Marketing/Design Ideas

This temporary text on this (still ugly) homepage is a smattering of additional marketing ideas in no certain order. [A stream of consciousness…] Some of these ideas can be free and nearly instantaneous. Others could, if done poorly or all at once, result in needlessly extravagant prices to pay.

The website menu for your Detailing services can show images of particular detailing services.
Before and after shots?

Are you already encouraging commercial fleet customers?

“Unlimited” car washes, but not at the scale/volume of the East Main St operation? Or just X number of economy washes per month? Recurring subscription charges?

Can we sell memberships or gift cards online and offline?

Comparison grid of types of car washes

Referral discounts. 10% or a free wash for every new paid membership with your registration number.

Special offers to regular/repeat customers for combo oil changes and washes

Post a video: A drone coming from each direction on Home Road then ‘turn in’ to your lot. For potential new customers who can’t quite grasp the idea of maps and/or can’t visualize where you are, but can click on a video, see landmarks they recognize — and find you.

Do you have a POS (point of sale) system? Multiple “registers?” Can you use it for marketing campaigns, e.g., redeem coupons, coupon codes sent via email, scan a barcode or QR code off a phone screen?

Blog: An ongoing set of easy-to-relate-to articles that will stay available on the website. Updateable as you may want, but written to be somewhat “evergreen,” meaning rather timeless in nature. Not a listing of “special offers this month,” but educational blurbs, 200 to 600 words that help fight fear, uncertainty and doubt, show you that you care and aren’t just profiteering at any cost. Articles that may show why things are as they are, such as what’s the real difference between high-mileage oil and conventional, etc. What weight oil is best for gas mileage and why one grade over another (0W-16 vs 0W-20 or 5W-20 vs 0W-40, etc.)
Regarding oil, BobIsTheOilGuy.com has interesting forum discussions.
Why Meguires and not just anything else on Autozone shelves.
I’ve already written a couple of overly wordy articles as test cases.
Why your underbody washes are better than DIY hand-held wander-wands for $3.50 in quarters.
Why a customer can go to various car washes and get such varying results. To include beater-brushes that can damage/remove paint, differences of your employees vs the other guys.

As we prove the worth and potential of the website we can look at additional B2C and B2B and B2G marketing and how the future of sales continues to be increasingly “online.” (Business-to-Consumer/Business/Government). The rule of thumb is that since the covidiocy started, online business acceptance has exploded. It’s mainstream. And, prices have dropped and/or services have become better, faster, more extensive, and more reliable.

We’ll tie in “web analytics” that give you a sense of traffic you’re getting. Something definable and measurable.

We need to give away something to get visitor contact information. It doesn’t necessarily have to be tangible or an actual cash outlay or discount. Maybe it’s a pdf that explains the importance of regular washes, oil changes, and periodic detailing of various types. Maybe it’s a free or one-time membership that gives regular discounts or early promos.

Consider the giveaway of info that might even cannibalize some of your business but gain you endearing credibility instead. Build trust, allay the fear that some ne’er-do-well employee will petty steal stuff from the car. Example: Explain what products and techniques are used to detail a car. Show a before and after shot, close-ups that really show a difference in a stain that was removed. Show the value of the significant effort and skill needed by the specialist. Show them the price and the pain of what they’d experience trying to do what your people do every hour of every day. Customers are time-crunched, lack skills, and even the physical ability to do what you can do for them.

An analogy within my own business: I could, for a $175 fee, teach a business owner how to set up their own website. It’s not cost effective for anyone to do that but a shoestring start-up entrepreneur with more time and inclination than money. There are people, though, who DO have the time, the interest, computer equipment, software, and ancillary skills to take me up on the offer. I’m compiling a book. Maybe. As a blog.

What other vehicle specialty services and products can you tie into? Maybe with a paintless dent removal specialist who arrives on a schedule to work on clients’ cars? You help him advertise at effectively no cost to you, you’re giving him a venue to work from, he’s seen by your customers and he shares revenue.

Create online surveys sent after a service that allow customers to vent any complaints AND allow you to react and keep them as a customer before they damage reputations.

Likewise, you can create polls with pre-selected choices.

Promote your brand by supporting local do-good non-profits

You’re promoting Mobile 1 and Meguire’s and riding their coattails. What other brands are class leaders you use?

What various factions of car afficionados can we be appealing to? E.g., are you already affiliated with people who promote car shows? What other affiliated industries and businesses could be a stream of referrals and repeat business?

Can we affiliate with other websites and industries that sell online and subsequently capture a percentage of their sales volume after referring customers to them? IOW, join an affiliate network or partner directly with particular complementary companies.

Can you connect with, let’s say Mercy Health Systems or Speedway and offer perks to their gajillion employees and their families? The big companies then regularly email their employees advertising that you exist and have a specific offer for them.

Maybe link to YouTube videos that compare and test various car-guy interests. YouTube’s ProjectFarm channel can be interesting at times.

I can start nailing down online ad costs as we get a little closer to defining the many exact search terms you’d like to target. IOW, if someone meets a certain demographic (e.g. Facebook) or types a certain search term or phrase (Google/Bing, et al) then you may appear in their search results above the organic search results. Organic search results are free, usually better than ads, and hard to get to be number 1 or close to it _every_ time. Even in a nearly ideal real-world, Google tends to let you be #4 one day, and #5 another day and #1 the next day. Some of that irregularity may be happenstance of technology and some by their formulas (their closely guarded algorithms). SEO is a gray art because it’s all based on detective work, trying to outsmart Google. Google, in turn, doesn’t want to be gamed by the few who’ve figured out the formula. That hurts their revenue. They want to game us, the masses.

Online advertising is as much a game of gambling as anything. Like the old adage, “I know that half my advertising works, I just don’t know which half.” It’s getting better with online marketing, but it’s not a science yet. Not at first anyway. Let’s choose an amount you can afford to lose, chop up that amount into lots of small gambles, and set the dice to your desired parameters. Let’em roll and see what happens. Measure it, try again another way. Rinse and repeat til something happens you really like. Example, let’s try a total of $200 spent over one week and no more than $70 in any one day. Maybe “car washes springfield ohio” or “auto detailing Springfield Ohio” or “what to look for in a car detailer.” We better first have a blog article (one of the webpages) that directly addresses that last search term. It would be the ad’s landing page able to incentivize them to give you their email address and/or twitter handle, aka username.

Once you can collect someone’s Twitter address you could send them prompts and discounts, particularly when a stretch of good weather is on the way. In the summer they get to drive a shiny car, in the winter, they get the salt pressure washed away.

What if we did a video of a drive-through of the car wash? Such that we’re mentioning stand-out features. Sometimes though, mundane qualities are worth featuring. Examples: Old commercials of Shell gasoline with it’s trademarked “Platformate.” Remember the 1966 Pontiac Bonneville bursting through the paper barrier on the Bonnevile Salt Flats. That spot marked where the same car without Platformate had allegedly coasted to a stop? What wasn’t told was that EVERY gasoline brand had a its own equivalent of Platformate and any gasoline that didn’t have the same would not perform well.
Remember Lucky Strike commercials in the height of BigTobacco’s fight against the Surgeon General’s statements against smoking? Lucky Strike, amidst the uproar of anti-smoking campaigns, merely calmly stated, “It’s toasted.” Like that was something huge? All cigarette tobacco was toasted.
Or the Volkswagen Lemon print ads and their follow on varieties that touted simplicity and economy. Two things we need more of in these crazy days.

Smooth and easy access, no crazy traffic, established long-time employees who do it right.

“Get what you want, pay for what you want.”
Simple menu of items to choose from.

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