The team at The AutoDream Group is investing time and money in a variety of marketing efforts, including an open house and social media, to gain attention for its classic restoration business.

As February began, the employees at the shop, located in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, were already thinking about Father’s Day as they held the first planning meeting for the shop’s annual open house.

“We have to get stuff printed; we also want to make sure that we’ve got our ads in place and the banner ready to go on the roof. {We are} also talking to vendors,” Glenn Berglund, general manager, said of the preparations being made for the June event. “We want to get the page on our website up with the proper dates and as many vendors as we know are coming, and start collecting our door prizes and get notice out to the car clubs [so] they [can] add it to their list of events for the summer.”

The shop invests about $8,000 to put on the open house, which features a car show, shop tours, supplier demonstrations, local vendors, a DJ and raffles. In return, The AutoDream Group gets to promote its restoration services.

“The major benefit [of hosting the open house] is getting people to talk about the shop,” Berglund said. “When you have an open house, most people who come here [have] at least some interest in classic cars and they could be a potential customer. They could go to a cocktail party a week later and say, ‘I was at this great open house,’ and that’s how word of mouth goes. It’s also a good time to show off what we’re doing, the size of the shop, and all the different facets of work that we do. It’s a great opportunity to have everybody come and see what we’re all about.”

Bigger Is Better

The AutoDream Group was founded three years ago when its private owner brought together a small restoration company and a small custom shop into a 50,000-square-foot building to handle increased workloads at both businesses and to attract new customers.

Today, the company offers complete restorations and custom work for individuals and corporate clients. The AutoDream Group sells restored vehicles, but paint and body work accounts for the largest portion of the shop’s sales.

“Our clientele is looking at a higher-quality paint job than your local cookie-cutter collision shop would provide,” Berglund said. “That’s the aesthetic part of a car and we do it right. [Our work is] a little bit more expensive than some of the other guys but I think it’s because of the quality that we put out.”

Clients are also impressed by the quality of the shop’s mechanical work, according to Berglund.

“There are [customers] who have cars in to get mechanical work done at some point over the winter because they’re not driving the car,” he said. “We have [customers] that pretty much bring their cars here exclusively to get anything needed done on the car.”

Staffing Matters

The shop is open from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday in the winter and Monday through Saturday in the summer. After-hours appointments are also available.

The technicians are paid an hourly wage, the office staff is on salary and the salespeople are salaried plus earn a sales commission.

Because of last year’s economic downturn, The AutoDream Group’s staff was reduced to its current size of 12. The shop did manage to maintain volume with the smaller staff. Berglund hopes to hire three or four new employees this year.

Current employees are involved in the hiring process.

“One of things we do is, if I’m hiring a new body man, I let the guys in the shop interview him as well because they’re going to be working with that person, they know the questions to ask,” Berglund said.

New hires are on probation for three months, during which time their coworkers are judging their performance.

“After three months, I interview all the guys here and say, ‘What do you think of Bob the new guy?’ and they’ll tell me, ‘His work is great’ or, ‘His work isn’t good’ or, ‘His work is good, his attitude is no good,’” he said. “During those three months, he’s shown how we do things, the quality level that we’re at and that we all look out for each other, so by the end of three months, he either fits in or he doesn’t.”

Getting the Word Out

The AutoDream Group’s staff had a retreat last summer at its owner’s vacation home in Muskoka, Ontario, where the team met to discuss business, share ideas and brainstorm. Pictures and details of the trip were shared in Fast Times, the shop’s quarterly newsletter, which is available at the shop in printed form, online in electronic form and is also e-mailed to subscribers.

“The idea with the newsletter is it was a good way for us to have something that if we had customers walk in, they would be able to leave with something in their hand and it gave an overview of who we were, what we did and upcoming events that we were involved in,” said Greg Gribble, who works in marketing for the shop and creates each edition of the newsletter.

In addition to news and information about the shop, the newsletter also provides readers with practical care and maintenance information. The fall edition offered an article on winter vehicle storage tips.

“The major benefits have been that we’ve been able to get people to focus on us and get our name out there and circulated, and have the copies of the [newsletter] floating around out there and just trying to drum up business, keep people informed,” Gribble said.

“We have a place that’s very unique and we try to get as many people in here as possible, so any opportunity that we get for them to identify this building with hot rods, we like to take that and get people coming through the front door,” he added.

On the Town

The shop holds an annual open house to show off its work, as well as attract new customers.

Another way The AutoDream Group gets people coming in is by attending car shows and cruise nights. The company dedicates half of its marketing budget to these events, paying for entrance fees, booth space, transportation for its project vehicles and expenses for staff members.

“You’ve got an audience there [of] potential customers,” Berglund said. “[It’s] more like target marketing rather than mass marketing, and you get people talking, you meet people, you show them what you’re doing. It’s basically the same idea as the open house, instead of them coming to you, though, you go to them.”

The car shows and cruise nights also provide a great venue for promoting the open house.

“We [pass out] information at car shows we [attend] prior to the open house, there [are] cruise nights pretty much every night of the week,” Berglund said. “We’ll take banners and fliers to cruise nights, too, [and] hand those out to people.”

Market Research

The shop does the best it can to track how successful all of its marketing efforts, including attending car shows and cruise nights, are.

“We ask people when they come in how they heard of us, and some people will say, ‘I heard you on the radio,’ or ‘I read your ad’ or, ‘I saw you at a car show,’ [but] some of them don’t even know,” Berglund said. “It’s really hard to track response. Another problem with marketing is measuring success; it’s difficult and sometimes you don’t remember to ask people and sometimes they have various sources. That’s one of the tricky parts if figuring out what works and what doesn’t.”

The AutoDream Group continues searching for the best methods to get its name out, such as selling restored vehicles on eBay, redesigning its website to be more search-engine-friendly, working with college students to create a television commercial and investing time in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

In the first few weeks of the new year, those efforts seemed to be paying off.

“We [saw] a remarkable increase in calls in the first three weeks of January and we’re excited about it,” Berglund said.

The AutoDream Group

Address: 4605 Kent Ave., Niagara Falls, ON, Canada L2H 1J3

Phone: (905) 353-1500

Services Offered: Audio/video, body and paint, brakes, car sales, commercial and corporate work, complete restoration, consignment car sales, custom work, engine rebuilding, fabrication, fiberglass, storage, suspension and upholstery

Number of Current Projects: 8

Current Project Cars: 1882 horse-drawn hearse, 1929 Graham Paige, 1931 Ford hot rod, 1959 MGA custom, two 1967 Mustang customs, 1968 Dodge Charger, 1969 Firebird Trans Am

Website: www.theautodreamgroup.com

Tags: Canadian shops, Company Marketing, Company Newsletters, Hiring Employees, Online Marketing, Restorer Profile, Social Networking