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Joe Schafranek is an Account Manager at Tread Partners, a marketing agency focused on the tire and auto repair industry. With roots in Detroit and hands-on shop experience at Firestone and Big O, Joe brings a unique perspective to digital marketing...
Joe Schafranek is an Account Manager at Tread Partners, a marketing agency focused on the tire and auto repair industry. With roots in Detroit and hands-on shop experience at Firestone and Big O, Joe brings a unique perspective to digital marketing through his understanding of both operations and data. Prior to Tread Partners, he helped grow BAIC and explored data-centric roles in the auto aftermarket. Today, Joe leverages that diverse background to help multi-location shops increase car count through performance-driven strategies.
In this episode…Marketing in the auto repair industry often feels confusing and inconsistent, especially for multi-location shop owners. With so many digital channels and buzzwords, it’s hard to know what’s actually driving car count and boosting business. How can tire dealers make smarter marketing decisions based on data and results, not guesswork?
According to Joe Schafranek of Tread Partners, it starts by focusing on transparency and measurable results. Joe leverages his real-world shop experience and data expertise to help clients improve performance using tailored PPC campaigns, SEO strategy, and localized promotions. He emphasizes the importance of tying marketing activity directly to car count and revenue growth — not just impressions or traffic.
On this episode of Gain Traction, Mike Edge welcomes Joe Schafranek for a conversation about data-driven marketing in the tire and auto repair space. Joe explains how to tie marketing efforts directly to car count and revenue, why transparency matters, and how shop owners can avoid wasting budget on ineffective campaigns. He also shares a case study on how a $250 Facebook ad led to $22K Saturdays.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:This episode is brought to you by Tread Partners.
At Tread Partners, we provide digital marketing for multi-location tire dealers and auto repair shops.
By using our strategy, branding, and marketing services, we help shops sell more tires and put more cars in bays.
We’ve helped companies like Action Gator Tire, Colony Tire and Service, and Ulmer’s Auto Care Center bring extreme growth in paid leads, ROI, and searches.
So, what are you waiting for?
Visit www.treadpartners.com or email info@treadpartners.com to learn more.
The Gain Traction Podcast features top tire and auto repair professionals, shop owners, industry executives, and thought leaders.
Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast where we feature top tire and auto repair professionals, shop owners, industry executives and thought leaders and share their inspiring stories.
Now let's get started with the show.
Hey folks, welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, the official podcast for tire business.
We have a great podcast show for you today.
I am Mike Edge, your host.
My guest today is Joe Schaefernek, account manager with Tread Partners.
He has a wealth of knowledge in tire and auto repair digital marketing for multi locations.
But before we begin, this episode is also brought to you by Tread Partners, our parent company.
Tread Partners specializes in PPC marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops.
Tread Partners works with clients that have hundreds of locations, down to five locations.
As you know, you can spend a lot of money trying to master the art and science of PPC digital marketing.
Let trade partners make you way more efficient and effective.
Get started with a review of your PPC structure and strategy today.
Hire the best contact Tread Partners and let them look under the hood of PPC marketing today.
Don't waste any more time or money.
You can contact Tread partners by visiting treadpartners.com My past guest shout out for today is TJ White with tiresource.
Had a great interview with him a couple weeks ago.
He's out of the Canton, Akron, Ohio area.
If you haven't listened to it, please give it a shot.
It's@Gaintraction Podcast.com Joe welcome to Gain Traction.
Mike, thank you so much for having me.
It's, it's a pleasure to finally be a part of one of these podcasts with you.
Well, you know, we've been around three and a half, four years now.
So we finally decided, we thought Joe coming on would be a, a good thing.
But you know, you're in a unique spot.
You've been in this business for a long time, but you bring a really cool perspective in marketing with a lot of the data experience that you have.
But before we get into all that, tell me a little bit about yourself.
I know you're originally from Michigan, right?
Yeah, born and raised in Detroit.
You love hockey?
Love hockey.
Yeah.
Big, big Lions guy.
Big, big Red Wings fan.
Big Tigers fan.
You know, carry, you carry that Michigan Michig there go all the.
Chicago listeners right there.
They just.
Oh yeah, turned it off right there.
Sorry for all those folks out there.
But yeah, grew up in Detroit.
Made my way to Arizona with my family.
Some of our roots on my dad's side of the family were out in Phoenix.
And it was a good opportunity for us back in the late 2010s and early 2010s for that matter.
And that's where I actually got started in automotive as well, believe it or not.
You know, moving from Motor City and then out to Valley of the sun and start working shops.
But out there they do have, don't they have all the test courses for a lot of automotive stuff?
Yeah, we had the GM proving grounds there for quite some time.
Not too far from where I went to high school and whatnot.
I think Ford still does, if I'm not mistaken.
I don't know anyway.
No, that's pretty cool.
But you're talking about a climate switch, man.
Yeah.
You still played hockey, right?
I mean you.
And you got your kids in it, right?
Yeah, yeah, I grew my family out there, started them skating, you know, two, three years old and still to this day they skate and I get out there with them and coach and still play some men's leagues here and there.
So definitely that's a part of Michigan that never left my heart and will continue on all the way into to my later years.
Well, I know that now you've moved in the Raleigh market.
Raleigh, North Carolina.
So you're still re.
You're still engaged in hockey with the kids, right?
Yeah, yeah, I try to.
That's a part of the community that our family really enjoys, you know, getting to know and growing.
I've got family members right on my wife's side of the family that help grow the sport as well and coach on a much higher level than I do.
But it's definitely prominent throughout the Franic household and all of our family members.
So what was your.
Because I know you got retail experience.
Was that your first experience in automotive retail?
Yeah.
So believe it or not, right out of high school, I.
In Arizona there's a big market for full service car wash.
So I, I started selling windshields just to make, you know, a quick buck here and there and was soon recruited to Firestone where I really got my kind of gateway into automotive, aftermarket automotive and yeah, repair and tire.
I started building my career through the great training of Bridgestone.
Firestone.
That is training though.
Yeah.
Oh, world class.
I mean if there's ever any advice I give to folks, at least back then it was, you know, working for a bigger corporation that, you know, has proven out exactly how it, maybe not exactly how it should be done, but one of the Steps to, well, having a successful shop.
It was you might say for their scale.
They've got some very good processes.
Sure.
Place and things.
Yeah, absolutely.
What a name to know.
Right.
That's a, that's a household name that's been around for many years outside of just tire as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
So you were in there several years.
What'd you do after that?
Yeah, so I started to move into a little bit of back and forth.
I got into my first, I guess you could say marketing job.
Right.
With, with the company Bay iq.
I was one of the very first early employees with Bay IQ back in 2015, 2014.
There's probably a lot of listeners that know that company.
Oh, I can imagine.
I'm sure there's quite a few that are still using them.
Yeah.
To this day, many years later.
But yeah, I worked my way up through management with Bridgestone and then took the leap with Pat Murphy who founded Bay IQ and spent a few years growing that and learning that and kind of watching some changes and learning more about the independent industry and some of the smaller franchise and things of that nature before relentlessly jumping back into retail and bouncing a little bit around between the automotive side.
Yeah, but you're still in automotive.
You're still in the space per se.
And then what happened next?
I spent a few years with Big O, one of the, if not the largest franchise group in the Southwest, with the Tony Williams group out of Phoenix, Arizona.
He's got I think 19 stores now throughout Arizona and growing and spent a few years with them, learned a different side of the business.
Right.
And I, I often joke it was the wild west out there in Arizona.
Right.
But it's a little corporate structure that you learn in your early days and definitely that stepping stool to what shops could be and how I learned in my experience and it was a good platform to jump around and really learn before, you know, seeing also how in some of these independents.
Right.
A lot of these independent owners that, and privately owned shops that we work with nowadays, just getting a different perspective that wasn't so by the book.
Well, then you got to Tread Partners eventually.
Correct?
Yeah, yeah.
Not too, not too long after that I had a short venture with a data company called Sidekick360.
Yeah.
And then transitioned it to digital marketing with Tread Partners.
So what's interesting about your career is that you have really hands on experience in the shops.
Right.
But.
And you got great training.
But then you seem to have grasped deep knowledge in data and then the marketing side with, with data.
And I, that's why I think this was interesting having you on the podcast, because you bring a perspective that, you know, I did a speech about a year ago, and I walked on stage, I was keynote speaker, and I was asking.
It was a.
In front of a, a large group of dealers, and I said, can I get a show of hands on how many people like to spend money on marketing?
And no one raised their hand.
And I, and I.
My retort to them was immediately, well, nobody likes to spend money with you either, you know, and then, and that's the truth.
I said, but what you guys do to try to accomplish or overcome that is, and accomplish trust is, you know, you use dvi, you try sales training.
You try to teach people how to tell people what their problems are with their car.
Because nobody's waking up that day thinking, hey, I can't wait to spend money.
I'm like, you know, something torn up on my car or my check engine or whatever it may be, or I need new tires.
But you got to make that as clear as possible, because once you build that trust, then they realize, you know, I'm not trying to.
Somebody's not trying to rip me off.
And I think some of the stereotype in, at least in digital marketing is there's a lot of lack of understanding sometimes, and there's a lack of understanding of data.
And the challenge you have is everybody talks in the same terms, just like shops do.
Right?
But how do you know one shop knows it better than the other?
Right?
You don't.
I mean, if you don't know the industry, I mean, if you don't know.
So how do you qualify that?
Well, I mean, based on results, I guess, reviews, things like that.
But I think it's important to convey to people, like, through your experience, particularly, you deal with a lot of clients that enter marketing.
Of course they're already doing something, right?
I mean, they're.
Right.
They're out of the g. They've got something going.
A lot of times, though, they may think, hey, my marketing is not working, or it is working based on just the revenue.
And revenue is not the clear indicator.
I mean, you might be successful in your marketing, might not be doing a thing for it, but yet you don't touch it because you say, we gotta leave that alone because my, you know, my numbers are up and I'm not gonna mess with marketing.
Right, but from your experience, what do you feel that and what do you think?
What's your experience with regards to clients in the automotive space?
You know, dealers, I know you deal with multi location dealers.
They have a whole world of problems and challenges that they face compared to a single shop.
But what do you, what's your, I guess, biggest takeaway in regards to their experiences with marketing?
Well, I think you made some good points in that question as well.
And when you think about the core of the shop, right, what are we doing every day?
Like obviously we're out helping people or servicing vehicles, doing it right, getting it done the first time.
Shoot, in some cases we're even out there busting cars ourselves, right?
Doing oil changes, doing tires.
And you often forget about some of the things that are driving that business to you.
And I think some of the perception can vary, right, because in my early days of doing this, right, the first marketing experience I had, it was all retention based.
So it was like, hey, what are we doing with the people that we already have?
And in a lot of cases, I think some folks may view that as, that's what true marketing is, right?
We're just continuing to get back to people that we've already serviced, make sure we're keeping them, retaining that business.
What I, what I come to find now in this world that I'm living in marketing these days is it's a lot more than that, right?
It's a lot more complex.
There's, there's only so much you can tap into with your return business.
You know, they're going to come back a few times a year.
You know, you're going to deliver great customer service, get them the right estimate and the best price and keep them at their home shop.
But how do you grab, There's a.
There'S a statistic out there that's like you, on average every year you've got a shrinkage of about 15 of your customer base.
And that's due to people moving, right.
New cars, right?
Just life, right?
But if you do anything for the new or acquiring new customers, then you're, you know, in two years you're down 30% on if shrinkage is at 15.
Right.
That's a lot, you know, and so you got to have a way to.
Got to bring up new acquisition, right?
And there's much more to the equation than just delivering great customer service and consistency across that.
And that's where that's, that's what I've come to Enjoy learning and watching along the way.
Working with the shops I work with now is most folks are sophisticated these days and how they're approaching things that they're taking the effort to grasp those new opportunities.
And a lot of it's through paid search.
Right.
A lot of it's through growing organically with your SEO efforts.
The biggest part, and I should say the biggest surprise to a lot of these shops I work with now is really how quantifiable that can be.
Right.
There's so much unknown in it.
Right?
You know, you're spending the money on it.
You know, hey, I'm spending a few hundred to get some clicks here and we did these press releases and a couple other things for SEO to try to make sure we're showing up in the search engines.
But how do you prove that?
Right?
How do you prove what that return was?
And I think a large part of it is, you know, in combination to the digital measurements that we have at our accessibility now and the understanding how, you know, it's not always easy to read a Google report by any means, but there's certainly programs out there that have helped make that a lot.
You know, it translated it in a way that's understandable to a shop owner and to the key members of these multi store systems.
And looking at, you know, that just the pure car count growth as well and things, it's interesting you bring that.
Up, but one of the things that I think is interesting about you is that, and I think it comes from your experience in shops and stuff.
But at the end of the day, I mean you can have all the impressions you want, but if car count's not up, then I mean that's a clearer indication than impressions.
And yeah, you know, I've had nice conversations with you, but you've always alluded to this with customers that hey, I, you know, ultimately I'm interested in the data that we get but ultimately you got to communicate to me that revenues, car counts and even certain types of sales.
Let's say for instance, that you're, you know, you're spending money strategically for brake repair or some, or even if it's oil changes, whatever it is you've, you're dialing into a specific, you know, location and a specific service that you feel that the, this location is deficient in.
Why aren't we getting more of these?
We should be averaging higher number of these.
So you'll dial that in for a client but also you're looking at across the board into the locations.
Are we, are we doing a good job across the whole board at things that we should be getting more of in every location?
Is that.
Absolutely, yeah.
And I think a large part of that you touched on it without saying it directly.
It's the transparency, right?
In the same fashion that I'm going to be transparent about what's working and not working based on the dollars you're spending and the results we're seeing, I'd like to see that same transparency coming back on how are we executing on what's coming through.
We know we just pumped a bunch of money into a break campaign or an alignment campaign or even a tire campaign.
How many of those calls can we go back and listen to or how many of those forms that we saw filled can we put a dollar amount to and say, hey, yeah, that campaign was successful because of what we did and how we delivered it and how effective the messaging maybe had been or how easy it was to convert?
I mean, some of the best campaigns that we've run, you know, have come at the cost of sacrificing some free services, but the turnout that it produced.
And I'll keep this one a little anonymous, but a special client of mine recently expanded to Saturdays, right?
Open on Saturdays.
Big change for them.
Not something they've done in the 20 plus years of business that they've been open.
And as a way to fill those bays on Saturdays, we offered a free oil change exclusive to Facebook only, right?
And you think now how do you give away a free oil change that seems like such a, a gimmicky thing to do.
Everybody's giving away a cheap oil change and it turned out really well.
I think their best Saturday was the second Saturday of the month.
They did a 22, 000 day, right?
And now I've consistently throughout that month averaged more than $15,000 a Saturday after never being open before on Saturdays.
Not having good customer base helps that, right?
Seeing that and it's floating around online, but you're hitting these eyes of people who maybe didn't know about you at all through Facebook.
It's complete awareness play something that they had never known about your shop, didn't even know you existed.
And what easier way to get them in and fill.
Fill your appointment calendar, really?
We filled their scheduler with a free oil change.
I got a question for you.
Was that campaign organic on Facebook or was it an actual ad campaign on Facebook?
It's an ad campaign.
Yeah.
Now that's powerful.
I mean, that's one of the things that I know you're very involved with is you know, digital ads across, you know, different mediums.
But that tells you right there that people will respond to an ad if that was the only place that you guys targeted for the Facebook audience.
Yeah.
And what's even crazier is you hear about all these shops spending thousands of dollars a month on ppc.
I think that the total campaign for that whole month of it running maybe three weeks, no more, 250 bucks.
Isn't that amazing?
Yeah.
Crazy.
Well, see, and that's the thing that's interesting to me, you know, my background and everything.
But I, I've always been interested in, you know, results and seeing people get results.
But it's amazing to me the confusion that exists out there because you know, if you're just a, if you're a shop owner or multi, I mean, you know, you own multi location shops and let's say you're not at that level where you've hired like you know, some in house CMO type, you know, you're not P.E.
necessarily, but you really don't know what, you don't know and it is harmful because you can throw money all over the place and what you seem to be able to provide people is that ability to, don't to be able to say, listen, we've done this before and that's going to be a, an endless bottle in this pit, you know, or that's a bad place to go with your money or whatever.
I mean, I think that's the opportunity that you like to present to people is hey, we've got this experience and we can really shortcut your trip or your time frame to see results.
Yeah, absolutely.
Without, without the shameless plug of using our name with Tread Partners.
Right.
A lot of us have been in that world.
We've lived that experience.
We trialed married, we.
What the majority of the marketing industry has done specific to this industry and we know how to do it.
Right.
Well, what I like about it is, and I am highlighting it, but what I like about it is the, that you're in a position where this is literally all you do and all you talk about.
So there's so many scenarios that you have seen.
Whereas, you know, somebody may be coming from a, well, reputable general practitioner of marketing, but if they don't know the industry.
Yeah.
They may Be pretty good at SEO, they may be pretty good at ppc, but again, if they don't know the angles in the industry, they spend a lot of time wasting a lot of money trying to figure those, dial those things in.
Yeah, I agree.
We see, we see it pretty often.
Yeah, no doubt.
What do you consider the most exciting thing about your job in marketing?
You know, it's such a small world that we live in that we all, we're all very similar and how we go about these things.
You know, no two shops are the same, that's for sure.
But we're all like minded in this.
We all see the same successes in and how we run our shops and what our end goal execution is and how we spend these dollars effectively.
It's really just with every new client that comes aboard and every new face I get to meet understanding those challenges that we've encountered and seen before, maybe even experience directly head on.
Right.
As, as former shop owners.
I think, I think that's really the most exciting thing then watching the successes of how we help in their shop and grow their numbers and grow their clientele overall.
Yeah.
Well, and it's fascinating how much can be left out there that you don't realize that you can grow within a certain, you know, radius around your story.
You realize, man, I've been missing some really good opportunities here and I didn't have to spend as much as I had been or I thought I'd have to spend to get there.
Right.
Yeah, just give people more like a personal view of who you are.
What is, what's your favorite hobby outside of hockey?
Ooh, I'm a bit of a tech nerd, I guess you could say.
I really like to get involved in some programming and some site building and really the ins and outs of the Internet.
I like to explore all different categories of that.
It's probably my second favorite thing besides really being an athlete and activities around sports.
Well, I think that's kind of cool considering your occupation that you actually, I mean what your hobby is similar to what your occupation is.
You, you enjoy the space tremendously.
Yeah.
In some ways you wouldn't, it's very wide ranged the amount of interest I have.
But that certainly peaks as well.
I mean, you know, we're, I would say trade partners occupationally speaking.
It's more like being a cardiologist because they don't tread.
Does not you Know, the general practitioning of marketing, it's strictly in this industry, strictly with what we, you know, the digital space, although I know it goes broader in many cases, but that's the lane.
Yeah, but it's cool that you really like being in this space in a lot of ways.
I guess I'm trying to say I like that.
I think there's always something more to learn, right?
Whether it's through automotive or through.
Through experience.
There's never a dull time to learn more.
Is there anything that, like a motto, a mantra quote, something that stands out to you, that you like to live by, or maybe you just found it and you really like it.
Anything, a mentor, you know, you touched on it a couple of times throughout this.
You don't know what you don't know.
And there's a whole world of discovery out there.
And every day, again, is a new experience to learn something and to grow within, you know, the bounds that you're given.
And.
I try to, I try to keep that close to the heart that there.
If you ain't learning, you ain't.
You ain't working, you ain't winning, right?
Like, you gotta.
You gotta figure something out throughout the day, even if it's something so small.
There's no other way to execute your life, I don't think, without continuing to try to strive forward.
I love it.
Well, I'm gonna leave you on that.
And I appreciate you being finally on Gain Traction, man.
I appreciate you as always, my friend.
It's great to be here.
Well, to our audience out there, to our listeners, thank you for being part of the podcast.
We are always grateful for you.
If you'd like to find out and listen to more podcasts like this, please Visit Gain Traction podcast.com Until next time, have a great day.
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