Hi my name is Don Archer and I own a half a century old 12 truck towing company that was struggling. We’d always had our share of truck traumas and employee dramas, I guess like everybody else. At times I seriously thought about getting out of the business, these last few years were the worst, it really made me worry a lot.

I know you know where I’m coming from when I say I’m used to being awakened in the middle of the night, but this lack of business stuff was keeping me up nights- churning my stomach.

As I’m sitting here at my kitchen table pounding on my computer I can still remember how it used to feel, I can actually feel the acid boiling in my stomach right now just from thinking about it again.

Yuk.

Ok what I figured out was I was worrying way too much about the people who didn’t use my services and wouldn’t unless they were forced. These people only wanted to get the lowest price and didn’t care about service or anything else.  Ok so when I kept giving these price-shoppers all my attention I was ignoring the good customers, the customers who appreciated us and wanted to use our services.

Not that these folks didn’t care what we charged it’s just that they figured there really wasn’t much difference in price, at least not enough to worry about it. They weren’t rich it’s just that when they needed something towed they knew they’d have to pay somebody and, for one reason or another, that was me.

So I quit stressing over those low-ballers and started to talk to my regular customers (asking why they used us) and the thing that kept hitting me was that they thought we were better because we’d been doing this for awhile and we knew what we were doing.  That’s when I had one of those Aha moments

I began to think about what I could do to take advantage of the fact that we do know what we’re doing.  I started to question everything we do and noticed that our customers saw us as the authority.  Awesome I thought, I’d never considered that before.  I ran with it.

That’s when I came up with a way to build on and use our authority to our advantage.  What I did was create a marketing message that explained in detail what questions someone might want to ask before they call for a tow truck.  I wanted to give new customers something to think about besides price.  You and I both know that there are some operators out there who don’t follow the  rules and are not insured, so I just started pointing out what customers should be wary of when calling for a tow. And it started working great.

We started to get more calls and I felt happier when talking to customers over the phone and guess what?  I didn’t get pissed anymore when a price shopper wasted my time.  Part of the business.

So…

If you’ve been flailing around these last few years looking for that something to give your business a boost you should consider changing your strategy a little.

One way of being seen as the authority in your market is to have an authoritative presence on the web.

What does that mean?

It means that your business must be found on the first page on Google?

How do you do that?

Well going into that can be quite time consuming but the short version is you need a properly optimized website, you need a verified Google plus page, you need a Facebook Business page, and an easy way of generating reviews.  Then once you have all that you need to point everything at your website.  Your Google plus page, your Facebook Business Page, and your reviews need to be integrated into your site.  I’m not just talking about links from your site to Facebook.  I’m talking about true integration.

I know this can be a bit confusing but to be found in Google’s TOP 3 on the map, you need to do this.

Did you know that 95% of searches end on the first page?

Yeah…that means that folks don’t continue to search beyond the first page, and rarely do the scroll below the fold.

The fold is just an old newspaper term for placement.  When a newspaper is sitting in a stack the first headlines you see are on the front page above where the paper is folded in half.

That’s where you want to be on Google.  So get to it and establish your towing business as the authority in your market.

If you need any help with this or anything else, don’t hesitate to call.