The big question concerning starting an auto repair business, besides what you will work on, is how you will market what you are selling.  Marketing is the way that business owners turn their products and services into the “need to know” name in the business.  Learning marketing takes a serious effort and the sheer volume of information available can be overwhelming.

All of the aspects of marketing these days that are available can have your head spinning in no time.  What do you do first?  What is the best kind of marketing for your business?  How do I go about niche marketing?

It seems that the more you read, the more questions you have.  When are the answers supposed to come?  Marketing can be intimidating when you are just starting out and it is all a bunch of foreign concepts.

What is the first thing you think of letting people know about your business?  Take an ad out in the local newspaper.  Well, you can take out ads on the Internet too.  Advertise on another person’s website.  By using an affiliate program, they will advertise on your site as well.

Do you write?  If you have a way with words, you can parlay that into another marketing area.  Good web content on your website will keep people coming back to read what you have to say.  But that content can be read and turned into a podcast or filmed and turned into a video to be marketed.

To do all of this, you need to read some more.  It seems like everyone knows the strategies but you.  In fact, they had to read and ask questions and learn just like you do.  There is no shortcut to learning marketing.  Everything that you learn builds on everything else.

One way to not go so crazy is to learn one area and learn it well.  From a brief description of each marketing strategy you can judge if it is right for you to start.  After you've gained confidence with one strategy, begin on another and another.  Taking marketing one step at a time is a great way to accomplish what you want to do with your business without losing your head.

Business is a combination of talent and hard work.  The talent can only take you so far, so begin by doing your homework.  Every business benefits from advertising in some form or another.  The key to becoming a name that people can trust is to let them know who you are and what you stand for.  Here are a few marketing mistakes that, if avoided, will spare you much grief and money.

1.  Not having a marketing plan.  What is a marketing plan?  It is the way that you will go about promoting your product or service.  Just like you wouldn’t begin to get serious about your business without a definite plan, it is best not to approach the marketing of your product without a plan.  When a product is promoted well, sales increase.

2.  Putting all your eggs in one basket.  This old saying seems to work in a lot of situations and marketing is one of them.  You may find a strategy like email marketing that has been successful for you.  But, don’t base your entire marketing plan on that one strategy.  In order to grow, diversification is the answer.  By not exploring other options, your business will become stunted in no time.

3.  Ignoring the value of networking.  For business, networking is invaluable.  It is the way that entrepreneurs get together to pick each other’s brains.  During these “meetings of the minds”, partnerships are struck.  You can find someone who will complement your business with a new idea.  Joint ventures mean more profits for everyone.

4.  Working as a force of one.  All businesses need support in some form.  There are not enough hours in the day to do it all and still make money.  Outsourcing can be your best friend.  You can outsource for practically anything that you need.  Hire someone to design your web page, answer your emails, and organize your invoices.  When these tasks are taken care of, more time can be devoted to marketing the product in new and creative ways.

5.  Cutting back on your marketing budget.  When business is slow, we can panic unnecessarily.  We want to save as much money as we can until things pick up again.  Since business is down, we might decide that we don’t need to advertise as no one is buying.  That is the worst mistake we can ever make.  This is the time to use our extra minutes in the day to beef up that marketing plan to appeal to a wider net of customers.

Have you already made some of these marketing mistakes?  In this world most things are fixable.  Begin again, but this time with the knowledge of what not to do.

One goal of any auto repair business is to provide quality service that people want to buy.  We’ve all seen or heard about what can happen when people get poor service and complain about it.  Law suits are filed all the time against companies for unethical practices and faulty products.  Earning more money is not to be gained at the expense of proper customer service.

How important is customer service?  It is a vital part of your auto repair business.  Satisfied customers keep coming back.  They will tell their friends about you and they will buy from you.  It is the way that business owners ensure that their business will continue.

I try to put myself in the customer’s shoes.  Actually, I am not just a small business owner but a consumer as well.  I know what constitutes excellent customer service to me and anyone I do business with deserves no less than that.

One thing about customers; you never know who they know.  Any one of them could be a person with a lot of influence in their town or city.  A word from them could send people to your website.  On the other hand, their job could allow them the opportunity to tell others of influence that you don’t provide good customer service.

All right, so it could be a hundred to one shot that one of your customers is someone like this.  But, the average customer who is concerned about customer service can post a bad review on forums, eBay, and other places where you may be looking for new customers.  And, the truth is, people flock to bad news.  They will think twice about using your services if it is floating around in the ether that you are a bad egg.

As your auto repair business grows, so will your customer service responsibilities.  The people who purchase goods or use your services are more than dollar signs.  They have lives and spheres of influence.  Treating each one like gold is our responsibility.

It is a mistake to think that your business could ever get so big that one customer doesn’t count.  It is also a mistake to think that providing a cheap product just to make money won’t come back to haunt you.  It is a fact that it will.  You could be on the receiving end of a suit.  This is not a good way to do business.

But, neither profits nor customer service has to be suspended to have a successful business.  It you feel that customer service is getting lax because you are spending most of your time marketing the business, consider outsourcing parts of the operation.  Set up email drafts and use other features to handle emails effectively and in a timely manner.

There is always a way to make it work.  Consistently providing good customer service will help expand your customer base and your image on the Internet.  This is vital to continued growth in your industry.