Some Customers are More Valuable Than Others. Curious? Let Your Free Automotive Marketing Consultant Tell You!

Some shop owners pay an automotive marketing consultant thousands of dollars to "define their ideal prospect." Auto shop marketing doesn't have to be cost a fortune and it doesn't have to be difficult. It's never as complicated as the expensive experts try to make it in order to justify their salaries. You can see who your best customer is right here, then learn what to do about it, all for free. Ready to define your ideal prospect?

The very best customer you can have is the one who’s almost never marketed to. Dollar for dollar, women are your most valuable advertising prospects. And here’s why: Women talk... A lot. News Flash from Captain Obvious, right?

The fact is, women say about 25,000 words per day. Men only say around 12,000. So what’s the big deal, you ask? Well, ladies talk about everything that happens to them more often and in greater detail. The best advertising is word of mouth and... The best word of mouth advertising consistently comes from women.That's some outstanding free auto shop marketing!

As you no doubt already know, lots of men don’t like to admit their vehicle had trouble in the first place, not to mention that they couldn’t fix it. But if you treat the ladies well, they’ll sing your praises all over town.

Of all the customers you see in a week, women are also less likely to come up with their own diagnosis. You know what I’m talking about… those customers who walk into your shop and try to tell you exactly what you need to do to fix the problem they couldn’t repair themselves. Women tend to hand you the keys and say, “Fix it, please.”

But take a look at any auto shop and what do you see? Usually there are a few Car and Driver magazines, some copies of Sports Illustrated and maybe a stack of muscle car calendars. Not much to appeal to the ladies.

This is a huge part of what automotive marketing consultants actually get paid for... telling owners and managers how to gussy up their shops. But do you really need to pay big money for that advice? Those things are easy to address... vary your magazine collection, spruce up your lobby, clean your bathroom and for goodness sake, take the naked ladies off the wall.

If your overpaid automotive marketing consultant were earning his money at all, he'd tell you this: The most powerful tool you have to catch and keep your best prospect is your newsletter. As your representative in the community, your newsletter should be appropriate for a general audience, but it should be specifically targeted to women (without being feminine, of course) And most of the articles will be expressly written to get passed along to other women. This is common practice for women with magazines and books. So a single, inexpensive copy can travel all over town, bringing your name and automotive authority along with it. That's auto shop marketing with legs!

Other articles will be designed to be kept in the glove box for emergencies. That way, wherever a customer may be when she experiences car trouble, she has all your information right there with her. And because of the way your info is presented, she already trusts and likes you… much better than a business card. It's stealth auto shop marketing

The overpaid automotive marketing consultant strikes again... Another often overlooked demographic is the senior citizen. Sure, some are curmudgeonly to put it nicely, and there is a stereotype for being tight-fisted. But the mature customer often keeps his car for years, rather than trading it in periodically. And he tends to be very fastidious about keeping a maintenance schedule. As a consumer group, senior citizens are overall the most loyal... when you treat them right. So don't forget them when you're writing your newsletter. Keep them in mind and they'll return the favor!