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If you’ve decided to take on the marketing efforts for your shop, we applaud you—it’s another hat to wear, but seeing an uptick in business and realizing it’s likely due to your efforts is pretty darn rewarding.
Speaking of marketing efforts, how do you plan to track yours?
If that question gave you pause, have no fear, for Dieselmatic is here.
WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT TO TRACK YOUR MARKETING?
Sure, you could gauge your marketing effectiveness solely by how many new customers you get (and don’t get us wrong, that’s not a bad thing). But careful tracking can also let you see what exactly is bringing in those new customers.
Tracking will show you what campaigns are attracting people and which are falling short. It lets you experiment and hopefully duplicate what works and discard what doesn’t.
(You’d want to know if something you ran turned customers off, right?)
You’d also want to know if one channel was doing way better than another, so you can adjust budgets and expectations.
Okay. We’ve covered the why. Let’s get into the how.
GOOGLE YOUR SHOP AND THE COMPETITION
Want to see how your shop shows up to those searching for your services?
- Open an Incognito window in your browser and head to Google
- Type in “Truck repair shop city name” (quotations optional; swap out city name for your city or region)
- Check out the results
You are essentially duplicating a search a potential customer in your area would run.
By searching for the service you offer, instead of just your shop’s name, you’ll see what is available in your vicinity. It’s a quick, easy way to gauge where you rank amongst your competition.
Is your shop not showing up in the top three, or at all? You’ve probably got some work to do. Are you showing up first, with lots of good reviews in your Google Business profile? Then congrats, friend! You’re knocking it out of the park.
CHECK YOUR ANALYTICS
If you’ve created a Google Business profile and are running ads—and we certainly hope you are—log into it at least monthly to see how you’re doing.
This might be a surprising tip; after all, you’ve set up these ads, so naturally you’d check on them, right? But tracking frequently falls by the wayside, especially when you’re a busy shop owner juggling all kinds of tasks. It’s all too easy to set up a campaign and never look at it again.
So check your results.
Google provides a thorough breakdown of how to do this here, so we won’t repost them here, but you can look at things like:
- Profile views
- Requests for directions
- Phone calls
- Searches
In short, it’ll show you how your marketing is doing. Social media platforms like Facebook will provide similar information, so if you’re doing some social media marketing, remember to check results there, too.
TRACKING NUMBERS
If you want to know exactly how a marketing effort is going, start attaching tracking numbers to them.
What is a tracking number?
Basically, you’re assigning a unique phone number to each marketing channel you use. How do you get those numbers? There are plenty of services out there that will assign you one, three, or a dozen, depending on your needs.
Call tracking works for digital and traditional marketing, so you can attach one phone number to your Google Business profile and another to a local billboard. You can put them on flyers, in your social media, everywhere. Those numbers forward all phone calls to your shop’s regular business number, so you’ll hear from everyone you need to hear from…but you’ll know exactly where each call originated.
Does your billboard drive two calls a month, while your Google Business ad sends 30 a week? Maybe it’s time to rethink what you’re spending on that billboard.
HIRE SOMEONE TO DO IT
Even doing the bare minimum of occasionally checking your analytics is going to take up a chunk of your time. It’s another hat to add to the pile you’re already sporting (each shop owner wears at least 42 hats, at last count), and maybe this is one piece of gear you’d like to pass off to someone else.
That someone else is Dieselmatic, of course. We’re the heavy-duty repair shop marketing specialists, and we’d be happy to put on this particular hat for you. We’ll handle everything—from your website to your social media and Google ads—and we’ll take care of tracking, too. You can visit your dashboard anytime to see what’s producing results and what kind of ROI you’re getting on your investment.
Our marketing experts have helped repair shops grow their year-over-year revenue by 78%. We can help you do the same—schedule a call today and let us handle the rest.
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