AutoVitals is joined by Danny Webb, the VP of Partnerships for Cinch, to discuss marketing strategies that drive car count and build lasting customer relationships.
Listen to our discussion on:
- The power of omnichannel marketing for your shop
- How to craft personalized marketing that resonates
- Why cleaning up your Google My Business page is a must
- Tips for identifying your core messaging to stay on-brand
- and more!
Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated with Artificial Intelligence. Error may occur. If you identify an error please contact [email protected].
Lauren Thunen (00:02):
Good morning and good afternoon everyone. I am very excited to be back for another edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. My name is Lauren, I’ll be your host today, and I’m really excited. We have Danny Webb with us from Cinch, and I’m going to let him introduce himself a little bit more as well as Cinch. But Cinch is one of our partners, especially on the Bay IQ side of things for marketing and retention. And today we’re going to be talking about advanced marketing techniques to take your shop to the next level. And pretty much across the industry, I’ve been hearing from shops from our partners that work in coaching, that car count is down overall for 2025 so far. So this is a really good, timely episode for you guys about what you can be doing in your shop to increase car count and customer retention. So without further ado, Danny, could you tell me a little bit more about yourself as well as what you do with Cinch and what Cinch does for the auto repair industry?
Danny Webb (00:59):
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, thanks for having me on here. I’ve been looking forward to this all week. Yeah, so Danny Webb, I am with Cinch. I head up all partnerships for Cinch. And so my role is really to ensure that our platform is integrated with the best in breed platforms out there to ensure that we’ve got partners that act as good resources for our end customers or shops. And also to ensure that if you’re working with agencies or if you’re working with other marketing providers, that there’s a holistic nature between our solution and their solution that we’re well integrated or that we’re playing nicely, I guess in the ecosystem. And a little bit about me, I’ve been in tech my entire career, and so I’ve seen a lot of different tech platforms out there, have been in primarily early stage tech solutions and centrally caught my eye.
(02:00):
One because they’re growing really rapidly, but they’ve really set up their platform for success long-term with coming AI and a lot of new capabilities, having clean data is pretty critical to making AI effective and Cinch by the nature of what it is, is a data platform first. And so there’s just a lot of really cool future things that I’m excited to see play out with Cinch. And a little bit about Cinch, if you’re unfamiliar, Cinch is really two different platforms in one, we’re what’s called A-C-D-P-A customer data platform. Fancy way of basically just saying that we are a platform that collects data about customers from various sources and combines them all into one platform so that you have one customer record, one clear view of who that customer is, and you can use that data effectively for outreach, for reporting, for whatever that is. So that’s one aspect is we’re a CDP.
(03:08):
The second aspect is we’re a marketing excuse automation platform. And so we take that really clean data and we make it actionable. You communicate over email, communicate over SMS, communicate with direct mail marketing, and we have all sorts of plugins into our system that allow you to use that data in unique ways too, like digital ad audiences. So pushing people into digital ad audiences when it’s time for an oil change or to get their brakes replaced or whatever that is, or removing them once they’ve had that oil change, still spend your ad dollars on trying to get ’em back to get an oil change until down the road a little ways. And so our platform manages all of that holistically across data and communication with customers.
Lauren Thunen (03:59):
Nice. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for the introduction and something we’ll just start here and then we’ll go naturally where the conversation takes us, but a big buzzword in marketing. And also I should say that my day job at AutoVitals, I work in our marketing department. So when I’m not hosting the digital shop talk radio, which is a form of our marketing, I do all of our other marketing, so I’m excited to talk about marketing as well and get into my specialty. But when we talk about marketing, one of the buzzwords is omnichannel marketing. Now for an auto repair shop, what does it mean to be an omnichannel marketer and have your marketing in multiple places? What are the key channels that you are thinking of when someone says omnichannel marketing?
Danny Webb (04:45):
So omnichannel, if you really boil it down, is simply advertising across a couple of different mediums or communicating across a couple of different mediums. And the reason why that’s become a real buzzword or becoming more popular is because the world’s gotten really, really noisy and people now are starting to really identify what their preferences are. And I had read something the other day that was in the seventies. People saw on average something like 500 to a thousand ads a day just sitting on the bus, seeing a billboard, going into a store and seeing a poster or a product sitting on the shelf or whatever that it was. So 500 to a thousand ads a day in the seventies, and then in the two thousands that ramped up to 5,000 a day because now you had the internet and people were spending time on the internet browsing websites, there was digital billboards started to hit the scene.
(05:52):
So now it was cycling through messages and there was just more mediums of communication were showing themselves and people had TVs in their home and all this other stuff. So now you had 5,000 a day, and I just read that now it’s estimated that people are seeing about 10,000 a day, but people only recall a hundred of those. So if you went back and asked somebody like, oh, what ads did you see today? It’s like if you could get to a hundred, that’d be incredible. And so the world is just really, really noisy, and that’s because we put our face in our phones a lot of the time, and social media, it feels like other post or every other reel is an ad. And it’s just because we live in a noisy world and we’re consuming information in various ways. It’s really important for marketers to be consistent so that their message is seen over and over and over again for recall’s sake, but also relevant, relevant and timely and all of those things in order for it to stand out.
(07:06):
And so omnichannel is become pretty important because one, they’re seeing ads everywhere, 10,000 a day, and they’re also absorbing that in a lot of different mediums. So you need to be there where they are, meet them where they are. And another thing I was thinking about my mom, she hates getting text messages from companies bugs her. And I prefer that actually, if you’re going to try to schedule something with me, communicate with me over text, it’s way easier for me. And I’m not a big email guy, and so people’s preferences are changing and some of that is demographics. My mom’s the older generation. I’m a millennial or just above millennial, and then generations below me prefer to be communicated in different ways as a business is trying to grow broadly, they really need to be communicating in ways where that demographic is listening or watching. And so omnichannel is becoming important for those various reasons, I guess.
Lauren Thunen (08:22):
Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense, and I definitely believe that I see about 10,000 ads a day. You go on, for instance, ratchet and Wrench, one of the publications, and the first thing you’re presented with before you can even go into their magazine is an ad, and then there’s display ads all over the place. So I’m sure everyone here is sympathetic to that. So a couple questions from what you said. There’s the, okay, people are seeing 10,000 ads a day. So number one, how do I decide where to show up and when to show up? And how am I if I’m an independent shop owner, going to be competing for attention with some of these massive large brands because folks are seeing 10,000 ads a day. So what can I do in my marketing to stand out from all of the other 10,000 ads and make me one of the ones that folks remember?
Danny Webb (09:21):
Yeah, I think because the world’s noisy people, I think by default, every business needs to be consistent. At least there’s this, I was a marketing major in college, and I remember that there was this theory about me exposure, MERE, mere exposure, and it’s like this phenomenon where people tend to trust something more if they see it more frequently.
(09:57):
So it’s just like because there’s the exposure to a thing, they end up trusting it more. And so I think there’s something to be said about that in consistency, that you’re continuing to put out content, you’re continuing to put stuff in front of their face, and you don’t have to be annoying about it. You don’t have to scream in their face about it, but consistency creates trust and also helps you to stay top of mind. So I think that’s one thing. The other thing is this is becoming more and more challenging, but relevance and timeliness also really important to stick out because I see so many ads that have nothing to do with me, and maybe it’s because my kids were on my phone or my wife’s was on my phone or something, and the algorithm is really messed up, but I just see a lot of things that I don’t have any interest in aren’t relevant to me as a buyer and also are just not good timing. I’ll give you another example. I have a colleague who was just complaining about this. He’s bought a mattress a couple of days ago or a couple of months ago now, a couple of months ago, and he still gets ads from the same mattress company that he bought a mattress from. And it’s like, look, you’re wasting all your ad spend on somebody who’s not in the market clearly for a mattress. He just bought one from you. You should know that.
(11:30):
So timeliness is important now, in 10 years from now when he is in the market for a new mattress, then that’s when you should really be putting mattresses in front of his face. So I think understanding, timing, when’s appropriate to communicate with folks and when it’s not appropriate to communicate folks will help set you apart relevance. So if you’re calling out something that’s specific to them and their situation in that marketing, personalizing in that way, that’ll certainly make you stand out and then making sure that you’re consistent with it, doing it over and over and over again.
Lauren Thunen (12:08):
Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. I think those would’ve been my top three as well. Just on, we’re going to go in reverse order on the consistency piece. I think something to keep in mind for the shops on the call is that your marketing is only going to be as good as your brand. So what that means is you can have the best marketing guru, but if you don’t have a consistent brand voice tone, clear statement, mission statement about yourselves and the customers that you serve and a good idea of who you are as a brand for your auto repair shop, it’s going to be really hard for any marketing company that you work with to create great marketing. So one of the first things that if you haven’t already done this for your shop is to have a core messaging document. It can be as complex or as simple as you like, that just has a few key pillars.
(13:02):
This is our mission statement. These are the customers that we’re looking to target our ideal customer. If you’re a European specialty shop, obviously that’s going to be folks that have European vehicles. If you are domestics only, that’s going to be domestic vehicles. If you do fleet, that’s going to be part of it, probably you can layer in there what zip codes they live in around your area, how many cars they have in their family, average income, things like that. And then even probably more importantly is how do you talk about yourselves as a shop? So what is your brand voice? Are you super confident and direct? Are you friendly and kind of want to be the shop next door? Give a family feel that when folks take their car to you, it’s like they’re taking it to their cousin to get fixed. Defining all of those things is going to be really helpful because then in everything you do, every email you send to a customer, every text message update you send about their vehicle, if you’re doing Google ads, every Google ad that you place, every banner that you put on your local baseball team, whatever it may be, is going to reinforce that message over and over again.
(14:08):
And that’s exactly what Danny was talking about, is having that consistent repetition that you don’t even realize, but folks will begin to trust you because if you have a really clear idea of yourself, they’re going to have a really clear idea of you. They’re going to say, that’s someplace that I want to take my vehicle. Versus if your messages are all sporadic and you’re testing too many different things out at once, it’s going to look like you’re five different shops and that’s going to plant even in the back of folks’ mind a little bit of distrust and make it be one of those ads or those marketing messages that folks don’t remember when they go home for the day. Right.
Danny Webb (14:41):
Well, there’s little things too that if you’re consistent with create consumers, start associating you with thing. So for example, the first time I went to Les Schwab and got some new tires, they ran out to the car and I was a little bit like, whoa, relax, I’m going to come in. But then the next time I came, they ran out to the car again and the next time my wife came, they ran out to the car and it just was their thing it they run out to meet you and it was like their thing. And I remember you remember that. It’s like when anybody says, my pleasure, half the world thinks of Chick-fil-A just because that’s like they consistently do it across the board and people start to remember that. So having this mission statement or values or core kind of pillar of how you want to communicate with the world, have a personality, have some fun with that, and people will start to remember, it’s like, oh yeah, those are good guys. And they do every time I go in, they always do this thing that’s unique to them, and that kind of stuff sticks.
Lauren Thunen (15:55):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely having that one thing that defines your brand differently than any other place that they’re going to take their car too is a good thing. That also goes into customer retention marketing as well. It’s like you don’t just need to be marketing yourselves to the folks that have never used that have never taken their car to your shop. You also need to consistently be marketing to the folks that are already in your book of business that have come in for service to keep yourself top of mind so that they say like, oh yeah, when I take my car in, I want to take it to Lauren’s Automotive down the street. I don’t want to try someplace new because I know every single time I take my car there, I’m going to get X, Y, and Z. Whether that they’re going to run out to my vehicle, they’re going to perform a comprehensive check, they’re going to say, my pleasure, whatever it might be, that little touch of something unique that separates you from all the other shops in your area.
Danny Webb (16:49):
Yeah, and I guess I would say all of that boils down to my pleasure and the running out to the car and the treating them like a neighbor or a cousin rather than just a transaction. I think that at the heart of marketing, it all comes down to building an emotional connection before you build the logical. And I think a lot of companies get that backwards. You see a lot of communication goes out and there’s nothing emotional that doesn’t draw an emotional connection with the brand at all. And it’s all logical stuff. Here’s the things we’ll do for you and this is how much it will cost. And people don’t remember that. People don’t remember the logic of things. People really what sticks with them and then it’s easy to recall is the emotional connection that you can create. So I think Chick-fil-A and others, the examples I brought up, they do that for the emotional thing. It recalls something that’s fun or different or unique that’s positive and has nothing to do with their chicken or with their tires, them running out. It has nothing to do with the quality of their tires.
Danny Webb (18:05):
It’s just like how they make you feel. And so remembering that in marketing is important for sure.
Lauren Thunen (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And then I also wanted to touch on, you started talking about personalization of marketing and your top three things that folks should consider. And I think this is, again, as the world gets noisier, this is one of the biggest things that you can do to differentiate yourself, especially from other auto repair shops that might not be doing this yet or have this level of marketing. And you kind of alluded to this, but one of the biggest things is the personalization that you’re going to be able to give is only as good as one data that you have about your customers. So really, and this is something that every company struggles with I think across the board, is just making sure that the information you have about customers that have been in your shop or your marketing list is as accurate as possible and is just meticulously kept.
(19:03):
All of the first names are capitalized. They’re not in all caps. The first letter of the name is capitalized. It’s spelled correctly. You have the correct owner of the vehicle, you have the correct vehicle under their name. If they had sold one of their vehicles, that you make sure to remove that from your system so you’re not still messaging them about a car that they sold three years ago that you have if it’s a husband and wife that you have both of their names in there. If it’s going to a joint email, things like that. Because the second I get targeted with a marketing content that has the wrong name in it, like the past marketing manager for Auto Vitals, the first thing I do is delete it. That email’s addressed to whoever that person was. It’s not addressed to me. And it shows that this brand doesn’t care about keeping their information up to date. And so they probably don’t care about reaching me. So just making sure, this is something you can go through with your service advisors every single time. A customer’s coming into the shop, making sure that first and last name are spelled correctly, making sure that you verify the email is correct, making sure you verify the phone number because if you don’t have the right emails or phone numbers, it’s going to make your life a whole lot harder on the marketing side of things.
Danny Webb (20:15):
And it’s impossible to personalize, right? It’s impossible to personalize communication and make somebody feel valued if you’re not collecting the data in the first place. And so we see if we’re dealing with shops who have that practice already, that’s great. There’s a lot to work from there. If we’re dealing with shops who are just kind of getting going, one recommendation I’d have is incentivizing, incentivizing people to capture information and make sure that you got first name, last name, address, all that other stuff, because it’s just a gold mine, not just be so that you can communicate with people, but just so that you can make that communication relevant to them. And one thing that we’re seeing that’s working really well at Cinch as it pertains to personalization is we pull in OEM data that we can leverage those data fields for communication. So the idea is it’s easy to be like Dave, comma your message.
(21:18):
Thanks for being a customer. It’s time to come back in for an oil change or whatever. It’s you could do that, that’s personalization because you use their first name. But one thing that we’ve noticed works really well is if you’re showing that customer that you really understand what their situation is, making it relevant like, Hey, Dave, your 2019 Toyota Tundra has these required timing belt change and the flush needs to occur at this interval. When you were last with us, you were at 50,000 and all of these services are required at 60,000. And so here’s the consequences of not doing that type of thing. Want to make sure that you’re taken care of. Here’s a link to schedule time to get your Toyota in with us. Doesn’t that feel different than Tom? Time to come get a service with us, hope to see you soon.
(22:18):
It feels different because it’s like now you’re looking out for them. You understand what their situation is. There’s relevance in that communication. And I feel like I used to have this, sorry for telling lots of unrelated stories, but hopefully this gets the point across. I used to go to a doctor, just a family physician. All my kids did. I did everybody. And this doctor would ask any questions. He’d go in and be like, oh, my daughter’s ear aches. It’s probably an ear infection. Here’s some antibiotics. It’s like, dude, shouldn’t you look in the ear and ask her, does she have a fever or not? Was she swimming recently? Is it swimmer’s ear versus an ear? It’s like, I don’t really trust your diagnosis because you didn’t ask any questions. It makes me feel like you don’t really care. And I think the same thing is true in marketing communication.
(23:19):
The more details that you show, the relevance of their situation and how you’re addressing that situation. It’s like a doctor who’s asked you a lot of questions and now is making a diagnosis. It’s like, oh, now they really know what’s going on and what they’re prescribing is something that I can trust. And so I feel like in personalization, you really have to kind of think of it that it’s like, how can I make this person think that I hand wrote this message specifically for them? I know their situation. So having good data is the fundamental aspect of being able to do that. But two, just being thoughtful and how you’re going to personalize.
Lauren Thunen (24:03):
Yeah, yeah. No, definitely. And I think too, something that, this is something I went back and forth a lot in my early marketing career is sometimes personalizing messages feels a little creepy. You’re like, I know all of this about you and I’m just going to share that I have all of this information about you. But actually more and more consumers are so comfortable with the fact that their data is out there. We all know it unless you’re taking some crazy privacy metrics like companies, businesses, they know so much about you, especially if you’ve already taken your car to a shop. They know what type of car you have. They know your last odometer reading. If you’ve been multiple times, you know that they know how many miles you’re driving in a year. Use that data to your benefit because actually sources are saying now that 76% of people are actually getting frustrated when marketing messages aren’t personalized.
(24:59):
Obviously, you want to have easy ways for folks to opt in and out of your marketing communication, things like that. But don’t be afraid to give these hyper-personalized messages and use the information that you have already collected about folks because people actually are craving that level of personalization because if you’re not doing it, every single ad on their Instagram feed is doing it. Everyone is collecting data about folks to the point where, yeah, if I see an ad on my Instagram feed that’s not exactly targeted for me, I’m annoyed because I’m like, how did this end up here? Obviously I don’t want X, Y, or Z. Same thing, obviously I just bought a mattress. I’m not looking for another mattress. Is really use consumer preferences and behavior to your advantage and make the most of you have the data in your system is just making sure that you’re integrating that with a marketing or a CRM system that can pull out and segment your customer base by that to make it easy. Obviously if you try to do this all manually, it’s going to be overwhelming. You really need a system that’s going to help you target each of your customer bases.
Danny Webb (26:10):
Yeah, I think starting with doing something is better than nothing. Obviously using the tools that you have to get going with some basic communication that’s consistent. But I think the challenge is if you just do the basics and not really spend some time to differentiate yourself either how you’re going to personalize or how you’re going to or in what channels you’re going to communicate on. The problem is you look like everyone else because most shops, most businesses are really busy and do the bear essentials and the bear essentials get lost in the noise anymore. And so I think it’s really important to make sure that even though with all these things said that you’re doing something is important, but making sure that you’re really trying to put your own personal spin on it is where you see the results.
Lauren Thunen (27:16):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think too, just, and we can talk a little bit more about this is a lot of marketing spaces are paid to play, right? If you’re thinking about Google ads, if you’re thinking about social media ads, things like that, if you want to buy a billboard, postcards, like all of those things cost additional money outside of your time. But there are also a lot of things that you can do to reinforce your brand message, especially with your existing customers that are relatively free. Obviously it takes your time or your service manager’s time or whoever’s managing your marketing, but things like Danny mentions a little bit like monthly newsletters, blog posts that are going to show folks how to care for their car and have seasonal tips, relevant tips that are reinforcing your brand as a trustworthy brand, posting consistently on your social media, making sure your website contents up to date.
(28:15):
Those are all things that you don’t have to pay to play. You can pay someone to do it, but it’s not an ad that you’re going to have to pay for is making sure that you’re doing those easy free things well and consistently. And then going in and looking into what are some of the other pay to play spaces that I should be looking at for marketing? Probably the biggest one that I hear folks talk about is Google search ads and really to determine whether or not you need to be, and then step field free step in. If you feel like you need to be in Google Ads, the best thing is to be in an area in your area and just Google auto repair shops near me, domestic oil change near me and see which of your competitors are bidding on Google Ads because they’re going to show first and it’s going to have their brand name in it.
(29:08):
And then where does your shop appear when you’re in local search results? Make sure to do it not when you’re in your shop, because if you’re right next to your shop, they’re going to be like, yeah, you should take it to Joe’s Auto Repair because you’re 500 feet away, so make sure you do it from your home or a coffee shop that’s in a zip code that you’re trying to market to, things like that. But you can also test and get some competitor intelligence relatively easily by just using Google. And if you can’t find your shop easily in the top three, top five of the search results, that’s a really good indication that, hey, maybe you need to look into enhancing your website or bidding on Google Ads. The easiest way to get to the top of the search results costs money, but it’s relatively easy,
Danny Webb (29:54):
And I would spend time making sure that you really clean up your Google My Business profile
(30:00):
Hours of operation services that you have, get images up on there of your shop and encourage, of course at all costs, reviews. It’s one thing. What since we’ve done is we pull in review data so that you can communicate with people who have left you one star review. You can segment down your audience and say, I want everybody who’s left me a four or five star review and who has also owns a Toyota and whatever, and maybe you have a specific segment in our audience you want to communicate with, but with that review data as we pull it and we have a reputation management tool set that allows you to respond reviews and see how that’s trending over time. Just the request of reviews makes an enormous difference after a service has been done, make sure that you’re asking for review and it’s not just because you want to look good, you want to have a four, nine or whatever on Google.
(31:00):
That’s great. That helps people to make decisions to choose your shop or another shop. But actually what it also does is it after 500 reviews, it really starts to help your search results. People are searching for auto repair near me, you’re coming higher in that list. All the things else equal with another shop, if you have more than 500 reviews and they don’t, you show up higher. So Google really rewards users for keeping the clean Google My Business page with hours of operations and lots of reviews. So I’d spend a lot of time focusing on that too.
Lauren Thunen (31:41):
Yeah, no, that’s a really good call out. And if you don’t know how to manage your Google My Business profile, you can definitely reach out, especially if we’re using auto vitals, reach out to us, we can help you figure it out. And if you’re not managing your website with us, then we can talk about that as well. But it’s really making sure that the content that’s on your website and the content that’s on your Google My Business profile are identical too. Because
(32:07):
Google is, it’s a search engine. It’s not a real person. So if it sees that your hours of operation are different on your website than on your Google My Business, or if you have different services listed on your website than you have on your Google My Business, all of those things are going to plant the seed of distrust in Google that’s going to rank you lower than someone who’s Google my business is directly representative of what’s on their website. So you just want to make sure, again, talk about consistency that everywhere that your shop’s placed online, you’re saying you do the same things. You’re saying you’re open at the same hours, same contact email, all of that thing is going to help your Google My Business page.
Danny Webb (32:44):
And also that Google My Business page really acts as an information source for all of the new AI models too, because I was just reading a report about how people are using chat GBT essentially for search and perplexity in some of these other platforms. And I mean, I find myself doing that too, and those engines will go out and also look at Google My Business and evaluate if that’s the recommendation that they should make based on that page. So you’re even future proofing yourself. Even if search goes outside of Google, those engines are still using all of that data from those places to help provide recommendations. So just one more reason to keep that stuff clean.
Lauren Thunen (33:31):
And then touching on the review piece. I think when you’re starting to request more reviews, I think the natural hesitation is like, oh, I might get a bad review if I’m asking almost every person that visits my shop to leave a review, you’re going to get some three star reviews, you’re going to get some two star reviews, you’re going to get some one star reviews, hopefully not a lot because if you’re on this webinar, you’re doing great service. So most of them are going to be five stars, but it’s to not shy away from getting a three or a two or a one star review as long as you take the time to respond to it
Lauren Thunen (34:06):
And have a meaningful response. Because most consumers, especially like I do this, the first thing I do is if I see, let’s say we’ll use a hotel. If I’m going to visit a hotel and it’s like, yeah, 4.3 out of five stars, 600 reviews. First thing I do is I go and I say, filter by most relevant filter by most recent and filter by the lowest star reviews. Like, okay, yeah, a bunch of people are happy, but what are the people that aren’t happy saying, does this hotel have bedbugs last week? Is that why they’re unhappy? Or are they unhappy because the person at check-in was a little disgruntled with them? And consumers are always doing that. They’re always going to filter to your lowest star reviews. But if they see that you have a great response and are like, Hey, I’m sorry Judy that you were unhappy with X, Y, and Z, bring your car back in, we’ll take another look at it.
(35:01):
Or if, and this happens a lot, I’m sure every shop on this happens is someone writes a one star review that is just completely not the situation that happens. Like they are taking things out of context. They’re saying things that are untrue about your business. Number one, you can report that to Google to get it removed. Number two, if you respond and explain how the situation actually happened in a respectful and kind way you responding to a one star review is going to go a lot farther in a customer’s mind than you having 50 or 105 star reviews. So just making sure it’s okay to get negative. Every business has it, it’s going to happen, and folks are more likely to trust you based on how you respond to the negative feedback than if you just have 505 star reviews and no one has ever said something bad about your business. Immediately a consumer is going to be like, this probably isn’t true. They’re probably paying for reviews or soliciting reviews unfairly. So just making sure respond to the reviews in addition to collecting them.
Danny Webb (36:02):
Yeah, that last point you just brought up, I was going to say the exact same thing. It’s like people trust a 4.7 more than they trust a 5.0 because otherwise they think it was the owner’s mom who just left 500 reviews and everybody knows that there’s cranky people out there. You can’t run a perfect business. So I think that’s important. Yeah, like you said, get every review even if it’s negative.
Lauren Thunen (36:30):
Yeah. And then two, something that search engines do look at is how quickly you respond to the review. I think that what they say it’s within three days is typically when then they’ll start pinging you if you haven’t responded in three days. So number one, if you have someone in your shop that has free time and is well equipped to do that, have them do it too. There’s also tons of companies like Auto Vitals and other folks that will help respond to your reviews and flag certain reviews that need your review. And then too, if this is a great for those five star reviews that you just want to say thank you, that’s a great way to start integrating chat GBT or whatever AI you use into your business flow as you can type in customer. Debra said this about my shop, how should I respond? And chat GBT will give you a nice template that you can use. Obviously you don’t want to use the same thing over and over again because you’re going to get flagged for that, but it will help you at least speed up the thinking process for responding to reviews. So make sure you’re responding and make sure you’re doing it relatively quickly within three business days.
Danny Webb (37:39):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, reviews are critical.
Lauren Thunen (37:44):
Okay, well this time is flying by. We only have about seven minutes left. If you have any questions about what we’ve covered, feel free to put them if you hover over your Zoom screen in that q and a box. But I wanted to ask a little bit too, we’ve talked a lot about personalization, acquisition. What are some other ways that folks can market to their existing customer base to increase customer attention with marketing? Does that look any different or is it pretty similar to what you would have them do for new customer acquisition?
Danny Webb (38:16):
I think on existing customer marketing, there’s a lot that you can do that’s adds relevance and timeliness to your communication that you’d have a hard time with prospect marketing, for example, because they’re an existing customer when they were in last, what they had done. And you also know what vehicle they have and what type of oil it is and how many quarts was required and what new part you put on or what you replaced. So because you’re armed with that data, I would use that data to your advantage to make sure that you’re communicating timely and relevant information. So where we’re seeing a lot of success is of course decline services, making sure that you’re communicating with them about that decline service and you’re adding context around that on these repetitive maintenance type services when the right time is to communicate that and to use a tool set that allows you to communicate that in a timely way.
(39:24):
So rather than just, one thing that Cinch has spent a lot of time doing is we deal with a lot of oil change businesses and we’ve gotten really good at timing that messaging, not just based off of time, but based off of mileage driven. You may have an Uber driver who drives a lot and you may have a grandma who never drives at all. It’s sending them the same message and the same time cadence doesn’t make any sense. This comes across as impersonal. So I would say that leverage the data to make sure that it’s relevant and timely. And then also, we alluded to this earlier with the mattress example, but make sure that you’re suppressing people in your ad audiences who are not, the timing is not right to communicate with them or make that communication more appropriate. So I keep using quickly with examples, but that’s what’s top of mind for me right now.
(40:20):
If they bought conventional oil, but it’s more profitable for you as a business to sell them synthetic oil, then if they bought conventional oil, then enter them into an ad audience that is just about synthetic oil next time. And when they buy the synthetic oil, stop communicating with them about synthetic oil. You already got them over the hump. Let those digital marketing dollars go further with a different audience. So because the context around that customer, treat them differently and intentionally treat them differently in how you’re communicating. So that’s one maybe that’d be how I would maybe answer the question.
Lauren Thunen (41:00):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And probably for most folks, you might not be running the Google ads and some of those things for your shop. You might be having a third party do it. Just make sure you’re checking in with them. Ask them if you want to start running suppression lists. Ask them what the best way to get that to them is. And that’s going to be like Danny said, current customers that have been in within the past three months, things like that. So you can make sure you’re not wasting your ad spend. And then again, something is like you can’t manage what you don’t measure. We say that all the time here is make sure that you’re checking in with your providers, asking for the results of campaigns and also that you have a clear idea of what can be measured and what can’t be measured.
(41:42):
Google Ads is a pretty direct ROI, right? They click on your ad, they convert on your landing page, they schedule an appointment at your shop. That’s pretty easy to measure. Things like postcard, marketing, billboards, anything that you’re running for brand awareness, like if you sponsor a local event, those things are going to be harder to measure, not as direct, but just knowing and setting realistic goals as well of I’m going to run this for brand awareness and I should see in the next three months an increase in my customer base, but I might not be able to attribute directly to that. So just make sure whatever you’re doing, you’re measuring it as well.
Danny Webb (42:17):
And I would also make sure with use your existing customer data for new prospect marketing. Use that data set to help you to understand who your ideal customer really is. Because I think a lot of new customer marketing or prospect marketing is all spray and pray. Just like spray the world with ads, spray the world with postcards, spray my neighborhood with whatever it is. But if you actually look in your data, you’ll understand there’s a real common theme, and it’s different for every shop, but there’s a real common theme of who your best target audience really is. Maybe it’s like this age demographic. Maybe it’s they live in these neighborhoods, maybe it’s they need these types of services and that’s the most profitable for you. We’ll start marketing to those niches. Use your existing audience to create a lookalike audience that you can plug in for prospecting. And there’s a lot of digital tools, Google and Facebook and all those ad tools. They have this concept of lookalike audiences. So if you’re doing it yourself, you probably know what that means. If you’re using an agency to do that, make sure that you’re giving them access to your data so they can create lookalike audiences and you’ll get better people and your conversion rates will be higher because you’re telling ’em the right message in the right way that best suits your business. And so I would encourage you to do that as well.
Lauren Thunen (43:44):
Yeah. Awesome. Cool. And then we just had a couple questions come in. John, I will take a look at your Google My Business page issue after this webinar and follow up with you directly. And then Justin, thank you for the comments on AutoVitals CRM. I will also follow up with you after the webinar. I will say that we’ve started rolling it out last year and through this is AutoVitals is making enhancements to our existing CRM in terms of service reminders. We have email and text marketing review collection, thank you messages. All of those things have been getting updated over the past year and we’ll continue to be updated in 2025. So a lot of exciting things coming on that front. So I will follow up with you, Justin, as well on the specifics of that as it pertains to your feature requests. Cool. Well, if we don’t have any other questions, that is right at 10 45 Pacific time. Danny, thank you so much for joining us today. It was great to chat with you and pick your brain a little bit. Folks, if you’re interested in learning more about Cinch, their website is Cinch, which is cch.io. And then as well as in the at post-show meeting where we send you guys the post-show email where we send you guys the recording, there’ll be a link to learn more about Cinch as well as to re-watch the recording. So if you have any questions, reach out to Cinch on the website.
Danny Webb (45:05):
Yeah, Lauren, thanks for having me. This was great. And look forward to hopefully doing this in the future. This was fun.
Lauren Thunen (45:11):
Yeah, of course. Thank you so much and have a good rest of your day everybody.
Danny Webb (45:15):
Okay, see you Allall.
Lauren Thunen (45:16):
Thanks, Danny. Bye
Danny Webb (45:17):
Bye-Bye.