One of the most challenging things to do in business is to nail down your messaging. The average American sees up to 10,000 advertisements per day. Our brains have learned to tune them out. That means your messaging must be on-point. It needs to be easy to understand and needs to make an impact the second it is seen.
Over the years, we have tested a lot of different messaging. Some of our taglines have included:
- We Do Big Ideas!
- Your Marketing, Done ✔
- You Want Better Marketing
Over time, your business and your ideal clients change. That’s why it’s so crucial that you keep a pulse on your customer avatar and what’s important to them.
We’ve recently changed our messaging. Our new tagline is “Top-Tier Marketing for Top-Tier Shops.”
From the beginning, we knew we wanted to work only with the best auto repair shops. We are a boutique agency. Everything we do is custom. We don’t do cookie-cutter marketing.
Some companies in the industry are giants compared to us. There is a need for their services, and there are many clients for them. But we don’t ever want to be them, catering to the masses, and we don’t want the type of clients who are looking for their style of average marketing.
Those companies work with any auto repair shop that will pay them. They do “copy and paste” marketing that’s “good enough.” They also frequently have no boundaries for the proximity of shops they work with. In other words, they would work with your competitor across the street and you both would end up with the same exact marketing. The shops they work with are usually great shops, but they haven’t learned the true value of marketing – yet. As they grow, some of them will come to understand the value, and we will be there to serve them.
A Facebook Poll
My first instinct for our new tagline was to make it “Marketing for Top 1% Shops”.
Kim didn’t like it. She said many of the shop owners we work with are very humble, and she didn’t think they would consider themselves part of the top 1%. So she created a poll in our Facebook group, Auto Repair Marketing Mastermind.
As usual, she was right.
A lot of discussions took place in the comments of that post. I didn’t realize that most people equate “Top 1%” with a financial measurement. It makes perfect sense when I look back on it, but I didn’t see it that way from the beginning. These shop owners didn’t see their shops as the top 1% of shops because they know (or at least think) there are many more than 1% of the total shops out there who are making more gross revenue than they are.
I personally was looking at “top 1%” as being the auto repair shops that:
- are involved in their industry.
- are involved in their community.
- are working with a coach.
- run a tight ship.
- seek training for all levels within their organization.
- do the right thing when things go wrong.
- Have clear values
- Have defined their ideal audience and are not just catering to the masses
To me, that is a “Top 1% Shop”.
Top-Tier Marketing for Top-Tier Shops
After I came back and explained what I consider a top 1% shop to the group, the fantastic group members started chiming in with suggestions.
There were a lot of great suggestions, but one of them stood out to me. Dutch Silverstein, owner of A&M Auto Service in Pineville, North Carolina, recommended “Marketing for Top-Tier Shops.”
I looked up the definition of “top-tier,” and it stated:
top-tier
/ˈtäːpˈtiər/
adjective
Of the highest level or quality
As soon as I saw that, I knew we were using it as our tagline.
So our tagline is now “Top-Tier Marketing for Top-Tier Shops.”
Defining a Top-Tier Shop
To us, a top-tier shop is defined exactly as we defined a top 1% shop.
- They are involved in their industry.
- They are involved in their community.
- They are working with a coach.
- They run a tight ship.
- They seek training for all levels within their organization.
- They do the right thing when things go wrong.
- And, of course, they do a great job of fixing their client’s cars.
Watch To See What Some of The Pros Say About What Makes A Top - Tier Shop
In Conclusion
So there you go. Do you consider yourself a top-tier shop?
I’d encourage you to join our Facebook group, Auto Repair Marketing Mastermind. The discussions are great, and the people there are super helpful. We started the group to help auto repair shop owners with their marketing, but who knew they would be helping us with ours?
