A slow season is inevitable in any industry, and the auto repair industry is no exception. However, a slow season is not something to dread, and is actually a great opportunity to grow your shop; one way to do so is to invest in marketing your business. Building your auto repair shop’s marketing assets with the available time your team has during a lull pays dividends when deployed in your marketing efforts.
Overall, building your shop in the slow season is a multi-pronged attack that includes building a foundation, evaluating and determining what is working, doubling down on what is working, and ultimately having a back-up plan because even the best laid plans can go awry.
Building a Foundation
Building a foundation includes a lot of advertising and getting your shop in front of as many potential customers as possible. This includes setting up advertising campaigns across Google, Youtube, Facebook and Instagram which all have a variety of tools to target your ideal customer along with previous visitors (both to your website and shop.)
To build a foundation also means to continue to foster an exceptional relationship with your customer base. Focus on getting more great reviews from your customers; having a great rating on Google or Facebook results in converting more first-time customers who are looking for a place to not only repair their car but repair it well with exceptional service. 
Similarly, having a slower workflow allows for more undivided attention on the customers who do come in during the slow season. Going above and beyond for these customers can go a long way in creating “evangelists” for your shop who will rave about your service and come back next time. (according to Robert Summers Founder of Kindred Automotive)
Summers and Patrick McHugh (Founder of Bimmer Rescue) both agree that having a way to adequately track what you are working on and accomplishing is important; especially in the slow season. Whether this is a project management tool, or just a well-constructed spreadsheet, having an established method to keep track of the less tangible accomplishments of your shop goes a long way for productivity.
Find What Works & Double Down
Having access to a process that keeps track of where leads are coming from, website visitor conversion rates, and call tracking among many other metrics, is crucial in properly deciding your next steps. Review your objectives and specific strategies and see how your metrics measure up to your goals prior to making revisions; digital marketing and marketing in general is a constant process of optimization and adjusting to what works best.
Say, for example, you find that a certain display ad campaign on Google is doing particularly well, it might be in your best interest to increase the budget (if appropriate) and allow it to continue creating leads for your shop. If there is a spark of potential in any marketing initiative, consider allowing it to flourish further.
Have a Back-up Plan
Rarely will plans perfectly fall into place, and it is worth having a fall-back plan for the slow season. Internally, take advantage of this lull in traffic to focus on employee training, employee review, and process evaluation and improvement. Focus on weak points in your internal processes, so when business picks back up, your shop is ready to hit the ground running more efficiently than ever.
According to Reggie Stewart (Founder of Reggie’s Motorworks) another great back-up, or supplementary plan, is to focus on customer engagement; follow-up with previous customers to see if their visit was satisfactory or if there was anything that could be improved upon. Spending some time to create content about the shop and its employees allows customers to get a “behind-the-scenes” look, and adds a personal touch. Letting customers know that they are appreciated and valued is critical to building a long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationship.
Don’t feel pressured to run discounts or specials to get customers in during the slow season if that is not your shop’s model, according to McHugh. The only exception to this would be on unsold work where you deem it acceptable to do so; having regular discounts could train customers to expect discounts, which could harm your business in the long-run if that’s not your shop’s model, according to Summers.
(Special thanks to contributors: Patrick McHugh of Bimmer Rescue, Reggie Stewart of Reggie's Motorworks, and Robert Summers of Kindred Automotive)
