Can you remember what you were doing on any given day 15-20 years ago? Where you went and who you saw there? Probably not.
The trouble is, 15-20 years is an estimated timespan between collisions for most of your customers.
According to statistics at carinsurance.com, the average driver will wreck a car only three to four times in their life — that’s essentially once every 18 years, it reports. So odds are, if you repaired a customer’s vehicle the last time they crashed, you probably won’t be on their minds the next time they do.
Collision repair digital marketing expert Megan Fulkerson says there are ways to fix that.
The Backstory
In 2015, practically no one in collision repair was using digital marketing, according to Fulkerson, who’s now managing partner and a digital strategist for 3P Marketing based in Evansville, Indiana. She was fresh out of college back then, new to the collision repair industry, and working in marketing for a multi-shop operator (MSO).
By the end of 2019, that MSO was bought out by another larger, long-running MSO with shops all around North America.
“Our then-CEO, Jimmy Lefler, and I decided to start 3P Marketing then because we were heavily active in the [industry], and our friends across the country wanted the digital marketing tactics we had utilized to grow our market share,” Fulkerson says.
The Challenge
When a driver suddenly needs a body shop, it’s a total surprise and they’re usually upset. Add to that, they have little time to think about where to tow their car for repairs.
“Customers don’t know when they’re going to get into a wreck, so they don’t have time to shop around,” Fulkerson says. “There’s just an urgent need to get their car repaired.”
That urgency can either be to a shop owner’s advantage or disadvantage, depending on the condition of the shop’s digital presence, marketing experts like Fulkerson report. That’s because most people will pull out their mobile phones to begin the search for a collision repair shop.
At that very moment, it’s important for a shop to have an appealing, functional, updated website that can quickly answer a crash-stressed customer’s questions. Most repair shop websites aren’t up to the task, though, Fulkerson finds, making website design one of 3P Marketing’s key offerings.
“We find so often that collision repair shops have old websites, but you have to think of the website as the employee that’s working 24/7/365,” Fulkerson says. “It’s important that it loads fast and that its content appeals to search engine algorithms. If the site won’t load, potential customers will just go to the next shop listed on Google.”
The Solution
Along with a great website that loads fast, Google Ads are an important component in successfully marketing an auto repair shop because they help drive traffic to a shop’s website in the first place.
Google Ads works by allowing businesses, collision repair shops in this instance, to display their ads on the Google Search Network and YouTube. And these are key places necessary to both build brand awareness and instantly put a shop in front of someone who suddenly needs its services.
Fulkerson describes it like this: “Google Ads (once called Google AdWords) help ensure that when someone searches ‘collision repair’ that your shop appears in one of the top spots. The most clicks will go to shops that appear in the top three spots.”
Specialized services like BMW repair certification, for example, can be utilized as a search term for a shop’s Google Ads and on its website, and this helps to target specific customers.
Another important digital tactic is to make sure your shop uses video in its digital marketing, because video attracts attention. “Whether it’s video your shop hired a videographer to shoot or video shot on an iPhone, our team can put together 15- to 20-second spots and place them on Facebook, YouTube, or [run them] across a variety of different streaming platforms,” Fulkerson says.
She adds, “Video is a newer component of a shop’s digital marketing, and in the past year and a half it has become very important. But almost every shop is missing this today.”
Apps, too — are they in play to digitally market collision repair shops? Not so much, in Fulkerson’s experience.
However, geofencing — or putting a digital fence around competitors’ shops to see who’s visiting them digitally — is an older digital marketing tactic that Fulkerson says can be highly effective.
With geofencing, a shop can place an electronic fence around the roofline of competitor body shops and can then target ads to the individuals walking into that location. According to Fulkerson, geofencing is best used as part of a multi-approach campaign that pulls in a few different digital marketing tactics to ensure your ads are meeting that potential customer, regardless of how they are looking for a collision repair center.
The Aftermath
The hardest-working digital marketing campaigns will not be rigid and can bend and flex to match a repair shop’s business needs.
As an example, Fulkerson notes, “We can switch lanes on a digital campaign if a repair shop’s backlot gets to be too much. For instance, we can take a break and switch to a hiring focus.”
Digital marketing services can also change with the weather — through a tactic called weather targeting.
“We live in an area where there’s hail 10 times or so per year. Any time there’s a hailstorm out, we want our clients to be the fastest to get out their hail [repair] messages. That way, they can begin taking appointments the next day for hail damage assessment,” Fulkerson says.
She adds, “We take the stress off our clients by doing weather-based targeting for their city. So if it hails or snows, for instance, a certain set of ads is going to run.” For example, if there’s a 90% probability that it will hail, 3P’s team can create hail damage-related ads and set them up to run automatically.
“Shop owners like that because they don’t have to worry about getting their message out when weather events come,” Fulkerson says.
The Takeaway
Digital marketing tools for collision repair businesses are designed to keep shops top-of-mind with drivers nearby — people whose car accidents are probably spread out with years in between.
“We’re able to target people who are looking for collision repair in real time,” Fulkerson sums up. “You want to direct them to visually appealing, easy-to-use websites … having a good website that appeases the algorithms on Google is critical right now.”
Marketing experts like Fulkerson always tell business owners not to expect instant results — because like a car crash, there’s a buildup of energy just before the collision.
“Digital marketing will take a few months. Don’t start a digital marketing campaign to only run 30 days and [go] off. Try not to lose all the momentum,” she recommends about the process of building brand awareness.
In the first few months of running a shop’s digital campaign, marketing specialists are working to home in and decide which tactics are working best for the budget. And from what they learn, they’re able to share reporting and data so owners understand how digital efforts are shaping up.
In the end, the ultimate goal is to target that customer who hasn’t visited your shop in a long time—making it more likely they’ll choose you to repair their vehicle based on the message included within the ad they saw, such as a focus on safety, proper repairs, vehicle certifications, etc. And then they’ll know you’re there for them the moment they need you.
