I know, I know, I’m always harping on the benefits of creating a blog. Up until this point, however, it’s mostly been about me giving advice without giving any real support. So how about a mini-case study then?

La Jolla Independent BMW is located in San Diego, California. They specialize in general BMW service and repair. They undoubtedly compete with every BMW dealer for customers, and I’m sure they have to compete with quite a few other independent shops. What is a local repair shop to do in this market? How do you get noticed? Then there’s the fact that the BMW dealerships in San Diego spend hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars every year advertising sales and service. How could the “little guy” hope to compete?

With a smart internet marketing strategy.

Start with their blog - BMW service blog. They post every week or two about a variety of topics, including quite a bit of free service advice. They also blog about some of their customer’s vehicles - very smart. What better way to get people excited about you and your business than to ask them if you can blog about their car? They’ll tell everyone they know to check out your blog, you’ll get blog visitors, build your brand, good-will, etc. Genius.

But they’ve also done a good job of maximizing search engine opportunities. By listing their business with Google, they’ve managed to gain quite a bit of a search engine presence. Search for “san diego BMW repair” and they’re the third map result.

This shop has also been smart about asking their customers to review them online. The Google business page linked to above has 5 reviews of 5 stars each - awesome - and La Jolla Independent BMW has reviews on Yelp.com too. Guess what? They’re all good.

Finally, take a look at their website BimmerDoc.com. It’s not the prettiest site I’ve ever seen, but it has the basics. Address. Phone number. The email address or “contact” link is easy to find. They’ve got a quick summary of their services on the main page, and they’re even selling some parts. Not bad at all.

Here’s the best part - everything is working. I emailed them and they’re currently re-investing in the website. Here’s the second best part - this level of internet marketing is very inexpensive. A few hundred dollars a month gets it done (and maybe a lot less if you’ve got a good writer on staff).

Do they have room for improvement? Sure, but who doesn’t. If you want some proof of the concepts I’ve been pitching, I think you need look no farther than San Diego’s best Independent BMW repair shop.

San Diego BMW

3 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. Julian

    Thanks for the real-life example - it really illuminated the concept. Now which do you think has been more effective, the blog or the Yelp reviews? Which came first? Any empirical data suggesting that this increased presence has translated into more sales? Good write up.

    Sep 15th, 2008

  2. Jason

    Julian - Good questions. Since this was an unsolicited write-up, I’m not certain that I’ll ever find out.

    Sep 15th, 2008

  3. Chris

    Thanks for the write-up Jason.

    I have no data to provide as far as increased sales at this point. As a small business, we only have so much time in the day to take care of day-to-day operations. We need to manage employees, customers, projects, paperwork, etc, etc. I’ve had to pick my battles, and at this point, there is not enough time in the day to get into tracking results from our web efforts.

    I can say that since I’ve been focusing on our ‘local’ web presence, I have had a decent amount of new customers and most of them have mentioned that they came to us because of our reviews (either on Google, Yelp or Mojopages). Our main problem is that our shop is known very well throughout the BMW enthusiast community on the National level. My goal in all of this is to attract customers on the local level that aren’t really enthusiasts, just run of the mill BMW owners that need to have their cars serviced.

    In any case I can say that the work I’ve done has been fun, and it certainly isn’t hurting business. As a small business, we need to spend every dollar on Marketing responsibly. Given our desired market group, we have found that our web efforts provide us with the most exposure per dollar spent. As Jason said, we could do more, but like restorations we do on BMWs, it’s all about time and money.

    Chris Keefer
    La Jolla Independent BMW Service
    bimmerdoc.com

    Oct 5th, 2008

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