2) Three out of four customers who watch your television spot will replay the visual image when they hear the corresponding audio portion in your corresponding radio commercial.

3) Place your vending equipment by the change machines or vacuums. Vending items are impulse sales and good location is the key to good sales.

4) With your advertising, don't sell cheap - sell quality. This is what customers want and it gives you a fair return and chance to upgrade.

5) Cable TV advertising is inexpensive and can reach thousands of potential customers. Call for price quotes and consider allocating money for cable advertising in your budget- you may be surprised.

6) Make your TV and radio ads look and sound attractive while keeping in mind the economic and cultural breakdowns and tastes of your target population.

7) Choose the right vending items. Air fresheners, foaming tire cleaners, protectant packets and window wipes are the most popular vended items at many locations.

8) Because vending items are impulse buys, offer a variety of items and consumers are bound to find something they want.

9) Always set your pricing for vending and washes based on the economic breakdown of your area. Two-hundred cars at $1 profit a car is better than 25 at a $2 profit each.

10) Keep your vending machines working. If someone loses money once, they may be reluctant to ever try again.

11) Empower your best customers to give special discounts, services or privileges to their friends, relatives and associates.

12) Create a frequent customer club with special benefits and upgrade deals.

13) Develop a sentence, phrase or tag-line that outlines an important valued difference between you and your competitors. Lines like "We produce the cleanest cars in the area," or "Our customer service is the best around" can help bring customers to your wash.

14) Use bright, visible, professional-looking signs to draw attention to the products and services you offer. Don't assume people already know.

15) Change your signs periodically. It keeps customers from getting bored and ignoring them.

16) Imprinted, promotional items are great advertising because they are retained by employees and customers for long periods of time.

17) Establishing a database of customers and their preferences helps you make customers feel important and will give you a better chance to retain their business.

18) Promotional events geared at both adults and children can significantly boost your image and increase carwash volume.

19) A Web site is an inexpensive way to get the word out about your location and its services.

20) When creating coupons, use a powerful headline with your name and service in bold, capital letters.

21) The offer on a coupon should be in a dotted-line box, and written in colors that will make it stand out. Readers decide in less than 10 seconds whether to keep a coupon, and this will attract their eyes to the most important part immediately.

22) Guarantee satisfaction and advertise it. This makes customers feel more confident about coming to your wash.

23) Be able to entertain customers as they wait, whether it's through a fast-food counter, a television or allowing them to watch the carwashing process. With the right entertainment, customers may decide to stay longer, for express detailing services, a lube or other off-line extras.

24) Get customer feedback through surveys, and heed their suggestions.

25) Set aside an afternoon every 90 days to make thank-you calls to important customers.

26) Revamp your service steps around the customer's convenience, not yours.

27) Train employees not only to do their jobs, but to interact with customers and be persuasive.

28) Clip articles of interest to key customers - fleets, new car dealers, for instance, and send them along with a handwritten note.

29) Always have someone visible and available to address customer concerns. Never force customers to find someone to help them.

30) Periodically inspect cars yourself, using a checklist. This will boost the quality image of your establishment.

31) You can produce fliers advertising your services on your own copy machine. They're a cheap way to get the word out to your customers.

32) Write articles for local publications such as newspapers and community bulletins that reach your target population. Make your goal to inform - not market. Consumers would rather read advice from a car cleaning "expert" than get the feeling you're just trying to pitch your services.

33) Make a deal with a local restaurant or other organization to distribute each other's fliers, coupons or business cards at your respective places of business.

34) Join community organizations. Members of clubs such as Elk, Kiwanis, Lions or Rotary often patronize other members' businesses. These clubs also help you keep in touch with other small-business people and community leaders.

35) Sponsor community events or allow charities to sell coupons or discounts to your carwash to raise money. They show you're willing to support the community that supports you.

36) Rent mall space and sell gift certificates around the winter holiday season. Some carwash manufacturers even offer a mini-wash you can set up.

37) Give customers a punch card, and offer every 10th (or eighth or 12th) wash free.

38) Offer a discount if a customer returns in a specified period of time. If you have a customer tracking system, you may be able to do this automatically.

39) Base your promotion and coupon mailings on database information. This will save you money and still allow you to hit the right customers.

40) The color red is scientifically known to increase blood pressure and cause anxiety, while blue and pink are known to promote greater relaxation. Consider biological reactions to colors when creating signs and painting tunnels.

41) When you need a product or service, try to buy from one of your top customers.

42) Send new-home buyers a coupon for a free carwash. It's a good way to target potential customers with high disposable income. Local governments have home purchase information; you can also buy a list from a direct-mail house.

43) Always write a business plan identifying your goals. Keep this a living document and organize advertising, promotions, training and other operations around it.

44) Offer fleet discounts to win the business of companies with cars, rental agencies and car dealerships. This business will be consistent and less affected by seasons or weather patterns.

45) Offer a substantial discount for customers during the month of their birthday.

46) Offer a senior citizen discount. Most senior citizens don't wash their own cars, so this is a good target group. However, only offer the discount if they request it. Never ask or assume someone's age.

47) Put promotional material and sign-up sheets for clubs next to the cash register. It's the one place where all of your customers need to go.

48) Position your detailing or extra service areas where regular wash customers can see what's going on. Many will decide to keep up with the Jones.

49) Accept all major credit cards. While it costs you a couple of percentage points off the top, it's tough to sell extra services - especially express detailing and oil changes - to a customer with only $10 in their pocket.

50) Offer incentives to employees who sign up the most club members or sell the most extra services. Weight the plans so the more they sell, the greater the commission percentage.

51) Always offer packages. Even by reducing the prices of individual items in the package, you'll still be generating greater revenue per car.

52) When offering packages that include a carwash, offer an itemized pricing list or throw in the carwash for free. Otherwise the customer may worry that they spent $25 on a carwash.

53) Always offer packages suited to the climate and season.

54) The average price of top-selling packages is between $10 and $15. It's easier to sell additional packages when their price isn't much more than what a customer would've spent on a regular wash anyway.

55) Always offer at least three packages. If you offer only two, people tend to take the cheaper one. With three or more, most customers will pick something in the middle.

56) Offer a special of the month. Once something is on sale, people start wanting things they hadn't even thought of before.

57) Choose a catchy name for a product or package that conveys what it does, while making the pitch to sell it easier. For example, "The Protect and Shine" package - wash, rust inhibitor or clearcoat protectant, and a polish wax.

58) When you tailor your products and services around the needs of the population of your region, your salespeople come across as giving advice, instead of making a pitch. "Our wheel blast will get that sticky red clay out from your wheel wells."

59) When customers don't need products or services, tell them. This builds trust and loyalty.

60) Create and distribute a brochure to better educate customers about various dangers to their cars and how your packages address these threats. An educated customer is a one who won't be afraid to spend more.

61) Most customers only see your building for a couple of seconds as they drive by. Do something interesting architecturally - add flower beds, for instance - to catch their eye.

62) Put mints and thank-you cards, perhaps with a coupon, on the dashboard of any car you service. This will generate repeat business.

63) Offer parents a discounted carwash for their children's good grades. You can run this promotion four times a year; it makes parents and children feel rewarded.

64) Have rehearsed greetings and good-byes. The two things that stick in most customers' minds are their first impressions and their experience as they leave.

65) Don't knock your competitors. It destroys your classy image and will sidetrack your marketing focus.

66) Some radio stations barter free or cheap radio time for promotional gifts or services that they can give away as prizes.

67) Don't be afraid to accept expired coupons. Many customers are only there because they have a coupon, and it can help you make them regular customers.

68) Give a free wash or discounts to new car buyers. Most dealerships would love to offer this with their cars, and it gets new car owners in the habit of washing their cars and coming to you for it.

69) Coupons printed on the back of grocery store cash register receipts can be inexpensive and effective.

70) Write for an environmental publication or speak to an environmental group on the water conservation benefits of a professional carwash. This can lead to free publicity and word-of-mouth advertising from these usually vocal groups.

71) Have a step-by-step procedure in place to handle any crisis that hits the media. A quick response can protect your carwash's image.

72) Go out of your way to introduce yourself to your federal, state and local government officials. They can be strong protectors of your business, and it never hurts to say the mayor is a customer.

73) When doing a direct mailing, postcards are more likely to be read than a letter in an envelope.

74) Sponsor a Little League or other type of sports team. It's good publicity and gets everyone saying your name.

75) Whenever you're going to increase prices, post a sign giving advance notice and explaining your reasons. This builds trust and will help silence complaints.

76) Raise your prices every year by at least the percentage the Consumer Price Index increased. This will protect your margins and is small enough to barely be noticed.

77) If an across-the-board price increase proves necessary, do it in stages. For example, raise the price of one service one quarter, and another service the next. This helps alleviate the "shock factor" of a price increase.

78) When adding a service to a package, don't add anything labor-intensive. The extra labor costs will eat up any additional profit you would receive from the package mark-up.

79) Always look for ideas from businesses that market services similar to yours. Don't be afraid to copy, in a limited fashion, their successes and learn from their failures. Let their dollars work as your "guinea pig" from time to time.

80) While it is good to be enthusiastic about selling extra services, never ask more than twice. People will begin to feel uncomfortable coming to your wash.

81) Marketing experts suggest that carwash companies consistently budget about 10 percent of revenues for publicity and advertising. This investment usually yields high dividends.

82) Never place all of your ads in one medium. This is a recipe for advertising budget disaster.

83) Ask every customer how they heard of your establishment. This will give you an accurate feel for which areas of advertising are most successful, or whether the location is selling itself.

84) If, after trying different media and talking to experts, your advertising is not paying for itself, don't be afraid to stop. Perhaps the word is already out, you may have fulfilled your market potential, or you might have customer service or reputation issues that need to be dealt with first.

85) The two things any media relations expert should be able to provide you with immediately are ideas on how to reach your target audience and detailed audience statistics. If they can't, you may be wasting your money and should probably shop around.

86) If you don't have the space to offer services like express detailing, windshield, dent or scratch repair, you should form a mutually beneficial relationship with detailers who offer these services and will work with you. Don't let a lack of space rob you of the chance to be a full-service business.

87) When hiring an ad agency, have candidates bring samples of their work to your first meeting. Any company can talk a good game - see what they produce.

88) Never burn bridges with ad agencies you don't end up hiring. If you decide to change companies, you'll be in position to execute a rapid switch.

89) When dealing with your ad agency, be deeply involved in budgetary considerations, approval of all creative work and media placements, but stay out of day-to-day matters. These experts need room to do their work and no one works well with someone looking over their shoulder.

90) Sufficient lighting not only makes your location more attractive, it also serves as nighttime advertising.

91) Use your send-off to remind customers of the great service you just provided - "We just finished putting a beautiful shine on your vehicle and it looks great," or to promote future business - "To maintain maximum shine and protection, we recommend that you have us reapply the express wax every three months."

92) When offering coupons, give a dollars-off rather than a percentage-off discount. Customers want to know immediately what they'll be saving.

93) When creating signs, spacing between letters should be 20 to 40 percent of letter height, or approximately half the width of the letter "O." This will increase the readability of the same height letter by 25 percent.

94) Mailings to customers should always include your signature. If it's an obvious form letter, sign with a different color ink. If the piece isn't important enough for you to sign, your customer won't think its important either.

95) Make your wash as easy to locate and identify as you can. Give people an intersection, a landmark or a symbol to remember, like "the carwash on the circle," or "the wash with the flags." These directions can go in your ads, as well.

96) The US Chamber of Commerce says 80 percent of sales come from within a three- to five-mile radius of a typical business. Keep this in mind when distributing coupons or fliers.

97) Put on a happy face. When there are kids in the car, have greeters at your exterior-only carwash draw smiley faces on windows as they mark the car for the appropriate package. This will give the kids something else to watch as they head through the tunnel.

98) Post letters from satisfied customers and newspaper stories about your wash on a lobby bulletin board. It conveys a positive message to other customers.

99) The maximum number of words people can comfortably remember in a slogan is seven.

100) Display a sign that says "Open" any time you are open for business. It may seem obvious, but many experienced operators believe that without such a notice, a potential impulse customer who sees no activity might drive away. Small neon signs are relatively inexpensive, highly visible and particularly effective.

101) Hold a "dirtiest car" contest at local high school sporting events. Donate a free wash, and have a team of students pick a spectator's car during the first half. The lucky winner can be announced at halftime, along with the name of your wash.