Last month, I took a look at Bryan and Becki McGinnis’ foray into pay per click (PPC) and online marketing. As a reminder, in the last year, their campaign has resulted in an ROI of 2,716 percent of spend versus customer sales. Their website is now converting over 29 percent of customers and they pay less than $10 per lead and grow their new customer base each day. After hearing the McGinnis’ story, I decided that I also wanted to hear about the other side of the coin from their provider, and learn about the important steps to replicate a success story like Autovantage Service Center.
Todd Westerlund, the CEO of Kukui, who helped the McGinnis’, was happy as always to talk to me about the steps to making a successful campaign and why having a strong online presence is so important in today’s marketplace. Todd’s view is that many shops are successful at getting customers in their own town, but always need to be looking for new ways to grow.
According to Todd, “A great online plan tends to offer a great marketing ROI (when executed properly), especially when trying to attract new customers. PPC, in particular, allows you to attract the exact kind of customer that you want, right when they are looking for repair work. With PPC you can target consumers who are searching for terms such as ‘brake repair near me,’ which will usually only cost a few dollars per click.”
I asked Todd why he was so focused on helping the McGinnis’ create the right phone conversion plan, operations plan, customer service plan and so much more. He said that if they provided a ton of leads, but those leads were not retained, did not return, or did not convert, then the shop would not be able to keep them as a customer. Therefore, they really aim to help shops on all levels.
Todd said that a recent study found that 91 percent of consumers now read online reviews, so building a strong relationships with your customers is key.
“The better your relationships are, the better your reviews online will tend to be, which in turn will drive in more lucrative business to your shop,” he said. “We also strongly recommend being as proactive as possible about asking your customers to leave reviews for you online, so that you are not giving up control of your online reputation to a few potentially upset customers.”
I asked Todd how to start reviewing where you are currently with your online presence and he had some great advice:
“When reviewing performance, we recommend starting from the bottom up instead of the top down. For example, instead of looking at clicks, start by looking at the revenue that is being generated by each of your marketing sources. Then review the key drivers that are helping or hurting that revenue. For example, some shops spend a lot of money on marketing only to let half of their phone calls go to voicemail.
“If you look at the stats from the top down, you may think that you need more clicks or a better ranking on Google to drive in more revenue. But in reality, if you are letting half of your leads go to voicemail, your marketing dollars are just going to be wasted by adding more clicks. So, the end result really matters, not just your rankings or website traffic. Sometimes it just takes a simple internal shift in the shop to improve your marketing results.”
At the end of the day, this article is about more than just data, plans, and business. It’s about relationships that help each of us work together as a community to grow! This year Autovantage has won the Best of the Best Automotive Repair Shop in Auburn, Calif., and their lead technician won the Best of the Best Technician award in the city. They continue to have a great relationship with their online partner, and Todd’s son still woks in their shop!
