A couple weeks ago I mentioned that social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have quickly become, questionably, the most powerful marketing tools that you’ll need to add to your ‘marketing arsenal’. Unfortunately this sparked a bit of confusion and debate from a few clients that were being steered away from social media by other advisors.
You know me. I live, eat and breathe auto repair marketing. I invest heavily in my education. I personally mastermind with many of the modern-day marketing masters like Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer. Even though the basics may stay somewhat the same, the methods used to deliver our messages to our clients are constantly changing. There are already ‘do not call’ lists and ‘do not fax’ lists. Talk of instituting a ‘do not mail’ list is gaining momentum too. The majority of our emails now get blocked even before they reach our clients’ mailboxes. Voice broadcasting is getting more and more restrictive and could soon be legislated out of existence. And, if the FTC gets its way, soon most of our testimonials will be illegal to use in our advertising. What’s next? With all this stuff happening right now, it’s now more important than ever to keep an eye out for new ways to market your auto repair business.
I’ll admit, when I first was introduced to Facebook marketing (way back when), I didn’t realize how largely my business could benefit. There was certainly no way I use this as a business tool. But that was back when I was young and digitally naive.
I recently did some quick research on Facebook statistics and here is what I found, keeping in mind this is just ONE of the many platforms for social media marketing:
(Source: https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/)
• There are over 1.79 BILLION ACTIVE Facebook users.
• Every 60 seconds on Facebook: 510 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded.
• 42% of marketers report that Facebook is critical or important to their business.
• Over 5 billion sources of content is posted is posted to Facebook DAILY.
• Five new profiles are created every second.
• One in five page views in the United States occurs on Facebook.
With those kinds of numbers, with how many profiles are created every second exponentially growing our potential audience & target demographics, it seems like we should be paying a bit of attention to the social media sites like Facebook, huh? Telling you to ignore them right now would be like the horsewhip and buggy salesmen telling you to ignore that newfangled horseless carriage!
Remember, you are not your own customer, you’re an auto repair owner. Just because you might think that sites like Facebook, or Twitter, or even LinkedIn are silly and you’d never ‘waste’ your time on them yourself, it doesn’t mean that your customers aren’t ‘wasting’ their time there already. Look again at those incredible numbers I listed above just for Facebook alone!
Is this the magic bullet, the magic pill, the greatest marketing strategy to be discovered this century that you need to drop everything and devote 100% of your time and effort on? Nope. It’s just a small part of my overall ‘Auto Repair Marketing Plan for the New Economy’ and it’s already showing very impressive results so far – my biz is already up 112% so far this year using these same exact strategies (can’t argue with that).
Oh, by the way, did I mention that in most cases, these new strategies won’t cost you a dime to use (other than maybe an hour of your time per week)? You know I’ve never steered you wrong before and as always, feel free to do what you want with this information. As they say, you can lead a horse to water…
Have any thoughts or comments? Comment below.
Best,
Ron Ipach
