Your
Best Marketing Tool Will Cost You Just 25 Cents!
By Bob Cooper, Elite
Business Services
The obvious purpose
of any marketing program is to generate leads, and if it's well designed,
it'll not only cause the phone to ring, but it will help "pre-sell"
the leads. With that said, think about this. If you're like most people,
you'll take the advice of your friends over any media, because you
trust your friends, while at the same time you question the motives
of those who advertise. So it should come as no surprise that a General
Electric study found that word of mouth advertising is 3 to 5 times
more effective than any other media. So what I'd like to do with this
particular article is talk about the impact word of mouth can have
on the success of your auto service business. When I was in the transmission
business I was amazed by all my competitors. They would tell me word
of mouth was at the top of the list in importance, but when I would
ask them for any kind of numbers or percentages, they would rarely
have an answer. So it didn't take me long to realize that although
my peers felt word of mouth was a powerful marketing tool, hardly
any of them had taken the time to do what they really need to do:
Develop a way to stimulate referrals, and then monitor and measure
the result. Well, in order to compete with the giants who had a lot
more money to spend on advertising than I did, I took that leap, and
I used the results to grow some of the most successful shops in America.
So if you want to develop a more profitable, successful business,
and control your advertising budget at the same time, then here's
my suggestions to you.
First of all,
you need to conclude that although most people will trust you with
their cars and charge cards, what they are reluctant to trust you
with is their friends. You see, they know that if they recommend a
friend to a doctor, a lawyer, or an auto service center, and if things
don't go right, they'll have to carry that burden for years to come.
So you need to be well aware that if someone recommends a friend to
your shop, then they have an incredible amount of trust in you. The
second conclusion you need to come to is this. In the real world,
when someone does recommend a service center, they do far more than
just give out a name and number. Common sense, and listening closely
to your referred customers, will teach you that those referring people
are doing far more than just telling someone about you. They are actually
selling their friends on you.
So what you need
to do is take a deep breath, and consider this. If someone has enough
confidence in your service center to entrust you with their friends,
then from my point of view, you "owe" them. You owe them
for their confidence in you, you own them for their trust in you,
and you owe them for being a salesperson for you. So my question to
you is this. Are you doing an exceptional job of satisfying your customers
so that they might refer others to you? And are you asking each and
every new customer…"May I ask who referred you to us?"
And are you recording that information? And are you spending thousands
of dollars on advertising programs to bring in those leery, first-time
customers? Because if you are doing even one of these things, then
I have just one more question I'd like to ask you: Are you taking
just a couple of minutes of your time at the end of the day, and spending
twenty-five cents on a phone call, to call and thank the people who
are kind enough … to not only put their trust in you, but become
your absolute greatest sales force? I can only hope that your answer
is yes. Because if it is, then you're tapping into the most powerful
media on earth.
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