With national chains posing stiff competition for local auto shops, it’s important for these smaller operations to step up their marketing efforts. However, it’s not enough to just implement marketing for your shop — it’s important to track the success of those efforts, too.
Here are three reasons why your auto shop should take a look at the numbers and analyze your marketing efforts.
1. Determine Effectiveness
Arguably, one of the top reasons to track your marketing efforts is to see how well they’re performing. Whether your goal is to book more appointments, gain new followers on social media, or increase sales of a particular service, creating and monitoring these benchmarks will provide you with insight into your marketing efforts.
If you’ve been heavily marketing a particular promotion at your auto shop, but you don’t notice an increase in sales, then it’s likely you need to tweak your approach. The issue could be with your messaging, the design of an ad, the outlet used to display it, or the promotion itself.
However, until you begin tracking your marketing initiatives, you’ll have no way to know whether or not they’re working.
2. Gain Insight on Your Audience
Whether you’re utilizing billboards, radio spots, or social media ads, every piece of marketing will reach a different audience. By tracking the performance of each channel used, you can better understand how you reach different types of people and which channels are most effective at reaching specific audiences.
For example, you might find that placing ads in local papers attracts older clients from surrounding towns. Alternatively, you might find that social media ads can attract younger ones. Many social media networks also allow you to target specific individuals by age, race, location, and various interests.
3. Reallocate Funds
Marketing campaigns cost money — whether it’s the cost to utilize a particular type of media or the amount you pay someone to orchestrate outreach efforts. A key component of tracking your marketing efforts is to determine if you’re getting a return on your marketing investment.
For example, if you’re getting a better return on ad spend from email outreach than you are from social media marketing, then you might want to invest more in the former and pull back from the latter.
Simplify Your Efforts
While many larger businesses can devote entire teams to marketing initiatives, smaller businesses don’t have the same bandwidth, both in terms of people and finances. Often, owners and managers are left to devise, implement, and track marketing campaigns while still performing their day-to-day duties.
There is, however, a better option. To automate the processes of marketing and streamline the process of tracking results, auto shops look to BayIQ. Designed specifically for auto shops, the BayIQ platform allows businesses to create loyalty programs, request online reviews, and send out promotional materials through both email and text message.
By creating individual profiles for each of your shop’s clients, BayIQ can keep track of their services and even allow them to schedule appointments online.
Marketing is a constant journey, and one that needs to be carefully monitored in order to steer it in the right direction. With BayIQ, shop owners can offload the routine tasks of outreach and focus on what they do best in the shop. Request a demo today to learn more!