The Independent Body Shop's Guide to Marketing

When you speak with marketing expert after marketing expert in the collision repair industry, you’ll start to sense a trend:

“There’s a huge opportunity for independents to dominate markets. Independent collision shops have great opportunity to compete with MSOs for page one on Google. Google loves local businesses.”

“It’s an ever-changing industry. The big companies are clueless about the opportunities available to them and how far ahead they can get of their competition.”

“In our town, revival of supporting local, downtown is thriving. The big shops are never going to experience personal connection we have with our communities.”

In order: Danny Sanchez, Steve Ward, Megan Williams. While “marketing” is just one of many hats collision repair shop owners must wear throughout the day, these three professionals are laser-focused when it comes to branding, advertising and selling a shop to communities. And to them, being a small fish in a big pond isn’t a handicap—it’s an opportunity.

And that’s because “marketing” to these individuals is not a 14-by-48-foot billboard or a 30-second radio spot—marketing is an everyday interaction with the community. If you want to secure a DRP or fleet account, gain support from local businesses, trend on page one of Google or stand out to area families, Sanchez, Ward and Williams argue that a defined brand and a community-focused marketing approach is the key to it all.

So, don’t stress that MSOs have ridiculously large marketing budgets compared to your shop’s. As an independent body shop, these three would argue you have opportunities larger companies are often too big to truly capture—as long as you’re willing to connect with your community. Here’s your guide for becoming your local market’s go-to, trusted collision repair shop.

Know Your Brand.

Danny Sanchez will talk your ear off about how to build a professional website, how to rank No. 1 on a Google search, how to populate your website with keywords—but before any of that can happen, he’s got a few questions for you.

“Most [shop owners] don’t have branding guidelines,” he says. “So, we have a questionnaire to have something to go off of.”

Sanchez’s company, Autoshop Solutions, has become a go-to figure in the mechanical community, as he’s helped automotive repair shops develop a digital marketing presence on the web. Upon examination, he realized the similarities body shops and auto service shops shared, and decided to aid the collision community, as well.

“Body shops’ attentiveness to the importance of websites is at an all-time high,” he says. “With the amount of collision shops we've added over last year, competition has heated heavily.”

And while there is a standardized approach for improving websites and search rankings, the digital marketing overhaul process is anything but uniform—a truly effective website that appeals to local traffic needs to connect with the community. You must evaluate your consumer database, your work mix and your financial goals, and find not only who you’re selling to, but also what you’re selling to them.

“If your customers are mostly female, a red-and-black website is too masculine. You’d need a balance of color and appearance of branding,” Sanchez says. “You draw on that information and the customer doesn’t consciously realize it.”

So, to have a better idea of your audience and the brand you should be selling, take Sanchez’s advice: question yourself.

Check Your Community’s Pulse.

There are several numbers to which Megan Williams, director or marketing for Lefler Collision & Glass, would point to prove her position’s worth—most notably her operation’s 7 percent year-over-year increase in annual revenue (which now stands at $10.6 million) since she started just two years ago.

But there’s one statistic in particular that jumps out to her.

“We have this huge Ladies Night Out event each year,” says Williams, who will be presenting a course on marketing this year at NACE. “We had been doing that since mid-2000, but I took it from 100 attendees to over 250 people.”

That’s not a huge amount of people, but it is an exceptional increase (150 percent) in such a short period of time. What’s really notable here is that the concept for Ladies Night Out (a night where Lefler Collision teaches women how to properly maintain their vehicles) didn’t suddenly change—all that changed was how Williams chose to market the event.

“It’s really about helping people,” she says. “I was surprised to learn that most of our customers are women. So, I decided to really take this on and really market what it’s about.”

The turnaround required a shift in advertising format. While previous Ladies Night Out events were marketed solely through radio and postcard mailers, Williams added a strong social media presence, including paid promotions on Facebook.

“These changes in strategy have helped us narrow in to our target market,” she says.

While the event requires dozens of hours of preparation and planning, to Williams, the return represents something significant that must be measured beyond dollars and cents: It’s living proof that the people of Evansville, Ind., respond to local businesses offering a helping hand—thus, the shop’s brand should reflect that giving nature.

Yes, your shop must define its own brand, but then Williams says that brand must then conform to your community’s expectations. And you won’t figure that out until you get out in the community and initiate conversations.

Williams has served on the Evansville chamber of commerce for the past two years, and recently became a chamber ambassador, meaning she represents the chamber at area events (such as ribbon-cutting ceremonies) and speaks with area businesses and residents about how to improve the city.

Any business can host Ladies Night Out, but, as far as Williams knows, only one collision repair shop in Evansville does. And because of that, those traits that residents find so endearing are now associated with one body shop: Lefler Collision & Glass.

“Helping others” might seem like a basic brand on the surface—but with that tiny nugget of information, your shop can perform wonders, Williams says. After years of tinkering and research, owner Jimmy Lefler has become a staple not only in Indiana, but in the collision repair community as well, as his charitable efforts have taken him from area organizations that help disenfranchised youth to sponsoring orphans in Myanmar. And because Williams took the time to understand her market, branding any of the shop’s charitable efforts is an easy choice in her quest to make Lefler Collision the community’s go-to choice.

There’s no science in finding the brand to which your community responds, Williams says. All you can do is try anything and everything—whether it’s hosting an educational event or making a simple Facebook post—and check your community’s pulse.

Extend Your Reach to Business Partners.

When Steve Ward breaks down his marketing approach, his strategy slowly becomes more and more convoluted. But not because he doesn’t have a systemized approach—it’s because he’s in Southern California.

“It’s one of the most competitive markets in the nation,” he says. “We have thousands more shops than most markets. One city bleeds into the next. When you break shops down by zip codes, they overlap. Major cities connected by a single street.”

As the owner of California Marketing Group, Ward and his wife, Debi, have helped dozens of collision repair shops nail down a local marketing approach. But their specialty doesn’t lie in appealing to everyday walk-in customers—they focus on marketing to business partners (insurance companies and fleets) that improve operations and offer new revenue streams.

That’s why Ward is so aware of the zip codes bleeding into one another: When insurance companies or fleets research collision repair shops, they search from region to region for the best partnerships. Just as you would do for any paying customer, you should  understand these outlets’ needs and desires—doing so has allowed Ward’s clients to stand apart.

“It sounds like body shop marketing 101 to me. But ... shop owners have no idea that their marketing money should be going towards getting exposure in any area that produces a profit,” Ward says.

This becomes especially important when you consider how attentive MSOs are to insurance carriers’ needs (“For the smaller guy getting into game, this is his biggest challenge,” Ward says). Marketing on a local level, however, can fill that gap. It’s not about being the biggest option available, but presenting yourself as the most enticing option available.

Replicate Your Efforts Online.

Williams wouldn’t say her posts have gone “viral.” But in Lefler Collision & Glass’s mid-sized community, hundreds of shares and 40,000 page views from a single Facebook post is nothing to shake a stick at.

“All I did was make a schedule for the fireworks on July 4. I put our logo on it, and 40,000 people saw that,” says Williams. “It basically had nothing to do with industry. It was just something the community needed.”

This moment reflects a truth Sanchez really wants to hit home: Your web presence isn’t a separate entity from your business—it’s a continuation of your business’s brand and marketing approach.

“Everything you do online has to be consistent with your brand, with the audience you want to bring in,” he says.

For example, if a large segment of your audience is eco-friendly, you should populate your website with green cars; if your customer database is mostly women, certain design elements could make your business less appealing; and, in Williams’ case, if your community is deeply invested in local events and activities, making a simple Facebook post could spread your company’s brand to thousands of people in seconds. Being on a local level, Williams says her operation’s web presence caters to the community much more effectively than a generic MSO website.

This approach even extends to Ward’s main marketing focus: Your web presence should win over any area insurance companies or fleets looking for trustworthy collision repair shops in the market. In particular, your website should be set up as an elevator pitch for winning local business partnerships (see sidebar: Cater Your Website to Insurance Companies).

While Google’s algorithm changes frequently, Sanchez says one constant has remained true for years: Populating your website with the right keywords will put you far ahead of the competition. So, while keywords such as “collision” and “repair” help your shop trend higher in local searches, you must be aware of your brand as well. You need to sell a consistent message about your shop’s role in the community if you wish to win over customers and remain top-of-mind in the long run.

“From the amount of collision shops we've added over the last year, competition has heated heavily,” Sanchez says. “So, now is the time to get ahead of your competition.”