Following the latest trends is must for car wash operators who want to leverage opportunities and enhance their business. With new trends emerging constantly, it can be hard to keep up, especially when combining the facets of marketing your business while improving the customer experience.
At PSD Codax, we’re keyed in on all the latest and upcoming trends for car wash businesses. We rely on this knowledge to supply our clients with systems that actually benefit them and their customers. In this article, we’ll discuss the top five trends that any car wash operator should be aware of in 2024.
If you want to know more about what we do and how we can help your car wash thrive, get in touch.
1. Digital Marketing and Other Methods
Posters, newspaper ads, and flyers are all staples of car wash advertising. Especially when you’re just running a local business, it can seem pointless to spread your marketing efforts onto the worldwide web. However, digital marketing channels are an invaluable resource for anyone looking to achieve the maximum potential for their car wash.
Digital marketing methods include:
- Social media like Facebook or TikTok
- TV ads
- Radio
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads on Google and other search engines
Social media often have local community groups, making it easier for your business to be found by the people who are likely to use it. TikTok in particular has a renowned niche for small, independent, or local businesses, often gaining popularity through the unrestricted, honest, and original content they produce.
By utilising digital marketing effectively, you can make your business known and catapult yourself from a small enterprise to a market force. With this, it is imperative to keep your business’ quality high, as customer reviews and ratings are visible in digital spaces – meaning you need to give them something positive to write about.
Find out about the marketing support offered by PSD Codax >
2. National vs Local Demand
To begin with, most car wash operators will have only one location. This means you’ll be covering a local area, attracting business through smaller-scale advertising that focuses more on your community.
As you grow, you may end up opening additional car washes at other sought-after locations, steadily building a multi-site business across the country. Certain national regions have plenty of opportunity for car wash businesses, and you should position yourself so that you can meet and leverage this demand.
3. Car Wash Technology
Advances in technology change everything from business operations to consumer habits and expectations. We’re moving into a data-driven age, where access to AI and Large Language Models means there’s more information than ever to inform new innovations.
For car washes, telematics has gathered a huge amount of data, leading to better processes that suit the vehicles your customers own. Embracing the technologies that result from this information will help you evolve and adapt, keeping your business in line with market demand.
This technology can also help generate invaluable data and insights to enrich business reports, helping to better shape decision making by understanding how customers are behaving, what’s working, and what isn’t. This isn’t an opportunity to avoid, as those who don’t change with the trends will see themselves outperformed by competitors.
At PSD Codax, our car wash access technology helps you lead the charge for a better car wash. Our development centre is always working on new technologies to bring to the market, like our WashConnect app integrations or our Auto Passport system which can process tens of thousands of vehicles a month. From entry systems to car wash controllers, the technology we supply is becoming increasingly important for car wash businesses.
See our full range of car wash technology >
4. Personalised Customer Journey
The customer journey is incredibly important to making your customers feel valued. By creating a personalised experience, you show that you care about each and every visitor to your car wash. A personalised journey might sound like a challenge, but there are some simple ways to do it.
The main aspect of personalisation is to get to know your customer, and to keep them coming back. A “one-size-fits-all” approach might be the easiest to implement, but it’s definitely not the most effective. Instead, you should focus on:
- Initial advertising efforts
- Understanding your target audience
- Loyalty programmes
- Bespoke pricing plans
- Touch points (like surveys)
- Subscription models which offer unlimited washes for a monthly fee
By employing some of these tactics, you can make your customers feel more valued. Then, they’re likely to come back for more, with a sense of trust from the strong, personal relationship you’ve built with them.
5. Car Wash Business Model and Equipment
The business model you choose should depend on what space you have available, and what your customers are likely to want. A business person will not want to stop and clean their company vehicle at the self-service, while someone with a tight budget won’t be willing to fork out the cost for a top-end automatic conveyor wash. Knowing your target audience, and supplying a business model to match, will see the best results.
Customers are becoming increasingly aware of what they want – whether that’s in-bay automatic, tunnel-conveyor, or self-service, knowing what this is will set you up for success. If a customer wants a specific car wash and you don’t provide it, they’ll keep searching until they find somewhere that suits their needs. This means you need to research constantly, ask for feedback, and ensure you’re offering facilities to meet your customers’ demands.
Check out some of the different car wash business models that our systems support and enhance >
Support Your Car Wash with PSD Codax
There are many different ways to optimise your car wash. From increasing awareness through marketing, to improving the user experience, to even the technology you operate from. The first thing a customer will interact with when they get to your car wash is the access system, so you’ll want a reliable one in place.
At PSD Codax, we make car wash access systems built on the latest innovations – helping you to reduce shrinkage and loss for your forecourt operations while giving customer quick, easy, and reliable access to your services. Get in touch today to secure your access system solution, or read on with some related articles!
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