Stevethemechanic

I've been a mechanic since 1979 and self employed since 1997. I've wasted a lot of money on useless advertising. If your in a small to medium size town, the local chamber of commerce can be your best friend, get to know the membership director (mine plays Mrs. Clause in our medium town for the PD and Fire dept.at our 3rd location) if your in a bigger town it's useful but not great. Specials like a discounted oil change seem to bring in usually result in customers that just want a cheap oil change. To increase your SEO without spending any money, look on the internet, find all of the free listings on the internet for your business, claim them and add the search words that might bring the customers to your website IE: Your city and county name, surrounding cities, words like timing belt, water pump, belt, belts, a/c, air conditioning, auto repair, independent auto repair, guarantee, warranty, best, ETC. You'll get a lot of calls and emails from them, just say no thank you, not at this time, save your money. As far as used car lots are concerned I tell them I do not offer discounts to car lots, I do good work for a fair price, If you can't sell that consider another business. I check out the car for the buyer, not the seller, Isn't that what you would want if you were the buyer? I also do not discount my labor to them, I tell em: Let me do my job for a fair price and by doing the work I recommend and using the parts I know will last and IF your customer has a problem I can afford to stand behind my work. We make sure we never let a customer with buyers remorse, we explain what we did and have a little show and tell with example: their old brake pads and some new ones. I always ask how they heard about us, regardless of their answer (usually they found us on the internet or through a friend, family member or coworker, I make sure I thank them for our business, sometimes I review our warranty on the work done, Then I tell them almost all of our customers found us the same way and I tell them I've wasted a lot of money on advertising that just doesn't work for us and I say Our business is referral dependent, almost everyone finds about us through a good warm referral from an existing customer, I tell them we answer the phone 24 hours a day so if they have an emergency we can get their car here and get them home, then I say thank You for your business.

Similar deal, my second shop is called Lexutech Auto Care, I know it's weird and I'm not very creative. We specialize on Lexus and Toyota automobiles. in the last two years we have branched out into other vehicles and I'm considering a name change also. As to not alienate our existing customers the name I'm considering is LXT Auto Care. Defiance seems a little off, How about Defender off road car & Truck care