The auto mechanic industry is full of mistakes in lead generation, or bringing in auto mechanic leads and turning them into customers. And, while it may be difficult to decipher the old practices from new strategies that are proven to work, taking the time to learn the difference will be game-changing in your company. Therefore, identifying the bad from the good is our top goal in this post.
We know many professionals and individuals focus on generating more mechanic leads, and we get it; people just want to bring more clients and customers. However, they often forget that bad practices are what doom a business, not necessarily how slow you are to generate the leads.
Thus, we will take a different approach, and instead of telling you what to do, what about focusing on what you shouldn’t and what you need to stop, including generating mechanic leads?
Does it sound like a plan? We bet it does.
You Aren’t Prioritizing Your Finale Outcome
How many interactions have potential customers had with your marketing before they made the decision to go into sales? You need to focus on this statistic to make sure you are aiming for your outcome, and in this way, you will be able to stay on track.
If you don’t understand it, we can make it simple.
Suppose the outcome you want for your potential customers or mechanic leads is them calling you.
For this, you need to think about how you will take your leads there as the final part of your campaign’s journey.
You would need to find a channel that is efficient in producing calls, like focusing your efforts in search engine marketing to add the call alternatively, and, eventually, you should be able to add more elements that can generate the final outcome, like a call button on ads for mobile users.
You can add a mobile call button to your ads or a trackable number on the landing page. You can ensure success by aligning every detail of your campaign with your desired outcome.
Of course, this was just an example, and you need to think of other channels or additional elements based on the ultimate outcome you are aiming for.
You Are Buying Leads… Big Mistake
It can be tempting to purchase leads, email lists, and anything related to your mechanic leads. Hence, you are able to save time and effort, especially if you are having difficulty generating leads.
However, people don’t stop for a minute and think why this option, the easy road, can be the worst mistake for their businesses.
There are many reasons why buying them is the worst idea you can have, starting with the email lists we mentioned.
When you buy one, you get contact information that wasn’t provided willingly for your potential leads. This means you will be contacting them, and they haven’t heard or read about your business at all.
In the process, you harm your email deliverability and IP reputation, while your brand name is also affected.
Where does this take you? Most likely to the point where they label you as spam. In other words, you are paying for a list of contacts that isn’t worth your time and effort because they are not the users and potential customers you want for your company.
The same happens with other types of leads, like those brought to your website without organic traffic and by other company or individual that doesn’t have your business’s best interests in mind.
The best option is to place your money and effort in generating leads organically and avoid paying for a list that others can have as well and will only bring a bad reputation your way.
You Don’t Offer the Right Content for Each Stage
Every visitor to your website will be at a different stage of your funnel or selling strategy, which you can also call their buyer’s journey.
Depending on the stage, you need to make sure they have access to specific content that makes them consider staying and progressing in the funnel.
Take the people who land on your website for the first time as the best example. Are they ready to view a demo version of your service or what you have to offer? Or do you think they would be more inclined to download helpful content such as a step-by-step guide and some valuable tips?
While some site visitors may be ready to purchase, others won’t. You need to provide them with the opportunity to learn about your business before making any purchase decision.
The main problem with mechanic businesses is that they include all their content at once or think it isn’t necessary to take the time to come up with the perfect plan to make visitors turn into leads and then clients.
It is an entire process, and the same content they see when visiting and seeing your landing page isn’t the same that should be added to the rest of pages and other platforms.
If you are doing this, no wonder your mechanic leads are far from being seen.
You Are Using Your Blog Wrong
Simple question: Are you writing a blog just to share content or also generate more leads?
If you answered “yes” for the first part, that means you didn’t even know you could use your blog for lead generation, or maybe you don’t even have one.
Well, for many, it is hard to believe, and as a result, they decide it isn’t worth their time to write a blog nor use it to generate mechanic leads directly.
Companies from all niches have found over the years that over 76% of monthly blog views and readers actually turn into leads and potential clients with the right optimization, and you don’t even need to post that much.
The best part is that you continuously generate them with old posts as long as you worked hard on them when writing and adding them.
If you are just blogging to fill the part of SEO that involves keywords, that is a great approach, but it is only a part of the iceberg of what this option can do for you.
But how are we so sure this works and that you are making this mistake? We find that marketers are not fully using this tactic to generate leads, especially those in the mechanic field.
They don’t put CTAs or lead capture forms on their blogs or any sort of element that generates the actual leads we are talking about. It is just plain text without any thought on the page it was posted.
So, from now on, remember that every blog post you create is an opportunity to generate leads.
You just need to be consistent and create valuable content that will keep the audience interested in coming back and giving your CTAs a click or taking a specific step you have established on your website.
Top Pages Aren’t Optimized for Lead-Gen
All web pages are different for a reason: Because the treatment you give them shouldn’t be the same, and the elements each one of them has, need to be unique.
If you examine traffic numbers to certain pages on your website, you will likely find that the majority of your traffic comes into just a handful of pages.
These pages could be your homepage, your Contact Us page, or one or two blog posts. What does this mean? They are the main source of leads on your website, and you need to optimize them well enough to keep them that way.
Many mechanic companies believe it is good enough to build a website using the exact same format for each of the pages, but what they don’t know is that this makes the user get bored in a matter of seconds.
Also, when you have a specific page, or several ones generate more, you need to make sure they are always operating well and generating even more with the optimization and improvement provided.
It’s important to create conversion opportunities on these pages because so many people land on them. Which ones are “them”? You need to determine this on your site.
You Are Ignoring Your Prospect’s Pain Points
It is easy to become distracted by internal visions and get lost in navel-gazing. During this period, you are usually too focused on promoting your products, services, bringing more offers, and just have a specific set of mind that doesn’t look beyond this.
What is so bad about this? This can lead to you overlooking the most important thing that will get your customers: their pain points.
Many companies don’t understand that understanding their audience’s pain points will generate more leads without much effort, and by addressing the points, they can bring value their way, and the same applies to you.
A prospect who has expressed interest in a video, podcast, or article about a particular pain point you have shared or keep track of means they are probably feeling it.
With this knowledge, you can provide more details about your service as the prospect moves further down the funnel based on the pain point they are showing.
This means that you should be focusing on pain points all along the journey, from the beginning of the funnel to the last part of the ultimate outcome you have set.
You Aren’t Spreading Enough
It’s crucial to quickly learn and focus on the most effective channels of lead generation when you have limited cash. If you don’t do it, you will run out of resources and waste your time and effort without generating the leads you want and need.
Most mechanic companies have to bring leads by spreading a budget across multiple channels at once, but this is not a good idea.
After all, the results will not be statistically significant, and remember that volume is essential to draw meaningful conclusions from data.
It’s also difficult to compare different channels and the results they are giving you at the same time without knowing if the money you are investing is being used accordingly.
There are way too many differences between each option, and you need to focus on one or only a few to determine which ones are giving you the best results for mechanic leads.
Iterative testing is a great methodology that relies on well-constructed strategic hypotheses.
You can test different channels by adopting a scientific approach and running lead generation experiments.
When it comes to choosing the channels to prioritize, experience is a great blessing.
The key lesson is to allow yourself to discover which channels are most efficient and not spend all your resources on multiple channels in a matter of weeks like you’ve been doing so far.
Your Forms Are Too Long or Too Short (Maybe Both)
Many marketers struggle to find the right length form, and over 50% of them never find it unless a professional enters the picture or after investing lots of time on it.
You are probably making your forms too long, which makes visitors avoid them because they are either lazy, you are asking too much, or for the simple fact, they don’t pay attention to so much information and requests in one place.
Instead, your visitors will fill out your forms more quickly if they are shorter, but not THAT much either.
While there is no “perfect” length for forms, you can optimize the length of your forms based on your goals.
You can make your forms shorter if you want more leads. However, when aiming for quality leads, you need to make them longer.
The theory and statistics work simply: Shorter forms are more likely to yield more leads. Longer forms, however, will produce fewer but better-quality leads, and you are very likely not to be doing any of them.
You Are Insisting, Not Persisting
It is not easy to be persistent in pitching your products or services. People often cross the line between this and insisting others access your services or rely on you as a mechanic company or individual. That people buy.
In case you thought they are both the same, well, many business owners do not know the difference and choose to push for customers to buy just like you, and this is what you need to know to understand why this is a mistake: Any potential customer will hate facing strong-arm tactics to almost forcing a purchase.
A pushy marketing strategy can do more damage than good for your business. It will drive away potential clients and create a negative image of your brand.
Brands that fail to follow up with potential buyers are at the other extreme. They might send an email or not do enough to follow up on social media or website visitors.
Many small brands don’t post much content on social media when remarketing, and other strategies are great tools to increase conversion.
You need to find the thin line between knowing how to persist and when it is crossing to the point of insisting and overwhelming the potential client.
You Aren’t Defining Your Ideal Audience/Client
It is not a good lead generation strategy or a successful marketing strategy to sell your product online to everyone or offer the services to every user and person you find off or online.
You won’t get many (or any) sales no matter how many people you reach. If they don’t have the authority, money, or desire to purchase from you or hire the services, then nothing you do will motivate them to do so. Why? Because they are not the client, you should be aiming for.
Thus, the first step in your lead generation strategy involves identifying your target market or, better yet, building rich personas and target clients that encapsulate more than just the demographics of your ideal customer.
You can identify the characteristics of your ideal customer to help you create communications, pricing, and products that meet their needs.
Targeted lead generation allows you to create more targeted marketing strategies that are highly effective in converting visitors and attracting new customers.
You can identify your ideal client by researching the traits that are common to your customers. Segment subscribers and other visitors can also be based on these traits. Next, design your pitch to target these decision variables.
Forgetting About Mobile-Users
It is easy to forget that mobile devices are a large part of lead generation campaigns, but you can’t afford to forget it unless you want your strategy and future to be affected.
Mobile responsive landing pages will greatly increase conversion rates, but not doing it will, naturally, achieve the opposite outcome.
Marketers should avoid the mistake of not allowing mobile users to access their websites easily. But how can they solve it? By optimizing their content for mobile users. It is that simple.
They should create simple forms and calls-to-action and make the visitor’s phone number clickable.
If you need an example, just visit a competitor’s site using your phone or go to any other website regardless of the niche and notice the differences in the organization and how the pages attract clients and lead using new elements that are more comfortable.
Always Underestimating Personalization
If you’re not focusing on the buyer persona while strategizing the lead generation campaign, or further worse, if you don’t fully understand the buyer persona (or fail to reflect through your content that you do), then you’re in a tough spot.
In this age of hyper-personalization, along with understanding buyer persona, you must have content catering to each stage of the buyer’s journey. If you have used the same CTA for every campaign, then they won’t work.
We mean by personalization by making changes and creating the campaigns based on the specific platform and site you are using.
Not all social media platforms support some formats, for example, and the same applies to the audience following each profile.
You need to create a different strategy in each one and with the rest of your marketing efforts. When you don’t do it, failure is inevitable.
You Aren’t Trying Hard Enough
Every strategy is like a seed sown, and regardless of how much you work around it, you can’t make the plants sprout before it’s the right time for them to do so.
How does this apply to lead gen? Simple. Understandably, marketers and business managers are compelled to rush to get leads.
However, it is dangerous to expect results from any campaign within a short time frame.
Social media campaigns, landing pages, and conversion of generic CTAs to more effective are all strategic investments. You will get results, but you shouldn’t expect immediate ones.
Be patient and don’t give up in a matter of hours, days, or even weeks.
No one said that generating mechanic leads was going to be simple, so you better stay prepared for it.
You Are Making the “Invisible Man’ Mistake
Stelzner refers to the “Invisible Man” error as the failure to include your free content offer in your marketing.
A free information offer can increase response rates by up to three times, thanks to many reasons, being the first one that free information always catches visitors’ attention.
With it, the reader is forced to slow down, and it makes them want to read more about what he can receive for free.
The other reason lies in that, even though they are overloaded with information, engineers and business people still need to be able to find new information that will help them do their jobs better.
These prospects are attracted to a well-targeted white paper or report.
Finally, a free report is an appealing “soft” offer to prospects who don’t have an immediate need or want more information before meeting with a sales representative.
What is exactly the mistake you are making? You are advertising your free content offer by itself.
Instead, it should be included in any marketing campaigns for related products and services.
It should be mentioned in your pay-per-click ads. Your print ads should include a starburst or sidebar.
You can run a sidebar advertisement for it and include it in your newsletter or blog whenever possible.
It is a good idea to include a banner on your home page as well as the related product pages. Include the URL of your landing page, and by following all this, results will drastically change.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Auto Mechanic Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Auto Mechanic Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Auto Mechanic Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.