Elite Webinar: Steps to Bring in the Ideal Customer

July 14, 2016

July 14, 2016—Elite hosted the first of four free marketing webinars on Wednesday, in which it defined important marketing terms, discussed how to position the shop in the market, and talked about the first steps to take to bring in ideal customers.

Elite’s Bob Cooper and Jen Monclus began the webinar by defining certain terms in the marketing world. They said there is a lot of misunderstanding and miscommunication in the marketing world. First off, Cooper said, people often confuse marketing with advertising. Marketing means identifying who the ideal customers are, who you are, what the message is, and how you are going to reach your customers. Advertising, Cooper said, is how we communicate that message to people. 

Cooper and Monclus also defined unique selling proposition (USP), brand, brand awareness campaigns, call-to-action campaigns, laddering, positioning, and traditional and non-traditional marketing channels. Monclus and Cooper discussed why each of these terms are important and how they fit into marketing. 

The webinar went on to discuss two steps to take to bring in ideal customers. 

Step one is to put dreams or vision for the business on paper, identifying long-term, mid-term and short-term goals. This includes drafting a mission statement and defining a purpose. It includes the culture of the company, what it does every day and what it does in the long term. 

Step two is to identify the ideal customer. A lot of shop owners make the mistake of trying to be everything to everyone. They end up spending a lot of money to bring in the wrong type of customers. 

Elite suggests to begin identifying the customer by pulling 500 recent invoices, depending on your company’s size, and sorting out the 200 people who spent the most money. Do not include one-time customers and out-of-town customers. Sort the repair orders by profitability. What vehicles were they? How often did these vehicles revisit? Narrow the list down to 100 and look at the number and types of vehicles in the household, sorting the owners by gender and approximate age. This process should give a shop owner a good idea of who the customer is. 

The next Elite webinar will take place at 10 a.m. PST on Wednesday, July 20. More information on how to participate in the webinar can be found on Elite’s website. 

Here is the full webinar: 

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