Blog: Google My Business

There are about 164,000 auto repair shops and maintenance centers in the U.S alone, and there were some 282 million vehicles operating on roads throughout the United States, as reported by Statista. While those numbers are staggering, the average shop sees only 22 vehicles a week. With such a large percentage of cars and trucks never making it to auto mechanic owner’s shops, you can’t be passive in your marketing efforts. With the industry growing and competitors are lurking and trying everything they can to get your clients attention. You, dear mechanic shop owner, must be diligent in keeping and attracting vehicle owners!

Here are 15 marketing ideas and tips for auto repair shops that not only keep clients coming back but also expand your businesses reach:

We have all heard it said, “buy local”. While we all want to, sometimes it can be hard to find a local company offering the goods or services when we go to Google or large online retailers. This is where Local Search Engine Optimization (Local SEO) comes into play.

The primary purpose of your small business website is to attract the right customers and motivate them to take action. The call to action might be to contact you, find out more about you and your offerings, or referring others to the business. A mere entertaining site is simply noise and is no real value, ahem social media sites. Your website needs to work just as hard for you as you do; consider the following suggestions:

On the surface, Google My Business (GMB) is a FREE tool from Google that helps businesses manage their online presence on the search engine results page and maps. It is the vessel that allows the local search to be more accurate. The only stipulation is that you must meet people in person. In other words, you can’t operate 100% online.

For example, if you chartered Nautilus trips, you could have a Google My Business listing, however, if you just sell seashells online, it's a no go.

Before we dive too much into GMB, let's look at how people search.