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Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Auto Repair Marketing Podcast.
I'm your host, Brian Walker, and today my guest is Caroline Legrand, and we're going to be talking
about preparing for October's marketing.
But before we get too far into it, I do want to take a second to thank our sponsors.
This episode is sponsored by Shop Boss.
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All right, well, hey, Caroline.
Hey, Brian.
How's it going?
Going well.
How are you?
Doing good, too.
All right.
I'm ready for October already.
Yeah, which is crazy.
I feel like, granted, we do these a couple of months ahead of time, but the speed at which
we've already gone through almost the whole year of them is absolutely wild to me.
This year has flown by.
Well, and it feels weird, too, because October is one of my favorite times of the year.
I love the fall.
I love when it's cooling down, but it's August right now, and it's hot in Louisiana,
like still miserable.
So I'm ready for October.
But for our listeners, now is the time where you need to be thinking ahead to October and
doing some planning for your fall marketing.
It is the time, I feel like, where die hard summer lovers are like, this is the last bit
of summer.
You can't let it slip away, but a lot of people are like you ready for fall.
So Starbucks, I think next week is, as we're recording this in August next week, is coming
out with their fall menu.
I've seen lots of pumpkins and Halloween decor at any store that I've gone to.
So everybody else is ready, unless you're a die hard summer lover, is ready for fall.
So if you're one of those people ready for fall, then you'll enjoy this podcast because
we've got all of the fall episodes or fall ideas.
All right.
Well, let's go on and get into it.
First up with just some general shop topics and things that are happening in the automotive
industry.
We've talked about this in past months, too.
But if you're doing something like Breaks for Breast, that is actually happening during
October, as you probably know, for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
So you've probably talked about it a little bit in September.
But if you are doing it, make sure you're still talking about it in October, as long
as you have space to keep booking those appointments out to do the break job for Breaks for Breasts.
All right.
Then we got the trunk retreat, which we have an article that Kim wrote about doing a
trunk retreat, great opportunity to do something cool for your community and have
people come to the shop and get to meet you and your team and all of that.
But mostly it's just about having a good, safe place for the kids to come and get some
candy.
There's a blog about trunk retreat specifically and one about just planning an event in your
shop and everything that you need to be doing to prepare for it marketing-wise and what
you can do following it.
So we'll give it here.
It's just an idea to be talking about in October.
If you're hosting a trunk retreat, but we'll link the blog and the show notes,
so y'all go check those blogs out if you are doing that or any other event.
It's also time, not in Louisiana at least, even in October, but everywhere else, a little
bit north of us and sometimes west is getting cooler.
So if you are an area where people are changing over to snow tires, start promoting
that now, reminding people to get those appointments scheduled ahead of time.
That way you're not waiting on it or they're not waiting two weeks out to book later
when the snow is actually on the ground, being a bit proactive with that.
And the same thing applies to winterizing vehicles.
So anything that has to be done preventative maintenance-wise, you can create a package
for your winterization to check the tire pressure, heaters, batteries, and all of the other
aspects and parts of it that get messed up with the range and temperatures.
Yeah, and it's a good time to start just educating people on the topic, because once
the weather starts cooling down a little bit, that's when people see those tire
pressure warnings come on.
It cools down and the pressure in the tire drops, and that's when the lights come on.
And to let them know that, hey, it may not be a serious issue, but it's also a good
way to get cars in the shop to be able to do a DVI on them is come by and let us set
your pressure for you and test your coolant and test your battery and all of that
kind of stuff.
My go-to that like fall is actually here in Louisiana is, granted, we'll probably get
another warm front after that, but the first time I get in my car and I see that my tires
or my tire light is flashing, I'm like, oh man, it's cool enough that the tire pressure
dropped.
It's actually cold outside.
It must have been really cold last night.
And here in Louisiana, we have fake fall number one and fake fall number two.
Yeah, that's usually about the time the hurricane season is coming to an end, which we're
always glad to see that go away.
Yeah, not there just yet, but we will be come October or end of October.
So getting into the months, there's a lot of months and weeks in October that have
just a lot to do with food.
So I know we joke all the time about the traditional pizza party, national
pizza day, October one is actually national pizza month.
So if anybody, I, pizza probably is one of my favorite foods.
If you're a die hard pizza lover, here's your chance to go all out for
that, but there are some other months that I think tie into some of the weeks
and days too.
So we're not going to repeat them every time y'all can come check list out.
But first up is national women's small business month.
We do have women's history month or women's month in March, but this is
specific to women's small businesses.
So any of you shops that are fully ran and operated by a woman or women
in the shop, give them a shout out.
I want to see it as a woman.
I want to see that.
So super cool thing to be promoting and talking about all the time, but
all month long.
And one of my favorites set of sale on this list is squirrel awareness month.
I knew you were going to like that one.
Well, yeah, because I mean, it's perfect.
You talk about breaks and tires because you know, I don't, I'm assuming
that squirrels are the same everywhere.
We call them suicide squirrels down here because they run out in front of your
car and then they can't decide which direction they want to go and
they're going back and forth in front of you.
And you either have to swerve last second or jam on the brakes.
And you know, it just seems like a perfect fit.
You got to save the squirrels and that requires having good breaks and good tires.
This is true.
I've totally lost Caroline.
She's looking at me like you're out of your mind.
I've never called a squirrel a suicide squirrel, but what?
I thought that was the thing.
No, the only nickname I've given to squirrels was the squirrels on
LSU's campus and the quad, the quad squirrels will like come up to you
to get an acorn like to eat your food.
They're like a cat, very friendly.
That's the only squirrel, but it is a good time to be paying attention
to the rodents or anything else that's getting stuck in your vehicle.
I didn't even think about that.
So you're, you're coming at it from the angle of like the nest that's
been built under the hood and the wires that have been chewed up
by a rat that the shop is going to call a squirrel so that they don't
offend the client.
Gotcha.
Okay.
Exactly.
Whatever it may be, chewing your wires.
There's tons of food months, like we said.
So take a gander at the list.
There's pretzel month, pasta, pizza, popcorn, all of the P foods.
Then there's also lots about transportation and transportation safety.
We've got national roller skating month, national walk to school
month and Halloween safety month.
So maybe you can tie something fun into that, but Halloween,
writing on your roller blades to work or to school in your Halloween costume.
I don't know what it could be, but if you do something fun with any of those
posts that we still haven't seen, anybody tag us in the Facebook post and
the Facebook group with the super fun posts from these, but we'll keep
an eye out for them still.
I love the national go on a field trip month too.
We know a few shop owners that have like they work with their local
schools and have field trips at the shop, you know, brings awareness
to a great career, especially, you know, now with AI and, you know,
how that's impacting white collar work.
It's a good opportunity to get, you know, kids thinking about maybe
an alternative when it comes to what they want to do when they're older.
And there's even one case that we know of that, like, you know, right
after COVID, I hate even using that word anymore, but, you know, right
after COVID, there was a shop owner who was doing virtual field trips
where they were like on zoom and he was going around the shop,
you know, showing the kids everything and interviewing, you know,
technicians and everything else.
That's pretty cool.
That is pretty cool.
All right.
Getting into weeks, we keep with a lot of those safety themes.
So we have national team driver safety week and school bus safety week.
We talk a lot.
I feel like in August and September gave a lot of tips for that back
to school safety and back to school specials and all of that
conversation.
Now that school is really in full swing.
You've got teen drivers on the road.
People are going to bonfires, football games in the fall, all sorts
of things happening in the community, state fairs, anything going on.
So anything you can do, like we said, talking about winterization,
educating your customers and just being a source of like a good guiding
light for your customers and your audience and your community is
going to help set you apart and might not be super specific to
what you're doing in the shop necessarily, but you're educating
followers how they can educate their teens on safe driving practices
or how kids should act or not act on a school bus.
Yeah.
And then so we get into our days.
You know, we have things like national green city day for those
of y'all who were lucky enough to live in those cities, you know,
that have like the awesome greenways and, you know, stuff like that
to just, you know, maybe showcase it and show how your team enjoys
it and uses it, you know, and all the other things that that
make your city green and even, you know, say opportunity to show
how you contribute that to that by running a green shop or to totally
take us off on a witch broomstick.
If you're a Wicked fan and your shop colors are green, you could
turn your whole shop into the Emerald City and just celebrate
it all month long.
And then if you do a trunk retreat, everybody can dress up
like Alphaba and Glenda.
The options are truly limitless there.
So just a thought.
That's kind of a wild one.
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National name your car day.
That's the perfect fit.
And, you know, it sounds like a fun thing to do.
Brian, have you named your truck?
No.
Like even our motorhome, Cam and I have never been able
to settle on a name for it.
We've never been the name our vehicles kind of people.
We tried.
Like we intentionally tried with the motorhome and I
can't even remember.
There was one name I feel like we had kind of settled on
and then we just don't do it.
I think Michelle defaulted the name of my car,
Derock Wilder, when I first got it.
So I don't necessarily refer to it as that, but she's
like, no, when you like come into the driveway, like
come into the office and you're bumping your music
and everything and you're Derock Wilder.
It's a song.
I don't know.
Okay.
We'll have to insert it here so people can listen.
Yeah.
So I mean, I thought about calling my truck like, you
know, Bigfoot or Sasquatch or something like that, you
know, which would be a fitting name, but I always
just call it the Ram.
That does fit it.
I mean, it still works.
It's boring.
Well, if there's anybody in your shop though that
names their cars or customers, if you've asked them
if they named their cars and maybe you've got it
in their customer notes, give some shout out to
them and get people to comment.
That's a great way to get people engaging on
your social media is asking them what they
named their car because either they aren't super
interested in it or they really are.
And I feel like if you name your car, like you
really name your car, you've got a custom license
plate and a bumper sticker and everything.
So people love sharing that stuff.
So we have one on here.
It's National Fire Pup Day.
What in the world is that?
The little Dalmatian that rides on the fire
trucks in the parade.
Oh, okay.
I possibly, I have no clue.
I didn't look into that one.
I could see that.
We got National LED and International Off-Road
Day are the same day.
Those can go together with all the LED lights that
we tend to put on four by fours.
But, you know, if you're a four by four shop,
then that's a given.
You've got to celebrate International Off-Road Day.
Got to.
You've also got National Kick Butt Day.
So maybe just a motivational message from your team
about getting things done in the shop, working
hard.
That's an easy one.
And motorcycle ride day.
So I don't know why I was thinking motorcycle
drive by is what I read in my mind as I was
trying to read that.
But National Motorcycle Ride Day, again,
lots, like I said, lots of automotive
kind of themes and food themes this month.
Yeah.
And you got National Gumbo Day.
And I'm just going to put a disclaimer on this.
If your shop is not in Louisiana, stay the heck
away from National Gumbo Day, because the
rest of y'all people do not know how to make
gumbo.
And if you put tomatoes in your gumbo, then
definitely stay away from this day.
You don't have the right to celebrate it.
And that's the end of this podcast today.
That's all we needed to tell you guys.
Do not post about gumbo unless you're in
Louisiana.
And if you're in Louisiana and you make weird
gumbo, don't post about it either.
But those shops, I know some of y'all are
listening.
Hopefully you have a good gumbo recipe
somewhere in your family, or you can start a
controversial comment or post chicken and
sausage or turkey and sausage or seafood and
have your locals go haywire in the
comments because people may be a little
indifferent sometimes about naming their
car, but people, at least in Louisiana, are
not, are very particular about which kind of
gumbo they like or dark roux, light roux.
There's so many things you can do with that
too.
Or if you put potato salad in your gumbo or
rice, yeah, yeah, pre-made roux from a
jar, we could go all day.
It's like when we were debating like a
spacewalk and then whatever else other
people call it.
Oh yeah.
The bounce house.
Like a bounce house and a spacewalk.
Spacewalk.
It's a spacewalk.
Yeah.
In Louisiana, we also have the neutral
ground and break tags.
The neutral ground is like our greenway in
the middle of the road, the median and
your inspection stickers or your break
tags.
Yeah.
Be bald and be free day.
I love it.
We talked, I think, last month about
the video that's trending on social
media that says, how does you know
you need new tires?
And it's like my tires and it shows
somebody in the shop that's bald.
So that kind of ties into that.
If you haven't tried that out, it's
every time I see it, I laugh at it.
So it's something that I don't think
really dies out.
I just saw a video of Benji Burris
shaving the head of one of his techs.
Wow.
Those are a couple of days apart as
national no beard day.
So anybody that's maybe gearing up to
do no shave November, maybe you do
one final shave in October to all
start fresh or on the same day.
And y'all shave on that day, you have
no beard and then you can start
your no shave November a week or
so early.
National make a dog's day.
Man, all of the ways that I can make
done today, he's so easy.
And we could make, I don't know,
there's so many videos that we could
make with that.
And same thing with your shop.
Like, what can you do to make the
shop dog happy?
You know, bring a mistake.
Zero to 100.
You could have brought him a pup cup
or a treat or anything like that.
I probably shouldn't say that too
loud. I'm in the house with
Dutton and Lindy, but you could
have brought to bring them
anything. You go from zero to a
stake, but that will really,
really make a dog's day.
Well, I mean, if you're going to be
a bear, be a grizzly.
There you go.
There's also support your local
Chamber of Commerce Day and get to
know your customer's day.
Get to know your customer's day
happens, I think once a quarter.
So this is a recurring one, but a
great way to post maybe something
on social media asking a question
to get to know your customers a
little bit more or sharing some cool
customer stories if you have any.
And then we always talk about
getting involved in your local
community, being involved in Chamber
of Commerce, your B&I groups,
anything like that. So if you are,
talk about it. If you're not,
maybe this is your sign to go get
involved with it.
Yeah, you got National Make a
Difference Day. Most of your shops,
they get involved somehow and
they're making a difference in
some way. I just did a podcast
episode with Chris Laoma,
probably by the time that this
one releases, it'll probably be
about five episodes back where
he talks about they give away a
car like once a year in their
community. So, you know, they're
making a difference when they do
that, you know, in our business,
we work with our food bank and
one of the weeks in October is
National Food Bank Week, you
know, so whatever you're doing
to make a difference in your
community or even just in, you
know, an individual person's life,
share it. And then National
Candy Corn Day, you know,
Candy Corn is one of those
divisive types of food like
gumbo. I don't know if it's that
maybe so, maybe in its own right,
it is. It's like pineapple on a
pizza. Yeah, you love it or you
hate it. And you're very
opinionated about whatever you
feel. Yeah, there's no in
between. And I happen to love
Candy Corn. It's got to be good
Candy Corn, though, because the
cheap crappy one tastes like
wax. Yeah. I see I am kind of
in the middle. I don't hate
it, but I'm not likely to
grab it. Unless there's
literally a bowl open on the
table in front of me, I might
grab a piece, but otherwise
I'm not seeking it out
necessarily. And then, of
course, Halloween, Halloween is
getting to be divisive as
well. So if you like Halloween,
you get dressed up and you
have a good time or you go
trick or treating. That's a
great fun thing to do in
the shop. If you're not,
then ignore it. Yeah. One
thing that we don't have on
here, and I say on here,
we have a document that
Caroline and I go off of and
you can access the documents
in the show notes for each
month. But October is when a
lot of the conferences start
happening again. So you got
ASTA, which ASTA is actually
the very end of September.
But in October, you can
promote that you were just
there at ASTA. I know that
there's Super Saturday, you
know, is one of the conferences
in October. We've got Apex
and SEMA that will actually
be in November, you know, but
you can promote early that
you're going. And I know that
we talk about it a lot and
know that we sound like a
broken record with a lot of
things. And honestly, it's
not that often that you're
hearing something that's
like completely new, you know,
it's very often reminders
of the things to do. And if
you take those things and
you just do them on a
consistent basis, it's going
to work really well for your
marketing. And I'm going to
like beat a dead horse that
when you go to conferences and
when your team goes to
conferences, you need to share
pictures being at the
conference, you need to talk
about the various trainings
that your team is doing,
especially with AI. We
literally just before
Caroline and I recorded this
Michelle and I recorded an
episode about AI and the
content that we're doing now
and how important it is to
get like specifics about
trainings and certifications
and all that stuff into your
content. Because when AI
is suggesting businesses,
they look for those types of
things. So that should be
next week's episode. Yes.
So as you're listening to
this, even though we're
recorded right before, it'll
be the episode that comes
out right after this one.
You'll want to go listen to
that, but share about
the conferences and get into
details about, like I say,
the various classes that
your technicians took when
they were at the conferences.
Write an article, a blog
post about it. And it's so
easy now with chat GPT, you
don't need to be a writer. You
just go in there and do a
brain dump of like, you know,
these are the courses that
these texts took. These are
the classes that we as
managers took. And this was
kind of the overall topic
of each one of these classes
and it'll turn it into a
really nice article based
on your thought
leadership. So I'll get
off my soapbox now.
There are also a couple of
things that aren't really
content ideas for October,
but things to be thinking
about in your shop and to
start posting about more
as announcement wise or
anything as you're getting
into the fall, November
and December, I feel like
goes so quickly with
holidays coming up. So if
you're doing anything around
the holidays, like maybe a
car giveaway, a angel tree
donation, any other type
of donations, gift boxes,
toys for tots, anything
like that. October is a
great time to start
talking about that, at
least start planting those
seeds and letting people
know. Because like we say,
we might sound like a broken
record sometimes hitting the
same topics over and over
again, or the same small
pieces of ideas over and
over again. But especially
today, I feel like with the
amount of content that's
consumed, it used to be
that you need seven
impressions, you could say
with some piece of content
or some company or business
or anything to remember it
that we consume so much
more content today, you
need more than that. So
here's your extra reminder
for if you're doing any
of those things. Even if
you're not doing anything
like that, but there's
something that your shop does
that we haven't thought of
or mentioned during the
holidays, or I know for us,
we close the week between
Christmas and New Year's. We
make sure people know about
that ahead of time so that
they, our work is done,
they know that we're
virtually somewhat mostly
unavailable, things like
that, and letting your
customers know what to
expect and how they can
get involved with you during
that time too. It goes
way too quick once you're
already in it. So plan
ahead within your shop and
start talking about it.
Yeah. And, you know, as
you get into those holidays,
I mean, you know, so yeah,
we're talking about October
right now, but you've got
Thanksgiving that, you know,
is going to be just a few
weeks later and Christmas.
And if there's anything that
you need to start promoting
around those holidays to
go on and start doing that.
So, you know, if you're
going to be doing a, you
know, a food drive, you
know, or something for
families to help them have
a nice Thanksgiving dinner,
you're going to want to
start promoting that in
October and you're not going
to want to go super heavy in
October because that's the
kind of thing that like
people are going to do it in
the weeks leading up to it.
But just think about those
things that you have coming
up. And then if you're
going to do, you know,
things like pre-trip
inspections, for example,
before people are traveling
for the holidays, you could
start inviting people to
get in a little bit early for
that to be done. October is
normally a good month for
auto repair. November and
December will sometimes
start slowing down, although
we do see many shops that
just have killer November and
December. So, you know, you
need to look at your business
historically and determine
in October, is there anything
that you should be promoting
for November and December?
Then to wrap up, we've got a
couple other just general
topic ideas that can be
really fun that are seasonal
for this time of year. You
do things like spooky savings
if you're going to do a
winterization package,
maybe you're branding it a
little bit to be fall
related, Halloween related
trick or treat related
anything like that. The leaves
and not in Louisiana, but most
other places of the country
are turning red and orange
yellow and they're so
beautiful. So if you're in an
area that has all of the
trees and leaves changing
colors, maybe you're giving
some road trip destination,
some road trip pointers for
where to go and how to be
on the best route to see
the prettiest trees or some
road trip safety tips, a
road trip package, whatever
it may be. And something
that I want to say Megan
and Eric at Bach did and
they've done it the past
couple of years is a pumpkin
carving contest. And so they
worked with a local pumpkin
patch and got a bunch of
pumpkins at the shop so that
when people came in, whether
they were dropping their car
off or not, they could come
to the shop and pick up a
pumpkin and carve it and then
bring it back or submit a
picture. And they judged in
the best pumpkin carving
got a gift card, I think
to a local restaurant or
dessert shop or something
like that. So really fun, good
way to get involved and
everybody's going to carve
their pumpkins anyways. They
bought a bunch and gave them
away for free and then did a
pumpkin carving contest of it.
So fun fact about them, their
shop is way out on the end
of Long Island in New York.
And we were up there and it
was the fall when we were
there and we went to visit
them. And that area that
they are in has like all
kinds of fall. It's like
farms, I guess it's pumpkin
patches, you know, I honestly
have to look it up to see if
it was pumpkin patches or what
it was. But there were like
all kind of fall events at
these farms and tons and
tons of people there. So, you
know, big deal in that area.
Yeah, fall is a fun time. So
anything else you can think
of anything that you love
about fall. Oh, something
somebody did one year. I
don't know if it was a
client or just somebody that
we saw on Facebook did a
pumpkin spice oil change. And
I don't remember the exact
details, but I think it was
that if you came in, you had
your oil changes, they would
make you a pumpkin spice
latte in the shop or make
you a cup of coffee. But to
make it seasonal was will
give you a pumpkin spice
latte. They went and got
all of the ingredients to
have in their coffee bar so
that they had some fun
seasonal options that can
go year round really. I
feel like there's always
some sort of seasonal coffee
flavor. But another device
of thing pumpkin spice, you
either love it or you
hate it. There's a lot of
fun things that you can do
with it in the fall. So have
fun with it. Enjoy. Hopefully
cooler weather. And we hope
y'all take some good ideas
from this and have fun
making your October
content. Alright, well, we
got two more episodes like
this to go and then we'll
have them done for the
year and we'll put them
all together so that people
can use them in future
years. So I hope that y'all
enjoyed this episode of
the auto repair marketing
podcast. Remember, we are
just one of a handful
of podcast on the
aftermarket radio network.
You can find the others
at aftermarketradionetwork.com.
Hope that you'll listen in
again next week. And until
then, remember in
everything that you do. Be a
pro. You've been listening
to the auto repair marketing
podcast with Kim and Brian
Walker. Follow the podcast
on your favorite listening
app. Find the emails in the
show notes and visit them
at ShopMarketingPros.com. Let
Kim and Brian know what you
want discussed because
they're all about advancing
the aftermarket.
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