Most business owners in the auto detailing and car wash industry invest in systems that install protocol that monitor and regulate marketing activities. A marketing plan is the general frame work of actions and steps that should be taken to realize a profitable business. A flourishing business status will heavily depend on the marketing strategy that has been put in place. Solid marketing controls in a business plan provide a launch pad for consumer interaction and an in depth understanding of the pricing strategy you will put in place.

A good and functional marketing plan should be dynamic and highly adaptive. This article is aimed exclusively at describing why is it important to have a marketing plan for your car wash and ways of evaluating effectiveness for the same.

Below are a few attributes that should be in a good marketing plan. It should:

• Outline prospective goals for your business – While designing your marketing plan, main goals are put down. Having a plan will constantly act as a reminder and measure to the goals you jotted down.
• Give room for innovation, ideas and creativity – Brainstorming with your business partners will always lead to productive ideas that lead to well spread out and diverse business plans
• Give a general scope of how to invest money – A lot of time and thought should go to this section of planning. It is best to have a general estimate of the investment and goals that the business expects from the marketing.

Marketing Controls in a Business Plan

The following are simple and efficient ways of how  to  evaluate  your  car  wash  marketing plan.

Income and sales

An auto detailing and car wash business with an effective marketing plan should generate reasonable and profitable sales. The business should be able to make inroads into new products therefore inviting new clients. Are you maintaining the regular and new customers within your business? Has your sales cycle improved? If these queries are answered favorably, then it means that you will get an accurate position on just how well your marketing plan is doing.

Promotional advertising response

Are you in a position where you can get response on how your promotional items are perceived by your audience? The market or audience base response should guide a car wash marketing team on what areas to put more focus on and/or improve. Whichever medium of advertising being used, be it; telemarketing, direct mail, broadcast media, or print. All these channels will help dramatically improve on the response rate. Once the data is in, the marketing team will have a clear path of how to evaluate your car wash marketing plan.

Consumer Interaction

Having open communication channels with your clients as we have mentioned in our blog series is a kin to a good car wash business marketing practice. The fact is that in service industries, car wash and auto detailing businesses have the best platform for client interaction. This results in customer interaction practices that are essential for lasting relationship marketing. You want your customers not only be returning clients, but also be your word in the street! Just how well your staff or you interact with the customers will give a clear gauge of the state of the marketing plan.

Referral System

How often do you ask your clients to introduce a friend or two to your excellent business? Referral marketing is all that and more! Once you create and give value to the products and services at your car wash, you end up attracting and most certainly retaining clients of value too.

This leads to a state of “value creation for both parties” A steady stream of referrals indicate that whatever marketing plan your business is employing is paying off. A reward system would at this point be a really awesome idea to put on the marketing plan.

Profit conversion and Return on Investment

How do you determine profit made within your car wash business? What aspects do you consider? Running costs, labor rates and rent. All of these should be crossed against the investment that went into ‘making the business clock tick’ You must measure the amounts that go into specific marketing campaigns and identify whether they are paying off. Regardless of the angle you look at it from, the most accurate way of how to evaluate your car wash marketing plan is RESULTS! Which marketing plan requires to be dropped and which moves forward will be easy to calculate when you put ROI into consideration.

Staff Interaction

How is your staff feeling about the placed marketing plan? Is it progress oriented? Since they are in a better position interacting with client responses, your staff play an integral role in mediating between the facts on the ‘ground and on paper’. The smoother the staff and client interaction the clearer the evaluation on what is good or bad for the business.

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