It sounds ridiculous, I know. It’s not as easy as just writing more repair orders in a day. Yet, when your RO count is down, typically your gross profit and net are lower too. A stopgap can be to bring in more customers as temporary relief.

When it’s slow, there’s tension in the air. You see it in the faces of everyone who depends directly on customers rolling in the door for their income: service advisors who can’t make sales, technicians who won’t make hours, and even the poor lot guy who can’t stay for overtime. Ebbs and flows are common in the industry, but when it’s been slower than normal for longer than you expect, you need to do something about it. If not, here’s what happens:

• Your service advisors look for home runs. Every customer that comes into the service drive gets hit with the whole service menu at once. Because they’ve put on the full court press instead of properly caring for the customer, the all-or-nothing approach often leaves them with the one-line oil-change. Obviously, that hurts the bottom line even more.
• Your technicians target the cream of the crop. Instead of properly looking for additional repairs with a thorough vehicle inspection, they rush through the minor jobs, hoping to snag a big engine job or transmission rebuild that will feed them for a few days.
• Your support staff get complacent. Detailers, cashiers, and lot attendants are found hiding in corners, checking Facebook accounts or talking amongst themselves. It hurts your department even more as the few customers you have rolling through are left waiting longer than necessary.

What it takes to get things on track again is simple: more work rolling in.

Bring the Work In

A tactic that the sales department uses can and should be used by service departments also. Buying leads is common when sales are slow in the showroom, so why not do the same for service?

If you’re not familiar with the strategy, it’s straightforward. Your dealership places ads or deals in strategic places online. The deal captures the viewer’s attention and demands a click-through. The offer brings the viewer into your store, creating the extra traffic you need to keep your staff busy. Your store pays a fee for each response to the online ad.

It almost sounds too good to be true, but there are a few things you need to know to make it work for your store.

1. The quality of the offer is critical. Paid leads are all over the internet. You can buy placement in the best places, but a shoddy offer or unattractive ad is almost as ineffective as not doing it at all.

2. The placement is crucial. Targeting the right online traffic is the only way to get return on investment. Non-specific placement is like burning your advertising budget.

3. The ad design and wording can make it or break it. You’ve seen online advertisements that make you giggle because of bad grammar or spelling, and it totally trashes your credibility. It has to look and sound professional.

What You Need to Do

You have enough on your plate without adding ‘internet marketing guru’ to your job title. Leave it to the professionals. The sales department already advertises online, and I’ll almost guarantee that someone has the contact information for an agency. If they’ve been effective for the sales department, use them.

However, I don’t suggest letting them work for you unchecked. While some of what they do is far beyond what you’ll comprehend, you should have some idea of what to expect from their work. Ask about how you’ll be paying – cost per click, cost per impression, and so on. You need to know how much you expect to pay per response to your online ad.

Find out where the advertisement will be placed. Make sure it’s on social media, and provide criteria for the type of customer you want to draw in. The agency you use will likely help you figure this out. If they don’t ask, you might wonder if they’re right for the job.

Follow up on the ad. You should be able to receive a metric of some sort to see the results. Once the ad begins to run, it shouldn’t be long until the trickle into the service drive begins to flow a little stronger.