What works and what doesn't?

[ClaireLR]

Hi
I want to pick people's brains about what types of marketing are best to prevent me wasting money. We repair and recondition car parts.
Things we've used so far
Sending out business cards and leaflets
Facebook
Facebook marketplace
Gumtree/Schpock
Twitter
Instagram
Googlemybusiness
Yell.com
Our own website
Local network marketing (bestof.com)
Ebay
Cold calling businesses in the local area.

Some of these things cost us an awful lot of money for what seems to be very little return.
I'm thinking about trying Google ads, has anyone had any success with this? Also wondering if its worth spending money on Instagram training, as I dont know a huge amount about it (but post there anyway!)
Any other tips for us to get some work in? We're growing month by month but not as fast as I hoped we would.
Thanks for any help.

 

[Alan]

Sending out business cards and leaflets
Facebook
Facebook marketplace
Gumtree/Schpock
Twitter
Instagram
Googlemybusiness
Yell.com
Our own website
Local network marketing (bestof.com)
Ebay
Cold calling businesses in the local area.

None of the above

I'm thinking about trying Google ads

Yes absolutely

The last time I searched for a second hand car part it was Google Ads that found it for me.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Answer

each of them work

also, none of them work

what research have you done to find out where your target customer hangs out?

 

[Graham Tyers]

Google ads would be my first action almost always - even if very gently at first.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

Hi @ClaireLR,

Since you are promoting something very specific that may be a one-off purchase, you need to make sure your is marketing specific too, otherwise, you are wasting your time.

Another piece of advice is that you should only use marketing channels where your audience is actively looking to buy or learn about your types of product. If they are not, then it's a total waste of time.

Many businesses waste hours and tons of money trying to flog their products in the wrong places. Instagram, for example, is probably not right. Yes, your audience may be on Instagram, just like everyone is on Facebook, but that doesn't mean they will be looking for your products there.

For a product like yours, I'd say use:

• Adwords - You can then target very niche searches on a per brand/car model basis. It's also immediate but it can be expensive if you target the wrong search terms or have a poor website. Website must also work on mobile.

• Google Shopping - Great for spare parts but your products need to be optimised well to appear, especially the titles. Again, this will struggle to work if you have a poor website. Website must also work on mobile.

• Google My Business - Yes, because some of your business will probably come from relatively local sources. You also want to build up your local exposure and become the go-to experts.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - You are selling a niche product so ranking high in Google organically should be fairly easy with a little bit of effort.

• Ebay - Possibly. This seems to work well for the car parts market and is a low-risk/low-cost way of gaining exposure.

I'm not sure whether you are doing this but you should also be networking with local garages who need your products. They are already serving your audience and will be your 'on-the-ground' sale team.

Finally, Facebook group and online forum networking may be worth a try. Go to groups and forums where owners of your main car brands 'hang out'. Start talking to them and helping them. Don't try to sell. Just be helpful. They will then come to you because you are a specialist.

Hope that helps.

Matt

 

[paulears]

Who are your customers? Where do they look for your parts? That's where you focus your budget.

 

[saythisinstead.co.uk]

Adwords? are basically adverts, and don't people ignore adverts. I might view the odd one I suppose, but largly do ignore the majority. look into video and be far more personal with your audience than what the rest is doing.

Better go and tell Google that no one looks at their ads then?

£23.5 billion spent on online ads in 2018....you really think all those people are wrong?

If your business solves a very particular problem like say...."I need a second hand starter for a ford focus" then google ads would work perfectly well.

It does take some research and work to get ads working efficiently however....but there's a price to pay for everything.

We ALL ignore the majority of ads BUT that is no basis to conclude that they don't work.

If Google ads didn't work then people wouldn't pay to use them....and clearly, that is not the case.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

If Google ads didn't work then people wouldn't pay to use them....

Not necessarily. Come across plenty of small businesses who don't track the results of their advertising.
And if you don't track, you can't possibly know if it's working or not.
Ever seen a Google ad for a local business the other end of the country appear in your search results? e.g. a plumber in Glasgow when you're searching in Southampton!

 

[saythisinstead.co.uk]

Not necessarily. Come across plenty of small businesses who don't track the results of their advertising.
And if you don't track, you can't possibly know if it's working or not.
Ever seen a Google ad for a local business the other end of the country appear in your search results? e.g. a plumber in Glasgow when you're searching in Southampton!

Of Course.....which is why I said.....It does take some research and work to get ads working efficiently however....but there's a price to pay for everything.

 

[CompleteWeb]

Hi @ClaireLR,

Since you are promoting something very specific that may be a one-off purchase, you need to make sure your is marketing specific too, otherwise, you are wasting your time.

Another piece of advice is that you should only use marketing channels where your audience is actively looking to buy or learn about your types of product. If they are not, then it's a total waste of time.

Many businesses waste hours and tons of money trying to flog their products in the wrong places. Instagram, for example, is probably not right. Yes, your audience may be on Instagram, just like everyone is on Facebook, but that doesn't mean they will be looking for your products there.

For a product like yours, I'd say use:

• Adwords - You can then target very niche searches on a per brand/car model basis. It's also immediate but it can be expensive if you target the wrong search terms or have a poor website. Website must also work on mobile.

• Google Shopping - Great for spare parts but your products need to be optimised well to appear, especially the titles. Again, this will struggle to work if you have a poor website. Website must also work on mobile.

• Google My Business - Yes, because some of your business will probably come from relatively local sources. You also want to build up your local exposure and become the go-to experts.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - You are selling a niche product so ranking high in Google organically should be fairly easy with a little bit of effort.

• Ebay - Possibly. This seems to work well for the car parts market and is a low-risk/low-cost way of gaining exposure.

I'm not sure whether you are doing this but you should also be networking with local garages who need your products. They are already serving your audience and will be your 'on-the-ground' sale team.

Finally, Facebook group and online forum networking may be worth a try. Go to groups and forums where owners of your main car brands 'hang out'. Start talking to them and helping them. Don't try to sell. Just be helpful. They will then come to you because you are a specialist.

Hope that helps.

Matt

Hi @ClaireLR - I totally agree with Matt. Some carefully targeted AdWords would be of help. And it should be reasonably easy to SEO your website for these items as they're pretty specific. Ebay might also be good source of exposure.

 

[HarrisH]

Hey @ClaireLR,

When starting off with digital marketing, it's always a little rocky at first, since you're probably struggling with questions like:

- "Is it worth spending so much of my budget on that?"
- "Ooooo, that sounds cool. But I don't think I'm tech-friendly enough to get started with it"
- "Will this get me customers?"

We've all been there!

I totally agree with a lot of the comments made above. Google Ads is 100% a brilliant way to directly target your customers since you can target by Search Keywords i.e "Vauxhall Corsa 2012 Light Bulb".

However, as tempting as it is, before taking on the internet, I'd probably recommend getting in touch with your local community first. By that I mean, why not try the following:

1) Establishing a relationship with local garages and supplying parts directly to them since they're the first point of contact for lots of people when they're looking to replace a car part (this can be easily scaled to garages nationwide).

2) Focus on exceptional service to get reviews for your Google MyBusiness (it's also big for word-of-mouth recommendations and a win-win for both you and your customers)

3) Get social, try Facebook Ads and target people in your area over a certain age since they're more likely to own a car (if you're unsure about the technicalities, there are loads of available resources online and it's super simple once you've gotten the hang of things).

4) SEO! It's completely free and since you're targeting a local niche, it should be much easier to rank for certain search phrases.

All the above are low-cost and definitely achievable with a little bit of effort

As you've established a great online presence by posting on so many different websites, you're definitely well-positioned to give off an "established" feel when someone hears about your business and gives it a quick Google search.

By going local, you'll also be able to get the hang of new digital marketing concepts without blowing loads of your budget as you'll be targeting a smaller group of people.

Hope this helps! Let us know what works for you!

 

[JamesR45]

Google Ads can work well, but the basic metrics need to be in place or it'll cost you more than you make in profit.

In my experience of running Ads for different sectors, you need both of these two essentials:

1) enough people are searching online for what you are selling (you might well find that only a few % of people who search will click on your ad and then a small-ish % of those people will convert to sales. So if there aren't enough people searching, you're metrics for conversion to sales will never stack up.

2) there needs to be enough profit in the items you sell to cover the high number of people who will click on your ad but not convert to sales. In an ideal world, each sale would make £hundred/s in profit so you have the leeway to cover the ad spend. So, for example, if it takes 10 clicks per sale (or 20 etc) do you have the margin to still make a profit.

Personally, I'd say SEO is your best bet... i.e. have a website with LOTS of pages of text content and images about the products you sell and make sure you're clear on your website where you're based so Google can index your pages for the correct locality. You'll then start to pick up traffic for free (and so the second metric above no longer matters).

FB Ads will bring traffic but in my experience it's much worse quality than from Google (but FB also tends to be cheaper per click) so maybe test a cautious budget and see what sales (if any) you receive.

 

[Martin Kennington]

It's important not to confuse Google Search Ads with Google Display Ads. You're targeting very specific search terms, that you want to appear on the top of Google for, so paid search could work well for you and a relatively small test budget with very specific terms can yield results - but you would first need to run analysis on the search volume (eg how many people are searching for "reconditioned exhaust pipes" or "second-hand catalytic converter") so you know where to allocate your budget (use SEMRush or a similar tool for this).

While I do agree with the comments above about SEO being very important, SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. You can't get a high position without a significant investment of time in creating content that is, crucially, of higher quality and more informative than that of your competitors. Simply writing a few articles/blogs about car parts won't suffice. Building a ton of pages to try to game Google at SEO also won't work, unless those pages are significantly 'better' than your competitors... and that's before considering how young your site may be and how few incoming links and citations.

 

[Oxfordlocals]

Hi,
Facebook for branding, not selling, does not work
Google PPC for selling
SEO, great content, design, speed of website, this helps you get organic traffic (free)
SEO Off page, doing guest posts about your products and services, do not post on Spam websites.
Do your research for rich keywords, and long tailed, this can be done with keyword tools and google PPC platform

Regards
Rob

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

banner advertising on the Owner clubs web sites and forums . Maybe see what sort of a deal pistonheads can do