Automotive Lead Generation Tips

Generating leads is an essential part of any service based business and automotive restyling businesses are no different. 3Dom Wraps are a market leader in lead generation for the car wrapping industry and have created a successful brand off the back of it, but we want to share some of this knowledge with our Wrap Shop subscribers. So where should you start?

Your Car Wrapping Website

Whether you have a car wrap business, you’re a detailer, alloy repair specialist or a remapper, your website is key to generating leads and bringing in sales from your local area. Being a location based business is a huge advantage for you and your sales team, allowing you to be targeted to those that are likely to buy from you. What better way to do that than with your service specific website?

How to build an automotive restyling website?

1. Choose your content management system (CMS). This is a platform that will host your web content, pages, images and also allow you to edit the content that you have created. There are many choices when it comes to a CMS, with pros and cons for each, but when it comes to building a simple, effective local automotive services website, you can’t go too wrong with WordPress. Ensure you speak with a professional web developer before making this decision or speak with the 3Dom Wraps team to see how we can help build your car wrap website.
2. Be mobile responsive. It is now not acceptable to launch a website, or to even have a website, that is not mobile responsive. For example 70% of our own traffic comes from mobile devices. If you are not serving a responsive site then you are not maximising the potential you have to sell your services online.
3. Be optimised. Build right, build once. This should always be remembered when getting a quote from a web developer. Don’t just take the cheapest price, the same way you wouldn’t for your own services, work with the developer who also understands how your website can grow into sales. If you are quoted less than £1500 for a website, you may well end up spending more down the line to make it more effective.
4. Get your website hosted. Hosting can be complicated and as will most things, you should seek professional advice before making your decision or you could find yourself with an offline website that you are unable to use to generate those all important car wrapping leads. Speak with our partners Host Crucial to see how they can help your up time.
5. Sell your services. Show off those car wraps, the gloss in your paint correction projects and the finish on the alloys you have repaired. Images sell in the automotive customisation industry and we guarantee that if you do good work and show it off on your site, you will make sales to local customer.
6. Get that quote request! This sounds simple but we often see professional restylers with websites that are not encouraging a customer to submit a lead and quote request. Make it clear you’re there to help and there to get them exactly what they need, as soon as possible.

Create brilliant automotive restyling content

There are a couple of things that connects all vehicle customisation and care professionals, you all work on exceptional vehicles and do impressive work that is visually stunning, be that paint correction and protection or a full colour change wrap, it catches the eye and stands out from the majority of other content we see online. This gives all professionals in this field a great opportunity to grow their online content catalogue. But why should you be creating content in order to generate leads? Imagine the average car care enthusiast, looking to spend his weekend working on his car, getting it clean and seeing if he can restore some of the gloss in his paintwork. Before he hits his driveway with his pressure washer, he is likely to go on Google and check on tips from leading experts to see how they do it. That information could be coming from you, especially to local searchers. The opportunity here is to provide help through your post before one day converting that user into a loyal customer who loves caring for his car, but also needs some professional services a few times a year. Content marketing is powerful and it works.

1. Create and grow a blog – The best advice here to to plan ahead and have a strategy for what content you want to create and what content will be well received by those who may need or want to read/watch it. Content always needs a reason, so maximise your efforts by ensuring each post is well planned.
2. Promote your blog on social media – once you’ve created something awesome, you need it to be seen. Simply leaving it on your website in the hope thousands will come to read it may be a little shortsighted, not to mention unlikely, so push your posts through your social media and mailing lists. If the content is good, it will get seen and shared and could really help you grow your business.
3. Target your content – As mentioned above, planning is key to successful content marketing. What do your potential customers want or need to read about? What do they search for on Google? ‘How to prevent swirl marks on my paint work’ etc Identify what they want to know about and simply answer their questions with informative posts.

Social Media

There are very few small businesses that are not on at least one form of social media, such is the understanding of the benefits and the direct access to potential customers. Making the most of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook has changed considerably, even over the past 3 or 4 years, where paid advertising is promoted, and therefore seen, far more than an un-promoted post. Even those who have earned large follower numbers are often limited in the access they have to them, unless they stump up some funds for each post. There are ways of cutting through this though and getting more attention without the additional cost:

1. Be a bit different – You will have seen others in your car care or restyling industry that seem to do better on social media or post things that you feel you would be unable to do, but never be discouraged by this and simply take your own route and create your own style and story. They’re posts may follow a particular narrative or make use of a particular service sectors that they specialise in, for example a vehicle detailer regularly getting healthy social exposure over his reflection posts after paint corrections processes, but what other aspects of detailing has he not focused on that may be of even more interest to your audience? How about not only showing off the work that you do, but giving away maintenance tips that detailing enthusiasts can learn and implement on their own cars? At the end of the day, your audience need to be interested, amazed or excited by what you post as a business in order to engage, share and then eventually buy into what it is you sell.
2. Give away knowledge – not only do people love a freebie, they also love to learn something new that they can use, especially if it can add value to their lives or jobs. Now the first thing service providers will think is ‘Why should I tell them how I do my job? Then they don’t need me’ which is a very valid question. In reality, this is not something that you should be concerned with, firstly because giving away free knowledge makes you influential and means people listen to you. Secondly, be sensible about it and give away snippets of information that will in no doubt help people, but will also leave them wanting more or even better, leave them thinking ‘Wow these guys know what they are doing, I’ll work with them.’ In any market, small businesses are having to give away small pieces of work or information in order to capture new leads or to win that new client, this is simply the same thing but on a wider scale.
3. Post regularly – By posting great content as often as possible, you’re far more likely to grow a committed and engaged community who not only enjoy what you post, but keep an eye out for it and engage with it. Engagement helps your content spread and no one likes to have a post with no likes and only 10 views.

Automotive Guest Posting

As an expert in your field and providing professional, high quality services on a daily basis, makes you an authority on a subject that not many others understand to such a detailed degree. This provides you with an exceptional opportunity to grow your online profile and become an influence in your field of expertise, by providing your knowledge to those who need or want it, using sources such as automotive and restyling blogs or publications. Guest posting is a popular form of content marketing in many industries and with the boom in vlogging and video content creation very much in it’s early stages in vehicle restyling, the options and opportunities are endless for service professionals. No longer does a guest post need to just be a blog or article stuffed with links, it can now be accompanied by your own video content and demonstration content that will increase engagement and views on the source website, making it easier for you to get your posts accepted and improve the performance of your hard work. The further you can spread your knowledge, the bigger your influence in the industry, the greater the trust in your services and the wider the reach for your quality services. 3Dom Wraps regularly work with guest posters across all forms for vehicle restyling, care and protection services. Apply to work with us and get featured across our blog and social channels.

Build a mailing list

This may sound simple, but it’s not easy to build up and engaged and effective mailing list that will make the most of your content creation efforts or marketing strategies. There are simple methods that can be utilised based on the industry you operate in, but be sure to do things in the right way.

1. Incoming leads – when someone gets in touch for a quick price or an official quote request, they are a potential subscriber to your mailing list. They require your services so would likely be interested in hearing about future deals and discounts, they likely care or have an interest in vehicle customisation and restyling and may enjoy additional tips that will help them maximise the impact of your services, be that maintenance or care techniques.
2. Content subscribers – if you’re now creating brilliant content on your website, you may have some visitors who enjoy reading or watching what your’re creating. Don’t let them leave without at least trying to get their email to add to your list. As long as they know why they’re giving their email over and what they will receive, then this is a great way of building your mailing list.
3. Give away – this can be a discount product or bit of amazing content, but taking a sign up in order to get something in return is as old as the internet and is still as relevant now as it was then. Again, be sure the user knows that by giving their email address, they will be added to your marketing email list.

Lead Generation Subscriptions

We’ve already covered some of the most effective lead generation tactics above, but what if you want, or more importantly NEED, more? There are various options available to you.

1. Buying car restyling leads – there are not many services around who do this off the shelf, but one effective way to make this work for you is to partner up with local businesses. When a car dealer is making his sale, they’re always looking at add-ons to increase their margin or to help get the sale over the line. This gives local car customisation and styling experts a great opportunity to be their source of these services. Many offer car detailing in-house, but we know how poor these services often are…

2. Lead Generation Subscriptions – This is where things become more exciting and more readily available to the professionals in the auto restyling industry. We see two main options here for those considering increasing their leads and also managing their brand in the cloud.
   1. Wrap Shop from 3Dom Wraps – that’s right, our own custom built software comes with a market leading lead generation tool, framed by cloud based business management tools to enable you to take your business online.
   2. Check a trade (and related services) – another useful service, although limited in it’s product features and coming and a premium cost in comparison to Wrap Shop. For a full comparison between the two products, take a look at our Wrap Shop vs Check a Trade post.