DealersEdge Professional Forums

With the increasing price of fuel and the overall price of goods and necessities on the rise, people are going to begin to prioritize their spending. Vehicle owners may begin to cut their vehicle spending since if it runs okay it will not give them any advantage if they cannot budget the fuel to make it run. Any suggestions on short or long term marketing ideas to maintain/grow service drive traffic?
OR are we just going to have to prepare for a rough road ahead?
Thoughts?

I've had this idea for a while and maybe the service managers can give some input. A lot of guys just want to do coupons for oil changes or certain maintainence services. If your services are competitive, add $10 or $15 to the service and add a free oil change (a $27.95 value) with your choice of 3 or 4 services. You can cover most of the cost of the oil change, do the service and the customer feels he got an extra for no charge.
Make sure you highlight the dollar amount of the free oil change in the ad.

Joe R

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Marketing ...some ideas .... marketing long term is really improved though great public relations.

Here is a bit of what we have done the last few years to improve our realtionship with clients and develop business for the shop / sales and parts.

On Sept 10 (Sat) we are installing a new Saturn playgound the cost is around 55,000 cnd. A lot of our suppliers contribute time and money for this event , we try to get evey one involved .... One of our customers came in 3 weeks ago and donated $1,000 check to help pay for the playground . The event is spread over two days and on Sunday the 11 th we are hosting our Tunerz car show. We anticiapate some 50 cars this year ..turn out last year we had 1,400 people show up to look over the TUNERZ show cars ... we provide a drink and hotdog and cake to everyone that shows up.
The mayor of the city and several politicians will be present to open the playground Sunday afternoon as well as lots of media

We just finished our DRIVEIN with 300 Saturn owners showing up for a a movie and one popcorn one drink ... we also hosted a tug of war and several other small games. A lot of fun and a good time.

please check out our invitational flyer on the link below.
http://www.saturntunerz.com/viewtopic.php?t=1443
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Other ways to have customers consider doing business with your firm ....


Our business owners suggested last year that rather than a Christams celebration for ourselves , we should consider what can we do for others.
For Christmas last year we had the entire staff ( both businesses) go over to the main Salvation Army complex that depratley required reapirs and painting ... in 8 hours a staff of 100 completed about 40,000 in renovations and painting as a donation to the SA. We had a supper get together afterwords and everyone felt good about it. Lots of media attention and we still have people mention that like to do business with us as our firm is well known for the contributions to the city of London.

[This message has been edited by johnny o (edited 09-04-2005).]

What are you doing to maximize the revenue opportuinity of every customer that comes through the drive. What sales processes do you have in place. Starting here is a lot less expensive than mass mailer that has very little chance of increasing your traffic.

If you are considering the free oil change option, it best that you have a sound upselling process in place to ensure your not just giving away oil changes. Make sure you build your packages so you are getting the effective labor rate you need.



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The cheese has moved. Time to go find new cheese.

Free oil changes bring in people with clunker cars, that won't buy anything, and parts probably won't have the filters for them anyway. Let these people go to WalMart.


We are a Pontiac, GMC, Buick store that is within a few miles of a giant Chevrolet store. We did an advertising blitz that talked about how we too could service your GM vehicle, and give you a better experience.

I've got stacks of the other dealers' plate frames now. And our techs can hardly keep up with the work.

We sent a mailing to all our customers that haven't been in a year for a 14.95 oil change or 10% off any major service it worked well to get people back. We shopped the cars and had a great deal of up sells which more than covers the discount.,

I AM JUST WONDERING HAS ANYONE TRIED REBATES INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY GIVING DISCOUNTS? MY FEELING IS THAT MOST PEOPLE WILL COME IN BUT NOT EVEN BOTHER MAILING IN THIER REBATES. I KNOW I DO NOT. WOULD LIKE SOME COMMENTS OR ANYTHING THAT YOU THINK MIGHT BE WORTH DOING. MY OWNER IS BIG ON ADVERTISING

Anything that is free does not work for us! I have a very good selling staff in a domestic store averaging around 2.2 per RO, but when we do free oil changes they usually do not work. The customer is conditioned that they are coming in for something that is free and that is there mindset when you try to sell to them. I have done seasonal vehicle safety checks for $9.95 and they have been extremely successful for me. It covers my cost with my techs and the customers are at least paying for something and there are no parts involved.