Approaching hi end businesses, card or flyer?

Stevedotmil said:
It's a little funny to me that you mentioned Yelp. I have had a bunch of 5 star reviews posted by customers on Yelp only to have the reviews moved to their "Not recommended" tab by their software that can't be reversed by anyone. Mysterious, I don't think so. It just so happens that I noticed a trend and then confirmed it.

After each 5 star review I received a call from the Yelp "advertising representative" mentioning how my business page is in a fast growing category, popular search, or asking me if I had spoken to a Yelp rep before. Then they try and pitch some version a sales pitch, unconvincingly, and then I explain that I'm not interested in their add support or paying them to move me up their totem pole. Then I politely ask them about my 5 star reviews getting moved by their software to which I get a canned response about how they can't move my reviews and algorithms blah blah blah. The next day, sometimes faster, the review that was legitimately from a thankful customer of mine was moved to the before mentioned "Not recommended" tab. Since I verified this whole process with the last 5 reviews I have gotten I have stopped asking customers to post reviews there and instead post them on my Facebook page where I have control of them.
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Yelp is a total scam. So many lawsuit's it is crazy. And I've see the exact same thing happen to reviews I've left. One was even deleted.
 
Stevedotmil said:
It's a little funny to me that you mentioned Yelp. I have had a bunch of 5 star reviews posted by customers on Yelp only to have the reviews moved to their "Not recommended" tab by their software that can't be reversed by anyone. Mysterious, I don't think so. It just so happens that I noticed a trend and then confirmed it.

After each 5 star review I received a call from the Yelp "advertising representative" mentioning how my business page is in a fast growing category, popular search, or asking me if I had spoken to a Yelp rep before. Then they try and pitch some version a sales pitch, unconvincingly, and then I explain that I'm not interested in their add support or paying them to move me up their totem pole. Then I politely ask them about my 5 star reviews getting moved by their software to which I get a canned response about how they can't move my reviews and algorithms blah blah blah. The next day, sometimes faster, the review that was legitimately from a thankful customer of mine was moved to the before mentioned "Not recommended" tab. Since I verified this whole process with the last 5 reviews I have gotten I have stopped asking customers to post reviews there and instead post them on my Facebook page where I have control of them.
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This is why I am not on Yelp. Many, many stories of people on Yelp getting a call from their sales department and when they turn them down, a ton of 1 star reviews start appearing out of nowhere on their page. Yelp uses the mafia protection scheme as a sales tactic. I will have no part of it.
 
I'm not sure if that's factually correct. I turned down Yelp every day for over a year, never affected me one way or another. I finally let them talk me into paying for their service for one month because like many people I didn't necessarily think it was a scam but I thought it was a waste of money. I couldn't have been more wrong. I ran a $500/month ad in November with a $300 credit so my net cost was $200. I probably did minimum $2000 off Yelp in November after basically doing $0 for the entire year prior to that. I ran it again in December because I don't trust small sample size. At some point I really stopped keeping track because it's so obvious it works. I did over $9k in December as a 1-2 man operation (because of finals, my son had a LOT of days off in December). So far in January, I'd estimate that I've done close to $3k off Yelp alone. January itself has been a slightly down month compared to December, New Year's day and 7 rain outs this month so far, but we're still on pace to have a pretty good month. Again, mostly as a 1 man operation as my son had surgery on January 4th and still hasn't fully recovered enough to work more than about 4 hours since.

Now I will say, I appear to be the king of the "not recommended" review. I believe I have 11 or 12 of them, all legit reviews, but that's something I nor my rep have any control over. It doesn't seem to have any affect on my business other than keeping my review total artificially deflated. In fact, the rep that signed me up in November probably would have done something about it if she could have because that was my main and steadfast objection for not signing up with them. I drummed it into her head until I was just being obnoxious about it. I was like "blah, blah, and I'll NEVER advertise with a company that hides my legitimate reviews."

You can kid yourself and make all the objections you want, the same objections that people make about Google, really. You're kidding yourself if you think it doesn't work or it's not valuable. And it's not washes, it's legit jobs. Frankly, I do maybe 3 washes a week. My average ticket is nowhere near a wash. The price shoppers are the only people looking for washes on Yelp and I'm never going to get the price shoppers.

Hey, you don't want to advertise, don't advertise. If you think your time and money is better spent tackling customers in a parking lot trying to find that one customer, have at it. I got 6 Yelp messages today and sold three of them. The money I made off Yelp today (or will make as two appointments are for this coming week) paid for my advertising for the month.
 
Facebook. LOL I think I did a $30 "ad" on Facebook once. I got like 5 million likes on Instagram for my "ad" and I believe it made approximately $0 but I'd have to check my records. It would have been a waste of time for free. If they had paid me $20 to run it, it still would have been a waste of time.

I don't know. I just don't think they're the same customer. I don't think that people that use FB or IG are my customer. Maybe you can't copy my business model, so my experience is not valid to your business. If I had the inclination (which I don't), I could run two full time rigs right now so I'll just stick with what works for me.
 
Only used Facebook last summer for ads. Some did very well, other did not. I should hire someone to make the ads, I am not an advertisement guru so what ever I do will always be hit or miss. Probably what I will do next summer.
 
I fully understand what you are saying. There is a way to crack into the market via advertising while targeting the customer that you want. I'm just not there yet with my situation. For me, at this point in the journey, it just doesn't make sense for me to use Yelp past what I have right now. Do you think that your customer flow and revenue has been positively impacted after you started using them at $200? Right now my snowball is the size of a BB. Maybe once I get the snowball rolling a little faster I will spent the money. Your comment was helpful to me and what I think of Yelp as a whole.
 
The $200 I spent in November was after a $300 credit, so I spent $500. I've spent $500 a month since November, but only had to pay $200 in November. I will tell you, I thought it was a gigantic waste of money, so did my son. My rep, a really, really nice and patient young lady, used to call me literally every two days. She'd call and I'd be like "I'm at a customer's right now, can't talk!" She call back "I'm eating lunch, can't talk!" My son would say just tell her you're not interested and you're never going to buy advertising. I really admired her spunk, I mean she must have called me 50 times. During one particularly slow stretch in late October, she finally got me. I was "man I need to make the phone ring." So I let her talk to me at length and she answered all my questions. I finally relented and said I'll try it for ONE month.

I'm telling you, I had six messages yesterday, did one job booked two for this week. I had a Yelp message when I woke up this morning at 8:30. I was NOT working today because I've worked 9 days in a row. The guy was 4 minutes from me and had two decent jobs. 6 hours later, $470 and he's going to do maintenance once every 10 days on both cars at his office. I had another Yelp message and the guy called me back and booked a wash & wax plus bird bomb etching removal for tomorrow. I just had another one and I'm going to do a test spot and give the guy a quote on a correction tomorrow morning on the way to my first job. Yelp keeps the phone ringing (so to speak because most people just message at first), period. It's up to you to take that and turn it into money. I'm very good with people and I'm very good on the phone. I would say I close 85% of the people that call me. Best money I've ever spent. It's been so good I'm thinking of turning my Google AdWords down a little because I'm actually getting too busy to support that much advertising.
 
Calendyr said:
Only used Facebook last summer for ads. Some did very well, other did not. I should hire someone to make the ads, I am not an advertisement guru so what ever I do will always be hit or miss. Probably what I will do next summer.
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I totally agree that no matter what means of advertising you choose, letting a professional help is the way to go. I, like you, am not an advertising guru. When we first started, we used a quarterly magazine delivered to two different local cities by mail. It wasn't cheap, averaged about $225/month over the course of a year contract. I did the ads myself, which I regret. They were good but the magazine didn't really work, so who knows? Maybe they weren't that good. By my estimation, we spent $2600 over the course of a year to make maybe $5k. I'll never do that again.
 
So, I thought I'd post about the quote I gave today. Nice young guy, nice new 2017 Dodge Ram Hemi in really good shape. Had a couple scratches, a couple scuffs, some touch up paint where somebody backed into him. Light swirls and scratches, nothing major. I quoted him what I thought was a pretty fair price for a one step plus 1-2 hours of labor to remove the scratches and scuffs before the one step. As I told him, it looks like a couple hours of labor. It might be less, but I don't think it's more than 2 hours. He agreed that it was probably fair. He tentatively booked for Tuesday as we have rain coming Thursday-Monday.

I left to go do my first job. Three and a half hours, $240. When I'm leaving, I check my phone and he says another detailer contacted him on Yelp and gave him a quote, sight unseen, for $250 for a full one step, full interior detail with shampooing (it didn't need it, it was so clean inside you could have eaten off the floor) and the labor to remove the scratches. I mean that's a 7 hour job. Unless of course I wanted to match it. LOL. I told him to have a nice day.
 
Do the "high-end businesses" you are targeting have enough employees that there would be onsite Human Resources or Facilities Management? Consider "please tell people about me" versus "Would you like to offer your employees a new benefit which is onsite auto detailing at a special company rate?" In other words, find someone in the company that will realize a "win" through partnering with you. An HR person would LOVE to send an e-mail blast to the company saying "we care about you, dear employees, so much that we have a new program which provides valuable auto detailing services..."

If not, ask the receptionist to put your flyer up in the break room, that will work better than business cards.
 
As somebody that did work with several businesses with HR departments and many employees, one word, run. You can't run away fast enough. You'll turn into car washers really working for every buck you make. And we were told "please keep the services affordable for every level of employee" and "try to have enough spots open so that all employees have a chance to utilize your services." Translation: Don't book anything big because you won't be able to wash everybody's hoopty. Pros: Steady money you can count on, learn to work at a good pace, learn to deal with a lot of issues at one time. Cons: Super tedious, low hourly wage, cutting yourself off from being able to make real money that day.

I'm glad we did it, we'd never do it again. That's not high end.
 
sudsmobile said:
So, I thought I'd post about the quote I gave today. Nice young guy, nice new 2017 Dodge Ram Hemi in really good shape. Had a couple scratches, a couple scuffs, some touch up paint where somebody backed into him. Light swirls and scratches, nothing major. I quoted him what I thought was a pretty fair price for a one step plus 1-2 hours of labor to remove the scratches and scuffs before the one step. As I told him, it looks like a couple hours of labor. It might be less, but I don't think it's more than 2 hours. He agreed that it was probably fair. He tentatively booked for Tuesday as we have rain coming Thursday-Monday.

I left to go do my first job. Three and a half hours, $240. When I'm leaving, I check my phone and he says another detailer contacted him on Yelp and gave him a quote, sight unseen, for $250 for a full one step, full interior detail with shampooing (it didn't need it, it was so clean inside you could have eaten off the floor) and the labor to remove the scratches. I mean that's a 7 hour job. Unless of course I wanted to match it. LOL. I told him to have a nice day.
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I suggested in my reply to this gentleman that he do his due diligence. Apparently, he received several more quotes more in line with what I quoted him. He spoke to one of those companies about the low ball quote he had received and they told him NOT to let them touch his truck. He mentioned my quote and they told him they'd heard good things about us, which is the same thing I told him about them when he called me back. He said he was going to mull it over and get back to me. He called me back later in the day to say he was going with me and rebooked his appointment.
 
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