We’re constantly hearing about the highs and lows of the economy, and everyone seems to have their own magic bullet theory. However, in the midst of all this economic uncertainty, it’s foolish to not employ every tactic that might be at your disposal.
The car wash industry is one of many “old school”, service-based ones that tend to forget about marketing. But in this day and age, there are so many ways to segment your audience, reach who you need to, and stand out from your competition – regardless of industry.
Jason Baumgartner’s article on carwash.com on why and how to capture consumer data sums it up this way, “The basic purpose of collecting customers’ information is to simply get them to come back. If you can get customers to sign up for email or text notices, you can send them discounts and coupons. You can also educate them on the benefits of unlimited plan membership and share the latest promotions for those plans. This is a great, inexpensive way to lock in customer loyalty and, hopefully, boost your unlimited plan membership.”
And loyalty is incredibly important.
Baumgartner elaborates on that a little further into his article, stating, “Our research shows that if you can get a member to wash four times in those first 30 days of membership, that person is 61% more likely to still be an unlimited customer at the end of six months.”
Consumer data also helps to facilitate repairing damaged or lapsed relationships.
For instance, if you notice that a customer who routinely visited your location suddenly drops off, you have the information you need to reach out and see why. If there was an issue with service or customer experience, that’s a very different situation than someone moving and simply finding a service provider that was more geographically convenient.
In an industry that has never been known for being tech-savvy – far from it in fact – it’s becoming more and more necessary to incorporate digital marketing and “smart” solutions to business challenges into your operations playbook.
We exist in a convenience marketplace, and we have to adapt to it.
Washify is a car wash point-of-sale management and pay station solution that is a great example of how to add convenience to the customer experience, whatever it is. Our prediction is that apps and integrations like this will only become more and more prevalent in the coming years.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest of the social media platforms that are now so ubiquitous need to play an equally important part in your strategy here. Not only are these affordable avenues to reach your target market, but they offer a great opportunity to remain top-of-mind.
When people scroll (precisely what these sites encourage) they inevitably take in more information than they realize. Having a presence here puts you in front of the eyes of your target market whenever they open up their favorite app.
Even with all of these digital tools ready and willing to be used, the car wash industry continues to lag when it comes to mining digital data. When compared to other industries, like retail for instance, the differences are especially stark.
That means there is a huge opportunity for the car wash that decides to utilize the marketing technology available to them and take modernizing their customer service seriously!