Make Your Detailing Business Memorable.
It’s one of the best bits of advice we can give to any fledgling or word-of-mouth-reliant business, and it stems from your detailing business branding opportunities.
Say your customer is visiting a friend. This is the conversation:
“Who do you use to detail your car?”
“Oh, it’s a chap… something detailing?… his name’s Steve… errrm”
“Ok, I’ll just Google ‘errrm detailing’…”
At that point, right there, you’ve potentially lost a new customer. Or a customer in another dimension where you were memorable and your details could have been passed on.
They exist, but not in your business dimension as yet, because your otherwise happy customer can’t recall your details off hand.
It’s easy to look at the cost of branding and baulk at the amount you may need to spend upfront – spending hundreds on air fresheners seems like a potential waste, until you look at the recommendation tree™.
The recommendation tree is the flow of work recommendations you receive from word of mouth, and how they multiply. It starts with one happy customer and multiplies from there down, each recommending to a friend or two. Break that chain with a misremembered recommendation and you’re losing every branch below. You have to spend money to make money, and it isn’t difficult to see gains if done correctly and effectively.
The rule: Make it easy for people to recommend you
The first port of call is your branding. Your name, your company image, how well you stand out. We wrote a blog on naming your business, so do check that out if you haven’t decided.
Clever isn’t necessarily memorable, but generic is forgettable. Make sure it’s not brand saturated either – if you can’t get the exact website URL for “Dave’s detailing”, or maybe David’s detailing is already established half a mile away from you – you’re giving customers a chance to mistake you for someone else.
So now you’re unique, but how do you stamp your business name into customers’ memories?
1. Business cards
Business cards – the obvious answer, and I can already hear the eye-rolls as the obvious-police pounce, but there a business cards, and Business Cards.
Business cards are one area I’ve never scrimped on. So many times you’re handed a cheap 80mm by 60mm scrap of wafer-thin card, designed on a website template with a random car image on the back. We won’t name names, but “Prista Vint” sounds a lot like it.
That’s going to go into the client’s back pocket, through the wash, never to be seen again.
Designing an odd card, either by shape or finish, on a decent-weight of card that people are going to notice in their pocket will prevent accidental laundering and one they are psychologically happy to pass on.
It is also the first statement this potential new customer will see from your business so you want it to be good. Don’t just give people one – give them two or three, so there’s the implicit “pass this out to your friends” without actually having to say it – maybe with a referral discount on the back!
2. Window clings
Window cling. Note – not a sticker. A cling is an easy-to-remove bit of free advertising for your business. Don’t take liberties with the size and the customer will have no reason to remove it so it’s there to jog their memory. Feature a recognisable version of your logo, perhaps with a “detailed by” tagline and some form of contact details if possible. For extra staying power, the rear can be used as a service record with the last or next appointment as a secondary jog to the customer. There’s the degree of exclusivity smugness a cling from a detailing company can carry – if it looks good, and if your customer doesn’t want it fitted you can still pass it to them to maybe put on the garage door.
3. Air fresheners
Get a range of scents with your contact details and logo printed, and add them and the end of each detail. If you’re not sure if the customer wants it you can always hang it wrapped and they can choose to release the scent if they want. The advantage of these is; once the scent fades, it’s another memory jog to rebook a service (so spec shorter life scents when ordering…).
These don’t even have to be free, you can upsell an air freshener and get paid to advertise your business!
Note of caution if handing over – make sure you client knows they need to be hung, many air fresheners contain solvents which can damage trim if opened and left on the dash instead…
4. Literally, anything else branded
It doesn’t have to be something they always have to hand when asked for the recommendation, but if they are likely to see it on a daily basis recollection will be better.
Mugs, keychains, branded cloths, coasters. Some of the best ones are unique to your industry – i.e. a locking wheel nut bag for wheel refurbishers, or a bottle of glass cleaner for window tinters. Could you stretch to a small custom bottle of Quick Detailer or a small branded microfibre (non-marring!)? It’ll get used, emptied and need to be replaced with another detail!
It doesn’t have to be just giveaways either. Stencilling logos into the carpet with a brush is a one-time stencil purchase, text appointment reminders with your contact details on them from a CRM platform, Even digital business cards are becoming more popular, and if they follow you on social media they can quickly check their feed – assuming you have a QR code visible to encourage likes and follows.
Anything you can do to get your number or name easy to pass on will likely do more for your business than £1000 worth of Google AdWords…
Want more useful and constructive business advice? This is exactly the type of assistance we can offer on our Business and Marketing course, for new businesses or those that need a little jump start with admin, branding, social media use, or customer acquisition. It’s 1-to-1 and tailored entirely to your business and what it needs in order to grow.
