How to Market a Boring Industry
The auto glass repair industry is a straightforward one. Car glass cracks or breaks, the glass shop orders replacement glass, then they repair it. That’s it. Marketing opportunities are limited!
While other industries offer a wide range of services and products, the auto glass industry is narrow. There is one type of glass for each vehicle and one basic type of chip repair.
It is by no means a flashy industry. Who window-shops for windshields (pun intended)? Nobody does. The auto glass industry is need-based and because of that, the targeted customer base is specific; vehicle owners with disposable income or insurance and broken auto glass; the last characteristic being key.
Why is auto glass an interesting subject? That’s the thing, it isn’t.
The auto glass industry is one of the most difficult industries to market. The chance of becoming dull and repetitive is almost a guarantee because the relevant topics are limited, boring, and uneventful.
Auto glass is breakable, essential, and taken for granted.
You only think about windshields if it breaks. Then again, why else would you think about it? Its sole purpose is to be an unnoticeable barrier against wind, rain, and bugs. If windshields were constantly noticeable, there would be quite a few distracted drivers on the road.
Because of this, marketing is tough for auto glass companies. Large chain auto glass repair shops have the luxury of big budgets to sponsor Nastrucks (Nascar trucks) and other extravagant marketing campaigns.
Yet smaller, local shops do not have that massive budget. Instead, we must harness our savvy marketing abilities to come up with new ways to break the monotony of windshield marketing (pun intended, again). With all honesty, this is a challenge, but we think we have done well so far.
Anchor Content
If you were to look at any of our social accounts, you will likely come across content relating to customer reviews. While we advertise these more frequently than our competitors, we believe customer reviews crucial for the success of local businesses. Plus, not to toot our own horn, we do have a 5-star rating and why not let the people know!
Blogs
When it comes to blogging, no one wants to read about windshield replacements every week. We do our best to shake up our blogs as much as possible, ranging from business advice to road trip essentials. As always though, we try to tie in the topic of windshield replacement, automotive care, or small business into each article. So, keep your blog content relevant, but engaging.
Other Content
Of course, there is more to our website than blogs. In between each consistent post, we do our best to sprinkle in fun posts our audience can engage with. They don’t always relate to auto glass or windshields, but they do liven up our feeds to create the needed engagement. (Remember SEO is key to website traffic.)
These “fun” posts allow us to interact with our customers and even laugh a little. We enjoy actively participating in social media rather than just scheduling identical posts month after month.
Look at Wendy’s for example. Go through their Twitter feed and you likely will find a multitude of tweets roasting their competitors or placing retweet bets with their customers; all in good fun of course. Denny’s is even more bizarre. Their Instagram page is brimming with hilarious photos, puns, and humor. All of which completely shatters serious corporate expectations.
Although we haven’t quite reached the sass level of Wendy’s or adopted the odd humor of Denny’s, we try not to take ourselves too seriously on any of our social platforms. We just try to keep people interested, informed, and entertained.
Consistency
It is easy to post anything willy-nilly on social media or your website. For personal accounts, that is totally acceptable, but for businesses, a different approach is recommended. As a business, you have a brand, logo, colors, mottos, etc. that you should be marketing. For many businesses, it isn’t the product you should focus your marketing attention on, it is the brand.
What company do you think of when someone mentions “online shopping”? Chances are you think of Amazon. Like it or not, this is because they have become THE go-to site when you want to buy something online. That is because they have marketed the brand to becoming a household name, rather than marketing the millions of products they sell.
So, depending on what your company does or sells, you may want to focus your marketing on the brand or at least include your logo/style in everything your post.
With all that said…
We may have a less than exciting industry to work with, but we make the most with what we have. No, not everyone gets ecstatic about windshields and that is perfectly fine. You do not have to be, nor do we expect you to be.
All we want is to make your experience with us, whether online or in-person, as smooth and enjoyable as possible. So thanks for stopping by and go have an adventure!