Our final post on marketing discusses how sponsorship can expose your business to a wider audience. If you have missed our previous posts talking about other marketing ideas, you can check them out here, online and branding.
Sponsorship
Have you ever thought about sponsoring a local sports team/event or interest group? This is a great way to expose your business to a wider audience as well as supporting the local community.
Here are some ideas of how you can become a sponsor;
- Donate a prize for the club’s end of year raffle
- Sponsor trophies or equipment
- Sponsor the club’s uniforms or facility upgrades.
Your expectations for your return on investment from a sponsorship agreement can vary widely. Ensure you do your research into what the entity can give to you in return for sponsoring them, it could be;
- Adding your logo to their website
- Adding your logo to their newsletters
- Adding your logo to the club’s uniforms
- Being mentioned over the PA at club days, competitions or events
- Being mentioned as a sponsor on the entities social media platforms.
Ensure both parties (yourself and the entity) agree on what the expectations will be. It can be hard to gauge your return on investment with sponsorship unless you offer a coupon, or gift certificate to participants or spectators and in return how many people bring in the coupon to your business from the sponsored entity.
Other marketing ideas
There are many ways you can talk to your customers to ensure you are at front of mind with your loyal customers to keep them returning to your automotive business or for your customers to refer your business to their friends and family.
These ideas can include;
- Surprise and delight, leave a small gift with your logo on it in their car after you have serviced it
- Your waiting area is comfortable, has the latest newspaper and fresh coffee for your customers whilst they wait for their car to be attended
- Create in house events (specialist VIP nights) to attract a new audience, for example a women’s only night to teach them how to change oil in a car
- Create a relationship with another local business and cross promote each other, it could be a local café where you give coffee vouchers to your customers
- You could offer VACC roadside assist vouchers to your customers to say thank you.
The key to marketing is to be engaging and interesting. Ensure your business stands out from the crowd and you and your employees look after your customers. For the full run−down on how to market your business you can read the articles found in previous copies of Australian Automotive (August, October and December 2016 editions)- check out Australian Automotive online: http://www.australianautomotive.com/