Some MSO names are becoming well known nationally within the industry, but even the largest still have a long way to go before they become “household names” among drivers.
Here are a dozen ways that MSOs, large and small, are working to build that name-recognition to keep their company in front of potential customers and referral sources.
Create a “signature” give-away
Sometimes offering a freebie seemingly unrelated to your business can help make you memorable. Remember when banks offered a free toaster if you opened an account? Frequent travelers have come to expect the warm chocolate chip cookies offered when they check into a Doubletree hotel.
If you’re a referral source or have other connections to Herb’s Paint & Body, which has eight shops in the Dallas, Texas, area, you’ve probably enjoyed some “world famous Jimmy Don's Picante Sauce.”
Jimmy Don Burris has been with Herb’s since 1979, and not long after started developing his own unique blend of tomatoes, peppers and spices. In 1991, Herb’s gave away 300 1/2-pints of “Jimmy Don's Picante Sauce” to customers and friends of the company, and the concoction’s “fame” and popularity grew
“It was when we started receiving requests for more jars from people we didn't even know, some of whom were out of the country, that Jimmy Don's Picante Sauce gained its ‘world famous’ status,” the MSOs light-hearted website boasts.
Herb’s now gives out 3,000 jars of Jimmy Don's Picante Sauce every year – and got so many requests for the recipe that it finally relented and allows those with “the proper security clearance” to see the recipe on its website.
Hold a social media photo contest
ABRA Auto Body & Glass this past July invited vehicle owners to share online a photo of where their car took them for a summer vacation or road trip. Everyone who posted a photo to Instagram, Twitter or Facebook with the hashtag “#ABRASummer” had a chance to win a $50 Visa gift card.
Post social media trivia contests
ABRA also regularly posts trivia questions about the company, putting everyone who submits the correct answer through any of ABRA’s social media channels into a drawing for a $50 Visa gift card. The answers to the questions can generally be found quickly at the company’s website or Facebook page. About a week after it announced its acquisition of 23 Kadel’s Auto Body shops in the Pacific Northwest, for example, the ABRA trivia question asked what three states those shops were in.
Put some humor in your ads
People love to share humorous videos on Facebook. Incorporating some humor in your ads can get them seen even when you’re not paying to place them on TV or other media outlets. Fix Auto Canada last year launched an ad campaign to “redefine the F-word.” The ads (www.youtube.com/FixAutoCanada) showed unexpected minor collisions (in one, a shopping cart slams into a car), and just as the vehicle owner appears ready to blurt out a profanity starting with the letter F, the announcer cuts in to say, “Fix Auto: The first word that should come to mind after an accident.”
Offer website specials
Gerber Collision and Glass lists several special offers for potential customers on its website, including $100 off on customer-pay jobs of $500 or more. For customer-pay jobs of $250 or more, the customer can instead choose to receive a one-year membership in an emergency roadside assistance program along with an auto safety kit that includes a flashlight, first aid kit, etc.
Let Uber do the shuttling
Most MSOs offer free rides to work or home for customers who have dropped off their vehicle at the shop. Chilton Autobody has done this, too, but now no longer uses its own employees to do the shuttling. With its 10 locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, also the hometown of Uber, Chilton now offers customers without rental car coverage a free $25 Uber ride to or from a Chilton shop.
Team up with a sports franchise
Soccer is huge in Portland, Ore., so the local Fix Auto USA franchises in the area have been a sponsoring partner of the Portland Timbers major league sponsor team since 2011. Like many MSOs around the country, the Portland area Fix Auto shops also for years have worked with insurance companies and vendors to repair vehicles to be donated to families in need.
This year, the Fix Auto shops combined the two programs, surprising a military veteran and his family chosen by USO Northwest with the gift of a car during halftime at a sold-out Timbers game. More than 20,000 fans cheered as Army Captain Thad Conwell, who was deployed in Afghanistan from 2012-13, received the keys to a Subaru Forrester brought out onto the field. Conwell had no idea his family was receiving anything that night other than free VIP tickets to the game for his family.
“This was just an opportunity to give the kiddos a fun evening; for [Fix Auto] to have a great automobile and all these wonderful people to help me out, I can’t thank you enough,” Conwell said after the presentation. “This is really a wonderful evening.”
Help your customers give back
No one likes to have their car in for repairs, but Mike Rose’s Auto Body tries to take out some of the sting by turning it into a chance for the customer to help out their choice of a local non-profit organization.
When a customer has a car repaired at one of the Mike Rose’s 13 shops in California, the company makes a donation in the customer’s name equal to 3 percent of the parts and labor on the job to any of the two dozen non-profits that are part of the MSO’s “Community Give Back” program. Customers can choose from among local schools, charities and medical research organizations.
It’s a way to help customers feel even a little better about choosing where they had their car repaired – and no doubt has those involved with the non-profits thinking about Mike Rose’s when they or someone they know has an accident.
Reward referrals
Caliber Collision Centers doesn’t just ask its customers to refer their friends and family members: They reward them for doing so. In a number of Caliber markets, if a new customer says they were referred by a previous customer, Caliber will send that referring customer a $50 Visa gift card as a way of saying thanks.
Salute veterans and the military
An article in ABRN last year focused on some of what MSOs are doing to honor and help the nation’s veterans and active members of the military. CollisionMax Autobody & Glass Centers, which operates 11 shops in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, has one of the most creative such efforts, a “Metal of Honor Project” in which the MSO selects a U.S. military veteran each month to receive free repairs to their vehicle.
The company set up a website for the project (www.metalofhonorproject.com), which enables anyone to nominate a veteran in need of vehicle repair. The website also includes video interviews and other information about each of the winners.
One such winner was Jerry McMullin, who was wounded while serving in the U.S. Marines in the Vietnam War. Despite significant injuries, after multiple surgeries he was returned to active duty until he was discharged in 1972.
McMullin’s return to civilian life was difficult, including an eight month period of homelessness, living in his car. But he eventually turned his life around, retiring in 2000 and living with his wife and their 27-year-old son, who has Down’s Syndrome.
CollisionMax repaired a variety of damage and rust on McMullin’s 2002 Chevrolet Silverado, and put in a new windshield.
“I use the truck to take my son back and forth to work, and now it’s looks better than new,” McMullin said.
Consider cable
Before Mike Quinn sold his Arizona-based MSO to a larger MSO, he was a proponent of cable television advertising. He said cable companies will produce such ads, which can save advertisers thousands of dollars in upfront costs.
Quinn recommends getting the camera crew to shoot as much footage as possible while they are one of your locations, so you’ll have more options down the road even if your initial ads don’t use it all. Have them get good shots of the building, signage, and employees doing all the key steps of the repair process, for example.
Another plus for cable is you can more carefully choose channels with the demographic you are seeking to reach. Quinn said his company chose a target market of women 30 years or older. He ran their cable television ads on HGTV as well as on Nickelodeon, which moms often watch with their kids. He said cable marketing representatives may try to sell you “excess inventory,” ad space they haven’t sold, so it’s best to know what you want rather than rely on their recommendations.
He also said a rifle approach to marketing is more effective than a shotgun. Don’t scatter ads on a lot of different radio or cable stations, for example. Focus in a few stations, with multiple airings of your ad within a specific time frame. Choose the morning or afternoon commute time on the radio, for example, and “own” that time slot with multiple ads. Repetition is the key, Quinn said.
| Marketing Misfires |
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Not all MSO marketing efforts are glitch-free. Checking out MSO websites, Facebook pages and advertising materials yielded a few missteps. One large MSO, for example, has a “specials” section on its website, where potential customers can see what discounts or offers are available at the company’s various locations. The MSO’s locations in one particular state, for example, are shown to be offering qualifying customers three free days of a rental car if they don’t have rental car coverage, or a free rental car upgrade if they do. But even into this fall, the website was saying the offered expired December 31, 2014 – eight months previously. Several MSO websites offer the option of a “live chat” with a customer service rep, which can be a nice service for customers and potential customers. But one MSO chat operator wasn’t overly helpful. When asked if the MSO has a shop in a particular state (which they don’t), the operator didn’t look up the information but instead only forwarded a link to the find-a-location page of the MSO’s website. So much for making things easier for the customer. |
Keep them coming back for detailing
One marketing tool McCollum Auto Body has been using for over a “Detail for Life,” which offers qualifying customers four vehicle details a year. It’s an idea the 4-shop MSO based in Portland, Ore., learned about in a Masters School of Autobody Management course. Customers love it, the MSO’s owners say.
“That’s sold a lot of jobs,” Joey McCollum said.
McCollum said “Detail for Life” is technically offered only to those with a repair job above $2,500.
“But our [sales staff] can make the decision on whether or not to give it to other customers based on other circumstances they may dealing with,” McCollum said. “So if it makes the difference in getting that $2,200 job, or it’s for a repeat customer, or maybe a single mom stressed out with two or three kids.”
He said the program helps keep the shop fresh in customers’ minds, and gives them an opportunity every few months to see if there’s body or mechanical work – the company offers both – that the customer might need.
“We actually have people who haven’t qualified for the program buy it for themselves or others, especially around Christmas,” McCollum said.
