It’s essential to have a marketing plan that goes according to your goals so you can bring in new heavy truck repair leads. To build your plan, it is important to have repair lead generation strategies that drive customers to your shop and choose you over other alternatives in the market and local area.
It is not difficult to create a marketing plan that will help your business thrive, if you know where to start.
Keep in mind that the first step is working in how you can increase your business’ visibility and attract new clients by using a few targeted and intentional marketing strategies; don’t think about sales straight away or how new clients will knock your door and close a deal.
You might think that marketing your heavy truck repair shop is a waste or that it is way too hard, but if you set your target market, goals, and work on learning more than selling, you will get there.
Now, don’t go thinking it is too much work. Consider that clients can come with the good old networking and word-of-mouth as they seem to work well. You will soon realize that you can reach a wider audience when knowing what works for your business the most.
You can also control the message about your shop that is sent out to your customers and audience to get better results in this process. You don’t need to rely on what other people say about your shop. Instead, create a positive image for it and build a reputation that people can trust.
Your marketing efforts should be focused on things that remind customers of what you do. Here, our goal is to help you set the right strategies for success. Thus, we have compiled a list of factors to keep in mind + strategies to add to your list.
Who Are Your Customers?
When you are creating a marketing plan, you must first look at your existing customers. Are you primarily looking for owner-operators for your jobs? Are you able to work with small and large fleets? Are most of your jobs repair-based? Are you a prolific PM?
Your existing audience can help you segment your customers and target them with relevant information and promotions.
It provides a common language that you and your customers can use. “We are a truck repair place and we deal with all types of chassis repairs” is a direct message to the customer who has a damaged chassis and the same applies to other messages you customize according to the audience.
Your new and existing clients should request services from you. This could be done by calling, emailing, or even stopping by your shop.
They should become paying customers. Ideally, clients who are satisfied with your services will return to you whenever they need them.
What’s So Great About You?
Most people have heard the phrase “What’s Your Angle” used in advertising. This roughly means “What’s your unique selling point?”
It is vital to find the answer to this question since knowing this will help you create a marketing plan for your heavy-duty shop. Once you have identified your unique selling point, it is time to determine how you can put it in front of your clients and prospects.
Are you able to offer something that no one else offers? Maybe you can do it in a way that no one else can.
You will be able to make a distinction about your heavy-duty repair shop that will help you stand out from others. Customers will remember you if you are the only one offering a specific service or the best at it.
This exercise is not meant to list all the great things about your shop but rather the main aspect that everyone should remember. This is why you should focus on one thing that you can make your shop famous—something that you want to make it a top-of-the-line destination.
You could offer a service or your availability outside of business hours, or maybe you have the best warranty available in the state.
Perhaps you have special pricing available for fleets of any size. If a fleet manager stumbles across the post on your Facebook page, or a shared page on Facebook, they will find a shop that could save them money. Thus, they will show interest.
Let us suppose you have a mobile tech that can do most repairs and diagnostics from anywhere. This mobile tech can be promoted on your website, in email newsletters, and via social media. Use it as your selling point.
In all this process, make sure that your logo and phone number are prominently printed on both sides. This way, the truck does double duty as a lead generation tool for your company while making service calls and add all the info to every digital property you own.
The bottom line is to use your trademark to highlight a unique selling point. It does not matter what it is, be proud of it and make sure to mention it often. It can be used as your shop’s tagline and in all your marketing.
Make Sure You Have a Budget Set for Your Lead Generation Process
Half of your marketing budget can go to waste if you don’t set limits in both goals and money.
Technology has made marketing a lot easier, but losing money is also easier as people don’t take the time to measure their efforts.
Effective marketing does not require you to spend a lot of money and although digital options make this clearer, many business owners lose focus on how to do things.
Everything lies in the options you pick for your marketing and lead gen process + knowing when and where to put your money.
Where should you start for this? By setting a budget so you limit yourself to what you should be using or not for your business.
There are thousands of blog posts that can help you in how to budget for marketing, but here is how we break it down: Estimate your gross sales. Determine how high you would like your gross sales to go. Targeted sales should be allocated at least five percent to marketing.
You can do it in many other ways, but the steps we have provided are very simplified. However, determining your budget in advance will allow you to decide which marketing strategies you want to use for your shop and for how long.
This is a major step towards sustaining your commercial heavy-duty shop via advertising.
Do You Have a Website? You Should
Marketing your heavy truck repair shop does not have to be expensive, as we mentioned above. Simple things can help spread the word about your shop. A website is the best way to do this since you will get a digital property that is always there to provide your prospects with all the info and even work as a word of mouth option as users are always sharing sites on the internet.
A professional website is like a business card on the internet. It is the bare minimum. If you do not yet have a website, get one.
Google, Bing and other search engines love websites that add new content regularly. A blog is one way to do this and what you’ll need to integrate to this new real estate property on the Internet.
You can create new content that search engines will notice by regularly posting to your blog. As you post more often, your site will slowly grow in search ranking.
A blog page is an important part of the best websites. It allows businesses to share their expertise and increase their customers’ value.
Blog articles are regularly posted by websites that inform customers about topics that pertain to their interests and needs.
Another way to attract potential customers is through instructional videos. These videos can be embedded on any page, even your blog.
Your “Request Service” button is the secret weapon of any website. It should be placed on your homepage in a prominent place that visitors can see. It can be used as a contact form or connected to your shop management software.
Social Media Needs to Be in Order
For heavy truck repair shops, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are great lead generation tools. These are the ideal places to link to blog articles, coupons or quick tips and, overall, social media is a great way to keep your name in front of potential customers.
A one-off open house or occasional newsletter will be forgotten by people. However, if your shop is frequently mentioned on their feeds, they will remember you.
Your plan should include regular posting to multiple platforms. You can ensure that your social media marketing efforts are consistent. However, you do not have to pay someone to do it for you. You can manage all your social media using tools such as Sprout and Buffer. You can even plan out your messaging in advance.
One caveat: We do not recommend posting every day. Regular posting will help build your brand and keep your shop’s name visible to the people who need it. However, regular posting may be as low as once per week or three times per week so you keep the content valuable.
Encourage interaction when you post whatsoever. Post a question at end of informative post and answer in the comments.
As part of your heavy truck repair marketing strategies, you should create a Facebook profile and update it with relevant content. You can make it about cars, driving, your community or your shop, such as:
- Safety tips for drivers.
- Maintenance tips for cars.
- Tips for traveling.
- Traffic news.
- Photos of your staff at work and the location.
- Customer satisfaction stories.
- Information about local events.
- Community initiatives supported.
- Specials and coupons available for shares and likes.
- Reward customers for social check-ins and mentions.
It’s good for your business to have positive social mentions of your brand. These social mentions are free advertising as they place your business before an audience. Encourage your customers to check-in via social media platforms and mention your business. Customers will be more likely to share their experience here by offering check-in incentives or winning contest entries.
Do You Have Loyalty and Referral Programs?
Heavy truck repair shop marketing is just like any other element of a shop’s business plan. You have to think outside the box and, sometimes, NOT that much.
Although they are quite common, loyalty and referral programs are one of the most effective non-traditional marketing strategies businesses can use.
Your customers will be motivated to bring their business to you by creating a loyalty program. You can use your market analysis to create rewards for different segments of your customers.
Fleet customers can be rewarded with loyalty rewards by offering them the above-mentioned plan to track high quality leads.
Once you have loyal customers, create a referral program that will help your marketing efforts and improve lead quality.
Existing customers can get even more benefits for referring others to your shop. Customer A can refer Customer B to your shop and receive a discount or other incentive if Customer A does. This incentive system encourages more people to recommend your shop to their friends and coworkers.
Whatever lead generation strategy you choose, follow-up with existing and new customers after each service. Send an email to a customer who is just signed up for your service and offer a coupon or percentage off their next service.
Ask them how satisfied they are with their service and encourage them to share the experience on social media. Rhis can all be used as part of your program and referrals connections.
Do You Have a Community Prince?
It is possible that your shop is the only place of civilization for hundreds upon hundreds of miles, but it’s unlikely. There is a good chance that you already have a community. By giving back to it and building trust, your shop will be able to attract a lot more customers.
Seminars that address issues of concern to clients are a good idea. While these seminars can be industry-related, you can diversify a bit as long as it is valuable and don’t drive too far from your main niche. It is worth collaborating with local charities and other businesses in the area during this process as well.
The point in all this is to build your reputation with the community around you as well.
Thus, make sure to nurture it and don’t skip it because you feel they may not be interested in you.
Email Marketing Is Needed for Your Business
Keeping in touch with your prospects and previous clients is key to ensure you have repeated businesses and new ones. Otherwise, you will be losing lots of deals In your process.
How can you stay in touch though? You can send them a newsletter.
Email allows you to keep in touch with your customers via direct communication and after they have decided that you are worth their time when looking at their inboxes. However, email is only as effective if you adhere to a few best practices.
- Know your audience. You must first define your audience before you can create relevant and useful content. You can only create compelling content that appeals to your target audience if you know who they are.
- Segment your audience. You can use tags to identify the characteristics and habits of each customer as you build your email list (e.g., oil change customer or repair customer, truck owner etc.).
- Offer more value than promotional offers. Customers love deals but do not want to be bombarded by promotions and advertisements. Your email messages should be balanced by sharing valuable and useful content, rather than sales-focused and promotional ads.
- Another way to stand out is to offer personalized shopping experiences. You can easily collect data using Wi-Fi Marketing. You can create profiles from customers that will allow you to track when clients are due for services.
How to Create Google Business and Yelp Profiles Pages
You can create a referral reward lead generation campaign to encourage customers to refer others as previous mentioned, but more than focusing on getting into this strategy, you need to make sure you’ve worked in your directory profiles and that your GMB listing is all up and ready to go. You want to make sure you appear in those pages as most local prospects will find you thanks to them.
In addition, you must worry about how they can locate you and call you for a service by how you show on the maps and ensure that directions and contact buttons are available.
Yelp profiles and GMB listings are completely free, and their optimization will cost barely anything if you worry about going for the organic options instead of the usual ones.
With organic, we refer to the affordable and free options on the Internet that allow you to rank them high and get your leads up and running.
The whole point with GMB is that, in today’s reach, customers can choose from the three first businesses that they see on Google. You are missing potential customers if you are not in the top three as a result.
It is the difference between one call per week and ten calls per day. This can translate into a monthly income of more than ten thousand dollars.
Community Marketing Boosts Local Businesses
Hosting events is one of the best ways to bring sales qualified leads into your heavy truck repair shop. Seminars, classes, and information sessions about truck maintenance are great ways to meet new customers, as well as to build relationships with your past customers.
Let your community know you are here to support other local initiatives. Get involved in the community by:
- Sponsoring community events.
- Collaborating with local charities.
- Partnerships with other local businesses.
To generate leads, you can swap marketing materials with other business owners. This partnership can be extended to social media. You could also ask people to follow each other’s accounts and tag a friend. Each participating business will give the winner a product or a service.
The goal of your repair shop marketing is to increase business. Once potential customers have viewed your company’s website or found you via social media, they are now ready for you to make a lasting impression by offering quality content and connecting with them for a service.
It does not need to be difficult or expensive to market your business. You will get back what you put in, so start your journey.
Whatever channels you choose, make a plan of actions to effectively execute your marketing programs.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Heavy Truck Repair 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 Heavy Truck Repair 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 Heavy Truck Repair 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.