Auto Repair Marketing Isn’t What You Think (AI Is Changing Everything) [RR 1090]

0:00This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. Hey everybody, Carm Capriato in the 11th year of Remarkable Results Radio, having more fun than I think anyone is allowed to have as we work so hard to bring unbelievable and some of the best content you could probably find anywhere in the professional automotive repair realm as far as podcasts. And this is the place, this is why you constantly come here.

0:27Hey, don't forget, we're getting ready. Actually, we had a great meeting about version 2 of our app coming out, and it's for your smartphone. We call it the Ultimate Professional Automotive Repair Playlist. Read show notes, link with our sponsor partners, which is so cool. Get all the show notes in our network, automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com/app, Android and Apple, and have a good time with that.

0:53In case you're gonna watch this on YouTube, please subscribe. We appreciate that at Carm Capriato YouTube channel. I got something really interesting coming up here today. Let me share that with you. We're gonna talk to Dan Vance, CEO and founder of Shopdog Marketing, and we're gonna talk about organizational structure for marketing. Oh God, Carm, please no. Using AI for review assessments. Now look, everyone, AI.

1:22You cannot not read an article, talk to someone. AI in every aspect of our world and our life. AI is— let me see, it's like my ears. It's attached to us. It's part of something that we have to know and understand. Dan's going to talk about— just for discussion purposes, if you want to position your shop as the local alternative to the dealer, what a review analysis from AI show to support or refute this marketing claim of yours.

1:50But before we jump in with Dan, thank you so much to our partners. Hey, you know the technician shortage is real, but NAPA Autocare has a solution at no cost to members. The NAPA Autocare Apprentice Program builds tomorrow's technicians through a 2-year, 9-stage curriculum. Learn more at member.napaautocare.com or talk to your NAPA representative today. Hey, did you know that NAPA Tracks has on-site training plus 6 days a week support?

2:19It all starts when a local representative meets with you to learn about your business and how you run it. After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice. Let us prove to you that Trax is the single best shop management system in the business. Find Napa Trax on the web at napatrax.com. Okay, Dan, are you ready for this? I'm ready. Dan has been reflecting an awful lot of late on organizational structure for marketing.

2:52And I'll leave it there. You go, you go. I know it's a mouthful, but there's definitely some thinking behind that. And I think it's something we should be talking more about. So first of all, most auto repair shops, they're gonna go out and hire somebody to do something for them. And most agencies are gonna tell you they're doing marketing for you, but in reality, they're doing a tactic.

3:16Like local SEO or build you a website or, you know, lead generation through visitors to your website. That's a tactic. That's not marketing. And marketing is so much more than that. Marketing is everything you do in the shop, how you treat people, how you process, how you get the repair done, lowering your comebacks and making sure your proficiency rates are all where they're supposed to be.

3:40That's all a reflection of good marketing. What you're doing in the community is marketing. How people are talking about you in reviews and in other places is all marketing. So I think the great auto repair shops have a better sense of that in terms of really having worked on it over time and making investments to make sure that they have a structure and following that structure and then implementing tactics with partners where it makes sense.

4:09And there's some things that partners can't do for you. Like, it's really hard for partners to do your social media, but that's a great place for you to build relationships and build a marketing brand. I definitely want to talk more about this. I think it's really important. And one of the core things that happened for me was a new client, a new repair shop, uh, young people, and they're doing great.

4:35They have a business coach and they're turning good numbers and they're making money and we've got them ranking. They want us to deliver more marketing results without making more money investment. It just kind of created this whole thinking about, does money really solve this marketing thing? Like, I want to grow, and how does growth in the internet really work? So you probably have a question or two, Carm, but I just— let me just say this last piece, and that is, is that I wouldn't want somebody brand new on the block to start outranking me and getting more customers from search engine when I've been there for 30 years and this guy just shows up.

5:16The reality is, is the internet doesn't work that way anyway. The internet is based on a commonly known factor called EAT. It's an acronym. It's E-E-A-T. All right, Dan, talk to me. E-E-A-T, what is it? So it's experience. It's— so just think about like how long I've been in an industry, what experience I bring to the marketplace. My expertise and experience are not always the same, so that's a factor that gets considered.

5:45So it's EE and then authority and trust. You know, a business that's been around for a long time or a large business is going to have a stronger factor in each one of those elements. And that's the measurement table. So that's how they can help small businesses grow because it allows you to develop those areas. And to showcase them, and larger businesses not to be threatened by, you know, a one or two-man shop in that internet space.

6:15As we're recording this, on the day that we're recording it yesterday, I was in Cleveland at the Breaks for Breasts check presentation. There were a bunch of shop owners there that participate, and we were just shooting the breeze. Hey, Carm, I'm thinking I may have a marketing issue, blah blah blah. And he says, listen, I'm not the expertise, but I know a ton of people, and though I could probably hook you up But what are you really doing?

6:35And then I started to think, as this individual was explaining, I'm just not doing enough of that, and maybe I gotta do more. And I said, are you telling the why story about Carm's Automotive? I'm just picking a name here. And they stopped and they thought for a moment, and he's having a problem trying to recruit some really good people. This is a legacy, great shop, two wives.

6:59Got different jobs in different cities and had to leave, and he lost his two best people and he hadn't prepared for the struggle of finding a couple of new people. And I said, have you been seeding your marketplace, your clients with this beautiful, unbelievably highly cultured, you know, this educational type of operation that he has? I've been in it. And I said, why Karmz Auto?

7:22And every time you make a post, if one of your guys is doing some great work with the Boy Scouts, and he's out for a weekend, get a picture of it, ask him for a picture and get it posted. Hey, our guy Bobby spent time, you know, in scout camp. They earned a badge, blah, blah, blah. These are the kind of things that I believe are tactics.

7:42Okay, you got to dial them in. I get that. But along those lines, are shops doing enough of that community public why? Yeah, I don't think they're doing hardly anything, much less anything close to enough. And if you look at most shops, they have hired some digital or agency help for marketing, but very few of them get involved in the community. There is a structure for what I do digitally.

8:10You have to have that. But there's also a structure for relationships. What am I doing to build relationships? That's what you're talking about there, Carmen. Companies or shops that go like a rocket ship are the ones that make a larger investment in community and a balancing effort in digital efforts. Because the digital world can see into your community. I don't know how they do all that completely, but reviews is a big part of that.

8:38So they can see what it looks like in the real world, and it does drive your ranking performance. So you get the benefit of digital lift when you focus on that relationship. Building relationships with people. They have a toy chest in the front waiting room. And all I said is, if one of the kids with moms in the waiting room and they open it up and they can take any toy and play with it and take it home, what about getting permission to get that posted up on Facebook?

9:10Those are like precious moments. Yeah, I think precious moments are really important. We want to anchor people having great experiences when they come to you for auto repair. And maybe it is that toy basket, or maybe it's a cookie in the car, or, you know, a nice clean waiting room. And for the ladies, they love clean restrooms, as we all should. But I think overall, this idea of creating experiences and then if you can highlight those and create a picture board of like kids playing with the toys, like that anchors it for somebody that wasn't there to see that moment.

9:44That's a really great place for you to build relationships, right? It's connection. I love that. That's a great point, Karn. And, you know, Shopdog Marketing, the CEO of this, you're a marketer. And I know though that you've talked to me an awful lot about the power and the value of coaches in the industry. Yeah, I love coaches. I think they're great. And to their credit, you know, they help and change businesses, but they're focused on transactional.

10:13And sometimes that thinking is— becomes linear. Like, I think that that's the way everything works. I can put it into a spreadsheet and track it. But the internet doesn't work that way. The internet's more of a momentum. What am I doing to build momentum? And every time I do something that grows and it gets stronger and I build more momentum week by week, month by month, year over year, that's hard to see in a linear thing.

10:36So look, I may spend $1,000 and get 2 cars in my shop, and after 90 days somebody's saying, well, maybe you ought to get a different agency because that doesn't look like that's working out really well. But it doesn't take into account that you went from a zero ranking factor to like a 45% visibility in digital search around keywords. And that's a mammoth change.

10:59That's a Mount Everest for somebody that has zero ranking. But that doesn't show up in the linear chart. Can you put a value on that? Well, yeah. Think about the impact for your business. If I go from zero visibility to like 50%, that means I've got really good presence. I'm showing up in the three-pack. For important keywords. So the likelihood of getting chosen by the larger majority of people goes way up.

11:26And I'm telling you, that's a really, really big factor for shops, but that may not necessarily translate into an ROI spreadsheet just yet. So the person who shows up, you're getting the credit for it, but no one sees that software. I hate to say that, but that soft touch. The stuff that's churning underneath in the algorithm and in the, in the accumulation buckets of, you know, people are coming here and they're clicking on us, but there's, there's gotta be ways to see that.

11:58Oh yeah. Those metrics are out there and your agency can show those to you and help you visualize what they are and understand them. But you have to include them in your ROI. Yes. The idea of telling my agency, hey, if I just get you to do more for me and not spend more. My ROI will go up. And that's not how the internet works either, especially if I don't have those markers of EAT, right?

12:24If I don't have experience and expertise in the— or authority or any kind of trust, I can give Google more money to give me better presence, but they will run to the bank with that. They are happier than you can imagine because they don't have to do anything. All you're doing is sending them extra money. The internet is a really big sucking sound and I don't think we know it.

12:46Oh, it's huge. Yeah. Oh my God. I mean, you know, there isn't anything that you would be interested in that you can't have a free option, but the, you know, free today gets you 2 of anything. You know, it used to get you 5 of something. Now it's down to like, just, oh, you're gonna do a couple of these. And you, you ask yourself, what's the hook?

13:04And then you decide to look at the pricing and, and it's way more than you expected or, or you thought. But recently Google sent me an email that said I was gonna save $50 on something during the course of the year. And I'm saying to myself, what shareholder approved that? I know. So I get it. We're spending a lot of money there.

13:24They're making like a billion dollars a day. They don't care about that. They're, they're making lots of money. Hey, you know, it's no secret the automotive industry is facing a technician shortage, but NAPA Autocare has stepped up with a powerful solution. The NAPA Autocare Apprentice program, and the best part, it's completely free for members. This program was pioneered by shop owners Pete McNeil and Master Technician Jake Sorenson at McNeil's Auto Care in Sandy, Utah.

13:52They recognized that waiting for skilled technicians to appear wasn't an option, so they built a program to grow their own by recruiting motivated individuals with the right passion and attitude and providing them with structured training. They proved that apprentices could become the next generation of skilled certified technicians. The program features a comprehensive 9-stage curriculum with in-depth classroom videos, instructor-led NAPA Autotech classes, web-based courses, and hands-on training with a mentor.

14:23Apprentices move at their own pace, typically completing the program within 2 years. Graduates earn 4 ASE certifications: the G1, A4, A5, and air conditioning, and are officially registered with the Department of Labor as journeyworkers automotive technicians. And here's the business benefit: as apprentices gain skills, they generate billable hours, often boosting shop profits as early as Stage 5. Plus, NAPA now offers a new apprentice toolkit developed with Carlyle Tools at an exclusive price, helping break down one of the biggest barriers for new technicians: the cost of tools.

15:01Together, NAPA Autocare and your shop can tackle the technician shortage head-on. Start now. Grow your own talent and build your bench for the future. Visit member.nappaautocare.com or contact your NAPA representative today and get started with your apprentice program. Let's face it, your shop management system is the single most important tool in your shop, period. NAPA Tracks was built from the ground up to make your business more profitable and efficient.

15:30We provide an extensive set of tools to increase and track profitability in real time. NapaTrax offers the industry's best post-sale support, hands down, and we train your people on-site. Yep, on-site. And we offer remote refresher training 10 times a week, and customer support is open 6 days a week. Give us a call, visit the website, or join our Facebook community today to learn more.

15:54We'll prove to you that Trax is the single best shop management system in the business. NapaTrax is always customized and tailored for you, whether you're a one-man shop or a large multi-bay or multi-location company. After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice. Visit us on the web at napatracs.com. Let's talk about the second major topic. So, Dan, if I wanted to position my shop as the local alternative to the dealer, what would a review analysis show to support or refute this marketing plan?

16:34That's such a great way to do that. And look, I see shops do this and I ask them, well, what kind of reviews do you see on the dealership's website or on their Google profile? What kind of reviews do you see? And are you solving those kind of problems? Because you can't just say we're cheaper than the dealership, but we offer all the same incentives, clean shop, best parts, great service.

17:01We're just cheaper. That's not gonna win dealership people over to you. So there's things they love and there's things they hate about the dealership. They go to the dealership because they think they're gonna get better technicians or specialists working on their vehicles, right? That's what they think. But if you see that in the reviews, you can work on addressing that with your own reviews, and then the search engines will pick up on it and they will offer you up as an alternative.

17:31They'll carry the water for you, but you fundamentally have to understand what your differences are and what your unique marketing position is. You just said something so big and so powerful about solving those problems. Let's go back to social media. Let's go back to your posts. If you discover that there's a little trend going on at a local dealership where consumers aren't happy with something, and I would never on purpose pick anyone out, but I'd say, Have you ever come across this?

18:01Well, here's how we do it. Here's how we solve that problem. Or you'd never feel or equate that issue here at Carm's Shop. I think it's a brilliant move. It's bullets for the gun. It absolutely is. And what's magical about it is, is that I don't have to try to be the communicator to the world of people that are on the internet.

18:22The search engine will do that for me. I just have to position myself so that I show as an alternative because the way the search engine works right now, so it's comparative. So it's definitely looking at why are you different and can I offer you up as a comparative option to somebody that searches for a dealership for auto service? And that's the way the search engine works.

18:45So if I position myself properly, the search engine will do all that work for me. It'll give me the visibility. I don't have to do that. I just have to train the search engine. You have to train the search engine. Is this search engine hovering over your website or your social media? Where's it pulling this from? It's going to look at your reviews.

19:07It always looks at your reviews and anything you put on your Google Maps, like a Google Post, which is like a blog. It sees that right away because it's on their website. They index that. And you want to mirror that on your website as well. Those 3 places will give you visibility. Oh my God. You know what I thought of? Does— do shops have a Y page?

19:29They have a Y page. They don't even know it because the search engines now have an AI tool called AI Overview, and it knows all kinds of things about your website, positive and negative. And you can find out a lot about what the search engines think about your business by just using the AI Overview in Google Search AI overview. And it's when I put in a question, a long-form question like, this is my business.

19:57You can do it that way. You can say we are Auto Shop Joe, Joe, Joe, and what's really positive about us in the search engine environment, or what's a negative perception about our business in the search engine? And it will tell you. Do you say that in Google? Do you use Gemini? Can you use ChatGPT? I like ChatGPT. But you can do it in Google search and you can do it in other places as well because they're, they're going to the same sources for that information, your website.

20:25You, you just said a mouthful. You explained exactly, hey, I own this place. I'm looking for an objective overview of the positives and the negatives of my business. Yeah, you can do that with the dealer too. Ask those same questions. You know, all of great marketing is just a lot of questions. And understanding, and why am I different and how can I really shine by being different?

20:49And to just say we're better or we're an alternative to the dealership is weak. But if you can help the search engines carry the water for you to demonstrate that you have better specialists than the dealership, then you will win. We have to make some kind of shift in a lot of our tactical stuff. Or at least make it better, but we have to think more strategically.

21:17Yeah. And AI is your helper. It's like helper, hamburger helper. It's ready to go. All you gotta do is mix it in. And so you can pull all of your own reviews and drop it into ChatGPT. Don't worry, it's already on public profile. It's already in the public domain. Just put it into chat. And ask some questions, questions that you're thinking about.

21:40And then it's okay to say, hey, dear Chat, I'm really interested in some angles that I'm not asking you about. What am I missing? And it will interject. It will help you review and analyze that. AI-Driven Leaders, a book I read, Chris Cloutier recommended, and I read it real quick. And I have to tell you, you talk about having your eyes opened as to what you can use AI-4, and the examples in the book were so powerful.

22:12And it wasn't because I was stupid or dumb. These executive— he was coaching executives on how to use it, and they were saving all kinds of time because it was doing some heavy analysis that the executive would get to, but probably 3 or 4 days later, once they devoured, or if you will, digested all the information that they had. They put it all in and they started to see some crystallization in strategic ideas.

22:36I'm telling you, AI is a place where you can become brilliant by just leveraging it as a, as a brainstorming place or as a place for insights. You can describe challenges that you're facing and ask it to help you see different routes to a better outcome. And you can ask AI, "Hey, what's my visibility?" How does the internet perceive me as far as for competition and for strength, for relevance, for authority, for experience, and all of those things?

23:08It'll tell you, and you can put that in there. Dan, are you finding your clients hesitating to want to do that? I think there's some hesitation, but I'm hearing about auto repair shop guys that are doing things that I get excited about. Like, I just like, that's brilliant. Like, I know of one shop, he's taken all of his really, really great people and he's combined them into like a personnel file and he's put that into ChatGPT.

23:36And then when they're interviewing, they'll take that interviewee's resume and they'll add it to that profile structure and say, is this person a good fit for our organization? Damn. Yes. That's what I said. You just gave me another wild idea and this could be illegal, but listen. I'm doing an interview with a candidate and I say, can I record it? Can I record our voice?

24:03He's got to sign a piece of paper somehow. And then you take that transcription and you put it in here and you say, can you evaluate the character, the knowledge, all this stuff? And based on the, you know, the culture of our business and all those resumes over there, can you give me a 2-paragraph overview on the risk that I have in hiring this person?

24:27What's this guy's personality or gal's personality that they're trying to hide because they're in an interview, but it'll give you insights to what their core personality is, like introvert, extrovert, intelligence, being able to kind of think through things before responding. It'll give you all that feedback. You don't have to be the HR expert. You are leveraging your new business partner. That's a beautiful thing.

24:51All right, so I think I recently wrote a blog and somewhere in that blog's title, the word brainiac was there. Okay. I can't remember what, what it was about, but it was about brains, our bandwidth. And I probably mentioned AI, and I think you're so right. Let's not be afraid that AI may tell us something we don't want to hear, because if you know you don't want to hear it, you're hiding behind something.

25:15So let it become your friend and let it do the brainiac work or the clarifying confirmation work that you feel in your gut. Your intuition says this. And you just need someone like a Dan or a coach or an AI, and I'm not replacing coaches and Dans with AI, but I think it's a great resource to listen to words and tone of voice and dig down deep inside with all of its knowledge.

25:43Yes, that's marketing in one way or the other. You can talk about that's how I'm representing my business, and those are the drivers that are underneath it. Those are the tactics. So if you said, look, I want to be a dealer alternative, you run the reviews, you figure out what people think, what their sentiment is, what are strong factors, what are weak factors, and you compare your own reviews with that.

26:05And you can start building a strategy with AI, and you can use an agency like us to go out there and deploy a tactic like writing blogs or content That's going to help the search engine understand that you really all are an alternative. You'll rank better and you'll all of a sudden you'll be like, we're getting a lot of dealer calls. That's how you'll label them.

26:28So that's just a digital tactic, but you could apply that to relationships too. What are my reviews telling me about how I'm perceived in the community? Everything you can find in the local chamber, newspaper, radio, whatever you can find that's published, because most of it always goes into the internet. About my business. I want to know everything about my business that's being said or mentioned.

26:54And AI will do that for you. We're not far off from it doing that for social media, which is going to be even more powerful. I'm kind of excited for that day. Are you telling me that AI is going to go in and find its inway to Facebook as an example? Yeah, I've tried to do like social media scraping for sentiment, and it hasn't worked out great for me, but it's going to be hard as AI becomes more and more powerful to not get that data.

27:23So yesterday, as I mentioned earlier in the episode, we were in Cleveland for the Breaks for Breast Check presentation at the Cleveland Clinic, which has one of the first ever IBM quantum computers, and it happens to be on display in one of their beautiful area of the hospital. It's not like you walk in the door and you check in., but it's in a private back area that we were at yesterday.

27:46And I saw this quantum computer 2 years ago, and every time I see it, I think of AI and I say, deep down inside there. And I think of the data centers that are being built to help. 472 minus degrees Celsius is the temperature of their core. So the computations are lickety-split nanosecond stuff. And I find— and so we can't be afraid of this stuff because the hardware, I believe, is being built to manage all this stuff.

28:21I had to toss that in. I'm a little bit of an introvert and I just tell people that so they know, like, for me, it's uncomfortable for me to ask other people questions about like, am I doing this right? Or how does this work? Or "Give me some input." For me as an introvert, I see AI as a kind of a way to collaborate with somebody without exposing myself in a place that I think I'm weak, because I don't want to be perceived as not knowing something.

28:53And I bet there's a lot of people like me that are going to turn to AI and feel empowered. It's not something to be afraid of, and it's really good stuff. It's going to help. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Dan, I always saw you as a quiet giant. I never really thought of you as an introvert. We've done a lot of great episodes together, brilliant stuff.

29:11You're so eloquent and you're not afraid to just jump in. That's a revelation. But I say that because I think that's probably a lot of auto shop owners when I look at them and I'm thinking, processing about them, and I just think they're gonna love AI if they just will kind of let go of the ropes and just enjoy it. And it's gonna help them be better partners, right?

29:34We want better partners in our marketing agency with auto shops that wanna be rockets and understand that there's some things that they can do to really drive that and not put all the pressure on an agency that's got one narrow tactic that we've been assigned, per se. Great final words. Thank you so much, Dan. I learned a ton. I think this was a great episode.

29:56You must come back as usual. Dan Vance, CEO and founder of Shop Dog Marketing. I had a blast. Thanks for your info. Thank you. Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the premier automotive repair business podcast, Remarkable Results Radio. Get your episodic education on the ARPN listing app at automotive repair podcast network.com. Also enjoy the podcast on our Carm Capriato YouTube channel.

30:23Carm is all for advancing the professional automotive service industry. Until next time.