Back in September of 2010, things were pretty busy for me. We had eight shops, all full to the brim with profitable work -- life was good! Then out of nowhere I got what I call a DRP sucker punch. I picked up the phone one day and it was this guy Keith from the head office of one of our main insurance DRPs. He told me it was a “courtesy call” to let me know that they had decided to go with a national provider and were going to be turning our stores off at the end of the month. In less than three days, 28% of my work for all of the shops was going to disappear.
I panicked. My knee-jerk reaction was to hire a marketing agency to make up that approximately 30% difference. To do that I knew I needed the best of the best, so I hired the top ad agency in the country. I may as well have been throwing money on a bonfire. We were spending huge dollars marketing on all of the usual channels (radio, tv, print, social media) but were seeing very little return. The ad company was confused and concerned, and so was I.
I had to change my game plan so we stopped the ad spend and instead hired a team of behavioral scientists to analyze the collision industry. The main question we were looking to answer was why a collision customer is so different from a customer in other industries. My answer came back from the analysts in a 5000 page document.
Now, I have a friend who always told me that if you want to impress someone, make it complicated -- but if you want to help someone, make it simple. So, I won’t give you the 5000 page answer to the question of what makes collision industry customers unique, I’ll give you the simple version.
If you want to impress someone, make it complicated. If you want to help someone, make it simple.
There are two types of product classifications:
Impulse purchases are where 95% of marketers are focusing their attention. For those of you who work in or with dealerships, you know how good they are at selling and marketing cars. They’re probably not as good at marketing your body shop. Cars are impulse purchases. Consumers want them. Advertisers can get people excited for them and build demand around new models and features -- just like they can with the newest iPhone, watch, or laptop.
The harsh reality is that no one wants to purchase a repair at your body shop. In fact, if they could avoid it, they would never want to set foot in a body shop at all. Car repairs are distress purchases, and the mentality of a customer making a distress purchase is very different from one making an impulse purchase.
Imagine you woke up and your basement was flooded. You know you need to hire a restoration company to deal with the water damage, but it is unlikely you’ve been researching flood repair in your spare time, or that you have a picture of your ideal repair company on your vision board.
The same goes for body shops. Unless someone has gotten in an accident and has damage to their vehicle already, they will have zero purchase motivation. There is just no reason for them to take any interest in you.
Your ad team should be approaching your marketplace using very different methods than if they were dealing with an impulse product. That being said, only about 5% of marketers truly understand the mindset of customers making a distress purchase and how to:
When you are looking to hire a marketing team, make sure that they understand your customers and the product class that they are part of. It doesn’t matter how skilled an agency is at advertising to impulse buyers, if they can’t speak to the mindset of a distress purchaser, they won’t make a dent in the collision industry.
Keep crushing it!
Ryan
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