ABSOLUTELY FREE)

Every day during a shop owner's work week I'm going to deliver one tip, trick, tactic, strategy or insight that can be put to use right away to immediately start to boost the car counts in every shop. That means over the next year you're going to get over 250 videos, audios, and blogs that you can consume in less than three minutes per day and then act on them in less than two. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO CAR COUNT DAILY

Free Report: Everyone knows how expensive advertising the repair shop can seem at times. So much so that many auto repair shop owners are hesitant to even begin to construct an auto repair marketing game plan. Because of this, in a file attached, we dug a little deep to provide you with 10 absolutely free ways to market your automotive business in order to boost the car count in your shops. Check out these 10 Strategies to Increase Your Car Count Without Spending Any Money (file attached) Enjoy. - Captain Car Count 😃 P.S. For more free daily content please subscribe here: http://www.carcountdaily.com Free Report.compressed.pdf

All, Last week I held a free tele-conference for my clients and I received so many positive comments on it that I'm going to do it again and open it up to the rest of you that may be interested in getting more car count. (NOTE: This is all pure content - no sales pitches whatsoever!) For details, go to www.SuccessfulShopOwner.com/?page_id=257

All, Please check out my new video trailer for The Auto Repair 'Event'. Let me know your opinions of it. CLICK HERE TO WATCH IT Thanks!

Please answer this question... "If only I had ______________________________ , my business would be so much better." (I realize you may have more than one answer, but only list the top one or two 'wishes' that immediately pop into your head.)

If you need more good customers, or want to get your best customers coming in more often to spend more money in your shop, you'll want to check out this free marketing course. CLICK HERE to get the Free Marketing Course Let me know what you think about when you get it. Best, Ron Ipach

All, If you're finding money to be a bit tight right now, here's a promotion that'll help bring in some quick cash for you. CLICK HERE TO SEE IT Best, Ron Ipach

Happy New Year to all! In case you've been living under a rock, you may have heard of this little community on the internet called Facebook. What you maybe didn't know is that Facebook is a great place to attract new customers to your shop. Together with my friend Greg Pitstick (one of the leading authorities on using Facebook for business) we just shot a brand new video explaining how this all works. You can watch the video here: www.4carcount.com Get ready to take lots of notes because it's packed with a lot of great info. Enjoy , Ron Ipach PS: Watch it right now, because I'm not going to leave it up on the internet for very long. www.4CarCount.com

Hi all, I just came back from Las Vegas where I held The Auto Repair Event. Here is a video I put together for my clients where i talked about the 'new' economy and where the future of marketing your auto repair shop is headed. (Note to forum moderator: this is also being used as a 'sales' video for the recordings of The Event. If it is outside the rules to have this type of video, please remove it. To re-shoot the video without the links to my sales page would take too long.) Enjoy... http://theevent2010.s3.amazonaws.com/Event%20audio%20sales.mp4

Here are some stats that I came across the other day with regards to where people in the US are spending their time these days… 76% of people in the US actively use the internet The average person spends over an hour every month on Google The average person spends over an hour every month on YouTube And get this… 126 million in the US are on Facebook and they average spending 32 minutes socializing each time they visit!!! Even better, 42% of people over the age of 50 (our best customers!) use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter – and that number doubled over the past year! Lets contrast that to a few other tidbits… Yellow Page usage is way down (I couldn’t find any official figures, but you already know this is true) Newspaper circulations continue to slide by double digit percentages every year More than half of TV watchers record their programs (and blow by the commercials) The cost of mailing a letter is going to cost 5.6% more real soon Soooo…. The majority of Americans are getting online and spending an incredible amount of time while there, and the effectiveness of the ‘traditional’ way of marketing your business is declining quickly and getting more and more expensive. Any thoughts on where you might want to focus your efforts now and into the future?? The Best Way To Get Noticed Is To Stand In Front Of (not behind) The Stampeding Crowd! Best, Ron Ipach, CinRon Marketing Group

Last week I sent out an email to my shop owner clients titled, “Zero Cost Advertising for Your Auto Repair Shop that Really Works” that was promoting my upcoming Auto Repair Event in Las Vegas. A few hours later I received an email from a past client that was obviously upset that the email didn’t contain all the nitty gritty details of what my new strategies were, as well as full instructions on how to put them to use. He called me a ‘plaid suit salesman’ because my email got him so excited about the killer results that I got from testing my new strategies that would produce new customers in his shop without spending a dime on advertising, but then I made the dastardly sleazy switch – in order to get the strategies, it would cost him money to learn all the details on how to put them to work for his shop. Apparently, unlike with his business, when he packages up his knowledge, expertise, and experience and then markets them to his clients, he’s allowed to get paid for performing them; I’m in an entirely different business. When I market my knowledge, expertise and experience, mine should be given away for free. Does that sound right to you? Is it sleazy of me to expect to get paid for the services that I perform? If you think so, look in the mirror and ask yourself the very same thing. If the answer is yes, then adjust your business plan accordingly. Then whenever a customer is unwilling to spend any money to fix his car, just go ahead and fix it for him for free. Forget about all the money and time you’ve spent honing your skills for the past dozen years. Forget about the knowledge you’ve gained while being in the trenches running your business. Forget about the enormous risks you take every day as a business owner – because after all, since this guy doesn’t WANT to spend money on his car… he’s entitled to your services for free. What a great business model, huh? You’ll get quite the reputation in your community, right? Sure the profits will be non-existent. Maybe you can make it up with more volume? Okay, okay, I know I’ve gone way over the top to show how ridiculous this guy was being. I’m sure you got my point a long time ago since I have no doubt that you’ve dealt with folks just like him and were left scratching your head while trying to figure out their logic. I hope you fired them too. Since when is developing an excellent product or service, marketing it in a compelling way so that your prospects get excited about having it, and then expecting to to get paid for it, drum up images of a sleazy cigar-smoking overweight balding guy in a plaid suit? Sheesh! Am I wrong, right, or somewhere in between. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Best, Ron Ipach, CinRon Marketing Group

As some of you know, I always go away on vacation for the entire month of July. Right now I’m writing this while sitting on a breezy sunlit balcony, overlooking an oil-free (for now) Gulf of Mexico. I have to admit, the prospect of spending another 3 weeks with these same ‘harsh’ working conditions doesn’t suck How can I afford the time and money to go on vacation for an entire month – and more importantly, how can you do it too? Easy. I made the decision to just give up! I threw my hands up and said. “NO MORE!” No more: * Trying to do everything myself * Dealing with pain-in-the-ass clients * Keeping lousy employees * Wasting time on unprofitable work * Allowing people to waste my time * Dealing with other peoples emergencies * Doing $15/hour work * Excuses for not succeeding When I finally gave up all that crap and fixed all those problems, a wonderful thing happened… I found myself with a whole lot more time and money. I know this almost sounds waaaay too simple. You probably were looking for some super complicated formula, maybe a map to the holy grail, or the recipe for the secret sauce. But no. Just give up! Just think of all the time you’re wasting dealing with bad employees and the problems they create? How much of your valuable skills are wasted doing work that could easily be handled by a low-wage employee or an outsourced provider with special skills that you don’t possess? How much time and energy is being sucked up dealing with folks that continue to be a pain-in-the ass, or just as bad, always ask you for favors or special pricing? If you spend just an hour a week dealing with each of these problems, you’re wasting over 360 hours per year (There’s your month-long vacation, plus plenty of extra days to play ‘hooky’ throughout the rest of the year!!!) And please don’t discount what I’ve said here because you think ‘your situation is different’. It’s not. We all have challenges that we must overcome in one way or another. If a shop owner in rural Canada, 20 miles away from the closest town; a shop owner operating in the ‘poorest city in America’; and a shop owner surrounded by 42 other auto repair shops in the same two-mile radius can all figure out ways to create million dollar businesses – plus find the time to get away and travel – so can you. Let me ask you, on the list above, what are you holding on to that is more important than you finally being able to accomplish all of your goals and dreams? What are you willing to give up in order to make the change? Best, Ron Ipach CinRon Marketing Group www.TheAutoRepairEvent.com

If you’ll recall, a couple weeks ago I asked for your help and asked you to watch two new video trailers that I’m considering using to promote my upcoming Auto Repair Event in Las Vegas this October. In case you missed it, you can watch them by CLICKING HERE Thank you to all 1123 of you that watched the videos so far and special thanks go to the 86 folks that responded on the blog or via email with their opinions regarding which was the right video to use. The results were very interesting and instructive because they were split evenly 3 ways: 1/3 preferred the first video; 1/3 preferred the second; 1/3 liked both but either couldn’t make up their minds or they wanted elements of both to be used in the final video. A few of you even used very strong words to convey the strong opinions you felt about each video; love, hate, awesome, crap, nails-on-a-chalkboard, etc. So what have I learned from this? First, even though I’m sure most of you had an opinion which video you liked best, only a small percentage were willing to tell me what it was. How many opinions – good or bad – are you NOT hearing from your clients about your services? Whatever you’re hearing, multiply them by 10?? Second, as long as the marketing strategy is solid, there is more than one right way to get it done. In my case, I’ll need to use both trailers, otherwise I’ll risk alienating the 1/3 of my audience that would have preferred the other video. How many ways are you advertising your specials? Are you stuck on the same message and using it over and over? If so, you may be losing 1/3 to 1/2 of your audience because they’d prefer a different message or a different way of being contacted by you. Third, over 1000 folks watched the videos, so I know that a good portion of my audience is willing and able to watch videos online. If your clients are getting online, how much effort are you putting forth to use this totally free way to market your services to your prospects and to stay in contact with your current clients? (Here’s my shameless plug: If you want to discover how to market your auto repair biz online for a teeny-tiny fraction of what you may be spending to do it offline, you definitely need to be at this year’s EVENT! I’ll be showing you in very simple terms how easy it is to do it, or how to get it done for you.) Finally, test! For the cost of a few hours of my time and a free email, I found out that I’m on the right track. I received a lot of constructive comments, got a lot of folks excited about attending the Event, and heard from a lot of old clients that have been out of the loop for a while. If you’re going to try an unproven marketing strategy with your clients, test it small first. If the results are good, quickly roll it out to the rest of your list. If it fails, you’ve learned what NOT to do, plus you’ve saved a lot of time and money too! Best, Ron Ipach CinRon Marketing Group www.TheAutoRepairEvent.com

The reality is, no matter what kind of economy we are in, some shops will do well, and others will fail miserably. Below is a video that I recorded last year that talks about the economy and it's effects on our business. Enjoy!

If you can stand the thought of having a few more good customers in your shop every single week, check out these videos that will show you how. You'll get several dirt-cheap or even free ways to put a few more butts in your bays. CLICK HERE to access the videos. (BTW, this is all pure content. Not even a hint of some sort of sales pitch to buy anything else!) Enjoy!

Guys, I could use your help. I just completed two video 'trailers' to help promote an upcoming seminar. If you have a couple of minutes, can you click on the link below and give me your thoughts? Thanks! Click here to watch