Q&A with Tim Ross

Jan. 1, 2020
Tim Ross, president of Mudlick Mail, recently spoke to Motor Age about marketing in general and how to make sure employees are in the loop.

No matter what type of marketing you do for your shop, there are some important components you must not overlook: communication, targeting and targeting.

Tim Ross, president of Mudlick Mail, recently spoke to Motor Age about marketing in general and how to make sure employees are in the loop.
MA: How can owners avoid “shooting from the hip” with their marketing?TR: The technology is so improved over the last several years on tracking your advertising and how well it’s doing, that shop owners now who shoot form the hip in marketing and don’t really have a plan in place on what they’re expectations are, that is where we see a lot of problems. You can’t separate your marketing from your staffing, from your operational set-up. One of the biggest questions I get from these shops is do I advertise first and then hire people? Do I hire people then I advertise? ...

I think a lot of marketing is negatively impacted by the fact that the owners aren’t spending the time to have their shops staffed and prepared and trained and ready handle the marketing that’s going out. Whatever that shop has chosen as its marketing vehicle or vehicles, one of the things that’s really important to make sure your staff completely understand the program, the pieces that are going out. Some owners don’t even share with their staff what programs, what specials, whatever they’re trying to use as a component of the compelling offer.

MA: How is direct mail evolving to meet the changing needs of shops?
TR: It’s the only vehicle that you can really target on a neighborhood level. It can really target at that income and distance level. And you can be certain that the product reached the household. Now people might pick up the ad and throw it away, but now through postal receipts and delivery confirmation reports, you can track and code that direct mail piece almost all the way to the mailbox. When you’re talking about spending valuable marketing dollars, we want to avoid the guesswork. And when you use some of these broader-based marketing vehicles, the certainty of it getting to the right person becomes a bigger question mark. On top of that, there’s some great, robust call-tracking programs out there.

MA: What are some of the main areas people should make sure they cover in their marketing plans?
TR: What we’ve learned in the automotive industry, there is some certain distance requirements that fall into the auto repair industry. We’ll drive so far to go to a grocery store, or will drive a little farther to go to a restaurant. Most people do a lot of their day-to-day spending in a two-, three-mile radius around their house. In rural areas, you can expand out farther. In auto repair, what we have found is that about 85 percent of our customers with our shops live within that two- to three-mile radius of a store. In auto repair, it’s real critical that when you have a marketing vehicle where you focus in on income, you want folks that come in with expendable income that can spend on more than just an oil change, but distance becomes a key element, because people will only drive so far for auto repair. When we work with owners around the country, the biggest thing for us is the targeting. You have to have the right kind of customer.

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