Great thread topic!
1. Why are you priced comparatively to your competition? That just tells people that price shop that you do similar work. My prices are disgusting low compared to a lot of people on this board, but believe it or not I'm a lot higher than ANYONE else in my market. Don't sit in the muddy middle, be either the top and worth the price of the top, or the bottom with quality to show for it.
2. What do you offer beyond interior/exterior that makes you different? Uniqueness = attention+money. People will see that you offer things different than anyone else does such as coatings, odor removal, paint correction(very small clientele here), ect. and it really does set you apart. Not to mention it is the key to the UPSELL. A key profit margin increasing tool for any business.
3. No offense, but the problem is not usually Google Adwords, it is the person running it. They are obviously going to your site if you are getting clicks, but they are clicking away because of price/how your website looks/what you offer. When someone clicks your site within 30 seconds they need to be able to find your contact number, rough price for their type of vehicle, and pictures of your work. Your web site needs to say you are the one, and the only one to go to.
4. Do you have an active facebook page? I don't update mine much in dec/jan, but the rest of the year I try and post every other day, minimum. It is just an extension of your website.
1. I am priced compared to the other very high end detailer that I consider competition. I am not a low end priced detailer, we have a superior product and I am more interested in getting a quality customer than quantity. The rest of the detailers are much lower in price, although we do have a service that matches price with a superior product. We rarely give a price out over the phone and if we do it is with a ton of caveats. Profit is not the issue, it is getting customers to know we exist.
2. We are set apart from anyone else in the SF Bay Area due to the product and the skills of the people I have working for me. My Yelp Reviews are novels about exceptional service and how magnificent the cars look when they get picked up and how what we do lasts more than anyone else. We literally kick butt once a customer gets in the door.
Upselling is not the issue,again the question is getting potential customers to know we exist. Once in the door and they see what we do, upselling is simple. I ran a very profitable Groupon campaign and 95% upgraded over and above the price we were at, willingly with no pressure on our part. We made suggestions once we saw the car and customers were happy to upgrade. I actually made money on the campaign and got very few coupon clippers. In fact we got several customers to bring in their second car at full price. That did help get us some of the exposure we were looking for.
3. No offense taken and hope it is reciprocal when I say I had probably one of the best campaigns seen. I had inside information from someone intimately involved in Adwords helping me review what I put together, so the program was better than excellent. I do have a clue about how to make this work, along with first hand knowledge of the program and what makes it tick. Being in Silicon Valley, and being an ultra techie myself we put together an incredible campaign. We had thousands of impressions with an average position of 1.2. My assistant, who has intimate knowledge of the program was not totally baffled when she looked at the stats and Adwords results from others in our area.
4. Yes there is a very active Facebook, Linkedin and Blog going. My website was farmed out to someone that was going to revolutionize how a website interacted with people. In theory they had something really cool, in reality it totally sucked, and we lost a ton of ranking, as they did not conform to Google's Panda and Penguin releases best practices.
I was the customer from hell, as I knew what needed to be done. Once my contract was up I dropped them, and I am slowly rebuilding our ranking.
Organic searches get us to the top in our local area, which is very high end but small. I am slowly getting the ranking up in surrounding areas, but still begs the question what have other people done to get your surrounding potential customers to know you exist?
