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AOCA CORNER

ADAM

TATUM

Adam Tatum is director of operations for the Virginia Group, a Jiff y Lube franchisee with 11 locations.

He has over a decade of experience in the industry with a proven track record of building customer counts and sales, as well as using innovative ways to bring a new look to the automotive fi eld for both the customer and the employee. Performance comes from growing your business through people.

ATATUM

@VALUBE.COM

Where Did I Hear That?

Getting your name out there is fundamental marketing

IN OUR COMPETITIVE MARKET, GETTING YOUR share of customers is the most important part of what we do.

Without those customers, you don’t have a business to advertise. How do we go about choosing the right method to get the a ention of our customers today?

Well, with the customer base becoming younger and more tech savvy, your old ways of doing a mail drop just won’t work anymore. That method ends up being very expensive with li le return on the investment. However, there are a few avenues that you can go down that might just get you the bang for the buck for which you are looking.

Airwaves This is a very inexpensive way to get to your customers. How many of you are listening to the radio or SiriusXM while you are going to and from? Nearly all of us are! So are your customers.

Reach out to local stations to inquire about the costs of doing a few ads per day, sponsoring a show or a sporting event. You will be surprised at how li le this will cost. I sponsor a local rock station drive home show, the college football team’s pregame and postgame show and advertise on three diff erent stations daily. The cost for all of that is only about $800 per week. If you were to go aggressive like I did, you would only really need to gain eight to 10 customers to pay for it. Knowing your customer base is important here, too. If you are in a college town, hit up your rock and top hits stations, for example.

Google Search This one can get a bit costly if you do not put a limit on it. However, getting front and center on a customer’s cell phone or computer screen when they are searching for a service can pay off big time.

There are many companies out there that can set this up and monitor for you monthly. When you use this method, come up with a distinct coupon code so that you can track the traffi c that it is bringing to your service centers.

Take note that on this method, you are not the only one that will be doing this. Your competition may spend more than you and, poof, they are above you on the search. A li le trick to gaining market share on Google is to keep up with your scores. If you are at 4.0 or higher out of 5.0 on their scale, you will pop up on the map in searching. This could be an easy way to just get it out there, as well.

Digital Advertising This is very similar to the airwaves. People are on their devices and their computers daily. We have all spent fi ve minutes looking up a vacation spot or that Amazon deal. Get your logo on sites or in the adaptive marketing sector. For example, when the blue F app is listening to you talk to your friends about needing tires, you see those ads for the next fi ve days, right? You can pay social media platforms for ads like this. It’s not as bad as you think price-wise, but you must be smart on searches and set a limit.

Point of View Although they may be going the way of the dinosaur now, billboards are a large catch of the eye. Really what you pay for in this method is the artwork design. If your corporate entity (like a franchise) has artwork available, this can be a great cost-cu er. The new way that I have started noticing in our area is the moving billboard. You have all seen one. It’s that big truck with a billboard a ached to it driving all around town in a loop. Although it may be a li le more expensive than the standard billboard, you will be hi ing more potential customers as it hits the streets. Again, set a special coupon code so that you know how it’s performing.

As you can see above, for a li le bit of cost, you have various methods to gain that market share from your competition. The standard mail drop or email blast will not always be eff ective any longer as most people bypass that with a fl ick of the wrist to the trash or that handy delete bu on. Think outside the box and look at ways that you can take it another step in your markets.

Any advertising is better than no advertising!