Scaling my car detailing business

[StrikingViper69]

Right now I’m leaving the customer with an air freshener, hand sanitizer, and a $25 off first-time booking coupon so they have incentive to share me with their friends and family.

For repeat bookings, I have a CRM and I’ll call with special offers for holidays and call asking if they want to book every 3 months. Car detailing is awesome for repeat business since cars get dirty again quickly and people have a personal attachment to their cars.

View attachment 55080

I’ll implement the QR code for reviews too as right now I only have a few real ones and like 60 fake ones from my friends

I love the thought of loads of teenagers commenting about how you did a great job detailing their lambo

Great progress though

 

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[perchboy]

Fb Ads were off last week due to snow but its getting warm again in my city so I turned them back on today.

Today I booked:
$199 job from Facebook
$199 job from Facebook
$199 job from Facebook (old lead I followed up with)
$249 job from Facebook (nvm it was my friend trolling smh)
$100 price shopper from Facebook who I gave a discount to
$249 job from my Google Page

All on $60 ad spend!

I'm booked out for the next 3 days in a row and have $750 coming in. I also made $340 today and $300 yesterday. Things are going great. If my ad keeps performing like this I'll be over the moon.

Heres a detail I did a couple months ago and heres my new and improved work:

Finished detail I did 2 months ago:
View attachment filtered-9586D9B9-0124-4DF8-895C-E38C197BB0CF.mp4


Detail I did this weekend:


Detail I did today:


I’m still improving my skills and trying to get better every time I detail. I need to provide as much value as I can to my clients so I can get that $.

 

[Dockid]

Fb Ads were off last week due to snow but its getting warm again in my city so I turned them back on today.

Today I booked:
$199 job from Facebook
$199 job from Facebook
$199 job from Facebook
$249 job from Facebook
$100 price shopper from Facebook who I gave a discount to
$249 job from my Google Page

All on $50 ad spend!

I'm booked out for the next 3 days in a row and have $750 coming in. I also made $340 today and $300 yesterday. Things are going great. If my ad keeps performing like this I'll be over the moon.

Heres a detail I did a couple months ago and heres my new and improved work:

Finished detail I did 2 months ago:
View attachment 55107


Detail I did this weekend:
View attachment 55108

Detail I did today:
View attachment 55106

I’m still improving my skills and trying to get better every time I detail. I need to provide as much value as I can to my clients so I can get that $.

Well done Perch, great work! Second detail is a massive improvement, keep going and stacking cash. Make sure to collect those five star reviews for your GMB.

 

[perchboy]

Quick rant…

The first week I got my drivers license an 80 year old man rammed into me (he was completely at fault) and now I don’t have a car. This guy made up some whole story to put me at blame and now it’s gonna take months to get my car fixed since I need to find security footage, get it checked by insurance, and argue against this guys claims.

I’ve been allowed to drive my sisters car but she has work now so for my weekday jobs I need to beg my grandparents who hate on my business to drive me there. It’s so awkward and it looks like I’m getting pimped out for some child labour when they drop me off at the job.

But I’ll probably look back and laugh in the future and it’s a good story to tell. Shit, I used to take trains to other cities to do jobs.

 

[perchboy]

Facebook ads question:

I’m running an open in messenger ad where it automatically asks the client if they’re interested in my $199 special when they open it. Once they reply, I instantly respond to them asking for their phone number.

1/6 leads send me over their phone number but so far I have a 100% closing rate when I get on a call with them. When I ask for phone number, some people don’t even read my message!

Using Facebook form leads in the past, I’d get a bunch of phone numbers that people don’t pick up.

What do yall think I should do? If I can get 1/3 people’s numbers instead of 1/6 numbers then I’ll double my ROI.

@The-J
@Andy Black
@szalek
@Johnny boy

 

[Antifragile]

Fb Ads were off last week due to snow but its getting warm again in my city so I turned them back on today.

Today I booked:
$199 job from Facebook
$199 job from Facebook
$199 job from Facebook
$249 job from Facebook
$100 price shopper from Facebook who I gave a discount to
$249 job from my Google Page

All on $60 ad spend!

Amazing.

I am a total snob when it comes to car detailing. Most people fail my standards. Ironically, that makes me somewhat of an "expert" in some parts of detailing, like paint correction.

There is a slow and a fast way to get these jobs done. But I can't imagine how hard it is to do it with just a car. Equipment matters. Proper lights matter. And it would be too expensive to rent a warehouse and do jobs out of there, few people make it that way.

That said, and it's hard to admit but like some people find gardening soothing, I've always thought car detailing to be soothing too! Now with a family and crazy schedule I just pay for it, but for years I did all my own work. And when the weather is nice, or there is a garage, the best "bang for the buck" is to show a mirror like paint.

For example, about once a year I spend $1k on a paint correction for my cars with nano-coating. I am sure the profit margin is high. Looks like this:

 

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[perchboy]

Amazing.

I am a total snob when it comes to car detailing. Most people fail my standards. Ironically, that makes me somewhat of an "expert" in some parts of detailing, like paint correction.

There is a slow and a fast way to get these jobs done. But I can't imagine how hard it is to do it with just a car. Equipment matters. Proper lights matter. And it would be too expensive to rent a warehouse and do jobs out of there, few people make it that way.

That said, and it's hard to admit but like some people find gardening soothing, I've always thought car detailing to be soothing too! Now with a family and crazy schedule I just pay for it, but for years I did all my own work. And when the weather is nice, or there is a garage, the best "bang for the buck" is to show a mirror like paint.

For example, about once a year I spend $1k on a paint correction for my cars with nano-coating. I am sure the profit margin is high. Looks like this:

View attachment 55125

You’re completely right.

The goal is to expand into doing exterior work since it’s much higher ticket than just a $200 cleaning.

I don’t have a garage in my house so I’ll be getting one of my friends in on it and using his garage to do the jobs. Ceramic coatings, paint protection films, paint corrections, etc.

But now that I’m thinking of it, it shouldn’t be that hard to start. I’ll just need:

- insurance since I’m dealing with nicer cars and they’re easy to mess up
- knowledge on how to do it (YouTube and I can learn in a week)
- equipment
- a garage to work in (or maybe I can just do in peoples driveways still I gotta research)
- sales (should be easy)

 

[Antifragile]

This pic I took from 10 years ago, almost to the day!… time flies, *sigh*.

This was done all by hand, no tools and no “nano coating”. Old school. And still it worked great.

As you get better, I hope you get a team trained and charge for a proper detailing job for collector cars. Sky is the limit for people who know how to do it well without damaging the car.

But now that I’m thinking of it, it shouldn’t be that hard to start.

100% this. You may not have high profit margins, but learn on the cheaper cars. You'll get to know how paint works between flat black and other colours. Just start and you'll eventually get there.

Regardless, looks like you are crushing it at your young age. Kudos! Keep up the great work.

 

[perchboy]

This pic I took from 10 years ago, almost to the day!… time flies, *sigh*.

This was done all by hand, no tools and no “nano coating”. Old school. And still it worked great.

As you get better, I hope you get a team trained and charge for a proper detailing job for collector cars. Sky is the limit for people who know how to do it well without damaging the car.


100% this. You may not have high profit margins, but learn on the cheaper cars. You'll get to know how paint works between flat black and other colours. Just start and you'll eventually get there.

Regardless, looks like you are crushing it at your young age. Kudos! Keep up the great work.


View attachment 55127

Sheesh that’s a clean pic

I’ll test out on my own car first and then I’ll start doing it on cheap cars and work my way up to the big boys.

For car detailing, I’m kinda scared that if I hire someone they’ll take all my clients from me. I talked to a lot of detailing business owners and more than half of them started working at a dealership and stole the clients to start their own biz.

I’m kinda lost with the direction of my business but all I know is that I wanna make 20k/month with time and location freedom.

As for now, I need to just get the ball rolling so the goal for April is 4k profit. I have $1.7k+ booked for this month already (if no one cancels) and made $340 so far.

In May Ill reinvest everything and start the exterior work.

 

[Andy Black]

Facebook ads question:

I’m running an open in messenger ad where it automatically asks the client if they’re interested in my $199 special when they open it. Once they reply, I instantly respond to them asking for their phone number.

1/6 leads send me over their phone number but so far I have a 100% closing rate when I get on a call with them. When I ask for phone number, some people don’t even read my message!

Using Facebook form leads in the past, I’d get a bunch of phone numbers that people don’t pick up.

What do yall think I should do? If I can get 1/3 people’s numbers instead of 1/6 numbers then I’ll double my ROI.

@The-J
@Andy Black
@szalek
@Johnny boy

View attachment 55124

How many times do you contact them? Do you have automations to send a series of messages if they've not responded?

 

[perchboy]

How many times do you contact them? Do you have automations to send a series of messages if they've not responded?

I manually follow up every day for a couple of days but they just end up ghosting me. After that I follow up once a week.

 

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[Andy Black]

I manually follow up every day for a couple of days but they just end up ghosting me. After that I follow up once a week.

Are you able to somehow feed back to Facebook which leads converted into a sale? So it can optimise for sales rather than leads?

 

[perchboy]

Are you able to somehow feed back to Facebook which leads converted into a sale? So it can optimise for sales rather than leads?

smart.

i just tagged them into different categories. hopefully facebook uses the data to attract more customers that actually convert

 

[The-J]

Facebook ads question:

I’m running an open in messenger ad where it automatically asks the client if they’re interested in my $199 special when they open it. Once they reply, I instantly respond to them asking for their phone number.

1/6 leads send me over their phone number but so far I have a 100% closing rate when I get on a call with them. When I ask for phone number, some people don’t even read my message!

Using Facebook form leads in the past, I’d get a bunch of phone numbers that people don’t pick up.

What do yall think I should do? If I can get 1/3 people’s numbers instead of 1/6 numbers then I’ll double my ROI.

@The-J
@Andy Black
@szalek
@Johnny boy

View attachment 55124

Test different messages for asking for phone numbers? Your message seems generic & automated, there might be better messages you can use.

Ask them if they want to get set up through FB messenger (and get a deposit from them once you give them the quote)?

Ask them if they'd rather do call or text?

Sounds like something you'll need to test out. The progress so far is excellent and you should be able to scale up soon.

 

[perchboy]

Test different messages for asking for phone numbers? Your message seems generic & automated, there might be better messages you can use.

Ask them if they want to get set up through FB messenger (and get a deposit from them once you give them the quote)?

Ask them if they'd rather do call or text?

Sounds like something you'll need to test out. The progress so far is excellent and you should be able to scale up soon.

Lmaooo I never even thought of that.

Im gonna change the generic greeting to “Hi (name)! What is your phone number? We’ll give you a call to get you all set up.” That should have a bit better conversions.

If nothing changes I’ll try out a text sequence and forms and etc.

If I tag leads as unqualified and qualified will Facebook start showing my ad to more users who are similar to the already qualified leads?

 

[szalek]

Facebook ads question:

I’m running an open in messenger ad where it automatically asks the client if they’re interested in my $199 special when they open it. Once they reply, I instantly respond to them asking for their phone number.

1/6 leads send me over their phone number but so far I have a 100% closing rate when I get on a call with them. When I ask for phone number, some people don’t even read my message!

Using Facebook form leads in the past, I’d get a bunch of phone numbers that people don’t pick up.

What do yall think I should do? If I can get 1/3 people’s numbers instead of 1/6 numbers then I’ll double my ROI.

@The-J
@Andy Black
@szalek
@Johnny boy

My pov:
You are targeting cold traffic that means people are seeing your ad for first time in they life. And you are trying to convince them that they are needing pro car detaling for 200$. Most of people that you are targeting are washing their cars on automatic car wash for max 10$. Ask yourself why Joe Sixpack would buy something that is 20 times more expensive.
This is the first thing that affects the high cost of your ads Your product is high ticket and is really hard to convince one that your product is valueable.

Think like your customer.

I have to solutions to you

First one: remarketing
Your ads are so expensive because you are trying to sell to people that don't know even that they have to clean their car. So my piece of advice is to:
first create a commercial, e.g. a roll, where you show how you clean the car, the before-and-after effect. Make it so that it goes viral. Set up data collection so that the purpose of the ad is, for example, for the person to see 30 seconds of the ad. Why? So you can collect people who are actually interested in cleaning the car.
use "traffic" or "engagement" as a target for this ad, it will be much cheaper, mean that it will reach a large number of people and build your brand recognition.
THEN
gather a group of people who will watch your roll as you tell them to (I'm talking about the 30 seconds of exposure)(30 seconds is just an example depending on how long the roll lasts) and only to this group of people use the target "Leads". This will be a small group of people who like car detailing and there will be a greater chance that they will buy your high ticket from you. This is a very simple explanation of how remarketing works

the second piece of advice is: create cheaper product
You could try adding a cheaper product to your offer which will be a 'lead magnet'. It will be easier to encourage people to buy the cheaper product first and only then to trust you and buy the expensive one.

Other important advices:

Check that you are using the target "leads" to advertise, this is a very specific advertising target which is difficult to configure correctly.

Check frequency of your ads if is above 2/2,5 (for cold traffic) that means people from your ads are not interested in buying something and you are reaching to same people. You are simply burning money

Getting lead from messenger always was hard for me so i prefer to make some landing page to convince client and get phone numer and call to them but its diffrent for every niche.

 

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[The-J]

If I tag leads as unqualified and qualified will Facebook start showing my ad to more users who are similar to the already qualified leads?

Only if you optimize for it at the ad set level

 

[perchboy]

My pov:
You are targeting cold traffic that means people are seeing your ad for first time in they life. And you are trying to convince them that they are needing pro car detaling for 200$. Most of people that you are targeting are washing their cars on automatic car wash for max 10$. Ask yourself why Joe Sixpack would buy something that is 20 times more expensive.
This is the first thing that affects the high cost of your ads Your product is high ticket and is really hard to convince one that your product is valueable.

Think like your customer.

I have to solutions to you

First one: remarketing
Your ads are so expensive because you are trying to sell to people that don't know even that they have to clean their car. So my piece of advice is to:
first create a commercial, e.g. a roll, where you show how you clean the car, the before-and-after effect. Make it so that it goes viral. Set up data collection so that the purpose of the ad is, for example, for the person to see 30 seconds of the ad. Why? So you can collect people who are actually interested in cleaning the car.
use "traffic" or "engagement" as a target for this ad, it will be much cheaper, mean that it will reach a large number of people and build your brand recognition.
THEN
gather a group of people who will watch your roll as you tell them to (I'm talking about the 30 seconds of exposure)(30 seconds is just an example depending on how long the roll lasts) and only to this group of people use the target "Leads". This will be a small group of people who like car detailing and there will be a greater chance that they will buy your high ticket from you. This is a very simple explanation of how remarketing works

the second piece of advice is: create cheaper product
You could try adding a cheaper product to your offer which will be a 'lead magnet'. It will be easier to encourage people to buy the cheaper product first and only then to trust you and buy the expensive one.

Other important advices:

Check that you are using the target "leads" to advertise, this is a very specific advertising target which is difficult to configure correctly.

Check frequency of your ads if is above 2/2,5 (for cold traffic) that means people from your ads are not interested in buying something and you are reaching to same people. You are simply burning money

Getting lead from messenger always was hard for me so i prefer to make some landing page to convince client and get phone numer and call to them but its diffrent for every niche.

Thanks for all the input.

I don’t really see my offer as high ticket and I’m not in the same category as a $10 outside wash at all. I’m not selling anything fancy, it’s just a deep cleaning of the inside for people with dirty cars who are too lazy to spend hours cleaning it.

So to be clear, if I were to do the remarketing I would:

1. Run a car detailing video ad with the goal of views
2. Compile a list of who engaged with my video so I now have a list of warm prospects
3. Run another ad targeting warm prospects with my offer.

These warm prospects will trust me so it will be easier to sell to them which makes conv rate skyrocket and ROI skyrocket as well.

Is that right?

 

[szalek]

Thanks for all the input.

I don’t really see my offer as high ticket and I’m not in the same category as a $10 outside wash at all. I’m not selling anything fancy, it’s just a deep cleaning of the inside for people with dirty cars who are too lazy to spend hours cleaning it.

So to be clear, if I were to do the remarketing I would:

1. Run a car detailing video ad with the goal of views
2. Compile a list of who engaged with my video so I now have a list of warm prospects
3. Run another ad targeting warm prospects with my offer.

These warm prospects will trust me so it will be easier to sell to them which makes conv rate skyrocket and ROI skyrocket as well.

Is that right?

Yep. Remeber that fb ads is all about testing and testing no one know what is going to take off. So don't turn off yours previous ads because we don't know what is going to work better. I like to start new ads with small budget and compare.

In your warm group is very important to check freqency of your ads bacuse is easy to overwehlm your audience. I think for warm traffc max freqency is 3.5/4. If freqency is more than that means these people don't want to buy from you.

I think that's all I can say in preparation. write to me if you have problems with configuration, I will be happy to help

 

[perchboy]

9 days into the month and things are going great.

I'm at: $2385 revenue and $1124 in expenses. I have $290 overhead, I spent $400 on fb ads, and I paid my friend $430 to do some jobs for me.

I've spent $400 on FB ads and got 1300 back. I'm currently split testing a whole bunch of strategies so I can see what sticks and double down on it. The rest of the jobs are coming from my GMB page.

If I stay at a 1:3 ROI:
3 jobs per day = $600
x 5 days per week = $3000
- 1000 ad spend per week = $2000
- 1000 employee expenses per week = $1000

That's without counting repeat business, referrals or me improving my ad ROIs. I can have a guy doing 3 entry level details a day and then I can add them to my CRM marketing to them for upsells to high ticket services, repeat jobs, and referrals so I can maximize profit.

 

[perchboy]

The only thing bothering me is control. Will my audience on FB Ads burn out? I don't know if I can rely on it; especially to get me 3 jobs a day consistently.

What do you think? @The-J @szalek ?

I need to get my Google Ads to a good ROI consistently as well for the next two weeks. Once I have FB + Gads right, I'll turn up the ad spend, pay my friend 50% to do it, and then once I prove the system to work I'll hire an hourly worker.

 

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[perchboy]

Pro tip for @piano @Subsonic @Danny Dobrota @Chet Shen @Atona and any other guys with a small non registered service business.

I changed my avg job price from $199 to $240 by doing this:

Instead of taking cash, make an account with square and take card payments for all jobs. You don’t even need a real card reader and you can just send a link to the customers phone that they can pay with.





You get easy tax money you can keep since you’re unregistered and almost everyone tips since it prompts them. Charges are only like 3% for processing and it automatically goes into your personal bank account.

 

[The-J]

Will my audience on FB Ads burn out?

Probably not. Your budget is probably not big enough. Your audience is several hundred thousand people and your service is (likely) seasonal. Demand for your service isn't static though so you can run the ads to the same people a bunch of times and they'll call on you when they need their car detailed.

Your creatives, on the other hand, WILL burn out at some point, but you know that.

Maybe find a way to get MRR from your current customers? Are there people out there who want car detailing done at regular intervals? Is there some regular service your customers want that you can effectively deliver without undue strain on the business?

 

[The-J]

You get easy tax money you can keep since you’re unregistered

Wrong. You gotta remit it regardless (unless you're making under $30k which you won't be by EOY)

 

[Bounce Back]

Wrong. You gotta remit it regardless (unless you're making under $30k which you won't be by EOY)

Even if you don't remit it - charging it and keeping it seems fraudulent.

Otherwise I like the hustle so far!

 

[perchboy]

Probably not. Your budget is probably not big enough. Your audience is several hundred thousand people and your service is (likely) seasonal. Demand for your service isn't static though so you can run the ads to the same people a bunch of times and they'll call on you when they need their car detailed.

Your creatives, on the other hand, WILL burn out at some point, but you know that.

Maybe find a way to get MRR from your current customers? Are there people out there who want car detailing done at regular intervals? Is there some regular service your customers want that you can effectively deliver without undue strain on the business?

My audience is like 90k people because I’m only targeting East York area since it’s full of my ideal customers. With $20 CPM and 100/day ad spend I’ll reach the whole audience in a couple weeks.

I can get MRR from charging a contract for monthly payments but there may be some resistance and most people would want it done every 3-12 months. I think it’s best if I just give them a personal call every few months with a new promotion or offer. The problem is I don’t really know my customer LTV since I’ve only been encouraging referrals and doing good jobs for like a month now.

Wrong. You gotta remit it regardless (unless you're making under $30k which you won't be by EOY)

Ya that’s true but that’s for the future me to deal with lmao. Worst case the extra money will just go to tax and everything’s all good

 

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[The-J]

The problem is I don’t really know my customer LTV since I’ve only been encouraging referrals and doing good jobs for like a month now.

You won't know LTV for a while so don't worry about it, estimate it using a spreadsheet of all your customers, what they bought, & how often they bought

How far can you realistically drive to make a job worthwhile? GTA isn't big but traffic is a real bitch. What other pockets of customers look like your East York customers? Could you have employees who live in other locales & you just send them to jobs while you collect the money online before the job is done?

 

[StrikingViper69]

You can show ads to you entire audience quickly, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Have a new ad “in the pocket”. The new ad will probably attract interest from different people to the first ad. Some people will react to ad 1, some of them and others will react to ad 2.

set your budget so you don’t burn through your entire audience in a day.

You could also try changing your marketing channels. Move from FB to YouTube. Possibly even physical media - I used to hire a company to do door to door flyers and those performed great.

If your ads are performing and you can book clients… can you consider hiring people to do jobs in different areas?

 

[perchboy]

You won't know LTV for a while so don't worry about it, estimate it using a spreadsheet of all your customers, what they bought, & how often they bought

Got it.

How far can you realistically drive to make a job worthwhile? GTA isn't big but traffic is a real bitch. What other pockets of customers look like your East York customers? Could you have employees who live in other locales & you just send them to jobs while you collect the money online before the job is done?

Yes there definitely are some small pockets with the same type of clients as my east York ones. I just need to find them.

My target customer is:
- Canadian born
- Lives in a house not apartment
- 30-55 years old
- Has a kid

I live in Scarborough and the 2 other places I know I should test out are guildwood (Scarborough), and Pickering.

Maybe I should try a campaign with a huge radius and then I’ll track which areas my sales come from and then double down on those areas.

 

[perchboy]

Something just changed and things are going crazy!!!!!

I’m way too booked up now and have 3 friends who do some details for me and also a new illegal contract employee.

A new fb ad Im running is going at a 6-8x ROI which is insane! These are my ideal clients as well! My Google page has been getting multiple calls a day and I’ve been booking in cheap shit customers from there as well.

Acquisition is going great, fulfillment is going bad. My friends are unreliable (they don’t even have cars so that’s why) and my employee who has HIS OWN DETAILING BUSINESS does shit jobs so I had to fire him today.

I want to focus my time on high leverage tasks and leave the labour to someone else. I’m gonna hire a real well-paid employee to do my FB jobs (ideal clients), and then I’ll drive my friends around doing the shit cheap jobs and while they do jobs I’ll be on my laptop focusing on high leverage activities like ads and systems.