WOM’s 5 T’s: Tools (3/5)

Again drawing on Andy Senovitz’s seminal book Word of Mouth Marketing we move on to the tools that can help messages spread. The big idea here is making it easy for people to share your message/ideas. You want them to be able to spread the word for you in a way that is simple, fast and far reaching. Andy contends that the internet is our biggest ally in this pursuit. Here’s some tools I regularly use that seem completely underutilized in the body shop business currently. That might change in the near future. Probably will. For now though using some simple internet tools can be a huge competitive advantage.  Here’s my top 3.

1. Tell a friend buttons. I had the privilege of meeting the founder/CEO of Social Twist at a recent conference. He was a gracias, Indian-American man who introduced himself to me at one of the breaks between sessions. In a very friendly way he asked about my business and told me about his. I was struck by 2 things: his humility and the awesomeness of what his company offered. I signed up the next day for the trial version of his product and I’m quickly trying to get it on every page of my website currently. What they offer is a simple button that can be easily posted on any/all pages of your website where people with the click of “tell a friend” button can share the contents of that page or blog post with their friends.  The trial version is free. The upgrades are not pricey though and allow you to customize the buttons with your logo. There is no reason that a button like that should not be on every page of our websites.

2. Email signature: Every time you write an email there should be a some reminder that you want people to tell other people about what differentiates your shop and what you offer. At a minimum all your contact info including name of shop, email address, physical address, email, phone number, fax number and website should be automatically added to every email. I use G-mail for my shop and in the settings you can tell it to add this info as a signature to every email. Beyond the basics though consider adding a link to something specific that might make people interested in forwarding the email. This could be a special offer, a coupon, or an educational blog post about car repair that might be helpful to others.

3. Blogging (a.k.a. educational marketing): Marketing at its best is simply educating prospects about how you meet specific. needs they have. Blogging is a great way to educate people. I’ve written some posts specifically related to auto body repair along these lines that you might find helpful. I try to deliver content that is valuable to those who take the time to read as well as position myself as an expert so that when people have a need for a collision shop I am at the forefront of their mind.

* Bonus round: Create a high quality monthly newsletter. This one take a lot of time which is why i didn’t include it in my top 3. But really if you’re taking the time to blog these can be the basis of a great newsletter. I would suggest developing a couple dozen posts that can be polished into 500-1000 word articles first. These can then be the core writing of a great newsletter along with any special offers and interesting updates about your shop. There are some great email marketing tools out there. I’ve used Constant Contact and found it pretty user-friendly. (note: They currently have a free 60 day trial.)

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