Grow Collision Repair Center from Local Hero to Regional Powerhouse
Goal
The goal with Cascade Collision repair was to grow from a local family owned collision center to a regional collision repair platform. When I came on board they had 4 locations all within the same county. They were highly rated and primed to grow but had always been hesitant. Over their 20 year history they had only added locations approximately every 5 years. In a two year period because of the successes of maxing out their local locations they were able to add an additional six locations and a mobile glass repair service. They currently have plans to have 25 locations in the next five years.
The Story of Cascade Collision Repair
The Nichols Family has lived and worked in the Utah region for three generations – Cascade’s origins can be traced back to the opening of Terry’s Auto Body in 1978. The current owners’ father opened that shop with the goal of providing trusted repair services to his neighbors. The team grew up in the body shop, and building upon their father’s legacy was always their plan.
In 1999, the Nichols brothers drafted a business plan for their own business, Cascade Collision Repair. Less than a year later in 2000, after getting the shop up and running by themselves, their flagship Lehi location opened its doors to customers.
Cascade Collision Repair had always been an innovator in collision repair processes. They did things more efficiently than anyone else. But from a marketing standpoint the collision industry was stuck thinking the way they did 20 years ago. I was able to bring that thinking forward to match how Cascade Collision had updated their repair process. Utilizing a digital first approach I grew Cascade’s online presence and reach from near zero to over 100,000 sessions annually. Resulting in a 277% increase in goal conversions and each location being booked out 2 months in advance.
Doubling Revenue
The year prior to me joining Cascade the shops were “Grabbing Keys” a term that meant techs were waiting around for work, nothing was scheduled ahead because of how slow it was. Over the next six months of a digital first strategy and some amazing work by our estimating team the shops were scheduling repairs out 2 months in advance. Reworking SEO, SEM, and Social boosted the awareness of Cascade Collision Repair to the forefront of customers minds when they needed repairs. Factoring in the seasonality of the industry, these six months were the first two quarters of the year, the company went on a hiring spree to bulk up for the winter months ahead. “I don’t know what we’re going to do once the snow hits. We’ll be scheduling out six months ahead by then.” Alexander Shaw, Area Office Manager. Being scheduled out this far allowed the estimating team to pick and choose which jobs we wanted. Maximizing profitable jobs and minimizing total loss repairs. Shops don’t make money unless they repair the vehicle. This increase in profitability made the expansive growth of the company almost a necessity.
Online Goal Conversions
The two big lessons learned during these first few months were reach and awareness were key. There was less of a need to target ads to find the perfect customer. Our customers only thought about us when they needed the service. The second being differentiating not just from the competition but from the auto industry as a whole. The collision industry standard was to never show a damaged vehicle. The old standard was to only show a happy result. This causes confusion for the customer who is overrun by ads from car dealers and manufacturers. The visuals get lost in the onslaught from the auto industry. My social strategy was to show vehicles in the process of being repaired. This not only set us apart and stood out on social media, but it showed the solution we offered rather than focusing on the result.
This awareness strategy helped push our organic conversions by 19% and coupling our awareness audiences with SEM increased our paid conversions by 277% without increasing budget.
New Growth
With each new addition, either build or acquired, the digital first strategy proved to be instrumental in a strong start up of each new location. The first repair in the Eagle Mountain location was a $45,000 repair. The customer had been waiting for the location to open after seeing so much about it on social media.
A big part of the digital first strategy was GMB pages. Getting them optimized and running before or as soon as a location was open built that awareness quickly. Paired with the high search volume from our ads helped our locations to perform at their maximum sooner.
“I had no idea how much our shop could handle. We put more vehicles through our shop each month than we ever did before Cascade bought us and we do it with less stress.” Shaquel Rhodes, Office Manger.
Overall Results
The work I did to improve customer acquisition would not have been as successful if Cascade Collision didn’t already have an amazing team with an amazing process. Marketing was the final piece to fall into place for them and the results speak for themselves. They are on track to hit $300M revenue within the next 5 years and I’m glad I was able to be a part of that.
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Client Toyota Dealership
Goal
Become the number one new car volume dealer for the state.
Method
The focus here was to build trust with customers through advertising. We made video content of the sales team explaining they were there to help with the vehicle buying experience. It was a no pressure, reassuring, and friendly introduction to the dealership. We then used the custom audiences we built from those videos to re-target search and display ads.
Result
Within one year the dealership was not only #1 new car volume dealer but also top ten in the nation for customer retention among all Toyota Dealerships.
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Client Financial Services Firm
Goal
Increase leads
With a focus on content marketing to drive engagement and boost page popularity the firm was able to grow their client base 60% over previous years. The firm's client base was dentist and their primary source of leads was from a weekly podcast. Our focus was to utilize quotes and clips from the podcast as social posts to drive traffic to download the podcast.
Result
After 3 months we set a record 22,000 downloads, more than double the monthly average.
