What Does it Take to Get Customers’ Attention? Marketing Experts Weigh In
by Abby Bowman
Many shop owners rely on insurance work for most of their jobs. Recent insurance and glass claims administration shakeups have made that less certain. To stay competitive, shops must attract customers themselves, rather than relying on insurance-directed work. AGRR magazine sat down with marketing experts from auto glass repair and replacement companies of all sizes to get their insights on the four Ps of marketing: product, promotion, location (place) and price.
Kyle Ankrom
Vice President of Marketing
Auto Glass Now!
National
Charlotte, North Carolina
Katerina Papagiannis
Director of Marketing and PR
Auto Glass Now!
National
Charlotte, North Carolina
Patricia Smiley
President
Quackt Glass
Local, Three Locations
Columbia, South Carolina
Joshua Levine
Co-Owner, Operations Manager
Arrow Auto Glass
Regional
Kingston, Pennsylvania
Sarah Seymour
Co-Owner
Seminole Auto Glass
Local, One Location
Tallahassee, Florida
Product: What Makes Your Service Stand Out?
Kyle Ankrom and Katerina Papagiannis
Papagiannis: We like to say, we’re not selling a service. We’re offering peace of mind, which includes time saved and a hassle-free experience. We really try to meet customers wherever they may be.
We understand that glass damage is stressful sometimes. Our goal is to make the repair process as easy, efficient and stress-free as possible.
Ankrom: We keep an eye on our ratings, reviews and Net Promoter Score (NPS) and communicate them to our teams. That’s how we keep ourselves honest and know if we’re delivering exceptional service.
Papagiannis: We follow up on all our reviews. If we see an issue that we need to follow up on, we involve our district managers or sometimes regional managers. Negative reviews don’t have to stay negative. There’s a way to turn a negative into a positive, and that’s something we keep in mind.
Patricia Smiley
I focus on the service side of the business. We’re always going to answer the phone. So many people call our business and they say, “You’re the first company to have a live person answer the phone today. I couldn’t get anybody on the phone at such-and-such company.” They also tell us, “You aren’t the cheapest quote, but you guys are so nice.”
I ensure knowledgeable people answer the phone. Everybody who answers the phone at Quackt has at least 10 years of experience in the auto glass industry.
We also educate customers about the services we perform. So many people don’t know what a recalibration is, or that their car even has Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). They don’t know just how important that process is to them and the safety of their vehicle. We explain why we do it, why it’s unsafe not to do it, and that we won’t do an installation if they choose to forfeit the recalibration.
Sarah Seymour
You have to wrap your product in customer service. That will show in the way that you answer the phones and how you talk to new customers or your employees. If you have good customer service, you have a good base for your business.
Promotion: How Do You Spread the Word?
Joshua Levine
We do a lot of our promotion on social media. For many years, we were old school and didn’t do much marketing. But the days of phone books are long gone, so we’ve started doing social media marketing, including a lot of short videos. It’s been so exciting.
You want your social media content to be modern and fresh. You want to balance humor with safety education. You have to know what your target audience appreciates so you can engage them without being over-the-top funny. For example, a mother will probably be more interested in hearing about safety than humor.
If you’re doing your own marketing rather than hiring a firm, there’s a steep learning curve and a serious time commitment. It’s cheaper, but there are so many facets of digital marketing that you’ll have to manage.
At Arrow, we’re glass guys. We’re trained to replace windshields, not marketing, so we hired a marketing firm to help us stand out. Anyone who does that should take the time to find the firm that fits their needs. Then, keep a close relationship and open line of communication with that firm.
Digital promotion can mean many things, and it could become a really crazy rabbit hole if you’re not careful. Make sure you understand your business goals and needs so you can implement the correct strategies.
Kyle Ankrom and Katerina Papagiannis
Papagiannis: It is important for us to create distinctiveness with our brand identity. A catchy mnemonic is memorable, and the exclamation point in our name creates urgency. We use creative storytelling in our marketing to really increase brand awareness in targeted markets so that we can drive more traffic to our locations. We really want AGN to be the first thought when a customer has an issue with their auto glass. They might not need our services right when they see our advertising, but we want to be top of mind when the need arises.
Ankrom: While we are an established business with a national presence, there’s still a significant opportunity for us to introduce ourselves to potential customers. With our “No Windshield” campaign, we wanted to do that in a bold way that would really bring some excitement and energy to the category. [The campaign includes exaggerated, funny imagery of what it would feel like to drive without a windshield. It recently won a bronze Effie award in the category for “Breaking Through in a Category Dominated by a Huge Competitor.”]
Papagiannis: People were chasing our vans down the street to take pictures and videos. Numerous technicians called us and told us, “Hey, people are following me home because they’re videotaping the van.”
Patricia Smiley
We promote a lot on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. We also do a little bit of radio advertising, but one of the most important platforms we use is Google Reviews. We ask customers all the time if they chose us because of our reviews.
We’re also dedicated to community engagement. That means we support our local elementary and high schools, the arts, bands and similar things. We ensure we’re engaged in and partner with the communities we serve.
Our duck mascot really helps make that community engagement memorable. When we bring the mascot into the community and use the pun “I quacked my glass,” people think it’s funny. They remember it. Then, when they need auto glass work, they say, “Hey, I don’t know the name of the company, but I want to call the duck people.”
The girl in the duck costume is a good dancer, so she attracts attention. She also engages the children and high-fives them. Duckie helps us read books to the kids. That way, if their parents’ windshield breaks, the children think of us and say, “Hey, Mom or Dad, call the people with a duck.”
Sarah Seymour
We do a lot of radio commercials. I started writing commercials when I was in middle school. It’s just something that has come naturally to me. I let that be my main channel to communicate to the public. I also put that content onto our website. I don’t do TV commercials very much because it’s easy to ignore those or skip past them. If you have the radio on while working or driving, it’s harder to ignore.
I have the same tagline at the end of all my commercials and a “beep, beep” sound to get people’s attention. People now recognize my voice and our jingle, which I based on “Seminole Wind” by John Anderson. I’ll also throw in a “dad joke” at the end sometimes or give the commercials a pun-y theme. I also vary them based on what’s going on in the community or upcoming holidays.
We also advertise in things like the local sheriff’s department calendar, banners at school boards and baseball fields. We’ve gotten many jobs from rogue baseballs hitting cars, many of them because people see our sign. You have to put your advertising where people will see or hear it, whether they want to or not.
Location (Place): Can Customers See You?
Patricia Smiley
We put our shops on main roads or in industrial areas. We try to make them accessible by putting them where people can either get on to or off the interstate to find us. That puts us in places where business is happening, cars are moving through, and people can see our signs and see the duck.
For mobile work, we can get to pretty much any job around one of our locations within 20-30 minutes. We’re in a choice tourist area. Our drive times go up when tourists arrive in the summer, but they also bring business. Hockey is big around here, and we’re close to the hotels where people stay when they travel for matches. We’ll get a lot of vandalism calls around hockey games.
Sarah Seymour
Tallahassee is the capital of Florida, and our shop is on a main strip about three miles from the Capitol building. You can get to our shop in about 20 minutes from pretty much anywhere in Tallahassee. I wanted a central location that was easy for customers and employees to get to and from. I also wanted it to be somewhere where I could easily do recalibrations in the shop, that also has good roads for dynamic recalibrations.
Price: How Do You Handle Sticker Shock?
Kyle Ankrom
It’s very common for someone to get sticker shock when they’re not familiar with windshield replacement and don’t understand what goes into it. Our shops, customer service representatives and call centers are equipped to talk about the value of what we provide. We tell customers it’s not just about the price you’re paying; it’s what you get for that price.
We have lifetime warranties on our services, so customers know the work is worth what they paid.
It’s also important to explain safety elements that increase the price. Recalibration is a great example. We ensure we’re clear on why it’s important that work is done and why it’s not something we see as optional. It is a requirement.
Patricia Smiley
We use a few methods to keep a customer’s business if they’re shocked at our quote. We emphasize the benefits of working with us. I’ll point out that we can usually get to the job quicker than our competition. We have the mindset that if we don’t get to it today, our competitors will. It’s also important to educate customers. Explain why windshields are so important and what ADAS is.
It’s also important just to answer the phone. That’s a huge factor in us getting a lot of the work we do. We might not be the cheapest, but we can offer the best customer service.
What is the Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
The Net Promoter System invented the NPS to measure a company’s customer satisfaction. According to the Net Promoter System’s site, it calculates the score by asking customers a simple question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” Customers then answer on a 1-10 scale.
“Your Net Promoter Score is simply the percentage of customers who are promoters (those who scored 9 or 10) minus the percentage who are detractors (those who scored 0 to 6),” the site says.
According to Salesforce, the NPS is a globally recognized metric for customer service success and helps companies determine which customers to follow up with.
Abby Bowman is the editor of AGRR magazine. Email her at abowman@glass.com and follow her on LinkedIn.
To view the laid-in version of this issue in our digital edition, CLICK HERE.
