Previously, we saw how fixed ops opportunities, revenues, and profits are available to dealers. While a dealer’s fair share of the $340 billion service and parts market ^[1] is available, half of dealers report investing less than 10% of their marketing budget on driving fixed operations^[2].

As a result, 25% of customers who bought a vehicle from a particular dealership are not aware that the dealership offers an automotive service center. The good news? This can change.

This means tackling a few challenges — starting with promoting your dealership’s service center beyond basic email and direct mail marketing. A comprehensive fixed ops marketing strategy requires meeting consumers where they spend most of their time online: Search and Social.

Whether prospective fixed ops customers are currently servicing vehicles at your dealership, are lost souls, or have never done business with you, be certain of this: most are searching online and spending some amount of time on Facebook.

Revving Up Search

It’s not that consumers aren’t using search engines to research places to service their vehicles. In fact, Google reported 70 million fixed operations searches were made by consumers every month in 2014. And 70% of consumers research parts and service information prior to their transaction.^[4]The unfortunate reality, however, is that national chains like Jiffy Lube, Midas, and Pep Boys are outperforming dealers at the point of Search. The result? Dealers show up in less than 5% of service and repair-related searches.^[5]

Perhaps another reason for this lackluster performance is a dealer’s sole reliance on OEM-endorsed search partners. Dealers who choose to align their search strategy with a true multi-channel effort (tying PPC, display, pre-roll and retargeting to other channels such as email, direct mail, and social media) are seeing a far greater reach and a far greater exposure, yielding far greater results.

Speaking of social media …

Revving Up Social

With Dominion, dealers have amazing social advertising capabilities. With respect to service and parts marketing, Dominion’s fixed ops social ads can be used to target any number of target segments:

• Lost Soul Customers (re-engaging customers who have not been in for service in the past 12-18 months)
• Maintenance Schedule Reminders (keeping current customers aware of their vehicle needs and engaged with you)
• Mature Service Messaging (displaying offers for tire replacement, air conditioning tuning, battery replacement, etc)
• General branding (setting you apart from your competition on Social, just as in Search)

The result? Significantly higher revenue and profits for the service drive in any given month. Take, for example, the results from a pilot campaign used to test the power of Dominion’s new fixed ops social ads.

After targeting 760 customers on Facebook, 37 total repair orders were generated with an average RO of $275. The campaign, funded with less than $200, drove over $10k in total revenue for the dealership. (When was the last time you ran a campaign with a 50x ROI?)

With a more intentional Search and Social strategy, dealers can take their share of the available service and parts business. Coordinating these channels, with the unique, dealer-specific content and branding of custom direct mail and email marketing campaigns, is the fastest route to stronger fixed operations revenue and profits.

Stay tuned for the fourth and final post of this blog series, where we’ll look at the channel that serves as “the insurance policy” to your entire fixed ops marketing effort.

Call 877.421.1040 to start planning your custom route to fixed ops success today!

^{[1,3,4,5] Google
[2] DealerOn
[6] Wordstream}