Branding & Promoting Your Auto Detailing Business – Tip #3 of 10

Select a Descriptive, Easy-to-Remember Name for Your Business:  A great name is the first step to success. Don’t leave the public guessing. Include a brief description of what you do or what you specialize in. You should check with your county or state to see if the name you want to use is available. Before you reserve your business name be sure to visit Godaddy.com and see if the domain name has already been reserved or being used by someone else. If the “.com” web site domain name has been taken you may want to consider choosing another business name that still is available. Your web site, if properly constructed, promoted and maintained can be a gold mine for generating customers on a regular basis.

Develop a Professional Logo: Your logo is your brand. It identifies your company as unique, different and compelling – all reasons the consumer should choose you over the other guys. The logo of a company establishes its credibility and provides an image the public can become familiar with. Branding your business with an interesting and easily identifiable logo will create loyalty from your customers and keep them coming back. Your logo can communicate values and ideas, even the personality of your business. You want your customers to have complete confidence in you. Confidence will lead to establishing credibility for your business.

A logo is the first step in your endeavor to build credibility with new prospects and your customers. A company without a logo will raise doubts and negative feelings, which is the opposite of what you want to accomplish. A clear and consistent logo sends a message of stability to your consumers, earning their trust. A quality logo announces that your business is legitimate and professional. Organizations without a logo run the risk of appearing unstable. You should place your logo on all of your advertising materials including service menus, flyers, business cards, letterhead, envelopes, invoices, web site, Facebook page and any promotional items.

Create a Service Menu: Imagine how long it would take to get your meal at a restaurant if your server had to tell you everything that was available back in the kitchen. In addition to describing the meal options, your waiter would have to give you prices and brief explanations of the food offerings. A menu speeds up the process and resolves most of the initial questions about what’s available and how it will taste. Same holds true for your auto detailing business. It’s most important that your auto detailing service menu be a tangible document that includes a complete list of your services, along with the price for each service. Visible somewhere on the cover of your service menu should be your company name and logo, along with your phone number.

Inside the service menu is where you should find a list of your services. And along with all of the packages you list, be sure to add a brief description of each service. You can describe the “features” of your services by using bullets, but be sure to have a short summary paragraph below the bullets to discuss the benefits of the “features.” Your service menu should be divided into sections displaying Exterior Detailing Services, Interior Detailing Services, Express Detailing Services, Value Detailing Packages, Sell Your Car Package, New Car Protection Package and an ala carte menu. Be sure to only print price ranges and the actual price is based on size and condition. We offer several CD’s with professionally designed templates for service menus and promotional flyers that can be easily customized and branded for your business.

Hand out Business Cards: Being in business is a tough game. It’s a competitive industry with many opponents. One of the most used tools of the business world is the business card. They are exchanged at any occasion. With so many business cards in the arena, it’s critical to have one that will stand out among all the rest. A business card can convey numerous things. It can simply be used as a way to quickly and easily hand out contact information. It can, however also be a very effective marketing tool for your detailing business. Prior to designing a business card, it is necessary to identify the goal you would like to achieve with your business card. It can be an identity marker, a marketing tool, or a way to make you stand out from your competition. Having an objective for your business card will help keep you from making it too “busy” and therefore less memorable. The most important information includes: your business name, company logo, tag line, your name, phone number, e-mail address, web site and your most important social media page address.

If you have a shop rather than being a mobile operator then your address should be included. When designing a business card, you want to be sure take advantage of all available space to the fullest potential; this includes the back. On the back of the business card you may have a QR code that connects to your web site, space for date and time of appointment and even list your popular services. Your business card may possibly be the first impression people will have of your business. You don’t want to have a business card that appears to be less than professional. Some will say that you want the feel of your card to stand out. Use a heavier grade of paper card stock bond and don’t print business cards from your home computer. They may send the wrong message especially to your higher-end prospects. Anytime I hand out a business card I ask for one back and then enter that person’s information into a database of either hot prospects or past customers and follow up by a phone call or send an email. Detail King offers a professional logo and business card development package

Send Out Periodical E Mails: It is imperative to ask for your prospects and customers email addresses. Proper email follow up is crucial to your success. Sending out an occasional email blast will keep your name in front of your prospects and customers. Inform your subscribers of any special promotions or new services that you will be offering. You should send out email blasts to your prospects and customers one to two times per month. Using services like constantcontact.com will enable you to “segment” your lists into prospects and into customers. You will want to segment your base so you can make the offers a little different to both lists (prospects and customers). Constant Contact will furnish you with statistics for each e mail that you send out so you can see how many subscribers actually opened it up and also clicked on any links you may have had within the content of the email. Services like Constant Contact offer several templates and the ability for you to include your logo and promote your brand very professionally. You can also put a code on your home page to allow potential customers to request more information about your detailing business.

You must always portray a professional image and the information published above in this newsletter is very basic components for branding and promoting your business. But even though basic, must be practiced and made standard procedure so you can acquire new business and get repeat customers. In a few days we will publish Tip #4 which will discuss how to obtain Repeat Business. Repeat business = Reoccurring revenues!