Your Online Brand Equity Matters

In today’s digital age, with millions of people receiving their information from social media sites, the perception of your brand online is a significant asset to your business. It is how the majority of your customers will come to find and create an image of you. Consumers seek to engage with businesses more actively – seeking a conversation rather than being told what to buy.

In the Harvard Business Review article “How to Build a Brand on the Web? Ask Unilever” by John Deighton and Leora Kornfeild, they discuss how Dove added $1.2 billion to its brand value over three years by understanding how to handle their online reputation. “The locus of control in the marketplace shifts from marketer to consumer, and success is built on a model of co-created meaning.” Clearly, a business’s online brand can paint a picture of a customer’s attitude of how to create a better image.

So how can you monitor your online brand in the auto repair industry? Simple. Reputation Manager is a set of tools that specifically helps you find, analyze, and understand what people are saying about your brand online. With text analytics, web surveys, and a metrics dashboard, Reputation Manager is your resource to help you keep on top of what people are saying about your business so that you can have the important conversations that really matter.

Once you have a grasp of your online brand reputation, own the perception! Start with consistency of your offline and online brand. Once the two are connected, any moves you make will take impact across the spectrum of your customer base. For example, $183 billion – or 34% – of Apple’s overall $623 billion value is ascribed to the intangible contribution of “brand” to its valuation. By taking the time to align online brand with offline brand, a business quickly takes advantage of opportunities arising from either realm leading to growth and sustained profitability.

Email Marketing: Turn Scanning Into Reading

Believe it or not, people still read marketing emails these days – they-just-read'em-a-lot-faster. More like ‘scanning’ than reading. They look for the highlights, the TEXT that stands out (even by putting text in parenthesis). There you go – three examples for you just in the previous sentence. 

Okay, enough with the gimmicks. The point is that if you’re writing an email message to your customers or prospects, always consider that the reader is scanning your message, not ‘reading it’ – at first. 

If you’re able to get your key points across to the scanner in a clean, crisp way, they’re more inclined to read the rest of what’s in your email. Which is exactly what you want them to do.

So, for your scanning pleasure, here’s a few gold doubloons pulled from our treasure chest of best practices in email marketing:

1. Put your offer or most important point in the email subject line. And again in the first paragraph.
2. Break up the copy for easy scanning. Keep paragraphs short – 2 or 3 sentences at most. 
3. Use bullet points, numbered lists, dashes to break up the text into easy scanning bits.
4. Go easy on making copy bold, in italic or use of exclamation points – less is more effective.
5. Spell-check-spell-check-psell-check. It matters! This is a reflection of your shop’s professionalism.  And I meant to do that.
6. Always have a ‘Call to Action’ somewhere in your email, even if it’s simply ‘Give us a call with any questions’. Make this stand out, so the scanner knows what you want them to do!

Here’s my Call to Action for you, dear scanner:  Step back and take a quick scan of this blog.  Pretty easy on the eyes, isn’t it?  There are a lot more tips in this white paper. 


 

Help Change the Future of our Industry

One of the issues plaguing the repair industry today is the fact that the average age within the industry is 40 years old, and younger generations just aren’t entering the industry in great enough numbers to balance it out.

With that in mind, the Collision Repair Education Foundation (CREF) has been working hard this year to put together an initiative to get more graduating collision students into the industry. As such, they have decided that any industry business that makes a tax-deductible donation to CREF by December 31, 2013 and joins the Industry Leadership Circle, will have the opportunity to work with CREF to have their entry-level employment opportunities distributed to CREF’s national database of collision school programs.

As such, if you’re looking for a great way to get your current and upcoming employment opportunities out to a national database, and ensure you’re getting quality, qualified applicants, make sure to take advantage of this unique opportunity. It’s a great way to not only help support schools and students across the country, but it’s a great way to find the employees you’re looking for.

If you’re interested in joining the Collision Repair Education Foundation’s Industry Leadership Circle donor recognition program, contact Director of Development, Brandon Eckenrode at 847-463-5244. Industry businesses can learn more information about the organization and make a donation online by visiting www.CollisionEducationFoundation.org.