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Before you spend a dime on any advertising or marketing, you need to realize that it's the employee experience that will determine how effective your overall marketing plan is. Everyone in your repair shop and everything you do on a day-to-day basis is the foundation of your marketing plan. We have all heard, "Happy employees create happy customers." This is more important today than ever before. Remember this: Your advertising and marketing programs do one thing; it brings you, people. It's your job to make the sale, and more importantly, create a customer experience so amazing it gives your customers a compelling reason to return!

When it comes to advertising, there is an endless list of strategies. And, it appears, that everyone has a different strategy and opinion about what works and what doesn't. So, the question is: What's Your Most Effective Form of Advertising?

With so many different models on the roads these days and the challenges of obtaining all the necessary training, tools, and technical information, should auto repair shops consider narrowing their focus on fewer makes and models? Is "All Makes, All Models" really achievable today?

Here's a tip I preach at the Elite Fly with the Eagles Marketing course: Study your competition in your local area, know everything about, learn what they do in your community, learn about their advertising strategy and marketing strategy, find what their strengths are, and find out what they do special for their customers. Ok...once that is done, here is what you do: Ready? Don't do anything that your competition does! That's right, in order to stand out, be different. Don't mimic what your completion does. Tell YOUR story and build a marketing and advertising strategy based on what YOU do that the competition does NOT do. For example, If you are active in youth sports, then make that your community story. Promote that everywhere. Remember, to stand out you need tell the world what makes you different.

If you are currently sending or considering sending out direct mail by carrier route, there is one specific type of address you should be aware of called a Drop Stop AKA Drop Address. A Drop Stop is a “locked” location where postal carriers do not deliver mail to the individual units or boxes. They “drop” the mail in a designated location for the individual complex to distribute. Take a look at the attached. This photo is from a client of mine from years ago that wanted to test this area and mail this specific complex that we identified to be classified as a Drop Stop. *Although the majority of Drop Addresses are apartment complexes, the vast majority of apartment complexes are NOT considered drop address apartments. In addition to designated apartment complexes, some other types of drop addresses are some gated communities, trailer parks, etc. There are no absolute rules or policies for establishing an address as a drop delivery location. The determination of a drop delivery location is based on several factors. It may be the choice of the recipients at the address such as for gated communities or prestigious high-rise condominiums that the residents don’t wish to have their physical address information disclosed and elect instead to have their mail distributed by their building management. Where a delivery location is defined as a business delivery point such as a trailer park, the USPS may make the determination that all mail will be delivered to a central location and the responsibility for distribution to the individual recipients will be made by other than USPS personnel. All that said, the first step is to identify if any of the addresses in your area are classified as drop addresses. From here I typically always recommend removing these from a saturation mailer. You could have a tenant that sees a special offer and simply takes all of them or someone doesn’t like an employee at your business or had a bad experience, etc, etc. and simply takes them and dumps them in the trash. In my opinion in 99.8% of cases it makes no sense to pay for postage on pieces that may just get dropped on a table. I’m sure you would much rather have your direct mail marketing going to a physical address that you know will get delivered into the intended recipient’s mailbox. If you have any questions regarding Drop Addresses or would like to see if there are any in your immediate area, please let me know. Josh Davis Mail Shark Executive Vice President of Sales Direct: 484-948-1611 Email: [email protected] www.themailshark.com/Auto-Direct-Mail

Before you call me crazy, please read on. Last year was one of the toughest winters in history for many shops in the northern states. Records snow falls and frigid low temperatures caused many shops to lose days, and in some cases weeks’ worth of sales. Many shops are still struggling to eke out a profit for this year. That’s the bad news, and the reality of what happened and what can happen again this winter. The good news is this: We all learned from it. And because of what happened we are better prepared, or should be better prepared for it. He’s a rundown of the strategy most of us will implement. Please feel free to add to this list, so we can all share in each other’s knowledge: · Create a Fall Promotion to get your customer’s car ready for the winter · Have a meeting with the entire staff; key on the service areas that are winter-related and check these items at every vehicle visit: o Battery testing o Antifreeze testing o Check wiper blades o Check tire condition o Suggest snow/winter tires o Check all fluid condition o Check operation of heater and fan speeds · Make sure your service staff is proactive with regard to needed maintenance services · Identify the next service for all customers, inform the customer. · Book and flood your customer base with service reminders during the slower months to boost sales · Implement a phone call system to call customer to remind them of recommended services, especially during the slow months · Create another Winter-Related promotion and send out during the months of January, February and March. o Flood your customer base with these promotions. No one can predict the future, and no one can tell how any effect any marketing plan will be. But there is one thing I CAN guarantee; if you do nothing, expect nothing. Your thoughts?

Got your attention? Good! This past Sunday I took a booth at the local Business EXPO in my town. I like doing these things for the obvious reason - It helps to promote my company's brand in my community. But the other reason I do it is to speak with the average consumer to gain information. One of questions I ask is this: "What model car do you drive and where do you go for service?" It is amazing to me how many people go back to the dealer for service work. And here are some of the reasons: It's a lease car, I didn't know you could take my car to you for service It's a new car, don't you HAVE to go back to the dealer? I don't know where to take my car, so I stayed with the dealer I have free maintenance (we all what "free" means) I don't want problems if I need warranty work My salesman told me when I bought the car that I had to used dealer parts and service Aren't the dealer mechanics better trained? By the way, when I asked about the level of service and convenience, all of them rolled their eyes and said something like this, "Well, it's the dealer, you know what you get." MAN! I can't help thinking that if they came to YOUR shop you would win them over just on your level of customer service! So, as you can see, we are in a fight with the dealers. The great news is that we are still the number one choice of the motoring public. Let's fight to stay that way. We, as independent aftermarket shops, do not aggressively market ourselves against the dealer. Maybe we should start? Your thoughts?

Yodle calls me at least once a day. Has anyone used this, or heard of it, or can provide any feedback? I would appreciate it. Here's a link to the Yodle site. http://www.yodle.com/?utm_source=google-paid-search&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=yodel&utm_content=Yodle%20-%20Core%20-%20General&utm_campaign=Branded%20Yodle%20-%20Exact