One of the biggest challenges small businesses, including auto repair shops, face is determining the success of their marketing efforts. For some, this measure of success may be a rise in visitors to their shop or number of quote requests they receive, while others may only count completed sales as a conversion. Regardless of your measure of success, the rate at which you convert potential customers to paying customers (conversion rate) is what you should analyze in order to determine which marketing efforts (e.g., print ads, Google ads, email, Facebook and other banner ads, etc.) are most effective for your business’s overall bottom line – revenue.
For auto repair websites, for example, a conversion rate is defined as the number of conversions on your website divided by the total number of website visitors over a period of time. Actions on your website, such as scheduling an appointment for service, reserving tires online or getting directions are typical conversions for auto repair shops. While every auto shop counts conversions differently, a typical conversion rate for this industry is between 1%-2% depending on the marketing channel used.
Now you may be asking, why does my conversion rate matter? Can’t I just count how many conversions I generate for each channel, and leave it at that? This is a fairly normal question from business operators. The answer of course is not that simple. Looking at total conversions per channel versus the conversion rate may give you more distorted view.
To explore the answer, we can compare 2 sample channels: print marketing and Google ads (PPC). Let’s say your print marketing campaign drives 200 visitors to your website in a month with 3 of them converting, while your PPC campaign drives 100 visitors and 2 conversions per month. This means that your PPC campaign converted visitors at a rate of 2% (total conversions divided by total visitors) while your print campaign converted at 1.5%. Using your conversion rate, you can see that even though print marketing drove more total conversions, your PPC campaign converted visitors more frequently than print. This information can help you make informed changes to your marketing campaigns, such as investing more time and money into PPC instead of print, in order to ultimately allow your marketing to become more efficient, and in the end, drive more paying customers to your shop.
If you are unsatisfied with your current conversion rate, and would like advice from experts with 10+ years of auto marketing experience, contact Conceptual Minds for an audit.
