Motor Age: What are one or two key areas that owners should focus on first when marketing their shop?

First, shops actually need to market. Many don’t. They rely on word-of-mouth and a yellow pages listing. That worked in the past; it won’t in the future.

Second, shops can’t afford to spend advertising money and just assume it’s working. They have to know.

Motor Age: How can owners make sure they’re getting the most bang for their buck with their plans?

In tight economic times, you have to track your advertising. You have to know what’s effective and what isn’t.

It stuns me when shops spend hundreds of dollars each month on advertising and don’t have a clue what’s getting their phone to ring and what isn’t.

I’ll give you an example: one of our partners is Mudlick Mail, a direct mail company. They send targeted post cards out for automotive clients. They wanted to prove these mailers generated phone calls. So, they began using our call tracking software, LogMyCalls, to track how many phone calls each mailer generates. LogMyCalls showed that certain mailers were generating phone calls several months after they were mailed.

Mudlick wouldn’t have known that (and the shopowners who hired them wouldn’t have known that) without call tracking.

If you aren’t tracking your advertising you’re flushing money down the toilet, and few businesses can afford that right now.

Motor Age: Tell me about the new product ContactPoint is offering in 2012.

It’s called LogMyCalls.com. It allows businesses to track their marketing, and the phone performance of their frontline staff.

Call tracking is a big part of the product. Basically you assign different phone numbers to different pieces of advertising (direct mail, radio, yellow pages, website, Facebook, etc.), LogMyCalls will show which ones are generating phone calls and which ones aren’t.

LogMyCalls also has call recording and scoring. It will record calls that come into your shop and help you score them, so your employees improve on the phone. You spend money advertising to get people to call, and then your guys can’t close the deal when the phone rings. LogMyCalls gives you the tools to fix that.

And frankly it’s pretty inexpensive.

LogMyCalls is a product specifically designed for the industry. A lot of shops use LogMyCalls and love it. We've created a free version so you can try it too. Just visit www.logmycalls.com.

Sign up for LogMyCalls - See Pricing and Features HERE