When it comes to marketing, Todd Bialaszewski, owner of Junk Car Medics, a nationwide junk car service in the US, provides us with his knowledge of how you can create more business for your auto salvage yard.
If you own an auto salvage yard, you may think that Pennysaver*, newspaper and Yellow page ads are the best way to generate business.
You’re probably spending money on these ads blindly, assuming that customers are coming in left, right and center from them.
However, have you ever taken the time to measure your marketing efforts? To see if that ad in the Pennysaver claiming you pay the most cash for cars in town actually brings you any new customers?
What about your Yellow page ad? Has that been on auto renewal for years now because you don’t want to deal with it?
I’m here to talk to you about how you can analyze your current marketing tactics for a mere $100 (cost of one month of fees for the two services below).
You may find out you are wasting a lot of your marketing dollars that could be repositioned into online ads to really help grow your business.
Let’s dive in…
Put Unique Call Tracking Numbers in All Your Ads
Do you put unique phone numbers in each of your ads? If not, you’re probably wasting some money.
In a matter of minutes, you can create an account with a call tracking software, set up a phone number, then set it up to forward to your business phone. You can probably do this for $20 – $50 over the course of a month.
Doing this allows you to see exactly how many calls came from that specific number that is tied to a specific ad. Think of putting a unique number in the phone book, a unique number in the Pennysaver, a unique number in your Craigslist ads, things like that.
Here’s an example of the data for one of our phone numbers at Junk Car Medics, a cash for car buying service in the United States:
You can see who called you, when they called, where they called from, and how long that call lasted.
Put Unique Tracking URL’s in All Your Ads
Similar to tracking calls you can also track clicks from your ads.
But how can someone click on a Yellow page or Pennysaver ad? Well, they don’t technically click on it, but you can put a unique URL from a service like bit.ly. A link will look like this: http://bit.ly/toddb-arw.
Every time someone sees your ad in print, they can type it into their browser on their phone or computer pretty easily. And every time someone clicks on it, Bitly will track the clicks for you. It’ll only cost you $35 a month and it’ll be worth it.
Monitor The Results
Sitting down and setting up a phone call tracking software can be done in under 30 minutes. The same can be said for creating a dozen unique URLs on Bitly.
Not computer savvy? No problem, someone in your yard is surely savvy enough to help you out. All you need is an email address to create the accounts and a credit card for each service.
Then just sit back and let the data come in. Once your ads go live, give it about three weeks, then analyze the results to that point. How many calls are you getting? What about clicks?
You can break it down to a cost per lead. I prefer to break up the two because a phone call is more valuable than a website click. So say for simple math, you spend $1,000 and get 100 calls. Your cost per call would be $10. The same can be done to figure out the cost per click: spend divided by calls.
Now you can figure out if you are getting a return on your ad spend. What is and isn’t working for you? What ads can you cancel and what ads should you enhance? The results may surprise you.
And don’t forget to cancel your phone call tracking and Bitly accounts if you prefer. You don’t need to track the calls, and clicks all the time. Doing it occasionally to check in is fine.
Hit me up on Twitter @toddbiala after you give this a try to let me know the results, I’d love to hear from you!
Todd Bialaszewski is an online marketing mind that is becoming obsessed with the auto recycling industry. He runs Junk Car Medics, a growing cash for cars service company.
*A Pennysaver (or free ads paper, Friday Ad or shopper) is a free community periodical available in North America (typically weekly or monthly publications) that advertises items for sale.
