3 Marketing Strategies To Help Your Diesel Repair Shop in 2023

If you answered no (or better yet, tried to back away slowly from this article), then relax—there’s still time. 

While our biggest takeaway is going to be (spoiler alert) hiring a good agency to handle your marketing for you (hey, like us!), we also know some of you want to take a crack at it yourselves. We’re still here to help. Last week, we made some business recommendations; this week, we’ll discuss three of our top strategies to drive new biz to your diesel repair shop.

Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.

We can’t emphasize enough how many people are looking for a shop on their phones. As of 2021, over 60% of organic search traffic originates from smartphones. That’s 211 million people. 

Yes, some of your potential customers are looking for you on their computers. But a lot are on their phones. And for whatever reason, a lot of websites aren’t optimized for mobile. In 2018, Canonicalized conducted an experiment on the top one million websites on the web. Twenty-four percent of them didn’t pass the mobile test. 

So, on the bright side, it’s not just you.

But on the negative side, what do you do when you can’t get a website to display properly on your phone? 

You close the tab. They’ve lost you. And if people are closing your website, you’re losing out on customers.

Embrace recruitment marketing.

The tech shortage is going to be a problem until we as a society once again encourage interest in the trades and stop thinking that self-driving trucks are going to wipe out the human aspect of repair (spoiler alert: they’re not). For now, you need to treat the techs you have well—and treat your marketing as a way to keep potential new techs interested.

We’ve written about recruitment marketing at length, but in a nutshell, good marketing gets the word out about your shop. That word reaches customers and techs. Especially younger techs, who are likely savvier about the digital realm because, well, they’ve grown up with it. If they see your shop is clean, modern, and has a good digital reputation, they’ll be more inclined to apply.

(Bonus tip: To bask in ultimate hiring power, pair your recruitment marketing with clear, detailed job posts that live on your website. Yes, we can help you do that—that’s why we rolled out DieselJobs!) 

Optimize your search traffic.

You want to make sure people find your website. There’s a whole lot of things you can do to make sure you’re getting the right kind of visitors. If you want an exciting and slightly gory rundown, the Fullbay folks get into it here. But if you want the quick digest version, make sure you do the following:

• Articles (or blog posts) and pages that are updated regularly with new, relevant-to-your-customer information. New content makes Google happy, and we all want Google to be happy!
• Page titles that accurately reflect their contents. If you’ve previously just shoved content onto the web, your page titles might have misspellings, or not even apply to their content anymore. Make sure people are getting what they’re looking for!
• Do some keyword research to make sure you’re signaling to Google exactly what you’re doing (so it can show your site to the people who are looking for it).

Wait, why are you backing slowly into that hedge? 

Was it the keyword research?

We promise, once you figure it out, it’s not all that difficult…but we totally get the hesitation. You’ve already got a lot to do—why add search engine optimization to your list?

The team at Dieselmatic can implement all three of these strategies—and a whole lot more—for you. Imagine: a fully formed marketing plan set into motion. You can be as involved as you like; some shops love to be hands-on, others prefer to sit back and just check their dashboard to see their ROI. 

Like what you see? Want to know what we can do for you? Hit us up! We’d love to help you make your marketing goals a reality.