When Bill Knight opened his Indiana shop in 2006 it was just him. The early aughts version of the Knight Automotive website was created by one of his customers as a barter agreement, and he was mostly leaning on word of mouth to bring in customers. After his business coach recommended KUKUI, Knight turned to the company for a website refresh and marketing assistance.
That piece of advice has continued to be one of the best pointers his coach ever gave him, and has helped to exponentially grow his shop. Knight has since been able to move towards solely focusing on managerial tasks in his shop and is currently working to expand his business.
Multiplying Customers
For Knight, the results were almost immediate. After partnering with KUKUI and redesigning his website, he began to see more and more customers enter his shop.
“I was averaging four to five people a week coming in saying that they found out about us online,” he explains.
This was a big for Knight, who was self-admittedly stubborn to the thought of advertising beyond verbal recommendations.
“It took me quite a long time to grasp the fact that you have to have a huge online presence these days in order to really grow your business,” he says.
With Knight’s pre-KUKUI website, multiple competing repair shops near him would come up on Google before his. One of his main goals when working with KUKUI was to get his shop to be on the front page of local repair shop results—and they have made that happen.
“The old website had virtually no hits, and when you go from nobody to four or five people a week, that's huge,” he says. “If you take your average repair order and multiply that by four or five people, that really adds up.”
With those new customers came a lot of Millennials, says Knight, which has been important to him and his shop as his business grows.
“Working with KUKUI is a no-brainer for me, I wish I would have been able to do it when I first opened my shop,” he explains.
Strong Partnership
Boosting his shop’s website to the first page of online search results and attracting more customers were some of Knight’s goals that he was able to achieve partnering with KUKUI and working with his KUKUI representative.
“The KUKUI team has been able to tailor my marketing to my shop and exact goals,” he says. “They have really been a blessing to us.”
Knight mentions that his rep is only an email away, and responds immediately with any question he may have about his website or marketing. KUKUI’s overall customer service is incredible, he says.
Knight meets with his rep once a month to go over all of the different numbers and data on his KUKUI dashboard in order to discover what factors he and his team need to focus on in order to keep growing. And for Knight, that’s collecting email addresses.
“I'm not good at asking people for their personal information,” he says. “But I’m really trying to focus on collecting customer email addresses so I don’t miss out on being able to send them deals.”
He’ll also share the numbers from the dashboard with his team as a form of motivation to help push his business forward towards his goal of further expansion.
“You don't realize what the return on investment is on digital marketing until you actually bite the bullet and invest in a partnership with a great company like KUKUI,” Knight says.
To learn more about KUKUI, visit kukui.com.
