Demographically Targeted Promotion Ideas for the Car Service Industry

If you haven’t already heard the virtues of demographic targeting in advertising, especially SME promotions, you are about to! Demographic profiling is used by the most successful businesses worldwide, and gives you the most reliable way of reading a customer's mind. The car service industry is one that is typically rich in demographic information, related to both the owner, and the car itself. Here we give you four neat ideas for targeting your scheduled text message promotions to certain segments of your customer base … and boosting your profits as a result!

For mechanics

1. Half-hour, half-price vital checkups: This will be targeted at women; this section of the population is much more likely to either forget to do basic maintenance or not know how. Build your reputation and create great branding for your business by offering 50% off half-hour vital checkups, where the tire pressures are reset, coolant, washer fluid and oil topped up, basic safety checks made and quick tune-ups done. These scheduled text messages should get a great response.
2. Half-price on window tinting: There are a couple of demographic segments among your customers that can benefit from this promotion. Mothers with young children will be looking to keep their car cool and shaded, for the kids. Men with hot cars, who spend a decent number of dollars on modifications for their rides, will also be interested. Use text message scheduling to send out the promotion to just the hot car owners if you don’t have family info for your customers. Partner up with a window tinting place to have this done if you don’t have the capability.

For car wash services

3. Free wax with a full service detail: Customers who are getting their cars detailed are those whose time is more valuable to them than yours is … in other words, big earners who have little leisure time. You can deduce this by the model of car your customers drive, or else specifically collect household income demographics and utilize them in your text message scheduling of promotions.
4. Buy four automated car washes, get your fifth free: This utilizes loyalty marketing principles as well as the convenience and excellent response rate of text message scheduling in an SME promotion. Issue a loyalty card to customers which they can either swipe at the point of entry to the car wash, or have stamped by a clerk to receive their fifth wash free. Simply target this to people that you know have used the service before.

Marketing Your Business With Text-to-Win Competitions

Running a creative-minded competition, or one with minimum product purchase requirements, can be one of the most effective PR events around. One of the easiest ways of administering competitions is with small business tools like text message services. Today we take an overview of the positives and negatives of marketing with competitions for small business.

The pros and cons of competitions for SME promotions

Competitions are as prone to ups and downs as any other SME marketing tool. However, when you carefully structure them, most of the weight is on the positive side. Competitions can:

• Get heartfelt, positive reviews and recommendations for your product from the people announcing or advertising the competition.
• Create media interest, especially if the prize is large. Press releases could get coverage in local media when the competition is announced, when the winner is drawn, and when the winner has received their prize.
• There are quite a few industries where prizes will not cost the business anything extra -- for example, free nights in a hotel and free flights (if the seats or rooms would be empty anyway) cost nothing but gain great exposure. For many businesses in service industries, SME promotions with free services cost very little to fulfill.
• There is the opportunity to gather marketing data about your audience, by requiring demographic information to be considered in the competition.

Some things to watch out for when SME marketing with competitions:

• There is an entire subset of professional competitors who will enter thousands of competitions every year. Little thought goes into these entries. For best effect, make your competition related to something that forces people to think about the brand.
• Depending on the format (for example, quiz shows), your product may get limited exposure. Run your own competitions rather than sponsoring part of a game show, for better SME marketing effect.

Text message scheduling services are invaluable in administering competitions. They allow you to digitally collect names, addresses and phone numbers, as well as easily validate entry criteria (for example, when people must text in a barcode to win). They also give you a guaranteed method for contacting the winner -- a large proportion of competition prizes actually go unclaimed!