New Poll -- Your Fav Radio Station

I know all about how hard it is to get your name out there.

I'm a small business owner and I have found that word of mouth referrals is the absolute best way to advertize.

Now the fact that your community has a small demand for this work is gonna be tough so you may need to concentrate your efforts on car magazines like Mopar glamour guide, and other gear head publications.

Radio advertizing is extremely expensive and to try to nail the perfect target audience in your neck of the woods may be A/M talk radio since so many people are listening to talk radio now days more than ever.

I'm 37 y/o and grew up with 70's-80's rock as my predominant desired music, but i listen to talk radio while I'm driving from job to job in the morning, then on the ride home pop in some DIO or Rush to jam to while stuck in traffic because heavy traffic and Sean Hannity's rants get me so worked up that i'm ready to run everyone off the road and leave them in a flaming pile of burnt metal...ahhhhhh, nothing like some Holy Diver to give you your game face for the ride home.

Back to the subject, I'd say keep doing what you're doing but forget the expensive radio ads and concentrate on craigslist ad's out the wazoo all over to target a broad audience in many states, and offer things nobody else does and make sure your ad says so!!!!!
Customers like to use the one business that stands out from the others.
make your ad pop out and grab them with the offer they can't refuse.

Get creative, and spend at least one hour a day advertizing on the web and checking the competition.

Get some customers to give you raving reviews on car related chat sites, kudzu.com, which has helped me pick up a little business.

You can also do the pay per click website deals where you can have target audiences driven to your website by using certain keywords.
You pay for every click, but one out of say every four or five people that click may use you.

Make sure your prices are competitive, and make sure you treat EVERYONE the same, and treat them right which I know you do anyways.

You may want to get some reviews on German car websites such as www.mercedesshop.com or some BMW or tuner car websites.

When people see tons of reviews, they call you.

I give every one of my customers a flyer with a couple websites that they can write a review for me on, and I've got alot of business from the mercedes websites from that alone.

ask every customer you have had so far to write you reviews on kudzu.com, and whatever other review forums, and car related forums you can think of.

The more web crawlers that see your business name, the more you will pop up in google searches too.
You can also pay into google ads as well to put your name up on the list higher.

I personally don't do that because word of mouth has been my best avenue and I've found that paid advertizing just really does not work for me.

I have even put ads in bellsouth yellowpages and got maybe one or two price checking calls a year so the internet is a much better avenue than the phone book now days.

One other thing.
No matter how good the customer thinks your business is by what they hear from others or from ads, make sure you reflect that in your phone converation because a crappy or short attitude on the phone make hurt you much more than you could imagine.
remember the internet goes both ways, and bad news travels much faster than good so don't give anyone an excuse to bash your company.

Also remember that you cannot please everyone and if you do get a bad review somewhere, make sure you reply and tell your side of the story so customers can see you care and are willing to stand up to ridicule.

good luck.