Advertising your Auto Repair Shop services on the Internet, are you getting your money’s worth?

If you are paying a few hundred (hard earned) dollars per month advertising your shop’s services on the Internet, how do you know if you are making money from it?

To simplify it a bit more, how do you keep your Internet Advertising Agency, or Online Marketing Specialist, honest?

After over ten years of talking to hundreds, if not thousands, of shop owners like myself (sorry, ex-shop owner) I have come to the realization that most of my ex peers like to play Ostrich. When it comes to Internet, Social networking, or any new online technologies, the great majority like to bury their head in the sand and leave their Ass ets exposed to the best sales person ((or BS Pro) that might sound quite knowledgeable and convincing enough.

Come on gentlemen! You are the ones that decipher all the intricate mysteries of onboard computer diagnostics, that spend hours pouring over Mitchell On Demand, AllData to arrive to a satisfactory solution for your customer.

Yes I know, I was there before, you don’t have the time to learn all that! And I must agree with you, when running a shop’s everyday operation there is hardly enough time to breathe. But that shouldn’t mean shelling out 6 to $12K per year trusting a few statistics and graphs, emailed or shown, by your friendly online marketing specialist. There are ways to keep them honest, and at the same time, know for sure that you are really profiting from your advertising.

Call Tracking and Honest Abe

Yes, between Graham Bell (or is it Cell? And Abe Lincoln, you can keep your Internet advertising sales person honest 99.9% of the time.

A call tracking number that rings on the phone line you choose, allows you to track all calls that originate from your ads. This makes for a real easy way to see if the money you are spending is producing enough revenue results to justify the expense. How? You access your call tracking account online every Monday morning to check all the phone numbers that called you the previous week from your ads. All you have to do is match the phone numbers against your customer database, looking for the ones that called AND came in to your shop that previous week. Supposing that you had three customers that came in, you figure out the average net profit that those 3 RO’s generated and you match them against the money you spent on the ads. Of course it wouldn’t be fair to just judge for that one week, this is a process you have to for at least a month or two to give you a fairly close average on you dollar’s performance. Great advertising proof that your ads are working, correct?

But, that’s not all, your call tracking number also allows you to use the information received as a great marketing follow-up tool. If you use a call tracking number company like the one we use, the reports that you access gives you all the phone number that called your shops. In 70% of the cases, it also gives you the name of the person that called, as well as the date and time. Now, after you checked the ones that actually called you and came in, you proceed to write down all the ones that DIDN’T show up. Those are the ones you want to call and follow up! A typical phone call would go something like this:

Hello Mr. Smith, this is Joe from Joe’s Garage, you called us on Tuesday at 10am, but we didn’t see you come in. Are there any questions that I can answer for you?

Hi Joe, No, I just needed a quick oil change and I ended up going to Jiffy Lube, I’m sorry.

Mr. Smith, I really want you to experience the quality of workmanship and the personalized service we offer our customers. If you allow me to have your email address, I would like to email you a discount coupon for $XXX dollars for your visit. You owe it to yourself  to find out, why we have so many satisfied customers.

You are serving two purposes here, you are trying to get the customer to come in and you are getting his/her email address for future marketing. Email addresses are worth Gold these days!  And, I really hope you are collecting them.

If you want to get more details on how to effectively use call tracking, as well as a fool proof way to use your email addresses to really start generating business, click on the Free Online Marketing Webinars tab above (or click here) and fill out the form.

One thing I guarantee you, no sales mumbo jumbo, no pressure selling, no BS. My concept is simple, ” Seeing is Believing!”, you’ll see for yourself all the great advantages that Call Tracking offers.

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