Small Town, Big Reputation: Marketing Your Rural Auto Repair Shop

Speaker 1 00:00:00 This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Brian Walker 00:00:09 Well hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Auto Repair Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Brian Walker. And today we are going to be talking about marketing a rural auto repair shop. Let’s take a minute to thank our sponsors and then we will get into it. Are you ready to convert clients to members? AppFueled specializes in creating custom apps tailored specifically for professional auto repair businesses. Visit appfueled.com to get started today. Keep your shop top of mind on the mobile device they love. All right, so we put out in our Facebook group the Auto Repair Marketing Mastermind. A few weeks ago. We asked for people to tell us what are the things that we haven’t covered on this podcast that you want to hear us talk about. Many of you know Michael Guenther. Michael gave a suggestion to talk about how do you market a rural auto repair shop? And I thought that that was something that I’d covered already. And I went back and looked through our podcast episodes and sure enough, we’ve not done it.

Brian Walker 00:01:17 You know, that’s what I’m going to talk about today. I want to talk about marketing a rural auto repair shop now to set the scene for you. Michael lives in Crofton, Nebraska and Crofton, Nebraska. I believe Michael told me has a population of about 700 people. I believe there’s two auto repair shops in Crofton, Nebraska, like 700 people and one main road. And of course, this shop is on that main road. So when you’re in a situation like that, you think to yourself, well, everybody already knows who the two auto repair shops are in town. And for the most part, that’s going to be pretty correct. Most of the people are going to know who the auto repair shops are in town. That does make it challenging to market a shop and like there’s different levels of rural. We’ve worked with some shops in Alaska before where they literally pull clients in from 200 miles away. When you’re doing that, it brings an entirely new element to marketing. There’s rural and then there’s like really, really rural.

Brian Walker 00:02:23 You know, I would consider where we are rural, but we’re six miles from a town of 18,000 people, and 18,000 is not a whole lot, but it’s plenty enough to support a handful of auto repair shops. When you have 700 people, you got two auto repair shops, and you feel like everybody already knows who you are. What are we going to do? So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Now, first of all, let me preface this by saying that like the things that you think of when we’re thinking about marketing, like your website and SEO and Google ads and Facebook ads and LSA, those things, they will absolutely still work in a situation like this. But the challenge is they’re not going to bring in the number of people that a shop doing those same types of marketing that’s in a metro area is going to bring in. Not even a shop that’s in a rural area like the one that I talked about where we are, where we’ve got 18,000 people. You’re going to have just a handful of people every once in a while that are going to search, and it’s worth doing those things.

Brian Walker 00:03:38 But you can’t afford to pay a marketing company to do those things for you at that point. It’s not going to be economically viable to pay someone to run Google ads for you. When those Google ads are producing, you know, 2 or 3 clients over the course of a month. So you’re going to have to either do it yourself or not do it at all. And there may be some other options in there, you know, like hiring someone offshore to do it or something like that. And those options may be viable, but for the most part, you’re either going to do it yourself or you’re not going to do it at all. We teach a lot of how to do those things. It’s not out of the question for a shop owner to go do those things here or herself. Just keep that in mind. We’re not going to really talk about that much more than what I’ve already stated. Yes, you should still have a website. If you’re in a small town, you should still be doing some SEO.

Brian Walker 00:04:39 If you’re in a small town, the level of SEO that you’re going to need to do when you’re in a small town is not going to be near what you’re going to have to do if you’re in a larger market. But you should still have the website, you should still do some things to make it appear in search. And I’m talking really simple things like creating some content every now and then and putting it on the website and making sure you know that the website was built well and doesn’t have anything that’s preventing the search engines from crawling it and that sort of thing. And nowadays, in this world of AI, you know, it used to be that you had to know what you were looking at, and now you can just go into ChatGPT and drop your web address in there and say, hey, go check my website and see if there’s anything that’s prohibiting the search engines from indexing it. So super simple to do that now. But the things that are going to shine when you’re in that rural area are basically the community involvement.

Brian Walker 00:05:35 And there’s nothing that I’m going to talk about today that you haven’t heard us talk about. Like if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a long time, there’s nothing I’m going to talk about that you probably haven’t heard us talk about at least 20 times already, but it’s still worth listening to because we’re going to be talking about them from the standpoint of doing these things in a small town. Because these things that I’m talking about, they also work really well in mid and large markets. But for a small town these are the types of marketing. Like if I had a shop in Crofton, Nebraska, these are the types of things that I would be doing. First thing is I want to become essentially famous in my town. Five Mile Famous is, you know, a term that we’ve heard used recently, and we’re using it more and more. Now, Five Mile Famous is not going to be enough in a rural area. In a rural area, you may need to be 15 mile famous. You may need to be 50 mile famous.

Brian Walker 00:06:32 It’s just going to depend on the area that you’re in. But the point is, you want to make sure that everybody knows who you are. So you should be seen at the local diner having breakfast, sitting down with the good old boys and having conversations. You should be going to your local barber shop and having those conversations with the people in the barbershop. Because if you’ve ever been in a small town barbershop, well, that’s where business gets done. Remember? I mean, you might say, oh, that’s, you know, such a, you know, people think of that, but is that really real? Well, I can tell you that it is from personal experience. I grew up in Albany, Louisiana. We were a town at the time that I grew up in it. We had about a thousand people in Albany, Louisiana, and business was absolutely being done in the barber shop and in the local diner. And I still see it here now in our town of 18,000. There’s a coffee shop in the downtown area.

Brian Walker 00:07:35 PJ’s, coffee and at PJ’s. You know, they’ve got a handful of tables in there, but they have one big round table in the middle of the coffee shop, and there’s like, a little like, I don’t know if it’s a metal or plastic or what, but it’s like an ornamental bowl that in the morning some of the good old boys, they just get together there every morning. They will grab that bowl. They’ll set it in the in the middle of the table. And that is where they go to shoot the bull. And that happens every morning. And some of the people that find themselves at that table, and they just kind of come and go all morning long, like that table will be full for 3 or 4 hours in the morning with various people. Some of them are there very early for a little while, and some of them will be there later in the morning for a little while. It’s just it’s a table that’s constantly changing who’s sitting at it. But the people that you will see, if you go in there and sit for a while, you will see our parish president there, you will see our chief of police there you will see various businessmen from throughout the community there.

Brian Walker 00:08:42 And they’re going there. And, you know, we can use fancy words and call it networking, but they’re just building relationships. And when you’re in a small town, those relationships that you’re building are some of the most powerful things that you can do to market your business. Now, look, you’ve got to take care of your clients. You’ve got to fix the cars. You know, we talk about that all the time. How like fixing the cars is part of marketing. Because if you’re not good at what you do, then in a small town that reputation is going to spread very fast. If you’re good at what you do, though, then that reputation is going to spread very quickly also. My mentor when I first started turning wrenches professionally, a guy named Shane Forbes. Shane owns a shop called Forbes Automotive over in Livingston, Louisiana. And I’ve had people say before, you know, that, oh, I don’t need to market my auto repair shop. I’ve got a great reputation. And I hear people in the marketing world that are like, oh, you know, that’s not reality.

Brian Walker 00:09:40 Well, I’m gonna tell you what, in Shane’s situation, that is very much reality because he is in a small town. Shane is still to this day, the best technician that I’ve ever worked with. The guy can fix Anything. He’s the guy that he is just as natural rebuilding an engine as he is with an oscilloscope in his hands. He was just born for this stuff. I never have even felt like he had to work for it. I mean, look, everybody has comebacks, okay? I’m sure Shane has some comebacks, but they are few and far between. And when they do happen, he takes care of the client. He makes sure that it’s right. I don’t think Shane has ever done any marketing in the lifetime of that business. And if you want to get your car worked on there, it’s going to be a 2 or 3 week wait to get it done. Small town known in the community. A lot of that is because he’s known in the church, but he’s also known in his the local community.

Brian Walker 00:10:34 They will do some things, like I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen where they’ve like sponsored some little league and stuff like that, you know, and that’s great stuff to do. It is marketing. You know, it’s not really not really the kind of marketing that you’re thinking about when we’re talking about this right now. But but those things matter. It’s part of being part of your community. He does that and does not run Google ads. I think he’s got like some little basic website that he got from being a Napa car care center or something like that. You know, it’s almost nothing, if anything at all for marketing. And he’s got more work than he can handle. And you can do that in a small town when you build an incredible reputation, when you treat people right, when you fix the car as well, but you still have to get out there. We talked about, you know, the breakfast at the local diner. We talked about the barber shop. And you’re like, well, Brian, what am I actually going to fix? Cars? Look, I didn’t decide to open your shop in rural America.

Brian Walker 00:11:37 So what I’m saying, take it or leave it. I’m telling you that these are things that will work. Find the time to do it. You know, if you’re a one man show, that’s going to be a little bit harder to do. But still, there might be one morning a week that you say, you know what? We don’t open until 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning because we’re going to be over here sitting at the bowl table at PJ’s coffee. That just becomes part of your business model. Independent auto repair shops get ready to transform your business with app fueled. It’s time for your professional auto service shop to have its own customer loyalty app. App fueled will build an app that launches a custom loyalty program for your shop in 30 days or less, fully integrated with your point of sale system. Bring fortune 500 level customer retention strategies to your business without the fortune 500 budget. Many shops are enjoying the benefits. Our app engages your customers with a loyalty ladder, enticing them to climb the next rung, coming back more often and spending more each visit, all with your own app.

Brian Walker 00:12:40 Build loyalty with your customers to your brand and boost your shop’s growth. Get your first app in 30 days or less, all without breaking the bank. Ready to start? Let AppFueled take your business to the next level. Go to appfueled.com or meet founder Jeremy Glasco and book your complimentary app vision session at appfueled.com. That’s AppFueled. On a recent podcast, I think it actually may have been the very last episode. Pretty sure it was the last episode. We talked with someone who had started a community podcast to overcome a road construction project that they were having, and I did a podcast on this a long time ago about, should your shop have a podcast? The answer is that your shop should not have a podcast that’s about auto repair. It shouldn’t. Like the people who are listening to that. They’re not your customers unless you’re like a performance shop or something like that. And in that case, you can get by with it. But a shop in a rural town and I’m talking like Michael Gunther’s shop in Crofton, Nebraska.

Brian Walker 00:13:53 You can start up a podcast that is about your local community. You record an episode once a week. You have local people come in. Everybody will start listening to that when they hear that. Well, in my town, there’s a guy named Ed Smith. And Ed has been incredibly successful in business and, you know, has just done some big things. And like when you say his name, people know who he is. You have somebody like that come on your podcast. People want to listen to that. In a small town, there’s going to be a whole lot of people like that where they have a story to tell, and that story is not going to have anything to do with auto repair at all. And that’s perfect. It’s going to be about local people, local community. You have them on, and when they’re on, people start talking about that podcast episode, and next thing you know, you’ve got a bunch of local listeners to your podcast and guess who sponsors that podcast. Your auto repair shop does.

Brian Walker 00:14:51 And it’s not a podcast about auto repair, but you should have like a 2 or 3 minute auto repair segment on that show where you’re talking about auto repair. Local people are going to be listening to that podcast, and they’re going to be hearing about your shop every time that they listen to it and guess where they’re coming when they need their car fixed. Like, I don’t know, a whole lot of people who have done it. But I’m telling you and Michael, I know you’re going to listen to this episode. You go do that and watch what happens. So, okay, you know, some other things that you can do would be to just like on social media, promote the things that people may not assume that you do. Now, if you have an auto repair shop in a rural area, then I hope you’re working on diesel trucks. You know, obviously that’s not a you have to do that kind of thing, but there’s a whole lot of diesel trucks in rural America. But people may have the perception that, you know, no local auto repair shop is going to work on that and that they have to take it to the dealer that’s in the larger community, that’s 40 or 50 miles away where they bought the truck.

Brian Walker 00:16:05 Start promoting that. You’re doing those things if you do those types of things, because people don’t just know, they might know that your shop exists, but they may not know that you’ll do the kind of work that they need done. In fact, they might have one car that they bring to you and another one that they don’t because they don’t think that you can work on the other car. And that’s a great question to ask people when they’re picking up their vehicle is, hey, what else do you have in the driveway? Because when they tell you what else they have, you can say, oh yeah, we work on that. Or if you don’t work on it, maybe you don’t work on Euro, for example. And you know, somebody is like, oh, I got a BMW. Well, maybe, you know another shop that will work on BMW. You should say, hey, you should bring it to this person over here. And when you start that referral relationship with another shop, that can be a great thing as well.

Brian Walker 00:16:59 Another thing, like I said, I know we sound like a broken record, but another thing that can be a very great tool is to open your shop up to some community events. Rural America, there’s a lot of people that have cool cars, you know, so you could have a car show at your shop, you know, invite the local car club if there is a car club, if there’s not a car club, invite the people that have some cool cars and it might be a small car show. There might be ten cars there. But you know what? When people are passing by on the one main drag and they see all those cars out there, they will stop to check them out and they get to know your shop a little bit when they do that. So you can do that. The rural America is big on things like scouting. You know, we’re talking about salt of the earth. They want to do, you know, things with their kids and all that. You know, open up your shop to have like, that workshop for the the local troop to get their merit badges.

Brian Walker 00:18:02 Those sorts of things. Work with your local high school. If they have an automotive department and go in there and start becoming an expert in the local high school, because those kids that have an interest in auto repair, when people know that they’re interested in that, they’ll ask them. They’ll be like, hey, will you work on my car for me? And if they’re not doing that, you know, which they’re probably not, they’re probably at some point in their life are going to move on, go get a different type of job or something. Then they’ll be like, no, but you should take it to this guy. He used to mentor us when I was in auto shop, and if they do decide to get into auto repair, then maybe they come to work for you because they know you better than they know that 1 or 2 other shops. That is your Competition. These are the types of things that you would do to market. Like it’s what I would do if I owned an auto repair shop in Albany, Louisiana, which is only about four miles the other direction from my house.

Brian Walker 00:19:01 And I promise you, I would have the busiest shop in town if I did that, so I hope that helps. Thanks for listening. Remember, we are one of a handful of podcasts on the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. You can find the editors at Automotive Repair Podcast Network. Com. I hope you’ll listen in again next week. And until then, go fill those bays.

Speaker 1 00:19:25 You’ve been listening to the Auto Repair Marketing podcast with Kim and Brian Walker on the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. Download our exclusive podcast app at AutomotiveRepairPodcastNetwork.Com because the best conversations in the industry start here. Marketing questions. Well, the walkers have the answers. Check the show notes for their email.