How do you shape your market? One idea.

(Besides traditional outlets- social media, pictures, video, general marketing.)

I have been toying around with an idea that I call "shaping." There is probably a legitimate term for it in the social sciences so forgive me.

By and large, private Facebook groups and even online forums, until this day, are populated with threads and comments about.... `let your work speak for itself...` `...do good work and the customers will come...` `...focus on what you do best; don`t worry about the rest...`

And while I can see some truths in these generalities, I don`t see a lot of talk about the nuts and bolts of actually "shaping" your audience into the customer that you want. Yeah, your work speaks but it doesn`t speak to the person who has never experienced it and is texting about a detail because his brother`s friend`s cousin told him about you or maybe they touched base because of your good reviews on Google. You may get an initial contact because of your good work but how are you influencing your market to increase your contacts to conversions?

I know we ALL get the email/text/ FB message that goes- `How much to detail my make/model?` (And that`s as much information you get, lol!)

To be honest, I sigh every time I read these because I thinking immediately- this person is shopping on price and I am not going to waste my time with the conversation because I have bigger fish to fry. After all, they don`t care about quality. BUT we have to realize that every conversation is worth investing everything we have into and these types of questions will never go away (ever.)

While I have been trying to improve my pleasantries with these inquiries, I have also tried to find out how I could influence them even before we get to this point. How could I `shape` the conversation before it even happens?

Those of you who detail for a living should own a website and those that do; you should be blogging especially if you are just starting the business or are looking to increase appointments. Doesn`t have to be every day, in fact, I publish one a month usually. (Now that`s probably not the BEST way to climb the Google rankings but it has worked very well for my individual site concerning the keywords I want to rank for.) Secondly, you should take this blog and use it to not only climb your local Google rankings but also speak to your audience. After all, it`s really easy to share a blog link on your business Facebook, even Instagram, and in monthly emailed newsletter to your customer list. Thirdly, I use it not only speak to my audience about things that I value and possibly they value but also to try to `walk a mile in their shoes` and understand just what kind of language I need to adapt and they need to read.

And I believe `this detailing language`, to a large extent, is a very key factor in sales. The best common ground to be on with a consumer is speaking the same kind of words and understanding them, to the extent that is possible. The more comfortable the consumer is in the actual conversation you are having, I believe the more likely they are to purchase from you.

I have read that only 15% of the public actively shops & purchases professional detailing services. If this is indeed fact, there`s a huge portion of the driving public that doesn`t and if we use marginal analysis in understanding this number, then allocating resources to convert not only `new` customers but `brand new customers` is a worthy goal and one that will pay dividends.

So, we need to choose wisely the language we use when writing blogs or speaking in person. Every detailer`s market is different so there is no hard and fast advice to give you necessarily. However, we also need to be aware of our `expert bias`... where we talk in code and use acronyms. That needs to go away if we are wanting people to pay attention. The `detailing language` I like to speak is through- analogies.

Analogies help, both the writer and the reader, find that common ground and speak a language that is largely understandable. I use it often in my blogs. Paint the picture you want them to see without bashing them over the head with- real detailing is THIS, blah, blah, blah. Find a common problem in your business, especially from a communications standpoint and find a way to talk about it thoughtfully. When you do it right, the audience will start picking up what you are putting down and they probably will fail to realize it.

A possible good example is my latest blog below...
Link Removed

Interested in other`s thoughts as well. Just wanted to get the ball rolling as they say!

Best regards,
-Gabe