Starting a mobile detailing business is relatively easy compared to most companies, however, getting customers is still a big challenge for most of us. It’s fairly easy to get the essential equipment, and you can get by with just about any vehicle that runs properly and ideally looks clean.
But getting customers is always a challenge when you’re new. No one knows who you are, or if they can trust you to do a good job. How do you overcome this? Well, there are actually a few easy ways to get started, and the internet makes it easier to promote your business if you know what you’re doing.
So here’s a step-by-step guide to promoting your mobile detailing business online and acquiring new customers.
Provide Examples of Your Work
Start taking photos, people love to see a good before and after! If you can record video and are comfortable on camera, then definitely start recording the work you do. It doesn’t matter if you’re washing your car, or someone else’s – nobody cares They just want to know that you’re good at what you do. They want to see a dirty vehicle look new again by the time you’re done with it. They want to see the trim restored, the paint corrected, wheels cleaned. Are you trackin’?
Gather a bunch of photos and/or videos to upload to social media and ideally your website. Even if you’re new and have no clients. People will feel comfortable hiring you if you can provide enough visual evidence of your detailing skills.
Put Your Brand on Social Media
Anyone can get started using a Facebook Page, but we recommend using one or two others to really enhance your visibility. Since you’ll be uploading a lot of visual content, you may want to use Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).
Create a Facebook Page and post a listing in your local marketplace. Before I ever got into auto detailing, I hired a mobile detailer and mobile tint guy from the FB marketplace. It’s highly effective.
The main thing to focus on is remaining consistent and posting frequently. Talk about car washing tips, crazy things you’ve cleaned, etc. Make it so people can tell you’re an expert as soon as they land on your page.
Launch a Website (The Right Way)
Most guys will pay someone a few hundred bucks to put a website up with their contact info, and a few images, only to do nothing else with it. That’s the wrong way to launch a website.
The correct way to launch a website for mobile detailing, or any business, is to come up with a long-term content plan and provide it with continual updates. Throw in a newsletter with a nice opt-in form, possibly providing new subscribers with a 10% discount.
Your website is your online real estate. It’s where people should be able to book you, contact you, and read your updates. Yes, you should provide users with updates. Blog about what you do! You can then turn those blog posts into social media updates, or even pay your developer to automate the social posts from your blog posts.
So how do you go about creating a content plan? Well, first you need to define and think about your ideal customer. What are they into? What kind of questions do they ask? Create your content around things that will get their attention!
You can even have AI help you with topic suggestions. Perplexity is a free AI tool that will help you with writing tasks, as well as provide you with ideas for articles.
Get Listed!
Create a Google Business Profile to get your company listed in Google’s local search results. You can also get listed in Bing to show up locally. There’s also Yelp, and depending on where you live there might be more places to get listed, so look around.
Build and Use Your Mailing List
This is a powerful thing, and it’s often overlooked as business owners feel like they’re too busy to handle something like sending out a newsletter once a week.
When you don’t have enough work and you need new customers – you definitely have time to work on a newsletter!
First of all, this is one of the primary reasons you have a website! Your mailing list will come from your followers on social media, people who read your blog posts, and also, your existing customers.
Even a small mailing list is powerful, as it’s highly targeted! Existing customers are likely to return if you send them a reminder or a special offer. You need to pop up in their inbox so they can remember how dirty their vehicle has gotten since you last washed it.
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