Micki Woods: Needs Analysis for a Body Shop Client Looking to Grow

The key is in the u201cbuy Inu201d for any collision repair shop looking to get to the next level

nKelly Kleinman: So you mentioned marketing and that you are a marketer. And yeah, and a nsavvy one at that. So as a marketer, what does your checklist look like when you visit a collisionn

nMicki Woods: Well, first and foremost, we have to talk about where their needs are. I like to meet a shop where they’re at, because your needs might be different than somebody else’s needs, you know, you may already have a full shop, but you just got certified in Subaru. So you need to drive more work there. And so we need to push the gas pedal on that, because you just made a big investment there. So we can specify marketing for certain certifications, or maybe you’re slow and you just need to pick up work in general. n

nSo really just trying to figure out who and what is your shop about? What are your needs? And then we really kind of go from there. What are you currently doing? What have you done in the past? What’s worked? You know, I don’t necessarily want to reinvent the wheel if you found something that worked for you before. So, you know, I don’t necessarily have like a top five, I feel like we start with, where are you at? What are you looking to do, and then we can come in, and then I create a strategy with the client.n

nIn an ideal world, since I always treat all my clients as if it were my business, if this were my business, knowing everything that I know, (and learning the hard way), what I would recommend. And then I lay it out for them, I would start here. I typically like to walk into the pool and not cannonball into it. Because I also don’t want to set them up for failure. I push him to do so much work that they’re juggling too many balls, and then you fail. And then that’s not good for anybody.n

nKelly Kleinman: Yeah, so it’s a needs analysis. That’s the main thing, what do you want to achieve and such? But what are some of the biggest issues that you see, in general body shop operations that prevent them from achieving greater success? Is it the ownership or the financial processes that handicap most? Is it finding good body work guys?n

nMicki Woods: Yeah, it’s a mix of things. You know, trying to find good people is a huge struggle, especially right now, I feel like in every industry, that’s very difficult. Culture is really big. Because first and foremost, if I’ve got an owner that doesn’t really see the value in something and doesn’t really buy in, his staff isn’t gonna buy in, the team doesn’t buy in. n

nSo then it’s very hard to move the marker there. So, you know, being flexible is really, really huge. And understanding the value of marketing, because most owners have a lot of business but especially in automotive, they look at it as an added expense versus an investment. And that’s a huge perspective shift. And for my shops that I work with that see it as an investment, for example, talking about COVID, what they were marketing prior to COVID. I lost one client during that entire period, because everybody else had built such a solid business that although it shrunk their marketing dollars, they could see we’re getting a return there. So why pull it? So you know, because there’s value they see the value. And that’s, that’s huge to be able to move the mark.n

nKelly Kleinman: Okay, that’s the next logical question would be from a marketing perspective, what online elements just from a visibility marketing perspective, do body shops really pay attention to? Is it SEO? What do they do or what are they not doing to improve their visibility and search ranking?n

nMicki Woods: Yeah, well, I would say some are doing some things and some are not. It’s really all over the board. Yeah, you know, a number one, getting your just free listings up the Google listing your Yelp listing, get them up and going with some nice pictures. People want to leave reviews, but they also want to read reviews. And having a place where you can read a good review and see some quality pictures is something free every business can do. You know, even dealerships, I see them dropping the ball on this. n

nAnd it’s something easy, free, simple, but common sense. Your website, a lot of people have websites, they may think that they look really pretty, but are they actually converting? We actually have tools that we use on our site heat mapping and watching actual behavior on the website. And then we can see digitally what people are doing when they get to your site. n

nThen there are all kinds of other things that you can do, some of the paid things that my agency provides that we see a lot of conversion on for body shops specifically and body shops owned by dealerships. I have several body shops I work with that are owned by dealerships, and we do Google ads which is one huge way to get conversions and we do them a little differently than normal. And then geofencing, which is really big, the way that dealerships understand geofencing is different from the way we do geofencing on the collision side. n

nSo if you hear me say geofencing and you do it in a dealership I can tell you it’s probably not the same because I know the way that the owners do it on the dealership side (collision marketing) and dealership marketing. There are some similar similarities but there are a lot of differences as well. So just because you do it one way because you have a dealership does not mean that that’s the way you should be doing it for your collision center. Sure.n