You might be asking, “How do I get more customers for my auto detailing business?” Let’s talk about auto shop and auto repair marketing and advertising ideas. You might be the best car detailer in the world, but that alone doesn’t guarantee that your business will be successful. You need to use marketing to bring in new customers, and we have some great marketing and advertising ideas for you to try!
If you’re new to detailing, you can build your business with the #1 business app for detailers by Mobile Tech RX. You can try the app completely free – signing up takes a few seconds. Mobile Tech RX has a ton of great marketing tools that will help you set up your customer database, schedule appointments, create branded invoices, share photos to social media, send automated text and email reminders, and more!
Attracting new customers to your business is one of the most important pieces of running a successful auto detailing business. This is where marketing comes in.
What is Marketing?
According to Hubspot, marketing is the process of getting people interested in your company’s product or service.
Let’s be clear on one thing though: marketing is not the same as advertising.
Advertising is a part of marketing, but it’s only one piece of many. Advertising is paying for ads in places like magazines, newspapers, radio, and even digitally on Google and Facebook. More often than not, advertising is the most expensive piece of marketing. In this article, we’ll talk about car detailing advertising, but we’ll also talk about other marketing ideas to help you get more business for auto detailing.
Idea #1: Use a CRM for Your Detailing Businesses
First, what’s a CRM? CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and it’s a piece of technology that helps you manage your interactions with customers and potential customers. Using a CRM helps you stay connected with your customers and improve your profitability.
The Mobile Tech RX detailing app has a built-in CRM to help you keep an updated list of all of your customers. You can use this list to send out email communications, text reminders, and see who’s due for another service.
Idea #2: Create an Online Presence for Your Detailing Business
Everyone is doing research online these days, and your potential customers are no exception. Before a customer will spend money on a product or service, they will do an internet search and make sure that the company looks trustworthy and professional. You need to be ready for these potential customers when they go to look for auto detailing services in their area. When you create a presence online, you are signaling to them that you are modern, engaging, and professional.
Here are four places you should be if you’re not already. If your auto detailing business is already in these digital spaces, you should focus on optimizing them and making them as professional-looking as possible:
- Create a Website
- Get a Google My Business listing
- Create a Yelp listing
- Create a Facebook page
Once you have these sites up and running, stay active. Communicate to your customers and potential customers by posting new updates and keeping pages up-to-date.
Idea #3: Use Email and Text Marketing to Attract Your Current Detail Customers
The great thing about a car detailing business is that cars never stay clean. If someone shows up at your shop for the first time to get their car detailed, they will most likely need another detailing service again a few months down the road. Your goal should be to get those customers coming back to you every time they need a detail. You can do this through email or even text marketing.
With the Mobile Tech RX detailing app, you can pre-program text reminders to your list of customers. For example, you can set up a program to text your customer a reminder 3 months after their last detail to come get another detailing service. They will probably appreciate the reminder and since you are top of mind, they will be more likely to go back to your shop than to a shop that didn’t remind them.
Idea #4 Try Advertising Your Car Detailing Business
I did just say that advertising isn’t all there is to marketing, but it’s still an important tactic to consider when you’re trying to attract new customers to your auto detailing business. Here are some channels you could consider advertising in:
- Print (Magazine, Newspaper, etc)
- Radio
- TV
- Billboard
- Direct Mailing (Auto Detailing Flyers)
- Digital (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc)
Idea #5: Measure Results!
The first and number 1 rule of marketing for your car detailing business is to measure. If you’re not careful, you can spend a lot of money on trying a lot of different marketing ideas, advertising especially. You want to make sure that you’re seeing results from what you’re spending. By results, I mean a tangible number like increased customer base or increased revenue for your auto detailing business. Watch how Matt Moore uses our Analytics tool to measure his marketing ROI below.
You are going to put resources and time into trying different marketing ideas. You need to be able to know what auto detailing promotion works and what doesn’t so you can be a smarter marketer and a better business person. If done in the right way, marketing will offer you the reward of more customers and more money, and it will far outweigh the cost of what you put into it.
Fast-Track Your Marketing Success
Mobile Tech RX is the world’s number one business management app for detailing professionals. To utilize our marketing tools and make your detailing business more profitable, try Mobile Tech RX today for free.