What is the best way to advertise a mobile oil change business if you want to get 80 percent of your customers to come from corporate parking lots and fleets of vehicles and only 20 percent of your customers to come from residential services.

Sure, direct mail will work for the residential part of your business but if it is only 20 percent of your market mix then how will you advertise to get to do oil changes on all the fleets in your community and how will you reach all of the corporations in the area so that they will allow you on their property to change the oil for employees while they work?

There are a couple of things you can do which have worked good for our company; Oil Change Guys.com and those include putting a flyer insert into the Chamber of Commerce newsletter, which is a bright color and a half sheet of paper with your phone number in bold at the top. Another way to get to the corporations is to contact a human resource director and ask if there is an employee newsletter that you can advertise in.

If there is not they may invite you in to explain the services you provide and therefore you get in to talk to the decision maker. If there is an employee newsletter it will be some of the best money you ever spend to advertise in it. Please consider this in 2006.

Lance Winslow