Running a cell phone repair shop means wearing many hats. You’ve got many tasks to keep an eye on, and marketing is one of them. But while repairs and ticket management may seem simple, marketing your repair business often is a bit more complicated. This is especially so if you’re not familiar with the finer details.
To market your business the best way possible, you need to know the secrets of how marketing works. Luckily, we’ve done the research, talked to industry experts, and figured it out. Here are the secret marketing techniques we discovered that every cell phone repair shop should know.
If you’d like to learn more, have a listen to our podcast with Cory Farrugia, Co-Founder of Repair Lift, as we discuss in-depth some secret marketing tactics. WARNING: Audio quality.
The Trouble with Cell Phone Repair Shop Marketing
Essentially, marketing depends on several factors such as:
- budget,
- customer behavior,
- marketing platforms,
- business model,
- channels,
- return on ad spent (ROAS),
- retargeting, etc.
With all these (and many more) factors playing in, there are so many pieces to look over that it can all become overwhelming pretty quickly. But marketing needs a hands-on approach.
A successful repair business requires expertise to run successful marketing campaigns. You can’t expect to increase your sales and take your business further through trial-and-error alone. Compounding the issue is the limited budget allotted to you.
Since you can only choose to spend a certain amount on marketing, you want it to go in the right direction and can’t afford to make many mistakes. It’s because of all these factors that you’ll need to give your marketing great attention.
The Secret to Better Cell Phone Repair Shop Marketing
Repair shop owners who want to have a vital marketing component need to learn the ins and outs of the discipline. These techniques will not only give you better sales but will help you better understand your audience and figure out what works best.
Know the Right Marketing Platforms
Business has changed dramatically over the years. These days, we can get better information on what works and what doesn’t. Thanks to advanced tools like analytics and better management practices, we’re able to learn more and act better on the information we receive. The main focus should then be getting the right insights.
Jay Baer, a successful author, speaker, and founder of Convince & Convert Consulting, places a lot of importance on this topic:
The truth is that most modern marketers don’t actually interact with customers very much anymore, and that robs us of a really important success ingredient: insights. The key to being more relevant isn’t hard – it just takes time. The key to being more relevant is to understand your customers better.
For marketing, learning what channels are most effective is an excellent way to start. By getting insight into what popular mediums are, you can make an informed decision to spend your resources.
For example, TV and radio stations were promising marketing avenues in the early 2000s. However, they may not be as effective today with the rise of social media. This is because social media allows you to get more impressions, better targeting, and more discussions for the same budget. These types of insights matter when figuring out how you want to build your marketing campaign.
Solution
If you’d like to learn more about how to market your business effectively to customers, you can always ask them about it. Talk to them and inquire about what social media channels they use or what kind of media they consume.
You can also get feedback from them in a lot of other ways, like asking them to fill a short survey while you’re running your device intaking process or after their repairs are done or running a social media contest with a reward. Leaving a suggestion box is also a good idea if you want to have an in-person solution.
Reach out through SMS & Email
Getting the word out to customers about your business is essential, but what’s more important is how you accomplish it. Communicating with your customers through direct messaging has yielded better results than targeting en-masse via social media.
While social media undoubtedly helps spread brand awareness more, using emails and SMS to connect with customers is better for conversion. This is because emails and text messages allow you to be a lot more personal and get better follow-ups.
You can address your customers directly, provide a more human touch to the conversation, personalize the experience for them, and can always check back in with them through it.
These avenues also have the benefit of being a lot more immediate and active. The open rates are pretty high for SMS, and because of their nature, any message that you send out gets delivered instantly to your customer base.
Cory Farrugia of Repair Lift sees SMS as a great way to reach out to your customers, and a lot more potent than emails.
Email is great, [but] I think SMS should be focused on even more […] People in business, they have so many emails, and it’s really easy to have a low open rate. I’ve never seen somebody with thousands of unread texts.
Solution
We recommend delivering compelling emails and text messages to your customers to pull them back through your doors. Announce contests, give them discounts, and insert keywords into your messages to make more of an impact.
Don’t forget to put in a clear call-to-action, which is close to the beginning. Adding a sense of urgency will also help your case. Use that the next time you’re running a social media contest or grand sale at your repair store.
Go for Retargeting
One of the benefits of using email and text messaging is that it makes retargeting much more effective. Securing a customer by constant coordination is the type of marketing you need for your business.
Let’s say a customer calls you for a quote on a certain kind of repair. If you can get their email or phone number, you can easily send them a message with an estimate and what they need to do to book a repair with you.
If the customer does not come in for a repair, you can follow up with a message asking about a previous repair. Your email or text message can ask them if they have chosen someone else instead of you and why they did so.
If they haven’t chosen anyone, you can send them a coupon for a discount at your store for when they come in. This kind of marketing tactic works well in securing leads.
The benefit here is that since the customer consented to give you their email and phone number, you can reach out to them for retargeting.
It’s free. You’ve already paid for that customer’s data at one point or another, so it’s very important that you continue [targeting them]. It’s like if you invest in a laser machine, for example. You don’t just use it a few times and say you got your money out of it. You keep continuing to use it, right? You just paid to get this lead […] whether they come in or not, you should continue to market [to] them.
Essentially, you’ve already paid for the customer’s data. And at this point, reaching out to them will not cost more, in most cases. Not only that, if they choose to engage you again, you’re increasing the lifetime value that the customer has contributed to your business.
Solution
To successfully retarget your customers, you’ll want to appeal to their needs. First, find out what those needs are. Look into their purchasing habits, taking note of their purchase frequency, the amount spent, and how often they open your emails. You can do that by looking into your software’s reporting.
You should be tracking them on your website if they visit, so if that’s something that you’re missing, be sure to take care of it.
Next, segment your audience and group ones with similar interests or common traits together. You can make a group of all iPhone users or people who have bought Bluetooth speakers from you. This will help you target them for specific campaigns that they are likely to respond well to.
Finally, create a compelling retargeting campaign based on the information you got. Talk to them about the items they abandoned in their shopping cart online.
Send them an email reminding them of why they came to your cell phone repair shop in the first place. Let them know you have an offer waiting for them if they come back. Tweaking your campaigns like this will give you better results when retargeting and will boost your business even further.
Automate Your Marketing Efforts
Connecting with your customers is great, but sending out individual emails and text messages is a tall order. It cuts into your time a lot if you have to do it repeatedly. To resolve this, using automation and better systems is the way to go.
It isn’t just creation and promotion; it is process as well. I think that’s what a lot of people forget.
Neil Patel
Marketing automation can help you schedule follow-up messages, inform your customers of any changes to their repairs, and promote your business better for a sizable audience. Additionally, it gives you better insight into how well your campaigns are running. Since most cell phone repair shop point of sale software have analytics, you’ll have a clearer view of how well you’re doing in the long run.
Check out our podcast episode with Israel Quintal of AdCentral as he talks in detail about the importance of automation and good processes at your repair store.
Solution
To make your processes smooth and employ marketing automation, look into your repair shop management software. Your software should be configured to send out emails and SMS to customers as soon as their repair job changes statuses, or if you’ve got a new sale running.
If your software does not support this feature natively, you can use integrations for services like Zapier and IFTTT. These can help you automate parts of your repair shop processes to perform the actions that you want. Services like TextNow can help you set up calls and messages to update your customers, and apps like Hootsuite and Buffer can work on the social side of things.
Using these solutions can drastically cut down time in reaching out to customers and getting your message across.
Focus on Your Online Presence
If you’re going to convince new users to come to you, you need to make yourself look attractive. In the real world, this would mean decorating your store, setting it up nicely, and making sure it’s easy to find. The same principle carries online as well.
Improving your store’s online presence has a significant impact on your business, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. When people need to search for a service provider, they usually pull out their phone and Google it. That means that if you’ve curated your online presence well, you will be more successful in bringing customers to your cell phone repair shop store.
Solution
Start by first optimizing your website. It needs to have all the relevant keywords of your business and should be set up well. That means adding necessary pages and making it look attractive. Services like Wix and Squarespace help in quickly building eye-catching websites.
Next, get your Google My Business profile set up. There’s no way around it – you need a Google My Business profile. With it, customers will be able to find you more easily when searching up online. Your physical location will show up on Google Maps if you’ve entered your address and will help drive traffic to your store immensely. You can also upload pictures of your store for better optics, and even the community can help give feedback on your store for better search results.
It’s also important to register yourself online in business directories like Yelp. These services give you added visibility online and allow you to collect reviews. With enough positive reviews, customers in your area will trust your business more and will be further motivated to visit you.
Get Experts Involved
Of course, not every repair shop might be able to dedicate some time to marketing. That’s why there’s no harm in actually outsourcing your marketing to someone else.
Getting experts to work on your marketing takes a lot of burden off of you, and allows you to focus on the day-to-day chores. While you’re managing your repair shop, your marketing team will be promoting your business and getting you more leads. Needless to say, marketing can give your business a ton of help.
Solution
To have a good marketing team work on your repair business, you can have two different approaches – you can either hire a team of professionals or outsource your work to different businesses.
Companies like Repair Lift and AdCentral work specifically with cell phone repair shops to help them outsource their marketing needs. They feature a fully-trained marketing team that specializes in cell phone repair shop marketing. This means that your marketing will be a lot more effective and will bring in results faster than if you were to do it by yourself.
Conclusion
Marketing for a cell phone repair shop is a challenging prospect. Since many repair shop owners may not know how it works, they can get pretty confused. However, once you know what areas to look into, you can have a much easier time promoting your business.
Your focus should be on learning all that you can about the field and taking the necessary steps to capitalize on your resources. Using a host of tools and services, you can get better insight into what your business needs and where you need to be, and come up with a game plan accordingly. Be sure to target existing customers along with new ones, and keep your communication channels as smooth as possible.
Finally, it never hurts to have experts come onboard to direct your marketing efforts. Outsourcing your work could prove to be a lot more beneficial in the long run.
