99StockGT

Always here to help support the good people and causes of CR sir! One of these days I'll get to take such a rally adventure as well. Enjoy the road and drive safe! P.S. Always appreciate you flying our flag sir! Couldn't ask for a better Spokesmodel

http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/autos-search-1/20-outrageous-concept-cars-that-really-should-have-been-built/ss-BBAWzDJ?OCID=AUTRLGLR

I get what you are saying, and we DO try to make sure every customer we touch has that feeling when they are here and when they leave. I guess it would be an interesting study, see if we knocked out 5 of those a day for a month, how it would effect our bottom line and quality of business.

Good luck and safe running everyone!

Exactly. Most people who are "searching for a shop" have usually been burned by at least one before. Unfortunately the mentality of most in our industry, and indeed in many other industries, is take every dollar every chance you get. That's not how we like to operate. Now, if any car comes in for a $25 LOF and actually NEEDS $2,000 worth of work we definitely feel its our duty to inform the customer and have a conversation. But that should be an educational and relationship building time not a Rape on the First Date. Facebook IS pretty decent for networking with other owners, myself and Rich are both active in several car groups, shop owner, and marketing groups. The vast majority of people who are successful tend to rely on oil change specials and boards outside their shop as well as location on a major road. OR, are part of a franchised major chain shop.

Ohhh the slippery slope. So a couple things. 1) Loss leaders are a pretty common business practice, give a basic service away at an irresistible rate then once we have you in our clutches turn up the heat to get add-ons. Now while this DOES work, it's also a portion of why our industry largely has a terrible reputation. Do we send out coupons? Yes we do, usually good for $5 off of a standard or synthetic oil change. We aren't the kind of place you for for a $14.99 oil change special, nor do we want to be. And this leads to my second point... 2) Cheap services usually lead to cheap customers. More often than not the people who go after the fantastically cheap oil change and alignment deals are those who are very seldom interested in maintenance. Customers who are always after the lowest possible price no matter the quality of part or work... well that's just not our kind of customer. Not saying we aren't going to do our best to keep costs down, and get a job done as quickly and cheaply as possible, but our number one goal is a quality repair done right and a satisfied safe customer. Those two views, are often mutually exclusive. Now, an exception to this is what we did for the CR crowd on our Crazy Alignment deal. CR, at least in my mind, represent people who are automotive enthusiast that value their rides above it just being a piece of transportation. When a car/truck is just a tool you are more likely to just use it and toss it, replace it if it starts complaining. If a car/truck is passion/experience/obsession/whatever it's more likely you will maintain or pay to maintain that vehicle.

Keep in mind, there are 2 different Lucore pages. Which I know, is annoying and confusing. One is Lucore Automotive. One is Lucore Race

Oh I fully understand the "7500 reach" part but how to do you verify they saw it? Spent more than 1 second or less than half a second viewing it? They can just as easily say "100,000" reach and we have absolutely no way of proving or disproving that point. Hence why measuring engagement is a metric I want. Seems odd that of everything that gets posted on there that 7500 people looked at the ad, read something on it, saw the images, then thought meh I won't bother clicking like on that I'm not into Muscle Cars/Race Cars/Trucks/etc etc I've tried multiple ways of listing the Instagram link on Facebook and on our page, will have to check maybe they got deleted. Either way, I cross post nearly every Instagram post TO Facebook. For those curious, @LucoreRacing is the page. Always welcome constructive criticism

Thanks again for all the interaction and opinions, exactly what I knew I could count on from ya'll. Let me address a couple things. The painted vehicle at the end of the lot, if you've noticed recently we put eye catching rides there as well as our '65 C10 shop truck with company paint scheme there. Personally I agree our building is very non-descript so anything we can do to draw the eye and get people to notice the logo the better. There's a project in the works that will be along this line sometime soon once we can get out from under the current batch of project rides. Reviews and referrals are our number 1 source of new customers, you typically are getting a better start with a customer who has had a sort of "warm introduction" than just someone picking up a flyer. Organic growth that way is definitely nice, however that also ties back to how do we drive people to view the reviews in the first place aside from random Googlings. We absolutely are in an excellent spot with tremendous potential as Dublin continues to grow over top of us. With all the new businesses going in up and down Industrial as well as the new housing going in towards Plain City and New California it's just going to continue to get better. Hopefully Does a sign or flyer listing oil change specials and new customers welcome sort of those scream of business problems / thirst? Or does it come off as hey maybe give us a try? Google analytics are definitely helpful, unfortunately we are seeing more like 10-15% of our traffic to the main page from Facebook/Instagram. The nice feature of Facebook is the ease of posting info/updates versus updating the website, unfortunately if you can't get eyes on the updated content it's all for not. For example, currently we are running a "Page Boost Ad" on the Lucore Race Facebook page. The money spent is over a 7 day period, every day I am manually changing the add wording and image. At current we have seen 5 new "Page Likes" which works out to about $10 per person to Like the page. Interaction with those new likes is 0. Now, our "Reach" is 7,454 People which is up 2,305% over the previous week... but how do you track and quantify that? Our designated market range includes 120,000 people... only 7,500 of so have paused for half a second on the ad? Only 5 of which have engaged with the ad? Would that kind of engagement percentage seem minuscule to anyone else? Money well spent? The younger crowd...is a challenge. Let's box in the younger crowd at 18-30 for the sake of argument. How many of those people maintain there cars aside from a basic quick cheap oil change? How many lease or buy new versus used? How many are making money and saving enough for a breakdown/repair? How many are still living off parents? Not trying to make a judgement, but FINDING people in that age category who are capable of affording a repair isn't easy. Aside from the fact that most of your "traditional media" outlets don't reach that age group any more either. It's a challenge, hence why I'm on here asking you folks! Mailers, well they have proven to work. Though your percentage is low, essentially every customer we get in the door and taken care of is one we can typically count on coming back time and again. Slowly but surely it keeps growing your base, can't argue the effectiveness of that. Tim... you are SO right. Unfortunately in this industry, more than most, a reputation is incredibly hard to build and maintain but can be lost in an instant. With online reviews and the ability for comments/posts/shit to go viral in a moment it's a hell of a battle to maintain your place Atop The Mountain. Part of why I'm here is to make sure we are taking the absolutely best care possible of our customers, I've built my business reputation on it over years and will do my damndest to protect it. We have dabbled with the window/windshield flyers in the past. Doesn't seem to be very positively appreciated. NOW, the exception to that is Diesel folks. A lot of businesses and business owners have a hell of a time finding competent shops to work on their machines quickly and at a reasonable rate. Many times I've put a card on a Powerstroke/Cummins/Duramax and gotten a call back. Considerably higher rate than with passenger cars. Thanks for paying attention to our Instagram! I try to put content on there pretty much daily that shows not only our project cars and such but also the day to day vehicles. We don't just want your hotrods, but who gets excited about seeing an oil change on a camry? Lastly.... Facebook and their fickleness. It's incredible the power they have over viewship/content appearance and give absolutely 0 notice or heads up on changes. On personal pages, the feed is based on communication and activity. The more you personally communicate and view a persons page the more often their updates drop into your feed. On the Business side of things it's a completely different beast. Those people have to actively search for your page, post on your page, select not only Like but Follow... if not even having 20,000 people that have Liked your page means nothing if there's almost no chance of interaction. UNLESS you do a paid advertisement, which will give you as I stated above a "Reach" and "Views" but are impossible to actually track or quantify. Frustrating...is not quite the word. Again, thanks for all the involvement so far!

Great to hear Facebook is being a good marketing tool for you, do your analytics on the page show a large amount of page clicks to your site from Facebook? What I find interesting is how few posts have any likes/comments/interactions versus personal pages. Even ones you spend money to "Boost" you may see a lot larger reach on there but that doesn't necessarily transfer to page clicks to the actual site. Or do you have a way of tracking from your main page where the referral traffic comes from? Also, how much do you feel it matters that you are selling a "Thing" that's purchasable online in the comfort of the home versus we are selling a "Service" that requires you to put pants on and come to the shop? Thanks for the prompt responses already guys!

Unfortunately zoning around here has been a ROYAL pain up until very recently, no signage in the yard or marketing on the external walls of the building. We see a TON of traffic up and down Industrial on a daily basis but that doesn't always translate into business. We have some ideas on signage and stuff to do but that's a little bit of a different marketing stream. If you don't mind me asking, without you knowing me on here just from driving by what would you think we do? Always nice to know what an honest unbiased opinion is.

Well Dave is taking an extra day to get ready for his vacation next week so I'll be manning the desk Friday. So no CR track day for me

So I'm aiming to make this an open ended conversation with obviously some self interest in the topic but in short.. Where to spend time/energy/money marketing that will see a measurable return on capital investment? In short, where will you get the most business or at least potential business, for the least amount of effort. Hopefully that doesn't come off as odd as it seems to be in writing. Business is good. Business is very good. We have all bays full every day and a backlog of projects into August at this point. There is still enough time on the schedule to squeeze in day to day work and small-medium jobs throughout as well. However what medium do people see as quality ways to reach out to new customers? Also, what age group do you reach that will go from being "viewers" to "spenders"? Facebook : Essentially without paid advertising your content is seldom viewed in the feeds of "new" people, and rarely even for those who "like" the page. Unless they actively search for your page and the analytics decide to place us in your view. "Reached" and "Viewed" numbers mean nothing if there is no meaningful interaction or potential business interaction. Instagram : Very time sensitive to posting, which their software does a reasonable job of identifying peek times for reactions. Growing your "Follower" base seems to be hit and miss, unless you are picked up and reposted by a page with a big base. The vast majority of traffic seems to be for beautiful half naked women (not judging!) or celebrities, rarely something like a feed from a shop about actual work. Tags are HUGELY important however just added 20 tags to a photo doesn't make the best sense, also you may pick up a "Follower" but they may or may not actually be human. DriveTribe : Great platform to produce and publish content, not very widely used still at this point and extremely hard to get your "Tribe" exposure. Unless you again get reposted by one of the big names, or someone is explicitly looking for your Tribe they will likely as not never see your photos/videos/articles. Free to use at this point, and the requirement to link to Facebook is gone... time will tell where this platform goes. Google : Making your business easily searchable is important, good review base is also highly important. Positive reviews are great, but even negative reviews that have a solid thoughtful response can also be turned into an informative event. Yelp : Does anyone really care? Their analytics for what reviews they post and don't post is mildly terrible. Interaction with business owners is almost nil and no way to actively market through them. Mailbox Mailers : Old school flyers. Those things that show up in your box at home/office that often as not get thrown directly in the trash. Are they effective? In the past 6 months how much business have you given to someone you got a flyer in the mail from? Events/Shows : Physically being present at a car show or event, wearing recognizable company garb with or without a vehicle present. There's a fine line between being there representing a company and actually "working" an event as a vendor. Events such as IFO and GoodGuys offer a few vendor booth options however general car shows such as Wholly Joes, Cars and Coffee, casual Friday QSL meets don't typically like people hawking services. As we constantly tweak our business to cater to our customers and what they need from us these are the questions that we must tackle. Always appreciate the varied and sometimes educated input from the CR brethren.

Love how quickly a new member gets on here and immediately we are there with advice and assistance Way to go Trish, and welcome aboard Vince!

Good for you for getting it out there and running it after all this work! Most, myself included, spend tons of hours and money building up a project then never have the time/money/motivation to really get out there and enjoy is. She looked great at Circleville a couple weeks ago, keep enjoying it and pushing for more!

And it's so much easier to load them than into a Mustang! Just toss 'em in the hatch and off you go!

Fortunately I was Sawmill/Bethel/Powell so had a pretty solid clientele but even still some of the situations.. yea.. Me :"Sir you aren't allowed to vent that, it's rather illegal" Cust : "I just wanted to get all the old stuff out and then replace it with the new system I just bought from you guys" /facepalm

Won't have any of my toys ready, decided to tear the "track car" back down for some upgrades and won't have it back together before the big day this time. May swing out to show support though. Looks like another big successful CR event!

Ohhh the stories and experiences from selling these at Advance Auto over the years.

IF you can find a 6.0 Diesel Excursion it will not be anywhere NEAR the 5k price range and if it is... run for the damn hills! Eventually I'll pick one of those up for racecar/track weekend duty but they are hard to come by and often poorly maintained. I'm thinking an E250 work van as a tow/support vehicle sounds about the ticket.

So maybe Goodyear Tire Tech wasn't doing the alignment check properly and all you needed was a toe adjustment? Improperly seated signal hats on the wheels? Cross-eyed technician?

How far into the South East? There are a lot of good diesel techs down that way, though they mostly are working on trucks. As long as it doesn't require a "VW Specialty Tool" that's not the worst area to be in. Otherwise. .. how far are you from Columbus?

Ohhh what a loaded question. Those X5s can be great trucks when they are working but when they decide to get temperamental or go into "Maintain Me Mode" the end can be down a long dark road. Scan the truck, see what you can find. Even drop it to a shop give them a small diag budget so you can get an honest assessment of where it is then make an educated decision from there. Couple hundred bucks spent on fixing small things to gain a few grand in resale value is money well spent, but tossing $2500 into transmission/major repairs only to lose a good chunk of that in resale...it just don't make no sense. I also agree with Clay and others, keep the fun car for fun car (truck) duties and buy a responsible semi fun gas sipper for DD duties.

Yikes! Sorry to hear that, not sure what happened that we dropped the ball on you. Sorry to hear One thing we always try to do with our customers is over communicate, my apologies that you slipped through the cracks. Hopefully E&S can get you all squared away and ready for cruising/show season!

Looks like some prompt proper attention! We (Lucore) are in the Dublin area so the other side of the north end but a second option if you wish it. We do a "little bit" of old school work as well