The costs of Search Engine Optimazation
Good SEO is costly. Bad SEO is even more costly. If you have no strategy for optimizing your website and making sure it shows up in the search results then it’s costing you a bundle in lost revenue. Another shop will gladly take that customer off your hands…
However before you go off and spend money on it here’s a few ideas to make sure its money well spent.
So before I even engaged with an SEO company I interviewed several. I talked to a few on the phone that I found online. A couple called me over the course of a couple years. And I found 3 locally that would sit down with me, review my website and offer a several page written proposal. In the process of interviewing them I realized they were willing to share with me a lot of their basic ideas and offer suggestions for improvements to my current website which I immediately applied. All I had to do was ask. That’s right. Ask and you will receive. I would simply say something like, “So you’ve spent some time looking over my site and I know you can’t give me all your best ideas for free but can you give me some idea what you will recommend or what kinds of things you will do to my site?” I realized that all of them gave me slightly different recommendations and most of the ideas I could easily implement on my own… and I realized that from this free advice I started to get traction on my website. My rankings started to improve and that proved exciting and provided motivation for me to keep learning.
In the process of interviewing SEO companies it became apparent that I couldn’t afford the ones I wanted. The trustworthy, trained, proven companies – as opposed to the black-hat, fly by night, untested hacks… and there’s a lot of them out there! The bids I got ranged in price but all landed in the several thousand dollar range to set it up and then $500-1000 per month to maintain. That’s a lot of money if you’re marketing budget (as mine was at the time!) is less than half that!
So since I couldn’t afford the ones I wanted I decided to learn as much as I could on my own by reading both online and off.
Here’s a few great resources to get you started…
1. Search Engine Optimization for Dummies is a book that provided me an almost comprehensive understanding of SEO but also the techniques were immediately applicable. It balances a ton of content with doable ideas that can be used immediately.
2. SEO moz has a free beginners guide that you can download as a pdf right now. Do it. Read it. Apply it. This information is worth thousands of dollars and will drive traffic to your website and cars to your shop.
3. All in One for Wordpress. I’m a huge fan and proponent of Wordpress as the platform for building websites (not just blogs). If you’re using Wordpress then get the plugin called “All in One SEO.” It helps you use titles, descriptions and keywords that help the search engines find you.
If you are a do-it-yourself-er and you’re willing to put a little time and effort into your website you can learn a lot, start to drive traffic to your website and when you’re ready and able to actually hire an SEO company you’ll be able to speak confidently to them and ask intelligent questions so they can’t pull the wool over your eyes!
Be found with ease…
I recently had a very frustrating experience with a great little cafe. This cafe had several stellar reviews on Google and Yelp. They had a beautifully designed and easy to navigate website. They had an incredible word of mouth reputation from several friends. But….
After several minutes on their website and clicking from page to page I could not find a phone number or the business hours. This cafe was a couple hours away from home so I didn’t want to just drive all that way and find out they were “closed on Sundays.” So I kept digging. I eventually found the hours buried at the bottom of a pretty generic “About us” page.
Turns out the cafe lived up to their reputation. The food was great and the service matched it. They were able to seat my wife and me almost immediately and the bill was very reasonable for the level of food and service we received. But we almost didn’t go. There was plenty of competition within a 100 yards of this cafe. Other cafe’s and coffee shops would have been just as easy to get to. However, I’m quite sure they would not have compared so I’m glad we persevered.
As a body shop owner or manager you know there is massive competition out there. It is in your best interest to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to find you and do business with you. Here’s some ways you can do just that…
1. Put your phone number and email on every page of your website.
2. Put a Google map with your location and driving directions from the surrounding neighborhoods (including any local, visible and well known landmarks) on your website.
3. Put your hours of operation on every page with instructions on what to do after hours like where the key drop is, where to have tow companies drop tow-ins off or even an online estimate form.
4. Build out your social profiles with contact info and hours of operation on sites like Google Places and Yelp and then encourage your customers to give you reviews there as well.
Making it easy for people to spend dollars with you just makes sense. Remove any barriers and create as many on-ramps to potential customers as you can.
“Take care!”
We hear it all the time as we’re leaving a friend: “Take care.”
But what does that really mean and how do we take care of ourselves?
I’m currently reading the book Be Excellent at Anything. Learning to manage our energy may be more important than managing our time.
Check out this video by Tony Scwartz of The Energy Project
Can I get a witness?
Testimonials are powerful tools. Testimonials from a recognized authority? Priceless.
It happens almost everyday at our shop. Someone will walk in and I’ll ask them how they found us. Quite often they’ll say they found us online and they noticed that we had a lot of good reviews. This is what Psychologists call “social proof.” When people are trying to make a decision they are looking for shortcuts to get to a trusted source. What previous customers say about your business is absolutely critical not only for the referral but for your website rankings. So whether its ‘word of mouth’ or ‘word of mouse’ testimonials are a power house of having a referral-able shop.
So, how do you get testimonials? Simple: You ask. One easy to get testimonials is to do a follow up email asking people to do a quick review on Google Maps, Yahoo Places or even Yelp.com and setting links to those review sites within the email so all they have to do is clink on the word and they are sent directly to the page where they can do the review. We ask everyone but only average about one per month actually doing the review… but over the course of a couple years that really adds up to a lot of great reviews!
Now, once you have some reviews it’s a good idea to really use them. You can sprinkle them through out your website on various pages, have a dedicated page to reviews, put them on an estimate cover sheet, use them in written ads, and collect them in a notebook (preferably with before and after photos) that customers can look through in your waiting area while waiting for their estimate to get done or a rental car to show up. Also, show them to your techs. They get a lot of the credit for making our customers happy so let them know by printing them out and hanging them in a place where they can see them.
I would love to know how you collect and use testimonials. Post it in the comments below so we can keep learning together.
And, as always, if I can ever be of any more help to you to increase your work flow just drop me an email at cccollision@gmail.com.
Thanks for reading!
There’s no place like home (page)
You have a website. (If you don’t, please call me and let’s get in the game asap!)
There is one page on your site that is critically important beyond all the others. It’s where most people will enter your site. It is where your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts will cause people to land. It is your first impression. it is your front porch, your welcome mat. We’re talking about your home page.
A few year’s ago I had an SEO expert take a look at my site which, by the way, is a great way to get free advice on how to improve your site immediately. The first thing she said to me was “I’m looking at your home page and I have no idea what you do.”
“What do you mean? I’m a body shop! We fix wrecked cars. We repair, paint and detail them. That is so obvious!”
“Well, it’s obvious to you but its not obvious to me… and more importantly it’s not obvious to the Google spiders”
“Ummm, did you just say ‘Google spiders’?”
“Yeah, Google has these little guys that crawl around the internet looking for important words – key words we call them – that tell Google what your site is about.”
She then reflected back to me what my home page was communicating to her and to the spiders.
“You write on your home page all about why your customers can trust you, how long you’ve been in business, what kind of equipment you have… all that but nothing about what you actually DO”
Ouch! I guess my home page was not as awesome as I thought it was! I had some work to do…
So here’s some things you need to consider in the design and wording of your home page:
1. First, include all the things you do like body work, frame repair, painting, and detailing for example.
2. Second, include your phone number near the top (also make it as large as possible for mobile users – which i heard today are expected to increase to over 1.5 billion by 2013!)
3. Have a clear call to action on the home page. What do you want someone reading your homepage to do next? Try something like “Call us to schedule for a free estimate” or “Check our our online estimate form by clicking here.”
4. Lastly, list benefits not features. People come to your website with their needs in mind, not to be impressed by you or your shop. They don’t care if you have the latest and greatest frame rack. They want to know if you can get their car straight and why that matters. So instead of using “We have the most state of the art equipment” try “We have a laser frame measuring system that insures your car is pulled back to factory specifications. This matters to you because if your car is not straight you will wear out your tires and suspension faster and possibly lose money when you go to sell or trade in your car.”
Here’s what we did on our home page as one example: Center City Collision
Would you like a free review of your home page? I’d be happy to take a look and give you feedback. Give me a call or drop me an email and I’ll take a look at it and get back with you in 1-2 business days.
The number 1 way to increase workflow NOW!
So a lot of what we talk about here on Body Shop 2.0 is taking a long term approach to sales & marketing. It takes time to develop meaningful relationships that will keep the calendar full all the time. It’s more farming than fishing, more marathon than sprinting.
However, we also understand that desperate times call for desperate measures and sometimes when you’re hungry you just don’t have time to plant a garden! You need to eat. NOW!
So for those looking for the magic bullet to get it done today I can tell you I actually have one: Follow up calls.
If you have written estimates in the last couple of weeks and your schedule is not full for next week, it’s time to pull out the tried and true follow up call.
Here’s what we say to land the job.
“Hello Mr. Smith. I see that we wrote an estimate for you a couple days ago but you’re not on our calendar. We are doing our scheduling for next week and wanted to see if we can put you down for Monday.”
Sometimes they will say “We’re still waiting on the insurance company to get back with us.” To that (and any other need they express for that matter) we ask “Would you like me to contact them for you and make sure they have a copy of our estimate?”
There are lots of variations on what they will say (hopefully a simple “Yes!”) and for each one I try to offer a solution that requires as little as possible from them.
Again, this is tried and true wisdom. It will require effort. You will need to pick up the phone and start calling people who may have already decided to go somewhere else. Those sting. But keep the goal in mind. If you consistently call you will see a fuller calendar.
What are your tried and true habits to fill the calendar? I’d love to learn how others do it…
Wake up calls.
A few weeks ago we had 3 of our customers calling their insurance agents because they were not happy with us. Those were severe wake up calls! We had only had 1 in the entire previous year and now we had 3 in one week. Unacceptable.
What went wrong?
Off the top of my head I came up with a few reasons why this may have happened:
1. The customers felt like they couldn’t get through to us. Oh, we would answer the phone and listen to them but they weren’t feeling heard.
2. They were no longer confident we were committed to resolving their issue so they had to “go over our heads.”
3. There was no clear point person to talk to. They perceived an absence of leadership. The managers would not bother the owner with it and the owner (that’s me) was not available at the time of the concern. In essence I wasn’t avaialable and the manager’s weren’t empowered to resolve the issue.
4. They were negative, whiny people who are never happy or satisfied and always feel victimized no matter what the situation.
5. The customers were having really bad days and we got the brunt of their frustration.
Now, there are only so many of the things above that we can control. BUT, we better do a good job of controlling the ones we can because typically if 2-3 of the above elements are in play at one time, it will turn ugly!
Most of the issues in this situation turned out to be simple quality control issues that could have been easily managed or avoided with a little extra effort. We decided to implement a couple extra measures to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Here’s what we came up with:
1. During our quality control checks try to see the car through the customers eyes. We may see the incredible structural repair and flawless paint job but what the customer sees first is dust on the car seat that we forgot to vacuum. Turns out lots of kids are allergic to dust and mothers can be very protective (duh!) and they probably will never fully appreciate the structural perfection or lack of fish eyes in the paint because all they want is to get their kid to ballet rehearsal without a coughing fit.
2. Double up on the quality control checklist. Have 2 people go over each car. Everyone sees things a little different so 4 eyes are better than 2.This could be an estimator and detailer or a manager and an estimator or any other combination. If 2 people go over it though the odds of catching something more than double.
3. Have only one person per file/customer responsible for listening to and caring for customer concerns. If there are multiple file handlers on one file then no one “owns” it. This doesn’t mean multiple people can’t be involved in each file but one person is ultimately responsible for seeing the job through.
4. Empower the managers to make customers happy. For us this translates to $200. If $200 can make the problem go away (and its surprising how often that is the case!) they are allowed to make that call. Often this will involve paying a couple days rental when someone is paying out of pocket or offering to detail the exterior for free. I have learned that the vast majority of customer concerns go away for well under $100. When we’re doing jobs in the $2000- 15,000 range typically that is a small concession to make someone happy and earn their referrals and repeat business.
5. Be proactive not reactive. If you sense someone is unpleasable and treating your shop unfairly even after attempting to help them then call the agent (or other referral source) before they do. This proactive stance assures the agent that you really want to resolve the issue and have made attempts to do so. Trust me, they are well aware that some clients are completely unreasonable. They have been there too!
6. After you’ve made reasonalbe attempts to satisfy them, don’t be afraid to fire customers. My dad taught me that 20% of your customers will cause 80% of your headaches so get rid of them and focus on those who appreciate what you do and trust you completely. Chronic complainers get charged a premium for the extra hassle and work they create. They can either pay it or take the work elsewhere.
How do you deal with customers who complain – for both legitimate and unreasonable concerns?
Zappo’s founder writes Delivering Happiness
Ok, first the legal disclosure: I received a free advance copy of the book Delivering Happiness in exchange for an honest review. Now on to my personal and honest review. Simply stated: Great book! I’m a bit of a sucker for good biography and personal reflections which is what this book is mostly. Tony reveals his early in life “entrepreneurial tendencies” starting in his childhood. I found the personal reflections to be humble and authentic – values that also come through in their corporate culture at Zappos. One of the most helpful sections of the book for me personally was the section on how Zappos developed and maintained a strong corporate culture that also values human beings and treats them like, well, human beings. It was instructive and even though I own and operate a local “bricks and mortar” business (auto body repair) I found many ideas that I could implement. Of course Zappos is well known for its outrageously good customer service and the book talks about that as well so ditto that on the learnings for my business (and really any size or type of business since customers.) I felt like the last section was the weakest. Even though it was inspiring in places I think it is taking on a topic too big for the scope of the book and probably warrants a book of its own. I believe as Tony’s thinking and practice of happiness grows he will have a lot to say on the topic but I could tell his thoughts were still forming and he was reaching in places to make it fit within the scope of this book. All in all an outstanding book and it had one great, unexpected spin off for me personally. I have been trying to interest my teenage son in things entrepreneurial. He’s a bit of a book worm (I say that respectfully and with admiration!) and he picked up my copy that just happened to be in place we both frequent (more disclosure: the Bathroom). He began reading it and its opening the door for conversations that I’ve wanted to have (but not force) for a long time. Thanks Tony for aiding that conversation!
For more information check out these links >
The 5 T’s of Word of Mouth (3/5)
Again drawing on Andy Senovitz’s seminal book Word of Mouth Marketing we move on to the tools that can help messages spread. The big idea here is making it easy for people to share your message/ideas. You want them to be able to spread the word for you in a way that is simple, fast and far reaching. Andy contends that the internet is our biggest ally in this pursuit. Here’s some tools I regularly use that seem completely underutilized in the body shop business currently. That might change in the near future. Probably will. For now though using some simple internet tools can be a huge competitive advantage. Here’s my top 3.
1. Tell a friend buttons. I had the privilege of meeting the founder/CEO of Social Twist at a recent conference. He was a gracias, Indian-American man who introduced himself to me at one of the breaks between sessions. In a very friendly way he asked about my business and told me about his. I was struck by 2 things: his humility and the awesomeness of what his company offered. I signed up the next day for the trial version of his product and I’m quickly trying to get it on every page of my website currently. What they offer is a simple button that can be easily posted on any/all pages of your website where people with the click of “tell a friend” button can share the contents of that page or blog post with their friends. The trial version is free. The upgrades are not pricey though and allow you to customize the buttons with your logo. There is no reason that a button like that should not be on every page of our websites.
2. Email signature: Every time you write an email there should be a some reminder that you want people to tell other people about what differentiates your shop and what you offer. At a minimum all your contact info including name of shop, email address, physical address, email, phone number, fax number and website should be automatically added to every email. I use G-mail for my shop and in the settings you can tell it to add this info as a signature to every email. Beyond the basics though consider adding a link to something specific that might make people interested in forwarding the email. This could be a special offer, a coupon, or an educational blog post about car repair that might be helpful to others.
3. Blogging (a.k.a. educational marketing): Marketing at its best is simply educating prospects about how you meet specific. needs they have. Blogging is a great way to educate people. I’ve written some posts specifically related to auto body repair along these lines that you might find helpful. I try to deliver content that is valuable to those who take the time to read as well as position myself as an expert so that when people have a need for a collision shop I am at the forefront of their mind.
* Bonus round: Create a high quality monthly newsletter. This one take a lot of time which is why i didn’t include it in my top 3. But really if you’re taking the time to blog these can be the basis of a great newsletter. I would suggest developing a couple dozen posts that can be polished into 500-1000 word articles first. These can then be the core writing of a great newsletter along with any special offers and interesting updates about your shop. There are some great email marketing tools out there. I’ve used Constant Contact and found it pretty user-friendly. (note: They currently have a free 60 day trial.)