Social media is a powerful tool to communicate with customers but it’s not going to get you a flood of direct sales if you are in the auto repair industry. Thankfully, we’ve compiled a list of the top social media platforms and techniques you can use to keep a strong social media presence. Having active social media accounts will help your business stay fresh in the minds of users for when the time comes that they will need your services.
Is Social Media Marketing A Lost Cause For Your Auto Repair Shop?
It’s no secret that the attention span of Facebook and Instagram users is short-lived when scrolling on social media. The truth is that nobody is going to remember one of your posts that they saw for 10% off an oil change 3 months ago. But, how easy is it for a customer to find you on social media? Well, we know it’s not as simple as clicking on the “About Us” page of your website and scrolling to social media. You should understand that not everybody that visits your shop will even see your profile or engage with it.
Your Social Media Content Should Respond To Specific Customer Needs. This will allow you to have a better chance of being seen simply because you’re responding directly to their needs instead of just pushing out filler content. Use your social media channels to promote before and after photos and videos of your services. If you’re not displaying this type of content on your website, then you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to get more exposure for your business. If you want to attract a specific type of customer, then show them what they’ll see when they visit your shop.
Find a person with a great personality that works for your company to be the face of the business, try following them around for a day at work and create a video highlighting what they do. Once your video is created, don’t forget to share it through all of your social media platforms. If you are trying to reach out to younger customers, then you should consider using Instagram and Tik-Tok. This is the most common social media platform that the younger generation uses.
The primary objective of social media marketing for an auto repair business should be to build a large following to gain credibility and social proof. When a customer is doing their due diligence on which shop they should do business with they will look for activity and the number of followers when auditing the social media accounts.
How Often Should You Post
Cracking the Instagram algorithms and getting the max exposure for your posts is a little harder, but it can still be done with some trial and error. The key to Instagram is posting new content consistently. Yes, you might have a good post, but if you want to maximize your exposure you need to create 3 posts a day and 3 reels. It’s a good idea to post a range of content and alternate so your audience gets fatigued. If you constantly keep posting promotions or specials you will get unfollowed very quickly. People are looking for value. If your auto repair shop can do that through education or entertainment it will make some seriously good content.
If You Own An Auto Body Shop Try This Idea’s
- Try a time-lapse video of restoring a completely damaged car to pristine shape
If You Own a Mechanic Garage
- Try filming some educational videos on when you should replace a battery or spark plugs
If You Own An Auto Glass Repair Shop
- Show some clips of car windows getting shattered by golf balls (entertainment).
Always Capture Footage Of Company Events For Social Media
Take videos of company events, Christmas parties, Team summits, and meetings, employee promotions. People want to see a happy workplace environment this doubles as recruiting material too.
Customer Video Testimonials
You don’t want to sleep with on these will strengthen your business and help build credibility.
All these examples of videos align with the end-user and what your business does they are not going to get you instant sales but they will keep your audience engaged.
The time that you post matters too because if you post at the same time every day then your audience will be prepared for that content. You should avoid posting too late at night or too early in the morning. Although you may think it’s good to post late because there is no competition if it’s too late at night your audience is probably already asleep and they won’t see it until the next day. This means that your post was not seen or it took 48 hours to be seen which is a lot longer than if you posted around noon.
Using A Social Media Poster For Your Auto Repair Business
Keeping your posts organized is important because with the calamity involved in running an auto repair shop you or whoever is in charge of the social media accounts are bound to forget. Social media marketing agencies maintain a calendar of all their expected posts 30 days in advance.
One of my favorite and cheapest options to use is the tailwind app you can take an entire day and schedule all your posts for the whole month. It conveniently links to all your accounts and even keeps tabs on the best times that should post when your audience is most active on social media. It’s also a good idea to get a second opinion.
Here is a list of the best social media posters and pricing for an auto repair shop.
Leveraging Social Media Influencers For Your Auto Repair Garage
If your goal is to get the most likes and comments, then you’ll need the help of an influencer. You will want to identify your audience and customer base and approach an influencer that is aligned with your industry. Don’t just use a hot chick with a million followers it really won’t resonate and you will lose money.
Aim for local influencers in your area the upside is that they will attract local business. If you’re trying to expand into other provinces or states then identify influencers that have a large following and can be spread across multiple audiences. You’ll want to look for people that have a high engagement rate and good-sized following and who will create content regularly.
Hiring influencers can be expensive; some with large followings can charge upwards of $3-5000 for a single post or shout-out. Try to barter services if the opportunity arises it’s a win for everyone.
You’ll want to research the right influencers for your business and pay attention to their engagement rate before making a deal. In most cases, you’ll want to research the number of likes and comments they receive on each of their posts. You can also politely request to see a screenshot of their analytics to show where their audience is mainly based from.
Once you find the person with the right amount of followers, you need to approach them to see if they would be willing to create sponsored content for your company.
If you have $10000 to spend you could try this approach: find 5 influencer/video content creators and pay them all 2k each for 1 month. Require them to create 3 short videos each day promoting your business. This will give your business over 450 pieces of unique content that you can post on your social media accounts.
Should You Hire a Social Media Marketing Agency? Or Train Your Staff To Do In House
Hiring a professional social media agency to schedule your posts and grow your accounts can be expensive. The average monthly salary for a freelancer or agency can cost your business a significant amount of money. According to payscale.com, the average social media marketer salary can range from 36k – 85k per year with the median salary at $55k.
The good news is that you can easily train your staff to do social media marketing so long as the skills are there. You’ll want to have a system in place so you have a set of guidelines and a set of keywords that they should be researching and what they should be tweeting about, Facebook posting about, and any other activity related to your business. We advise auto repair shops to do this task in house because it is not as difficult as agencies try to make it out to be.
Everyone in your company needs to be on the same page with what they are doing and it’s easier to communicate with your staff new ideas for posts and such. With the stress involved in running an auto repair shop, it’s easy for people to get away from their responsibilities so you must be lenient and have them dedicate at least 2-3 hours each day to keep your social media accounts active.
Posting fresh and interesting content is half the battle the person in charge of this task will need to be engaging with potential customers, sending likes, comments, and DM’s consistently during this period every day will help grow your customer base.
At Spectral Vision, we are in the works of designing a tailored standard operating procedure and training manual which you can forward to your employees to perform this task. We are including the “how-to” on scheduling your posts, what hashtags to post, how to post back with customers, and anything else that can be done on social media. This way you don’t have to pay an agency large amounts of money per month just download our guide and train your staff. We are building this training manual based on the auto repair industry and it will be an important resource for your shop.
Auto Repair Shops With Lots Of Followers Build Credibility
It’s no surprise that a business with thousands of followers will give your business an extra layer of credibility. A consumer will be more likely to trust your business more than one with only a few hundred followers. This gives the impression that you are known all over social media and you are not just some person trying to sell something.
Build Expertise With Relevant Forums and Message Boards
The only exception to the rule above is to try and stay active every month on forums and message boards aligned with your industry.
As the owner of an auto repair shop, you hold expertise in the field and you should share this information as often as possible. Participating in forums and getting involved with community discussions will give your business a unique identity online.
We advise any auto repair shop that is trying to build authority to start with Quora and Reddit simply scan the forums and try to assist people with helpful non salesy advice.
Task 1
Answer or provide input on 15 discussions on Reddit.
Task 2
Answer or provide input on 15 discussions on Quora.
30 responses have been the magic number that has gotten us more than enough engagements to move things forward. If you answer 15-30 questions per month on websites like Quora and Reddit you should see some positive results. It all depends on how many groups you join and how active you are on the boards. This will send a strong signal to Google and you will establish expertise, trust, and authority. Remember most of your competition is most likely sleeping on this task you will gain a slight edge that will pay dividends in the long run for your business.
In Conclusion, Social Media Marketing Is A Must For Your Auto Repair Shop.
To attract more customers and to stay relevant in the minds of the public you need to use social media.
Even though social media is important, don’t just use it as a means to an end. Consider your social media channels as a way to keep your customers informed about new things that are going on in the company. Ask your peers what they think about your marketing efforts and why they are successful. Get honest feedback from people that you’ve worked with before, ask for their ideas to help you improve your marketing strategy.
