Many older advertising techniques used online are based on print advertising techniques. At first, businesses built web-sites for brand awareness, expecting that visitors would flock to their business' physical location because of it, but they would never do anything to market their website. Businesses quickly realized, however, that if you build a site, you have to make it known to people on the internet. As search engines developed, a platform became available for businesses to connect with their customers much more efficiently, through keyword targeting. During this time, Google launched their AdWords program, and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) was born.

SEM is one of the most effective ways to gain an advantage over your competition, especially if your competition doesn't have a web presence. SEM involves a wide variety of techniques, but they all have one goal: to get web users to click on your advertisement and become visitors to your website. Once they become visitors, they're customers visiting your virtual shop, so to speak. SEM's purpose is to increase the likelihood that a potential customer using a search engine to find a site in general similar to yours will be taken to your specific site. SEM uses many techniques to associate key words and phrases in the mind of the search engine to your individual site, putting it higher on the results page. Needless to say, this is a very competitive field, with the number one spot on the results page being a highly sought after position. One of the advantages to SEM is your advertisements are placed on all of the search engine's content partners. With this, your advertisements are placed as banner ads on websites relevant to your own. So if you put up an advertisement through SEM and use the content partners, your ads could appear in local publications that your customers are visiting. This technique has been updated significantly, particularly in the area of targeting readers who are likely to be interested in the service offered.

As you can see, keeping up to date with marketing techniques is important to an auto body shop. Failing to do so can allow competitors to gain customers easily. An auto body shop that does not keep up to date can find its website falling off of the front page of a search engine's results entirely, making it almost impossible to find if not searched for by name. As more and more people use the internet as a research tool, this will become a much larger problem for any business.

Web-Est is intent upon bringing their auto body customers more business through the web. We're able to stay up-to-date with internet technology and pass that along to auto body shops by developing search engine marketing campaigns for them through ShopFind. Contact your Web-Est sales rep to learn more about how we can bring you more business through the internet.

Google has had a local business listing for a long time, with its "Maps" application being the dominant tool. In April, Google did a re-launch by adding new features to the program and renaming it "Google Places." Of course, you've got to be asking yourself the question, "What does it do and how can it help my business?" Google Places gives businesses a chance to connect with consumers in a specified location by listing the business online in a Yellow Pages-like directory that appears to a consumer every time they search particular terms in Google's search engine. By setting up an account, you build a single page, called a Place Page, that allows you to add a business description, business hours, photos, coupons customers can print out, as well as a link to your website should you have one. You're also listed in their Maps application, which will give potential customers the opportunity to obtain driving directions from their location to yours. Another cool feature is its adaptability to mobile devices. Once you set up your Place Page, it immediately becomes available to Google's users on their mobile applications. For example, if a consumer in your area gets into a car accident and has no auto body shop in mind to go to, all that consumer would have to do is go to his or her mobile device, search "auto body shop," and your listing will come up. The listing that customer sees comes with directions, a phone number to call and access to your website. This reach into mobile Internet users is pretty important for small local businesses because estimates by some experts are that by 2015, mobile Internet users will exceed PC Internet users. So take note.

The biggest kicker of all for this program is that its free of charge. Google offers this product as a free service to its users. There is a feature that costs a flat fee of $25 per month, but its not essential to the service as a whole, nor is detrimental to its effectiveness if you don't use it. Its also a complete turnkey product. You spend a little bit of time setting up your Page Place, activate it, then let it ride. Very little management is required. Setting up an account will give you immediate access to potential customers in your are without you having to really do much or spend much. Just as an example of its effectiveness, the leadership at my church just put up a listing on Google Places. The church is located in a suburb of Atlanta and has been running the listing for over a month. Our listing has already been viewed over 300 times, clicked on 70 times and has produced 41 requests for driving directions. And we're not even a business! Of course, the demographic for a church is much different than that of a an auto body business, but the key point is that it produces visitors, it creates a bigger audience for you to target and its completely free. Imagine this program producing just one job for your business. If it produces even one job for you, its already worth the investment. And it has the potential to produce more than just one job per month for you. Give it a try! Let us know how it works for you.

Still a relatively young company, Facebook has become so popular, they are projected to take Google's place as the most dominant website on the Internet sometime soon. In other words, Facebook is not just the new trendy thing among teenagers. Businesses should get used to them being around and should take notice that it has 500 million users. Facebook has done a great job maturing from a social networking site built for college students to a website with the capabilities of connecting a business to its local area customers. If you don't already know what it does, here's a quick re-cap. Facebook allows its users to create personal profile pages, giving them the freedom to list their interests, employment information, adding and sharing photos, while providing them a tool to update their profile status. The means of connecting people together is by becoming "friends" with other people on the website. This creates the connection point between all its users and the status update per profile gives users the chance to shares with all their friends what they are doing at any particular moment. Businesses are able to do this exact same thing. By creating a page for your business, you are able to list important information (a bio, geographical location, services provided), post and share pictures, and, through the status updates, communicate with your friends.

The key feature about Facebook that's beneficial for auto body shops is 1) its ability to connect shops with previous customers and potential new customers, and 2) its ability to provide an online space for those customers to refer your business. Nothing replaces the significance of personal referrals from previous customers to potential new ones as a marketing strategy. No new online gizmo will come close to that strategy's strength. Tons of shops still use only that method and do quite well. But Facebook has 500 million active users and 50% of those users are messing around on Facebook per day. There's no data available to suggest this, but there's an incredibly good chance that the people in your communities are among those users. So if they're willing to recommend your business offline, then its okay to assume that they'll be willing to recommend your business online. That's the whole idea behind this particular Facebook marketing strategy for auto body shops.

The first thing that you would want to do is create a business page on Facebook. Tony Bradley over at PCWorld.com has a good article on how to get a Facebook page started for businesses. You'll need a personal page to get one started, so if you don't have one, you'll need to do that. Once created, do what you wish with it: write a bio, establish your geographical location, put up pictures, etc. As you're putting the page together, ask yourself, "What do I want my customers to know and see?" That should be a good guide as you move along.

After you feel comfortable with the way your page looks, its time to begin adding friends. This is the connection point between the business and the customer and it will take continual work over a period of time. Facebook will provide you with some techniques on ways to add friends. I recommend you consider those ideas. Some of those include, posting status updates, promoting the page on your website and suggesting friends you already have to friend the business. Another important thought to consider is your offline efforts to promote your page. This is a big takeaway from these thoughts: make sure every customer you have is informed that you have a Facebook page and they are invited to become your friends. Let every customer that has received your services know about your page. After the services are complete, you can simply say to them, "Hey, if you liked our services, become friends with us on Facebook." You can also do a number of non-verbal communications with them. Take the words "Follow Us On Facebook" and put it everywhere you can think of that your customer sees. Put it on invoices. Put it on email signatures with links back to the Facebook page. Post it on your site as Facebook suggests. Put it on business cards the next time you order a set. Provide customers with satisfaction surveys with an invitation at the end of it to be friends. Put it everywhere they see! And if your customer had a good experience with your services, and assuming they have a Facebook account, then there's a good chance they'll become your friend.  They're able to suggest friends themselves.  So just in the same way that a person can recommend your business through "word of mouth" by simply telling others, they're able to digitally recommend your business page by the "suggesting friends" feature.  This gives that new customer an opportunity to look at what they've been told is a credible business, all with information about it right in front of them: your page, your photos, bio, website, and all the other material that post on your page.

Remember, the goal here is to provide your customers with a new platform to recommend your business to other people in their community. If they'll recommend your business offline, then I believe its safe to assume that they'll recommend your business online. Facebook is the online community space that they'll most likely do it with. Candidly, Facebook is still young. The auto body presence on Facebook is even younger. There's still no systematic, established model for how to effectively use the popular social-networking site for auto body shops with the exception of the one described here. Recent news has been coming out that Facebook will be adding geolocation applications to their program, which hopefully means that they'll consider developing a system to allow local business owners to post advertisements targeted to their communities. That's still undeveloped, however, and unlikely to be here anytime soon. But it would be an absolute travesty if any business owner assumes that there is no value to Facebook in empowering their business with more revenue. Give it a try and let us know how it works!  

JR Seidel can be reached at jr@web-est.com.

The internet is a breeding ground for innovation, and it is well known for changing rapidly. However, in such an environment, it is easy to be left behind. There are many techniques that are simply less valuable than they were in the past. Banner ads, for example, are easy to ignore. Additionally, many of the clicks you receive from a banner ad are useless. Without proper targeting and research, they are of questionable value. Additionally, things like e-mail lists are also dubious at best. It is easy for your target audience to skim over your mass e-mails, particularly if they are low in content.

You can avoid problems like these by involving your customers actively. Instead of relying on your customers to passively read advertisements you put out, it can be a good idea to use a group on a social networking site such as Facebook instead. In a situation like this, it is easy to engage in a back and forth dialogue with old customers, leading to increased name recognition and quality relationships that turn first time customers into repeats. Additionally, seeing such a dialogue can be an encouraging thing to new customers as well. On top of this, it is easy to keep your social networking page updated constantly with useful information, providing customers who are interested a reason to come back on their own.

As you can see, allowing customers to involve themselves in your marketing campaign can be quite advantageous. While it might seem like few people would be interested in something like this, the truth is that it works, and you can see successful examples of such a campaign in many locations online. Keeping up to date is very important, and can place you ahead of your competitors.

One of the more traditional forms of using video for auto body marketing is television commercials. Although these can be fairly expensive, many cable companies are offering very good rates for local business owners. Also, as video cameras of high quality are now readily available, it is possible to produce a TV spot without needing professional help or equipment. Although the added costs for this kind of auto body shop marketing cannot be denied, it is still a good way to convey a professional image that will inevitably reach a large number of viewers.

However, one of the newer ways to go about utilizing video for auto body marketing purposes is by taking advantage of the internet. With media innovations, such as YouTube, virtually anyone can produce a video for all to see. Although you can use video sites like these on their own, it is also a good idea to incorporate this kind of media into your other auto body shop marketing methods as well. For example, if you have a website or a blog, consider posting a video on those web pages. This can give potential customers a view into what kind of services you provide, while giving you a chance to introduce yourself in a more personal way.

You can also use these videos as a way to showcase your work as well as your customer's satisfaction. You can show examples of cars that you have worked on that illustrate your range and quality of service. Also, taping testimonials to use on your website can have a major impact in converting someone into a paying customer. If you already have a website, including these videos will cost you very little, if any, money and are a fun way to go about auto body marketing.

If your offer is attractive enough, you will see a large increase in clients. Even if they are just in it for the one-time deal, in a down economy, this can bring in a large sum of money in a short amount of time. Even at a reduced price, if a large enough amount of people take advantage of it, you are able to multiple the amount you take in by quite a bit. However, the key to this kind of auto body shop marketing is pricing it right. Of course, you want to make it worth your while, but you need to price your services way below the competitor's. This will ensure that you have a substantial increase in your number of clients. If lowering your prices worries you, keep in mind that it is only for a limited time and they will go back in a short period of time.

Although, with this type of auto body shop marketing, you will inevitably attract some one-time-only customers, this is not typically the case. Much like offering samples, people are much more likely to continue buying the product once they have been exposed to it. Similarly, once a customer has gotten a taste for your quality of service, they have a much higher probability of becoming a repeat customer. However, this also means that you will want to make sure that you provide quality work and do so with a smile. Treat it like an interview and you are sure to increase your clientele.

Another benefit to auto body shop marketing through low-priced promotions is that it provides motivation for the customer to take action. Most ads simply drum up interest. However, without a reason to act, many people will not convert into paying clients. Therefore, highlighting that your deals are for a limited time only will create the sense of urgency that is needed to draw in loads of customers, making this a phenomenal method for auto body shop marketing.

Here are examples of what some shops are doing.  One shop we know is offering $100 off to customers for every $1000 of work they need.  Alot of shops offer free transportation for the customer while the shop is working on the vehicle.  Many of the shops using Web-Est take advantage of our internet estimating technology and take their business on the road, offering their customers on-the-spot estimates at their customers' home or place of work.  Some shops even go so far as to pay for their customer's deductible (depending on the size of the vehicle).  Ultimately, the idea is the same: How is our shop providing powerful reasons for our customers to choose us over the competition?  Ask yourself the question, "What deals can we offer customers to bring in business that won't kill our profits?"

The winner is....(drum roll please)...G&G Automotive from Texas!

The G&G Automotive team offered to us one of the keys to their success:

We purchase incident police reports weekly, since they are public data, then we offer free estimates to them by phone and buy post cards in the mail letting them know we work for them not the insurance company. The post card covers all the pros about my shop.

In a word: brilliant. After doing a little more research on that idea, we found that this is a practical and very efficient way to communicate with people in your community that are in need of your services. The incident report that local police departments produce should be public information, so all, including businesses, should be able to have access to it at a fee. Most police departments will not offer the report at an itemized rate, where you can pick and choose which incidents you would like to have information for. You will most likely have to purchase the entire report that includes a list of all the incidents in your area. These reports should be available on a weekly basis.

Upon purchasing the report, send post cards or business cards in the mail to the persons listed in the incident. By providing information about your services to a person in need of services your business provides offers an excellent opportunity to connect with potential customers your community directly. In the post card, include information about your business that will seem relevant to the customer: special pricing, works with all insurance companies, willingness to cover the deductible if over a certain amount, free transportation and estimates, etc. Make it easy to read, yet directly to the point. The pricing of getting post cards developed is not much. An internet search of printing companies that provide post card services shows that 1,000 post cards cost only $100. That many post cards should last 6 months to a year...well worth the $100.

Do some research in your area to see if the local police department offers the incident police report to the community. Of course, since the decision to offer that information will be made by local officials, not state or federal, we can't guarantee that every municipality in the U.S. will offer this information. We encourage you to contact your local police department to see if these reports are offered to the public. Find the contact information to your local department by visiting usacops.com.

We were overwhelmed by the responses people provided in the contest, but the practicality and efficiency of the idea provided by our winner seems the most creative, yet accessible method for shops to attempt. Give it a try and let us know if it works out for you.

Below you will find honorable mentions from the contest:

-We accept referrals from new car dealers who have no bodyshop. In return, we buy the parts for the repair from the refering dealer, handle their warranty and used car repairs, along with sending back to the referring dealer any mechanical repair we do not perform here. We currently provide this service for 6 dealerships and the referrals provided by satisfied customers as a result of those referrals is incalculable.

-internet ads, flyers

-do seminars at the body shop for customers

And of course, a Web-Est staff favorite:

We give away a new Mercedes with every oil change. We hope to make up the difference on volume. So far its not working , but accounting says to give it 6 months. You know they are always right.

We don't encourage you try that strategy, but good luck with that.

Thanks for participating. Congrats again to G&G.

One of the best ways to accomplish this type of auto body marketing is by pairing up with other, related, service providers or retailers. This means working with companies that deal with various aspects of a vehicle. Of course, in order to make this sort of relationship successful you will need to offer something in return as well. Word of mouth referrals are always a great way to drum up business. However, its potential is even greater when coming from a trusted professional. As many people already have a relationship with a certain service provider, when looking to get auto body work done, they are very likely to take a recommendation from them.

Therefore, this type of auto body shop marketing serves you both by building up clientele for one another without putting in virtually any extra work. It is truly a situation in which everybody wins, including the customer. However, you may be wondering who you should pair up with for this kind of auto body marketing. Although not every single business you approach will be open to it, a few good places to start are car dealerships, both new and used, gas stations, and car washes.

Reaching people while they are in the "auto mindset" is key to successful auto body shop marketing. This way, you are not simply putting ad dollars into coupon books or newspaper ads that simply get glossed over and then pushed to the back of someone's drawer. Not only is this method highly effective at reaching your target audience, but you are also helping other businesses in the process. Therefore, this type of symbiotic auto body marketing is a great way to grow a successful business as well as a community.

Once the contest is complete, we will post all the ideas on our website for all of our customers to see and utilize at their own shop. Afterwards, our customers will pick the winner, with the top-3 vote-getters winning one free month to the Web-Est Collision Estimating Software.**

Click here to share your marketing idea and attempt to win a free month!

**Non-Web-Est Customers who have not purchased will receive $100 discount on the program if they win the contest.

You can advertise your auto body shop website in all kinds of public relation situations. Any time a press release, editorial or trade article is written by someone from your shop, attach your website to it. This will be especially beneficial if the writings are published and distributed to possible clients in your area. Web-Est would be more than happy to post articles of any kind written by our customers. If someone from your shop wrote valuable material for the industry, send it to us, put your web-site on there, and we'll post it for you. Anytime your business name is mentioned as being part of the collision repair industry, you should automatically attach your website to it. There is never a shortage of people needing collision repair, and an easy-to-remember website to them may stay with them when it comes time for them to need your services.

The ability to combine your online presence with advertising offline is a great benefit for the collision repair industry. Since you will obviously not be selling car repairs online, your website can be a simple one-page representation of the prices your auto body shop offers. It is also a great place to list specials and discounts of services. Obviously, creating a simple website for your collision repair industry business is easier than creating a more complicated website.

Never pass up any opportunity that presents itself allowing you to participate in auto body marketing in an offline situation. Of course, if you only focus on advertising offline, you will be missing other opportunities awaiting you in the digital world. Your key to running a busy, successful auto body shop is combining many forms and venues of advertising. Balance your priorities and advertise where your skills are. If you know nothing about online ads, you may want to tackle offline auto body marketing first. It is clear that there are many opportunities for you if advertising online seems out of reach right now.  The key is to just be thinking about it for yourself.  Ask yourself the question: "How can I use the resources available online to market my business, and how I can I balance that out with offline marketing efforts?"  

-JR