There is a lot of promise in marketing and usually after spending thousands on a 30 second commercial, you may reach enough potential customers to count on two hands.  Social media is not only ten times more affordable, but potential customers are around 24/7 without having to wait for your commercial to air in its purchased time slot. 

Reaching out to your customers and potential customers is part of the basis of the building blocks of your body shop.  To succeed in social media is also being socially active and gaining growth within your virtual community.  When you start gaining followers who are satisfied with your body shop, the goal is for others to see and recognize your body shop via social media and give promise to your services as well.

Creating good content is a great way to keep your customers and potential customers invested.  Tips, upcoming sales, or any information that entices someone to share your information is what can push your body shop substantially.  Resources that are provided by your body shop including pictures of a completed work or something your body shop is currently involved with allows followers further confidence in you body shop.

Before social media exploded, businesses would rely on search engine optimization solely.  Currently the online world uses social media and search engine optimization to produce results for those browsing for a body shop they need.  Helping customers find your body shop through search engine marketing and to optimize social media content is the goal of Collision Builder.

What do small businesses need to grow?  Answer: product, customers, and marketing.  Granted these are just the basics and not the true blue details that involve deeper deductive reasoning.  However, for your body shop to grow, one needs to start simple and focus on these three important tiers in order to go from surviving to thriving.

Social media is the equivalent of office supplies or parts for your body shop.  Social media may be lumped into the marketing category to help in approaching potential customers or keeping existing ones.  Yet it is as effective and simple as greeting your customers when they walk into the door.  Keeping your communications basic, trendy, helpful, and communicating successful stories are effective ways to reach out and inform your customers that your body shop is reliable and confident with its products and services.

It serves as a behind the scenes without giving the technical aspects of your body shop.  People love the underdog and your body shop is certainly the underdog to a major chain.  That quality that you give customers, repeat and new, should also shine through on social media platforms.  This alerts everyone to not only your presence, but your body shop’s ability to turn service into satisfaction upon demand.

Sales, aspirations, and pictures are also great tools of communication on social media sites.  A customer’s letter praising your body shop and your services and/or products, can be a blog that speaks volumes.  It allows the veil of hesitance to be lifted and allows for a new customer to take a chance on your body shop.

A Buzz for Your Body Shop

For over a decade SEO has been the talk within tech in regards to inbound links as well as page-level elements.  These days having a technically optimized website accompanied with pertinent inbound links are very important.  A commanding presence on the web with the helping hand of social media is pushing brands into the spotlight.

Relying on a cheaper means of marketing for your body shop is as accessible as Facebook and Twitter among other social media outlets.  Content is also ranked on search engines based on tweets/retweets on Twitter and shares or reposts from Facebook, to name a few examples.  In essence, you can say that your content is promoted via search engines as, “the talk of the town”; the more that content is passed on from person to person.  Of course with content and sharing must be interaction.  Posting on social media sites alone is a great and favorable tool; however, fan or friend participation or response is the driving force behind the buzz of your body shop.

As well, general keywords that one may use on a search engine are also helpful.  Customers need to find your body shop and the wonders of the product/products you have to offer.  Emphasis on holidays, historical facts, monthly themes, current sales, or anything that would pull up your content during the moment, can help in finding you virtually.  Creating content around buzz words are also a great resource in getting involved in what is circulating within conversation in society.  For your body shop, word on the street starts and ends on the World Wide Web.

The Purpose of SEO

When you properly optimize your website for search engines, you are ensuring that your body shop has a high ranking on search engine results pages (SERP). For most internet users, results received after the first page are irrelevant. This underscores the importance of getting listed in the first results that follow a search query. The goal is to increase traffic to your body shop website and through that, generate more sales. SEO efforts carried out in this case have to be targeted to the local audiences, and so general SEO strategies would not work as effectively. Local SEO marketing has a greater recorded success rate, as the visibility generated is targeted towards the market around your area. To put this into perspective, an online business situated in Claremore, Oklahoma might be SEO optimized but competing with businesses in other counties of the state. However, if all the SEO efforts are geared towards marketing the business in Claremore specifically, it will more easily register with the local people.

Why Your Body Shop Needs SEO

As with other kinds of marketing strategies such as PPC (pay per click), SEO is all about increasing traffic to your body shops website. This optimization aims at engaging the business with the local audience, so that they can entrust your body shop and the products and services that they are in need of.  When greater numbers of visitors are recorded in your website, the chances of making a sale are generally higher. Local body shops can take advantage of this by ensuring that they are optimized for their local markets and this can only happen if their body shops are well ranked on popular search engines such as Google and Bing. This is exactly what SEO hopes to do.

SEO Strategies Designed for Body Shops

When it is not possible to undertake the task of doing your own SEO, you can always hire an SEO company. Some of the strategies they use are fairly simple, such as back linking, which is basically the case where a site offers links that direct to your website. You usually do the same for mutual gains. If the website has a greater popularity than yours, you stand to gain more. Use location-centered keywords in your website, and ensure that your site has relevant landing pages for the links you have within your site.

As you focus on SEO results, keep in mind that search engine optimization is a marathon not a sprint. Be persistent and consistent with your SEO strategies. I get the best results when I set aside a few hours each week to work on SEO.

When thinking of the content you want to share over social media, you need to also consider that those following you want to share that same content with their friends, family, and coworkers.  While most enjoy clever advertising, people have a greater confidence in individuals they know and talk to on a regular basis.  Individuals are also shown to rely on the word of strangers in bulk, before trusting or relying solely on the brands or businesses or body shops outlooks of themselves.

When it comes to social media, instead of bias or boastful advertising, your body shop should simply be communicating.  A discussion in which you can have within your community, however big, relaying informative content, entertaining content or both.  People tend to share content when it is humorous or informative.  Think of all the emails in which a family member or friend forwarded over for your reaction.

However, the most important content is answering any questions or concerns brought into the social media ring.  Potential customers do not forward content that does nothing for them although they most certainly will share a bad experience or bad communications to their issues.  Concise is the magic word when responding to a customer.  Clear and to the point with no wiggle room as rambling just leads to further unnecessary communications and possibly leaving a discomforting undertone.

It has to be good, short, and relevant if you expect people to invest their time into reading it and energy into sharing it.  A body shop talking among the people is going to gain more growth than a body shop talking down to them.

Reaching Out To Customers

The average customer works in stressful situations which include constant emails, meetings, travel time, and a constant buzz and chatter in the workplace.  There are typically too many distractions to truly focus on services and/or products, even though they could reduce costs overall.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of using time and integration as a crutch in ignoring change, especially when a seemingly effective routine has already been put into play.

There is no doubting that the buyer is in control of the decision making.  Engaging customers, consumers, and/or buyers and introducing your body shop is a meaningful relationship that you want long term.  Stories that focus on how you have affected other customers are the building blocks in doing so.  It is easier for a potential customer to relate to someone with the same questions, concerns, and more importantly, the solutions that they too are hoping to find.  It becomes real-time and real-world information, rather than a hope and a promise.

Allowing other customers to narrate their problems and how your solution has affected them in a positive manner, speaks volumes.  It separates the bias opinion of your own company and puts the opinion into the hands of a third party.  Relating to a story makes it much more comfortable on the customer.  The last thing your customer wants is to feel pressured in their already stressful lives.

Do You Have A Social Media Toolbox?

What are the goals of your body shop and/or service?  What is the game plan and a measurement for success?  The efforts of marketing your body shop, through the use of social media, are not just as simple as obtaining friends.  And it’s like a bag of chips, you can’t just settle on one.

Planning, executing, and effective use are all important steps for involvement on social media sites.  Having well rounded business objectives is going to be the most useful tools in the approach when it comes to interacting with your social media audience.  After all, being prepared and strategizing already gives the leverage to perch your body shop above others and look around at the bigger picture.

Here is our social media toolbox guide:

• Understand – everything that’s involved, everything included, options, your involvement and what is expected.
• Research – competition and find what works or will work for your body shop.
• Plan – to take all of this newfound information and apply it to your goals and communicate effectively.
• Initiate – begin, start, organize and put forth a fan, customer, friend and support line through communication.
• Assess – review where you were, where you are and where you’re going.
• Maintain – put forth regularly scheduled maintenance in which you may want to address fads or growing trends which draws attention.

With these easy steps, being a social media guru is within a body shop business owners reach.  Clicking to make sure your past customers remain long term customers is just as important as potential customers.

How Is Your Social Reach?

The total number of those following your body shop on all forms of social media is your Social Reach.  Combining your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and any other followers within Social Media is how far or wide your Social Reach extends.  There is a benefit to exposing your body shop on social media outlets and the more, the merrier.  As long as your customers are there, your body shop should be there in sight and mind along with them.

An important part of Social Media is communicating or engaging on a regular basis.  If your followers only hear from you once in a blue moon, they are likely to get disinterested.  Followers typically want two things out of every post they come across.  First, the average follower and/or customer are looking for reassurance.  A comforting friendly face that your body shop is still there and that you care enough to take the time to talk or communicate.  Secondly, a follower wants to read something informative, interesting and something that pertains to them.

Your body shop status update or tweet is as powerful as a perfect stranger saying, “excuse me” in the supermarket after a long day at work.  It is a memorable moment that stays with a person and leaves a positive impression.  Furthermore it encourages and triggers others to communicate in that very same way.  In other words, the message your body shop sends could be a message that is repeated and talked over by none other than your customers.

Strategizing your presence in social media is the same strategy used in marketing with billboards, television, magazine articles, or flyers.  With Facebook having over 500 million members since July 2010, using Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter and applying branding, engagement and learning, are three great ways to involve your body shop in social media.  This is simply a method for advertising in which businesses have yet to value, appreciate, or recognize the potentials social media can offer.  Social media is a potential bond between customer and business with effects quicker than that of consumer surveys hosted by third parties.  Strategically reaching out includes appraising your goals, understanding your desired audience and determining your resources.  The relationship is being offered by social media awaiting a suitor, your body shop.

With every reward comes risk and social media and its exploitations are no different.  Everything used via social media is public.  Be cautious, however, words have an impact on page and on the screen.  Be authentic and apply customer service without any negative emotions that you may want to express because you disagree with a comment a customer may have written.  And remember a conversation you want to keep private and maintain control of should not be posted in the public eye on a social media site.  Heated discussions should not be seen by past or potential customers on a public domain.  Customer service is key when resolving issues, avoiding issues and informing of your good intentions.

Social media gives your body shop a new, low-cost device in communicating their brand.  Businesses only need apply to position themselves in the eyes of those online.  The voice needing to be heard is as loud and important as the voice that responds.  Planning your move to getting involved is an extension of the marketing process as well as accessing and managing risks.  There is a great deal of value in communication and social interaction that has now become the forefront in technology.  Finding ways to communicate to an audience for the purpose of introducing or reminding and selling your body shop services is the staple point of any body shop business.

Our most common topics are auto body websites, social media management, and search engine optimization (SEO).

We discuss:

• Website design tips and tricks for body shops
• SEO advice that you can implement immediately to help you improve your search engine ranking
• Social media marketing ideas to help you pull in more customers

We welcome you to leave comments, suggestions and ideas. We’d love to hear your success stories!