Crunch time

 
 

Crunch time

30 Jul 2008

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Experts offer marketing tips to help garages through credit crunch

GARAGES have been urged to boost their marketing success to help survive the credit crunch.

Frank Massey and garage owner Stuart White joined forces for a day-long workshop at the headquarters of Diagnos.co.uk in Oxfordshire recently.

The talk saw Frank (pictured right), from Automotive Diagnostic Solutions, talk alongside Stuart, the owner of independent garage Complete Car Maintenance in Surrey.

The tips were all aimed at helping workshops maximise their business success during the current economic squeeze.

Key to this, said Frank and Stuart, was successful marketing and promotion that was targeted at a specific audience and measured, so that its effectiveness could be measured and reviewed.

Stuart said garages should consider the following four points to help achieve successful marketing:

  • Ask new clients how they found out about your services
  • Concentrate on specific, well targeted promotions
  • Request feedback from your customers
  • Focus on your strength as a business

“Garages need to think about what they want to achieve, what their unique selling points as businesses are and what makes them strong in their particular area,” said Stuart.

“Without asking your customers for feedback and checking the effectiveness of your marketing you run certain risks,” he continued. “The boss of a famous US retail company once said: ‘Half of the money I spend is wasted, I just don’t know which half’.”

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