Drive More Revenue at Your In-Bay Wash

August 28, 2023

There are many ways to optimize reveune at your IBA. We will explain how to drive traffic with digital marketing and how a mobile app can build loyalty and recurring revenue.
 

 

Transcript

Kayla Ivey, Product Marketing Manager:  Let's go ahead and kick it off, Ali. So, hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're going to be talking about driving more revenue at your in-bay wash. So our goal today is to leave you with five different, like, takeaway strategies or tactics that you can implement. And really, what we want to keep in mind is you've got probably a lot going on, you may be a convenience store, gas station operator, and maybe your in-bay washes are just part of your overall business, or if you do have standalone in-bays, you might have other businesses on the side, your in-bay may not be your primary focus, so we want to give you some tactics that are really things you can implement one time and they can reap rewards and reap revenue over time. So that's what we'll focus on today. We'll get into five different strategies that you can look at implementing. And real quick, we'll just do our housekeeping items to make sure you know how to communicate with us through the webinar. We should have about 30 minutes, 40 minutes or so of content and we'll save some time at the end for questions. And so, if you do have questions, you can put those in the, there's a Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom screen.

So that's how you'll communicate with us throughout. The chat button is disabled for today. If you have any technical difficulties or anything like that, you can also put those in the Q&A. If for some reason you can't see that button, you can try hitting View Options and then exit your full screen, and it should bring it into a smaller window where you can see the buttons. And then just so everybody knows, we will be following up with a recording of our webinar, as well as answers to all of the questions within a few business days. Okay, so quick intros from your speakers here today. So I'll kick us off.

My name is Kayla Ivey, I'm a Product Marketing Manager at DRB. And my background is, I came from, about six years or so, at SUDS. And we'll talk about SUDS a little bit later, but if you're not familiar, it's basically our marketing, and analytics, and design agency that's within the DRB family of brands. And so, through that experience, I really was able to partner with a lot of different types of car wash operators and help come up with strategies on how to drive revenue, how to grow membership programs, how to hedge against competitors, how to open new sites. So I got to see a lot on the carwash marketing side of the business and hoping to bring that to the table today.

Alison Amira, Director of Product Management, Applications: Awesome, thanks, Kayla. And my name's Alison Amira, for those of you who don't know me. I have been with DRB for just over three years. I'm the Director of Product Management overseeing Applications, so specifically Beacon Mobile, which we'll talk about a lot today, as well as other various applications. My background is in marketing, and integrated marketing, and product product management. So I've been doing that, like I said, for over three years, and prior to that, spent over a decade working in the fast casual and QSR business, specializing in high volume and retail brands. All right, so what we're going to talk about today is five strategies to drive revenue at your in-bay. So we're going to go through these five specific strategies that are specific to in-bay. And Kayla's going to kick us off with our first.

Kayla: Awesome, thank you, Ali. Okay, so strategy number one, we're starting with pricing. So ensure the price is right. Ensure your pricing is optimized. This is what we recommend, like, we're starting with this one as the first for a reason because it's a great thing to implement on the upfront. And then essentially, you'll be making that additional revenue for every single car that goes through your car wash. So what we've found is, basically, in the car wash industry, things like the number of wash packages that you offer, the spacing between your wash packages, and how the retail washes relate to membership offerings, all of those factors can heavily, heavily influence what a consumer, who's at your point of sale, will actually decide to purchase. So there's a lot that goes into pricing. We find, a lot of times, car wash operators are kind of forced to make their best guess. And so, you don't really know if you're potentially leaving money on the table.

And so, we found, through doing these pricing analytics and pricing strategies for car wash operators and especially in the in-bay space, you could be leaving a $1.25 and anywhere upward from that just by not having your pricing as optimal as it could be. I mean, that may not seem seem like a ton, but if you multiply that out over every single car that goes through your wash across maybe multiple washes, it obviously adds up pretty quickly, and it's revenue that you could make with the exact same number of vehicles going through your wash. So we'll talk about how to actually do that, how do you think about pricing, how can you make sure that your pricing is actually strategic rather than being unsure if you're leaving money on the table. Okay, so I want to start with a menu that we see, this is just an example of something that we commonly see in the car wash industry. What you'll notice is it's very evenly balanced. So we've got 6, 8, 10, 12 for our wash package prices. So even $2 increments between each wash.

So it's not inherently bad. I mean, it feels balanced upon first glancing, but this is what we would consider an unoptimized menu, because what we can do is if we actually manipulate how these packages are priced in relation to each other, we can really influence people to actually purchase a higher package than they would have otherwise with a evenly distributed menu like this. So part of the struggle or the challenge with a menu like this is consumers who are overwhelmed by the amount of decisions that they have in front of them, and if they can't, like, really quickly discern what is the additional value I'm getting from jumping from express to deluxe, from deluxe to premium, if I can't get that really, really quickly, my, basically, consumer human behavior is that they will actually end up spending less money. So what you'd probably see in a menu like this, what we've seen over and over again is the ticket average would be right around that $8. So the kind of the bottom middle section is where a lot of consumers would end up kind of reverting downward too.

So one of the strategies, you may be familiar with this, but one of the strategies that we have found really successful in the car wash industry is called the dominated alternative pricing model. So what that is is basically creating a larger gap between the bottom and the middle and then a small gap between middle and top. And so, you'll see this all over, not just in car wash. It's really a successful pricing strategy for many different things, especially when there's, like, three options. So think like coffee, different sizes of coffee, different sizes of soft drinks. I've seen this in, like, subscription options where there's three packages. So it works really well across many industries. And, you know, looking at kind of this popcorn example we have here, essentially, if I'm going to the movies, I know I'm not going to want the small popcorn, for some reason, I'm sharing or whatever. If I know I'm deciding between the medium and the large, you know, it's only 50 cents more to jump up to the large. So most of the times, most of your consumers will wind up actually going upward because that gap is so small. So we're really trying to influence those people that might be hovering kind of in the middle and help encourage them to really go upward.

So this is called the dominated alternative, and it's just one of the strategies we found to be successful in the car wash industry. And then here's kind of what that would look like in terms of the menu that we just saw. So if we remove that bottom middle package, just for the sake of an example here, that would create dominated alternatives. So basically, now we've got 6 to 10, so we've got a $4 jump there, and it's still only that $2 jump from premium to the top. That's creating the effect where if I'm going to the car wash and I know I want more than just kind of the basic soap and water wash, maybe I'm deciding between now the premium and the works, okay, it's only two bucks more, I'm going to go upward. So by simplifying the options, we're really helping the consumer with that decision. And in a minute, we'll talk about how you can actually leverage design to help make that consumer decision to go upward even easier.

So what you're going to find with a menu like this is your ticket average is going to increase. So one thing to point out is you may or may not already be familiar with this kind of three-package strategy. It's not quite as simple as the example we just did, where you literally just remove a package. You want to think too about, you know, it is the spacing and it's also how much spacing is the right amount of spacing. You know, which actual wash packages are the right price points? So there's a lot of factors that go into determining, you know, yes, this one is more optimal, but could it be even more optimal? And so, the only way you're really going to know that is using data. And so, we recommend using an analytical model. We have a tool available at SUDS that basically runs off of historic data of what consumers have chosen at both your wash and others, and then it will come out with a recommended pricing model that is going to optimize revenue. So that's really the only way you can be confident that you're not leaving money on the table, because now your pricing strategy is based on real data. So that kind of sums up the pricing.

And then I'll get onto strategy number two, which is optimizing your menu design. So this one goes hand in hand, just like I kind of alluded to, with your pricing strategy. We've found that by adjusting design in a specific way on your menu, that can actually have an effect of increasing ticket average by 13%. So if you take that and combine it with the effects of the optimized pricing, that's where you get kind of the biggest bang for your buck. You're going to be maximizing revenue at your point of sale through both the pricing and the menu combined. So we highly recommend, if you do implement these, to implement them together. So when we talk about strategic menu design, what we want to do is help our consumer make really quick and intuitive decisions. I mentioned that on the pricing section.

When we think about the menu design, we can essentially use design principles to help guide our user, our consumer to what we want them to focus on. So in most cases, that's going to be helping them focus on that top wash package, especially if we know they're kind of deciding, there may be that swing vote deciding between the middle and the top. If we can get them to focus on the top package through design principles like color, contrast, size, layout, all of those great things, that's when we can get our consumer to really make that decision and spend more money at the point of sale. So a quick and easy thing that you can test on your own menu is called the squint test, really basic. So literally, if you just squint your eyes real quick for a second here and just take note of which wash package jumps out at you and which one your eye really wants to settle on and focus on. So for most of us, in this case, it's going to be that middle orange wash package.

And really, that's because of design. It's not because of anything else. So in this example, the orange on the blue background is the highest contrast, and so it's really making your eye jump straight to that middle package. And, you know, in the top package, where we actually probably want people to focus, is blue on blue. So we're not doing ourselves any favors on this menu of getting people to look upward and think about that top wash. Other elements of this menu is there's a lot of words, there's a lot going on. So probably, if I were to guess your ticket average on a menu like this, it would be right around that middle package 'cause we're heavily influencing our consumer, through design, to look at that package. So here's an example of what we would recommend doing instead to really do ourselves a favor, help our pricing strategy be more successful through design. The checklist on the right are things you can go through on your own and really make sure that you're leveraging on your own menu.

First one is very simple, utilize size. So we see a lot of menus where the wash packages are evenly spaced and evenly sized. So one super easy thing you can do, make your top wash take up a bigger portion of the real estate on both your menu sign, if you have one, and on pay station screens as well. So making it just bigger is a very simple thing that can be really effective. And then notice too the size of the fonts on this one are increasing. So that's also helping draw the eye upward toward that ocean wash $20. So that's a super easy one you can do. Next one is establishing a clear hierarchy. So we want to make it really intuitive and easy for a consumer to understand, which one's my basic, which is middle, which is top? So we do that through, obviously, the layout of this menu is really intuitive. You know, they're stacked on top of each other. There's a diagonal line that's helping the eye draw upward. Those are easy things. The color gradient is kind of going dark, medium, bright, so it helps the eye travel upward.

One thing I think can be underrated about establishing hierarchy is the names of the wash packages. So take a look at what your names are and just make sure they're not confusing in any sense to a consumer trying to make a quick decision on, which one's my best option? So make the basic wash sound like a basic wash, make the middle sound like a middle wash, and top sound like the most premium, best option. Just make it super intuitive. We see sometimes all of the wash packages or at least several of them kind of all sounds like they're trying to be the best name. And so, that is just confusing for the consumer. If you can really simplify and use your names to clarify what the consumer should choose, that's going to help. Using color and contrast. So this one, if you were to do the squint test again, like we did on the other one, your eyes going to go straight to the top wash. And the color is standing out from the backdrop. The color's also very different from anything else on this menu, so your eye is almost going to have a hard time even, like, going away from that package. It's really going to want to hover there.

And then lastly, reinforcing the pricing strategy. So a design is only as good as its pricing strategy, and vice versa. So what you'll notice here is we've got this dominated alternative strategy that we talked about a minute ago, where it's 10, 17, and 20. So the middle and the top are kind of that shorter gap. There's not a whole lot of space between them. So if I am coming to this wash, I know I don't want the basic, I'm kind of deciding between the lake and the ocean, my eye is heavily drawn toward that ocean wash, and it also is really clear on this menu. You know, it says includes everything, plus ceramic, hardwood, and UV sun protect.

So I can see really quickly, okay, that's what I get, three bucks, sure, sounds good. So we're heavily influencing and just helping our pricing strategy be even more intuitive for the consumer. Okay, so that wraps up design. And then next strategy I'll talk about is... For a reason. And really, it's, I think, one of the best sort of set it and forget it marketing strategies that you can implement, especially if you've got a lot of other things going on. Maybe you have other businesses or other business units that you're needing to focus on, but you want to have something going on for your car wash that's working for you in the background and driving in new business. And especially if you do the strategies one and two, where you're optimizing pricing and optimizing your menu design, you're now making more revenue per car that goes through the wash.

So we recommend doing those first, then kind of going external and investing in marketing that's going to drive more people in, because now you're making as much as possible with every single car. So the term evergreen is just a fancy marketing term that means it goes on all the time. So if you think evergreen tree is green all year long, that's where that phrasing comes from. And so, evergreen marketing is just about setting up things that can run for you in the background and really kind of do work for you after you've set it up. So here is what we found to work really well when balancing promotional marketing with evergreen marketing. So the difference is promotions would be, like, a targeted campaign where maybe you run a membership special, or you run a gift card discount, something like that, where it's a short timeframe and you're really trying to focus on converting a customer with, like, a discount or something like that, versus evergreen marketing kind of runs like, you see all year long, so we run it in the background.

And really, what that can do is help you warm up an audience and really make sure that your community and your area is aware of your car wash because they've kind of seen these different ads, they've seen your marketing over time, and it's working for you in the background. So then when you do a targeted promotion, that promotion is going to be even more effective. So we recommend doing some kind of combo like this where it's two to four promotions per year, meaning, like, a discount on membership or something that's driving repeat business and loyalty, and then setting up that evergreen marketing to run in the background. And I'll talk about a couple ideas of what you could set up. So here are three easy, highly recommended tools that you could set up and let run for you in the background. So first one is Google Ads. You may have explored this.

It's something that I think is kind of underrated, that a lot of car washes still have the opportunity to do in their area. So first things first, if you don't have a website for your car wash, make sure to get that, because with Google ads, you're going to need to point them toward a website. So essentially, you're going to be targeting certain search terms, and these can be basic, you know, car wash near me, car wash insert my city name here. And just make sure that you're targeting those search terms, where people are telling you they want a service like what you have to offer. And then just make sure that you're putting a little bit of money toward making sure that your carwash website is popping up for those terms. So that's an easy one that you can really let run in the background and just kind of tweak and optimize over time.

Next one is geofencing. So if you haven't done geofencing or not familiar with that capability, it's basically drawing an imaginary fence around a geographic location. And then anyone who passes in that fence will then be served ads for your wash on their phone later. So if you were to draw like a geofence around a Walmart that's nearby, anyone who enters that fence will then later get served your ads on their phone. Usually as they're searching through or as they're scrolling through apps is where the ads will show up. So it's different than the Google Ads in that way, kind of based on the platform that they show up. So that can also be a really effective thing that you can set up. Those work really well if you run them for longer timeframe and kind of let them work for you in the background. And then lastly, automations. So first things first, Ali's going to talk about how you actually collect customer contact information, especially at an in-bay where you're not physically there helping at the point of sale. So she'll cover that, the tools for collecting customer contact info.

Once you start getting that, let's say you have a membership program and you collect your member's information, what automated communication can you set up that's going to help proactively retain those customers? So it could be as simple as a welcome communication or, like, recognizing their six month anniversary of being a member. Things like that go a long way. And really, why we're recommending them here is because you set them up one time and then they really work for you and benefit you without you having to do a whole lot. So all of these tools can be great to set up and let them kind of do the work for you.

Ali: Awesome. Thank you so much, Kayla, that was great. So as we talk about launching a membership program, what we're going to talk about today is specifically utilizing Beacon Mobile, which is a native custom mobile app that we have within the DRB portfolio, but it's built specifically for your car wash. So Beacon Mobile is just an internal-facing name. If you move forward with an app, it's all branded to your car wash. And the use of this is really to drive revenue, membership management, and customer loyalty. So today, we're going to talk about two things specifically within Beacon, and the first being launching a membership program. So launching a membership program is another way to drive massive revenue in exploring subscription membership offerings.

We've seen a ton of success of this over the years on the tunnel side, helping car wash operators reduce volatility due to weather, increase the value of their business with monthly revenue. But we know that that historically has been really challenging on the IBA side because we don't have the process or the team members in place on site, as Kayla mentioned, to manage this. With the use of a mobile app, all of this is really managed directly by the end user on their phone and really eliminates a ton of that legwork that has made it challenging in the past. Go ahead, Kayla. So with a platform like Beacon Mobile, your customers can purchase that membership on their phone, drive on site, and automatically trigger the wash to start by scanning with a code on their phone. It requires no employee interaction to be present on site for the purchase. They can redeem everything in the membership through the app and they can even change their plan or cancel their membership directly through the app, which again takes all of that legwork off of an attendant on site or somebody picking up the phone to help manage this.

So that's really great 'cause the customer manages their program all on their own and they're also providing a ton of great data and customer touchpoints for you to then utilize in subsequent marketing campaigns. So upon making any purchase in an app, whether it's a single wash or a membership, they have to put in their first name, last name, and email. So that email capture right off the bat is an additional added value that you're getting. When they're doing a membership, they're of course putting in the membership, the credit card, the license plate, the license plate state, and they have the ability to put in make, model, year, and color. So additional data points that are great to have for you at any time to utilize at your fingertips.

Of course, within a mobile app, one of the best ways to communicate to your customers is via push notification. So this is a really easy way for you to segment your customers, send them messages based on certain filtering criteria, remind them to wash, prevent credit card issues, thank them for a purchase, all different methods for you to communicate and messages that you can communicate to them and really kind of drive that loyalty and engagement. One of the other things that we've seen is that you can limit the number of washes that you provide to a customer. So unlike on the tunnel side where unlimited memberships are really popular, on the IBA side, we know that it's really important for you to potentially limit that usage. So you can set that limit based on number of washes in a week, number of washes in a month, and making sure that wash usage does not get abused by any means.

So again, another really easy, great way for you to drive recurring revenue, utilizing an app, very little communication needed from an attendant, customer is able to manage their plan completely themselves, and a great way for you to engage with them. So another thing that's really important to the app is having a loyalty program. So this is another big, missed opportunity that we see in the car wash industry and especially in the in-bay space, not having a great way to capture that customer information and remarket to them. So one of the best ways that we've found to do this is to offer an incentive to get customers' information and to download the app. And then you're allowing them to put in all of their information and then provide nurturing campaigns along the way, whether it's a membership or to come back for just their next retail wash. Mobile app is the best and easiest way to do this. And we can get our customers to download the app with a free wash or another incentive as a benefit to continue to communicate with them.

So we know who that customer is, we can understand their behavior, and then we can communicate to them directly through the mobile app, and encourage them to watch more frequently. And what we found in the research about mobile apps in general is that one of the primary reasons consumers download an app is to get some kind of deal or incentive. So again, offering that discount or loyalty rewards program right off the bat is a great way to continue to drive revenue. So we offer them a deal to download the app, plus the potential to accumulate points through a loyalty program, and earn those points and redeem through the app, we're continuing to increase that value. So what you're going to see here is just a kind of very overarching screenshot of loyalty points or reward points that a customer can access directly through the app.

So if any of you use any type of retail app, let's say, for example, a Starbucks app, you're probably familiar with a point-based loyalty program that rewards you for things like free drinks or snacks with every purchase, and you can accumulate those within your app and then redeem directly through your app for a free item. That's essentially how the Beacon Mobile loyalty program works. So using the admin portal, you the carwash owner can set up this architecture of your loyalty program so you can easily define how you want these points to be redeemed. So $1 equals one point, and maybe a free basic wash is 20 points.

So the more the customer spends, the more that they're earning to then utilize within the app. And you really want to continue to drive your customers to getting more and more loyalty points to redeem for a higher value and repeat visit. One of the best ways that you can do that is send them a push notification, an automated push notification saying, you know, you're five points away from your next loyalty reward, so make a purchase and get this for free. So just a really easy way to continue to drive that loyalty and engagement through a referral program or a loyalty program. And other ways that you can drive loyalty within the app are things like gamification, where a customer can earn high scores and get free rewards. So there's different ways in which you can really kind of touch upon driving that loyalty.

But a loyalty program is a great way to just set that architecture yourself and continue to drive both retail and membership sales through it. So just to recap, we went through five really great strategies today. The first ones that Kayla obviously went over, ensuring that the price is right and optimizing that menu design. So between really strong price point, driving customers to the highest price point or the best value for their dollar, optimizing that menu design with really great graphics, clear, easy, legible fonts, the right use of color, the right distribution, all of these are really key for driving the best possible customer experience and incremental growth and profit at your wash. And then of course, as Kayla mentioned, that evergreen marketing, that always-on marketing that you're going to just have running in the background, really low maintenance on your side once that's up and running, and that will continue to make sure that your wash stays top of mind for customers when they're searching for a wash near them or they're utilizing other various mobile apps and getting really filtered digital ads on online.

And then of course, like I just talked about, launching a membership program, utilizing a mobile app, really easy way for a customer to manage that program themselves, drive that recurring revenue for your site, and then of course offering a loyalty program in addition to that, which will really help kind of drive the retail side of the business. So these are five ways that we have seen great success in the IBA space and we think we're absolutely worthy of chatting about today.

Kayla: Awesome, thank you, Ali. So just to hopefully clarify and kind of tie this up, also, if you have questions, now's a great time to enter those in the Q&A 'cause we'll have a couple minutes here to answer. So everything we talked about today relates back to two of our products that we offer or services that we offer at DRB. So one is SUDS. So that was kind of the three analytics and marketing-related tactics that we talked about first. So SUDS is a team of marketing and design experts and has a team of analytics experts as well that can really help with partnering with you to drive strategies for growth, to look at your pricing, design your menu, any of that kind of thing. So if you were interested in any of that or learning more, feel free to scan the QR code and learn more about SUDS.

And then the items that Ali talked about in terms of the mobile app, that's all through our mobile application called Beacon Mobile, like she talked about. So again, if you're interested in hearing more about either of those, we're happy to discuss further. Just scan that one QR code and we can talk about either or both. So we'll go ahead and take a few minutes here for some questions. All right, let's see here. Okay, so, Ali, I think this one will be for you. How does the Beacon Mobile app integrate into my point of sale?

Ali: Yeah, so it's a good question, and I see a couple questions here kind of populating in regarding specific point of sale systems, whether it is POS within the DRB family or outside. So Beacon Mobile was acquired by DRB almost exactly a year ago and has different integrations into different point of sale systems. So within DRB, we have a direct integration into Director, and we also have a direct integration into SiteWatch. Both of those are currently live. We will also be completing integrations into Washify and Patheon in the near future. So more to come on that in the next 6 to 12 months but absolutely on the roadmap for us to be fully integrated into all of the DRB point of sale systems.

There's also a ton of various integrations that are outside of DRB POS. So I saw a question about Hamilton here and various others. I would recommend that, because those are very kind of specific to various pay stations and POS systems, I think that's a good one that we can offline and kind of go deeper depending on the individual pay station and POS that you have.

Kayla: Awesome. Okay, someone asked for just a quick recap on the evergreen marketing suggestions. And that was kind of a lot to take in, so happy to recap that. So we talked about three specific, like, easy to implement ones. One is Google Ads. So I recommend search ads as a starting point, which is essentially, you know, when you search for something, you're paying for your website to pop up as one of the search results. So that's a really good one, and it's not super expensive so you could definitely implement that and kind of let it run. That's a great one. Geofencing is a great one to explore. That one can be a little bit tricky depending on what access to marketing tools you have, but we found those to be great for targeting specific locations. So geofencing, like, a competitor's wash even or a grocery store that's nearby that you feel like, you know, people that go there might be interested in coming to your wash. You could even, like, retarget, so you could target your own, geofence your own wash and retarget people who have maybe come to your C-Store, and tell them about the car wash or any deals that you have going on.

So I love the combination of those, the search ads on Google and then the geofencing ads, just because geofencing is much more targeted in that sense in terms of, like, the geographic location. And then the last evergreen tactic we mentioned was automations. So we can talk more about that deeper if you're interested, but, like, if you do implement the Beacon Mobile app, like Ali talked about, you're collecting customer contact information in there, so that can really open up, you know, maybe now you can send an automated push notification when a certain action happens, or the loyalty program, you could send someone a message automatically when they're 10 points away from their next reward.

So I think pairing the evergreen concept with the tools that Ali talked about is key because you have to make sure you're collecting that info and then actually kind of utilizing it in an ongoing way where you don't have to physically do something every single time. So hopefully, that was a good recap. Okay, so here's a question about Beacon Mobile app. Is the Beacon Mobile app customized to my car wash branding?

Ali: Yeah, so I did want to make sure that this is really clear. So like I said, Beacon Mobile is basically a B2B name for this product, but when we create an app for your car wash, on the app store, it is completely branded to your wash. So if the name of your wash is Wave Wash in North Carolina or something, it will show up as Wave Wash in both iOS and Android, Google Play app stores. So nothing is DRB-branded, nothing is Beacon-branded. Everything is in your brand colors, your logo, you know, specific design elements that can be customized. So it feels very unique and specific to your car wash, and there's no confusion about who is DRB or Beacon Mobile. We are just the conductors behind the scenes.

Kayla: Awesome. Okay, so we got a question about the menu layout. So it sounds like on the pay station you're talking about, the menu is displayed horizontally. Can that be changed to vertically as was presented? So I would just say, we have a different menu strategy, menu layout for screens, which it sounds like you're talking about. So it's kind of keeping those same concepts where you're making the top wash package the biggest size, but it can just lay out a little bit better on a screen. So we can definitely follow up with kind of some of those concepts that might be better for what you're specifically talking about. But a lot of the strategies are still the same no matter what shape or size your menu is.

Just think, if I'm a consumer looking at this and I have, like, just a few seconds to decide, where is my eye going, is it really, really easy for me to decide and focus on this top wash? So a lot of the same concepts apply but maybe just reformat a little bit to fit within the space that you have. But happy to talk about that more to your specific question.

Ali: I see a few other questions in here that are specific to Beacon that I can help answer. So Beacon does have integrations with, if you have a SiteWatch, Director, or, I'm sorry, SiteWatch, it'll be Patheon, and then Washify to come, for LPR and RFID, that will be completely integrated into Beacon, if not already. So if there's concern about LPR or RFID integrations, if a customer already has a membership on site or an RFID tag within the point of sale system, that will sync to the Beacon app. So that membership will pull through directly between the POS and Beacon, again, depending on the POS that you have.

But that's something that we have been building out on the DRB side. And then in terms of, can Beacon integrate with an existing website? So I believe this is probably in reference to kind of look, and feel, and product offering. So, yes, absolutely. As we go through that implementation and onboarding process, everything will look very cohesive from the front end customer experience. Obviously, there are certain things that the web is intended for that are different than a native mobile app, but things will feel very cohesive and integrated. If you're looking for a different type of integration, definitely, please reach out and we can kind of talk about that further. But it will feel like a very cohesive experience between all of them.

Kayla: Yeah, and just one other comment on that. We've seen a lot of people be successful, like, highlighting benefits of the mobile app and, like, how to download and stuff like that on your website. So kind of using, yeah, making it a very cohesive experience and using your website to actually, like, link people to download the app as kind of a call to action.

Ali: Yeah, and you can also, within the Beacon Mobile app, you can deep link to different webpages. So if you wanted to drive people to your website to learn more about something, we could deep link to that very easily within the app. So there's also kind of that very easy integration as well from a more technical standpoint.

Kayla: Okay, there's a question about spend in terms of the Google Ads. Yeah, I think we would want to talk about that to your specific situation because it also depends on how many sites we're talking about and the competition in your area. Everything you kind of mentioned in your question, we'd definitely take into account. In very general terms, we recommend starting around a thousand a month to 2,000 a month per site on multiple platforms, if you're doing, like, a pretty robust ongoing campaign. That can definitely change depending on what your goals are. And, you know, there's also things you can do if your budget is more limited. That's a great general starting point though. But happy to talk about that a little bit more detail with your exact situation.

Ali: Yep, and I did just want to reiterate that we do have a direct integration into specific IBA pay stations as well. So again, we can kind of offline that directly for which of the Unitec pay stations we have direct integrations into that allow for really easy access and member usage.

Kayla: All right, we probably got time for one more question. Anything jumping out at you, Ali, you want to hit? And if we didn't get to your question, by the way, we'll follow up. And all of these will get answered. We'll send everyone a document of all of the answers as well.

Ali: Yeah, I think that's great. We do have a ton of questions here. And like Kayla said, we'll make sure we reach out directly with some of those answers.

Kayla: So one I can take here pretty quickly before we sign off, how would you present your menu on a digital sign? So we really like the concept of digital menus, especially because it gives you flexibility to maybe adjust prices more frequently than you would be able to with a physical menu. You just want to be careful of visibility. So because sometimes the bottom of a digital screen can take up quite a bit of real estate, just make sure that they're really legible from a distance back. But it's generally the same concept. So we like to kind of use that vertical layout. If you're talking about a digital vertical menu, use that vertical layout. Stack the wash packages like we looked at, where the top one is largest. And then we like to add animation too to even help aid in making the top package even more prominent. And adding some type of animation to make that one just look more enticing, that can be great. And then a lot of times too, we'll add in an introductory, like, menu screen if there's a promotion going on, that kind of comes in shortly, talks about maybe a membership promotion, and then fades away and lets you see, like, the full price menu.

So those are super fun to get creative with, but overall, kind of same general layout. Just make sure it's really legible. All right, and I think we're out of time. We'll let everyone get back to your day. There's still quite a few ques questions here, so Ali and I will work on getting everybody answers. We'll send everyone a follow up with the webinar recording. And just, again, thank you all so much for your time, and attention today, and the really great questions. And we will be in touch. Thank you everybody.

 

 

Related Content

E-Book

E-Book: "How to Protect Your Car Wash Brand Reputation"

October 7, 2024

Learn how to avoid negative impacts to your car wash's reputation and even turn angry customers into brand advocates. 

Read more
highway at night with an off ramp with lines that appear to be blurred speeding cars

Blog Post

Stopping the Silent Enemy of Unlimited Car Wash Plans

September 23, 2024

Car washes often focus on adding new members to unlimited wash plans, but it's just as important to keep the members you have. 

Read more
inside a running car wash tunnel with blue wraps

Blog Post

Should You Convert Your IBA to a Mini Tunnel?

September 11, 2024

The popularity of express exterior car washes has given way to IBA-to-mini-tunnel conversions, but it’s not right for every IBA. 

Read more
Translucent arrow decoration

Don't Miss a Post

Subscribe to our monthly Soapbox newsletter that includes all of our latest blog articles, plus events, news and more.

Air bubbles in blue water