by Greg Sands
CEO Mudlick Mail

For repair shop owners, advertising was once as simple as buying a large advertisement in the local Yellow Pages. Those bulky directories were the best way for customers to locate a shop when they needed repairs.

But about a decade ago, the environment began to change. Customers started turning to the Internet more frequently to research information about services they required. Yellow Pages listings were replaced by stand-alone websites that allowed shop owners to provide a full spectrum of information about their shops and services.

Even more important, ­auto-makers began to build better cars. The steady flow of customers who would inevitably walk in the door with broken cars, slowed to a drip. As a result, many shop owners I know now spend the majority of their time performing maintenance (such as oil changes), instead of addressing major repairs.

When my business started to plateau because of this shift, I realized I needed to employ new marketing strategies to attract high-caliber customers who were interested in maintaining their cars. I couldn’t just wait for customers with broken cars to walk in the door.

The trick was finding the right marketing vehicle to reach the audience I wanted to target. Over the years, I tried nearly every form of advertising available and what I found is that most didn’t provide the return on investment I expected.

In the November/December issue of Shop Owner, George Lucas of U.S. Learning Inc. discussed why newspaper, radio and television advertising fails to deliver a return in the modern media landscape. I experimented with all three and agree that they don’t do the job. Not only can consumers easily ignore those vehicles, they also don’t give shop owners the ability to target by income, geography or any other demographic. Their market reach is simply too broad.

Lucas also discussed how mass mailings fall short because too many repair shop owner coupons get lost in the shuffle of other offers and get trashed.

But there are other less traditional advertising methods that, in my experience, also don’t produce results. Those mediums include:

Newsletters
Nowadays, nearly anyone can buy user-friendly graphics software and create their own personalized “newspaper.” I sent my customers a newsletter filled with articles about auto repair and other information about my services for two years. Though it was carefully crafted, my newsletter didn’t get me noticed. It took me too long to produce and I failed to understand that my target customer didn’t have time to read the information I was sending out.

Digital Efforts
It’s easy to get lured into the hype about social media and e-mail marketing. The idea of sending targeted e-mail campaigns seemed like a dream come true, but the reality was that my e-mails ended up in junk mail or deleted upon arrival. Facebook and Twitter are nice tools to connect with friends, but they don’t drive customers into an auto ­repair business. And while I think a good, search-optimized website is ­essential, I’ve learned that it can’t be the only marketing tool in your arsenal.

The Magic Bullet
After all that trial and error, I had to ask myself what I wanted to achieve through advertising. I came to the conclusion that I needed to find a compelling and cost-effective way to reach the middle- and higher-income customers located closest to my shops. Direct mail allowed me to achieve that goal. Through direct mail, I was able to target higher-income households within two miles of my shop. Direct mail also enabled me to separate myself from the pack with a stand-alone offer that was interesting enough to draw customers.

Of course, like everything, employing direct mail effectively proved to be a learning process. I cringe when I think about the first postcards I sent out and how unsophisticated they were. It also took awhile to determine which type of offers resonated most with customers.

Yet, despite some of the hiccups along the way, I wouldn’t trade direct mail for any other advertising vehicle available.

Making It Work
If you decide to do direct mail, you have to commit to making it part of your long-term marketing plan and ­devote the budget to it. Too many shop owners view advertising as an expense, but I view it as a return on investment. If you pick the right advertising vehicle, the more you invest, the higher the return. To make the most out of your direct mail campaign, I suggest the following strategies:

• Pick a direct mail company that specializes in your industry or at least has experience serving other businesses in your sector. A mailing service that caters to everyone (from auto repair chains to pizza parlors) is more likely to recommend offers that won’t resonate with your customers. They also may not understand how to help you better target the right customers for your business.

One company I worked with, for example, suggested that I give away free binoculars. But that offer made no sense for the customer base I was trying to attract.

• Ask for references. Ensure that the company you choose has a successful track record in your industry.

• Ask for samples. Don’t get fooled by deals on low-cost postcards. Oftentimes, the quality and size of those postcards is why the price is so low. And trust me, going cheap won’t pay off. A postcard that’s too small will get lost in a pile of mail, and a card printed on paper that’s too thin can rip, potentially rendering your message worthless.

• Make the right offer. Consider who you want to reach and create an offer that is most likely to appeal to that customer. If you want to target higher-income households, sending a coupon advertising 30-minute oil changes might mean more than offering an oil change for $19.99.

• Don’t give up. Direct mail takes time. If you do it one month and then take a break, you’ll never build momentum. I view direct mail as a chain. Every month you send out your cards you add a link. But if you take a month off, you break the chain and you need to start over again.

• Don’t say no. Attracting customers is only half the battle; what you do when they walk in the door will ultimately determine your success. If you’re too busy to service a customer, you will not only lose that individual’s business but any referrals that may have come out of that transaction. Meeting the increased demand that may result from your direct mail campaign could require you to increase staff or re-train front counter staff to work around the customer’s schedule.

In the March/April issue of Shop Owner, I’ll discuss how to best measure the effectiveness of your direct mail campaign.

Greg Sands is the CEO and founder of Mudlick Mail in ­Acworth, GA. The company provides demographically targeted, direct mail programs for automotive service and repair shops nationally. Greg also owns and operates 20 repair shops across the country. Greg can be reached at [email protected] or 1-866-794-0167.