June 2019

BY Andy Savva O ne of the biggest mistakes I regularly see within the aftersales garage sector is the constant advertising specifically in local press with ‘come and get me offers’ in order to attract new business. Most of these are by already established business. Whether they are large or small, they will rarely measure the actual effectiveness of such campaigns, or analyse the type of customers they are attracting. Indeed very few of these businesses actually understand the ‘diamonds’ that already exist within their database. Too little thought is given to how an existing customer may feel if he or she saw a deal that had never been offered to them, despite the fact that they have been loyal customers over a number of years. This could be a real kick in the teeth. The perils of transactional marketing We’ve all seen the larger corporates like Sky, Vodaphone and, of course the insurance industry to name a few, offering far better terms for new customers than any existing customer can get. In my opinion this form of ‘transactional marketing’ does not work in the independent garage sector as it does not lead to long term loyalty and leads to these potential new customers hopping from one garage deal to the next one. There is no point trying to attract vast numbers of new customers and provide them with a sub–standard service based on a cheap price which can cause severe damage to the reputation of your business. Another factor is that established customers tend to buy more and are less price sensitive and may be less likely to defect due to price alone. Focus on relationship marketing You have to focus on ‘relationship marketing’ and yes there are many guises however your own database and the ‘diamonds’ within must always be your starting point. It also builds a platform where the business and its customers are more likely to be able to adapt to each other’s needs and reach agreement quickly and easily. So, by getting emotionally connected and regularly engage with your existing customers will only enhance the trust and loyalty you build with them. It can be concluded that relationships with customers help a lot growing the revenues/profits for the business. Relationship marketing is all about creating, building and maintaining the relationships with the existing as well as new customers for the long-term profits. Relationship- focused marketing is not something that will happen overnight. It requires a change in thinking and some discipline along the way. Top level management support is needed for introducing such a change. it's quite obvious that the relationship approach is really successful, because 80% of an organisation's revenues are generated by 20% of the customers. Thus, it is concluded that building strong relationships with customers is very important for any business to grow and relationship marketing is a mantra to long-term success by 16 AFTERMARKET JUNE 2019 BUSINESS www.aftermarketonline.net DIAMONDS IN THE DATABASE There is a treasure trove of information in your customer records according to Andy, the trick is to know how dig out the jewels