How Mobile Detailers Can Stay Busy This Winter
How Mobile Detailers Can Stay Busy This Winter
For mobile auto detailers, winter can be one of the most challenging times of the year. Colder temperatures, shorter days, snow, ice, and freezing water can make it difficult or sometimes impossible to perform exterior detailing services outdoors.
But winter does not have to mean shutting down your detailing business until spring.
With some planning, creativity, and smart marketing, mobile detailers can continue generating revenue throughout the colder months while positioning themselves for an even stronger spring.
1. Shift Your Focus Toward Interior Detailing
When temperatures drop, consider putting more emphasis on interior services. Winter can actually create tremendous demand for interior detailing.
Snow, road salt, mud, slush, and moisture get tracked into vehicles every day. Carpets and floor mats take a beating, and vehicles can quickly develop stains, odors, and dirty interiors.
Promote services such as:
- Complete interior detailing
- Carpet and upholstery cleaning
- Steam cleaning
- Leather cleaning and conditioning
- Interior ceramic protection
- Salt stain removal
- Pet hair removal
- Odor removal
- Ozone treatments
Customers may not be thinking about having their vehicle polished in January, but they may be very interested in getting the salt stains out of their carpeting.
2. Find Indoor Space to Work
One of the smartest strategies for a mobile detailer is to temporarily become a little less mobile during the winter.
Look for another automotive business that has unused indoor space and approach the owner about renting a bay or work area during the winter months.
Potential partners could include a:
- Tire shop
- Mechanical repair shop
- Collision or body shop
- Used car dealership
- Automotive accessory shop
- Window tint shop
- Self-storage facility with appropriate commercial workspace
- Tunnel automatic car wash
A tunnel car wash can be an especially interesting opportunity. Many automatic car washes do not offer higher-end detailing, paint correction, ceramic coatings, or extensive interior services. A mobile detailer may be able to complement what the car wash already offers rather than compete with it.
You could negotiate a flat monthly rental amount, rent the space by the day, or potentially create a revenue-sharing arrangement.
There can be benefits for both businesses. You get a warm, dry location to service vehicles, while the host business may be able to offer its customers additional services without hiring and training its own detailing staff.
Before entering into an arrangement, make sure you discuss insurance, utilities, water usage, customer parking, signage, hours of operation, local zoning requirements, and exactly what services you will be permitted to perform.
3. Build Relationships With Dealerships and Automotive Businesses
Winter can be an excellent time to pursue business-to-business accounts.
Contact independent used car dealerships, repair shops, body shops, rental companies, limousine services, transportation companies, delivery companies and other businesses that regularly need vehicles cleaned.
Instead of waiting for individual retail customers to call, one good commercial account could provide multiple vehicles every month.
Don’t just tell a business owner that you are a detailer. Explain how you can help solve a problem.
For example:
“We can help keep your vehicles clean, presentable, and ready for your customers without you having to hire another employee.”
That is a much stronger value proposition.
4. Promote Winter Protection Services
Winter is exactly when customers need protection.
Educate customers about the benefits of protecting their vehicle from road salt, grime, moisture, and harsh winter conditions.
Depending on your capabilities and working environment, winter promotions could include ceramic coatings, paint protection services, wheel protection, glass coatings, trim protection, leather and vinyl coatings, and fabric protection.
Instead of simply advertising a “ceramic coating,” explain why protection matters during winter.
Customers buy solutions to problems.
5. Create Winter Detailing Packages
Consider developing packages specifically for the winter months.
For example, you could offer a “Winter Interior Rescue” package that includes vacuuming, salt stain removal, carpet cleaning, floor mat cleaning, interior cleaning, glass cleaning, and odor treatment.
Another option could be a “Winter Protection Package” that combines exterior cleaning with paint, glass, wheel, or interior protection.
Creating a package gives customers something specific to purchase instead of asking them to figure out which individual services they need.
6. Sell Gift Certificates During the Holidays
November and December can create another revenue opportunity: Gift Certificates. Start promoting gift certificates for Black Friday. Offer 15% Off All Gift Certificates up until Christmas.
Auto detailing makes a great stocking stuffer because nearly everyone has a vehicle, and many people would love to have someone professionally clean it.
Promote gift certificates through your website, Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram, email list, networking group, and text marketing.
You can sell the service during the winter even if the customer chooses to redeem it later.
7. Reconnect With Previous Customers
Your existing customer database can be one of your most valuable winter marketing assets.
Reach out to previous customers with a simple message letting them know about your winter services.
If you use a CRM like the new “CZAR CRM” from The Detail Czar, segment customers based on services they previously purchased. Someone who received an interior detail six months ago may be ready for another one. A ceramic coating customer may be due for an inspection or maintenance detail.
Don’t always wait for customers to remember you. Stay in front of them.
8. Offer Pickup and Delivery When Practical
If you have access to indoor detailing space, pickup and delivery can make your winter service even more convenient.
Customers may love the idea of having their vehicle picked up from their home or workplace, professionally detailed indoors, and returned when completed.
Convenience can be a powerful selling point, especially during cold weather.
Just make sure your insurance properly covers customer vehicles while they are being transported.
9. Use Slow Days to Build Your Spring Pipeline
Not every winter day will be booked, and that’s okay.
Use slower periods productively.
Improve your website. Add photos to your Google Business Profile. Ask past customers for reviews. Create social media content. Contact potential commercial accounts. Follow up with old leads. Build email and text campaigns. Improve your estimating and sales process.
Most importantly, start marketing spring services before spring arrives.
If you wait until the first warm Saturday to begin promoting paint correction, ceramic coatings, and spring detailing, you are already behind.
10. Don’t Disappear During the Winter
One of the biggest mistakes a mobile detailer can make is disappearing from the marketplace for three or four months.
Continue posting photos and videos. Continue requesting reviews. Continue emailing and texting customers. Continue networking with other local businesses.
Even if winter reduces the number of vehicles you can physically detail, your marketing should never go into hibernation.
Winter Can Be an Opportunity
Successful detailing businesses learn to adapt.
If you’re a mobile detailer, winter may require you to change your service mix, find temporary indoor space, develop automotive partnerships, and market differently than you do during the warmer months.
The key is to stop thinking of yourself as simply someone who drives to a customer’s driveway to detail a vehicle.
You are running an auto detailing business.
Mobile detailing is your operating model, but it doesn’t have to limit how or where you generate revenue.
At The Detail Czar, we teach aspiring and existing detailers more than how to clean and protect vehicles. Our Certified Detailer Licensee Private Training Program also focuses on the business and marketing strategies needed to build, operate, market, and grow a professional auto detailing business.
Winter will eventually end. The detailing businesses that use those months wisely can enter spring with more customers, stronger relationships, better marketing, and a pipeline that’s already beginning to fill.
Nick Vacco – The Detail Czar
