With the utter demise of the Yellow Pages and many of us still confused about what role social media (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) has in our lives, advertising and thereby marketing management are more important than ever in a day in the life of your average shop and shop owner.
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I am strongly of the opinion that most of us of the tire and automotive repair worlds love to spend money on marketing, though far too many of us do this with no particular result in mind, with little or no research behind our efforts and no way of measuring the results. In light of this, it is not surprising that most of us don’t feel the benefit of our advertising and marketing efforts.
Advertising is one piece of the marketing process. It’s the part that involves getting the word out on the products and services we provide. It involves developing strategies such as where we place ads, how frequently we run them and in what medium (newspapers, radio, cable TV or the Internet). Advertising is the most expensive part of our marketing budget. A distant second would be market research. I am guessing the disparity between the dollars we spend on our advertising message and the fewer dollars we spend on market research might explain our results. Too often we are simply firing messages out there with little or no thought as to whom we are aiming at and whether or not we are selling what our customers and would be customers are buying.
Exploring the Marketing Engine
The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as the engine. Inside that engine you have the cooling system, the fuel delivery system and the exhaust system; each sub system important in its own rite, but a subset of the marketing engine whole. Advertising, market research, sales strategy and administration might make up that marketing whole. Advertising is only one piece of the marketing engine. It is marketing management that brings it all together in a cohesive strategy.
Noting our preoccupation with car count and our tendency to advertise and market with car count in mind, I would remind you that between acquiring new customers and retaining the ones you already have, retention marketing typically will be the greater priority. That includes an effort toward driving numbers of visits as opposed to attracting new customers. Acquisition marketing is very expensive and has a very low return on investment, but is a very necessary consideration in our developing a marketing strategy. Car count will be determined by your capacity and by what you want back from your business. A great marketing strategy is a means to that car count end.
The next important step is research. This is where we look at the market and its potential. We look at our competitors and what they are doing, and we start to look at consumers. In studying a market, it certainly is important for us to understand its potential for our shop and the products and services we offer. Part of this would certainly include our understanding who the competition is, what sorts of advertising and marketing they are doing and how effective they have been.
Part of this also would include our need to know who is out there. Is it a college town with lots of students or senior citizens, young professionals or a broad mix? In the process of all this we look at our own customer base, what they spend, where they live and what portion of the services we offer are our customers buying? Two very important aspects in this research phase are demographics and psychographics.
Demographics and Psychographics
Demographics are the characteristics of a group or population. Commonly used demographics \ include gender, race, age, disabilities, home ownership, employment status and even geographic location. Even though you may have determined what demographic groups you would look at and which are pertinent to you and your operation, individuals within that group will have very different perspectives about your products and services and will be motivated for vastly different reasons.
This is psychographics. To best target your advertising and marketing efforts, you not only have to determine who is buying (or will buy) your products and services, but what makes them choose to buy them. Out of this research gaps in what we are currently doing will appear and opportunities will become apparent and out of this we can begin to design our advertising and develop a strategy and identify a target audience.
Things we’ll look at are what we are looking to accomplish (our marketing goal), how we are going to go about accomplishing it (our tactics and broad strategy, which groups) are we targeting (women, young professionals, commercial accounts, seniors) and how do we measure success. This last is our laying out milestones for success, assigning a budget (3 to 5 percent of annual gross sales) adequate to support our plan and our having a process toward managing it all. If we can’t measure it, we have no way of managing it. If we can’t manage it, we shouldn’t do it.
A very, very important next step is the development of a marketing plan. This will include the development of advertising, the message or messages you will be putting out, the selection of media(s), setting that budget, assigning roles, responsibilities and expectations for performance and timing. Though all of this sounds very complex, a marketing plan is nothing more or less than our base lining our current performance, our deciding with a look at what we are currently doing and a look at what potential there is in our market and putting together a strategy toward something better.
Unlike a lot of the money we often throw out there in the automotive world, a marketing plan is precise and targeted and based on an in depth understanding of the market. There certainly is no guarantee of success but rather than throwing advertising dollars at the wall and hoping something sticks, our tactics, strategy and expectations are based on actual market conditions and tendencies, targeting specific consumers in very specific ways. All that remains is execution of the plan and measuring our performance.
We of the automotive world are assailed by marketing companies who promise the world and who often fail to deliver on the promises they make. Many of us take on this vitally important task, as though our days weren’t pretty full as it is, with advertising and attempts at marketing that are inconsistent, untargeted and mostly ineffective.
Marketing and the management of the marketing process is critically important, and if you are an owner that can dedicate the necessary time and effort to develop and deliver a marketing plan that is targeted, impactful and have the time to manage it, I say go for it. If you are an owner who is not blessed with the time and the knowledge to manage this important task, I strongly recommend finding an accomplished and capable partner to take on this task with you. His or her expertise and marketing abilities combined with your vision and oversight will assure our touching the right customers and would be customers in the right way to assure a positive result and success. That only happens if we partner with our partner. Only if we manage the process and set ourselves up for success.
Far too many of the shop owners and managers I have known over the years have looked at advertising and marketing as an expense, like paying the electric bill or the waste disposal company picking up our trash. Marketing is an investment in our operation and in our future, or as Clayton Makepeace said, “Top-flight sales copy is never a cost. It’s a profit center.”
Remember, a customer or would-be customer is a terrible thing to waste.
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