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This article was most recently updated in Nov. 2024

Soak, lather, rinse, repeat. It seems simple and effective enough, right? Those steps are sufficient for the three minutes your customer spends getting their vehicle washed and waxed at your car wash location. But your car wash marketing efforts demand more time and attention than a few minutes once a week. Your company’s success is directly related to effective and intentional car wash marketing. The hours you spend discovering who your target audience is, how to reach them, and how to implement strategic marketing moves will grow your company and boost sales.

Let’s address the car wash industry in America as a whole. Here are a few findings from the first primary research study commissioned by the International Carwash Association. The purpose of this study was to quantify the size of the car wash industry. Check out these astonishing statistics:

  • Over 2 billion cars are washed each year in North America, equaling over $15B in car wash retail sales.
  • The percentage of drivers that report washing their vehicle at a professional car wash location rose from 48% in 1994 to nearly 80% today.
  • There are more than 62,000 car wash locations in the United States.
  • Gross sales of chemicals into the car wash market are nearly $1B annually in North America.
  • Gross sales of car wash equipment and parts exceed $700M in North America.

Those statistics say a few things you can’t ignore:

  • Your car wash has competition.
  • Americans spend ample amounts of money each year at the car wash.
  • The popularity of using professional car washes continues to rise.
  • Sales related to car wash services drastically affect the economy.

Hopefully, now you have no doubt that you need to push a very well-made marketing strategy to boost the success of your car wash. We can confidently say these car wash marketing tips will help you meet your marketing goals.

Car Wash Marketing Tip: Display a Stunning Car Wash Website Design

A user-friendly car wash website design is the foundation for great marketing. When a potential client is searching “car wash near me” on the Internet, they will click on your website to find your location, hours, and services. If your website is not user-friendly or lacks in functionality, your potential customer will likely choose your competitor instead.

Car Wash Marketing Tip: Ensure Complete and Accurate Listings

Most car wash customers decide to get their car washed as a spur-of-the-moment decision. They get into their car, see that it’s dirty, open Google, and search for a nearby car wash. Your essential information such as hours, directions, and website link, should be easily accessible and straightforward. Listings are an excellent marketing service to ensure this information falls directly into your potential customer’s lap.

When set up and managed correctly, search engine optimization (SEO) will push your listing to the top of the search results. The listings that show up first have complete information, plenty of reviews, a link to a complete website, and more. Google, Yelp, and Facebook are three of the top listing platforms, but there are 60+ listing platforms available. The more platforms you can manage, the better! If you want help managing your business listings, M&R can provide turnkey listing management services that will help ensure that you show up when people are looking.

Car Wash Marketing Tip: Implement a Geofencing Strategy

Gone are the days where advertisements only reached your potential customers if they physically stumbled upon them. Today, hyperlocal targeting allows for advertisements to reach your target audience and remain with them.

Geofencing is a highly effective form of advertising that places an ad before your potential customers instead of waiting for them to search for your product or company. Consider these statistics:

  • 78% of businesses are not using hyperlocal targeting accurately
  • 97% of consumers own and regularly use their mobile device
  • 70+% of consumers routinely search for products and services with their mobile device

Geofencing places a virtual fence around a physical location. After the fence is set, digital ads can appear to anyone who enters the virtual fence. The fence can be placed around any geographic location – from a small building to an entire zip code. When you choose to incorporate this newfound technology into your marketing strategy, you will see effective advertising results!

Car Wash Marketing Tip: Focus on Your Local Community

Your most loyal customers are the ones who work, play, and live a short distance from your car wash. These people drive by your car wash every day while running errands, heading to work, or dropping the kids off at school.

Meet them where they are! Talk to local business owners and school administrators and ask if you can drop brochures and coupons off at their location. By leaving tangible ads, customers and students can pick them up and will be reminded that your car wash exists and is available for their car wash needs.

Sponsorships are another great way to get in front of athletes and their parents. You can sponsor club or school sports teams which helps your community thrive and puts your name and services in front of potential customers every time they hit the field!

Additional Recommendations

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a valuable component to add to your car wash marketing efforts. with a solid understanding of SEM  and the right strategies in place, your car wash can see increases in:

  • Brand awareness
  • Conversion rates
  • Visitors to your location(s)

SEM utilizes pay-per-click marketing campaigns to present search ads, display ads, and landing pages to people searching for the services your car wash provides. Through detailed keyword research, smart bidding, multi-point targeting, account monitoring, and more, SEM can lead to a boost in brand recognition and conversions.

Social Media Ads

Social media advertising is a fast, strategic way to improve your car wash marketing. Billions of people worldwide spend time daily on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and so many others.

By knowing your objectives, your audience, and what organically speaks to your followers, you can seize the opportunity to put your car wash ads in front the right users. Doing so can increase clickthrough rates, conversions, and on-site visitors.

Social Media Page Management

Along with advertising on social media, it is important to manage your car wash’s social media pages strategically. A well-planned yet flexible presence on social media increases your potential to organically attract new but relevant users, earn trust, provide information, and further increase business.

Want more tips on developing an effective marketing strategy? Check out our Definitive Guide to Creating a Marketing Plan!

 Case Study: Marketwash by Enmarket

When Georgia-based convenience store chain Enmarket wanted to build a new brand for their c-store and standalone car washes, they approached M&R for a simple but informative website that would showcase the services offered by both of their services: Marketwash drive-in car washes and standalone Marketwash+ tunnel car washes.

The company wanted to keep the new site down to a single page that could be seamlessly integrated into their existing site, which M&R built for them earlier in the year.

One of the main challenges was the similarity of the two different products. Both offer monthly subscription services, both offer different levels of wash at different price points, and both have very similar branding.

Another challenge was ensuring that the unique value adds for each service were clear and the separation between the two products was unambiguous. The drive-in washes are supported by an app that is not compatible with the tunnel washes, the price points are completely different, and while the company owns several c-store drive-in washes at Enmarket locations around the Southeast, there are still only a few Marketwash+ locations, all in the Savannah, Georgia market.

By building a site that uses clear branding, color and design cues, and robust intrapage linking, M&R was able to reinforce Enmarket’s new carwash brand with a solid web solution that provides SEO benefits and improves the customer’s experience.

M&R Knows Car Wash Marketing—Let Our Full-Service Team Help Yours Gain Even More Success! 478-621-4491

Your car wash marketing strategy needs to be created and implemented with a success in mind. From creating your car wash web design to managing your car wash social media account, our team can do it all. Give us a call today with your questions: 478-621-4491

Want More Car Wash Marketing Advice? Check Out Our Additional Articles:

Car Wash Website: Why You Should Have One and Things to Include

How to Market Your Car Wash and Stand Out From the Crowd

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