What You Need to Know about Detail Advertising

By Keith Duplessie

You’ve just completed a direct mailing to 5,000 residences in your target market neighborhood and you are staffed and ready— but all you got the first two weeks were five calls. How disappointing!

One of the greatest-held myths about advertising is that if you advertise, the customers will come. But getting new customers is much harder than that. It takes more than doing a direct mail or running a print ad and getting immediate results. Detailing is not a supermarket where the ad breaks in the newspaper and the shoppers flow in for the bargains. Detail advertising requires a consistent and organized plan.

Before advertising for new customers, you have to take care your current clientele. So you need to have a good customer retention program in place. Did you know it costs five times more to get new customers than to keep the ones you have, according to the U.S. Department of Consumer Affairs?

If you can reduce customer attrition by 5 percent, you can raise profitability up to 25 percent.

Think about it. Spending money on advertising for new customers while you don’t have a system in place to keep them is like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it. It may take a while, but eventually, every drop you pour in will flow out.

Therefore, everyone in your detail business must be trained to build relationships and provide great customer service, and you must keep in touch with customers by mail, e-mail and/or phone. This is a major priority.

OK, now that you have a customer- retention program in place, you can start to reach out to new customers.

Getting Customers to Bite

Your direct mail program didn’t seem to work — a good direct mail piece — and it might even have been read, but you didn’t get many calls.

Conclusion? There was nothing about it that motivated the customer to act on the mailing piece with any sense of urgency. Maybe they would someday, unfortunately, someday didn’t come for you fast enough.

The cardinal rule of most marketing efforts should be to make offers that get customers to buy now. There are many kinds of offers you can use.

Discounts are the simplest offer to make, but not always the best for a detail shop. You are selling a quality service and most buyers are looking for more than price.

For example, how much should you discount to get the business? No one knows for sure. You might be better off to give a free fabric protectant or hand washes for 90 days, rather than discounting price.

Many detailers don’t like discounting in any form, but think of it this way: If you pay $100 for an ad, there’s no guarantee you’ll get a single customer. But if a discount got customers and you gave away $100 in discounts, you could be making much more in sales.

Using the Right Hook

It’s important that your offer be attractive to customers. Step outside yourself and be the customer, not a detail business owner. You need to be certain you motivate the customers — are you offering something they feel is worthwhile?

To promote your discount, you can use a coupon with an expiration date. The expiration date gives customers a deadline. You’re offering them such a great deal, you need to set a time limit on it. They can’t wait for “someday,” especially if your offer expires next week.

The other benefit of coupons is you can use them to measure your advertising’s effectiveness. If you count the returned coupons, you know how many people were attracted by your offer.

Go a step further. Record the amount spent on each coupon or staple a duplicate receipt to it. Then, you’ll be able to tally how many people your offer attracted and how much the ad generated in sales. If you collect more data, you can start doing fancy charts and line graphs.

Where Are They?

Once you have your offer put together, you have to get it in front of the right customers. One way you can do this is by purchasing ads in newspapers, magazines or radio. While this form of advertising is good, it can also be very expensive.

Why not consider a couple of cost-effective ideas that will work for detail shops? They are what is called cross-promotion and referral marketing.

Cross-promotion is cooperating with other aligned auto service businesses to reach their customers with your offer. For example, co-op with body shops or auto repair shops. They hand out your flyers and you reciprocate by doing something similar for them.

And, when another business hands out your flyers to their customers, they are, in effect, endorsing your business. And, remember you’re doing the same thing. So, be careful to choose reputable companies you trust and are sure will do well by your customers.

Keep this in mind: it doesn’t matter how many people get your coupon — what matters is how many use it.

Referrals

What’s the best kind of advertising? Of course, word of mouth.

So what can you do to inspire more customers to refer relatives or friends? A referral program will help. Reward customers for any referrals, and it works better than just asking them to tell their family and friends about you.

A simple referral system uses business card coupons. On the front, print your offer. On the back, put “referred by” and leave blanks for your customer to put his or her name, number and e-mail address. Give each customer a few cards every time they come in. Tell them to fill out the back and give the coupons to friends and family.

If their relative or friend uses the coupon, they’ll get a free wash or a special discount on their next detail. Don’t be afraid to be generous — consider this a VIP customer since they refer others to you.

These referral programs can be so successful you might want to create a special database of referrers who you can mail to on a regular basis asking for additional referrals.

Ideas such as this are cost-effective and measurable. They work really well if you test different offers and keep track of what works best. Start using these techniques, and soon you’ll have more business.