5 easy tips for staying engaged with your collision repair shop customers

As you have probably experienced yourself, people are bombarded with advertisements all day, every day.  Ads haunt our peripheral vision on the highway, obscure the webpages we’re trying to view online, barrage our televisions, and litter our mailboxes.  Advertising is unavoidable—especially in this day and age, with our increasingly immediate and all-consuming technology.  Now, not all of this is necessarily a bad thing, but it can be tricky to get your message across as an auto body shop when you’re competing with so many other shops, along with every other kind of product and service out there.  The real issue happens when you try to create and maintain a lasting connection with your customers.  This is something that many of our collision repair shop clients have struggled with before coming to us, often having tried and failed to remain engaged with the customers they’ve acquired over time.

So, in an age where so much social grazing is happening, how can a business effectively stay in touch with its customers?  While this can be very challenging for many businesses, here are some great collision repair marketing strategies you can implement to remain interesting and engaging to your customers:

1. BLOG.  I say this practically every week, so I hope you’re already doing it!  Blogging is one of the most effective ways you can increase your pageviews and leads (and, therefore, customer engagement), so be sure to write great content every week for your website.

2. Build a lead database.  Capture the names and email addresses of people who visit your website every day by posting coupons, downloadable materials, and more.  Once you begin building up your lead database, you’ll have a core group of customers and potential customers to communicate with on a regular basis.  This will also help weed out the casual website visitors from the ones who are genuinely interested in your body shop services.

3. Develop a solid email campaign.  Yes, people do get a TON of emails every day, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not reading some of them.  If you make it worth their while to remain on your email list, your leads will look forward to your mail.  Send them links to helpful articles, offer exclusive discounts, mail video links, and invite feedback.

4. Jump on the social networking train.  If you’re not already on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, it’s time to develop a solid plan for using a few of the awesome (and FREE!) social media tools available to you.  Take the time to post thoughtful content, reply to comments, and host fun contests.  With social media, you can get super creative about engaging with customers without spending a dime.

5. Pay attention to your analytics.  If you notice that your customers’ levels of engagement are dropping off, it’s time to work a little harder to keep their interest.  Invite answers to a great question on Twitter, ask people to post photos of their favorite customized paint work, post a survey asking for what content people might appreciate from you, and more.

Do you have questions about staying engaged with your collision repair shop customers?
At Stratosphere Studio, a marketing agency dedicated to helping auto repair shops to increase their business, we would be happy to answer any questions you might have.  We can also develop a customized marketing plan to fit your unique needs or provide individualized services, such as professional blogging, website design, social networking, video services, and more.  We look forward to helping you!