Scrolling through the Suds: Building Carwash Social Campaigns (Part I)
By Mel Ohlinger
Social media is a total game-changer for carwashes – and, hands down, the most affordable way to advertise. Love it or hate it, social media isn’t going anywhere in 2025. It’s become part of doing business, and having a social media presence is pretty much non-negotiable if you want to stay competitive in the carwash market. The way you market your carwash is constantly evolving (just like the platforms themselves), and staying on top of those changes can make all the difference—especially when it comes to reaching local customers who aren’t part of your estimated traffic counts.
What makes social media advertising so affordable is that social media profiles are free to create. Anyone can sign up and start posting. Plus, with all the new and accessible cloud-based design tools, creating professional posts that make sense and look good has never been easier. Creating engaging content is another conversation – one that requires some serious thought and time. That’s another story. It takes strategy, creativity, and a little bit of effort. As they say, quality over quantity.
At a minimum, throwing up the occasional post across your channels tells your customers that your business is still alive and ticking but if you want to actually grow your audience and attract new customers, a random photo of your wash on a busy day or a quick Canva graphic for a holiday won’t cut it. You need a plan. A well-thought-out strategy that makes your posts stand out from all the noise. That’s where a social media campaign comes in. A great campaign makes your message clear, grabs attention, and—most importantly—gets results. So, how do you put together a social media campaign that actually works?
Plan Your Campaign
Whether you’re a manufacturer who is rolling out a new product or an operator who wants to bulk up monthly memberships, the general tactic behind planning a campaign is largely the same. Try to follow these steps.
- Define Your Objectives: The first step in planning a social media campaign is to define clear objectives. What do you want to achieve? Are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive membership sign-ups, promote a seasonal offer, or boost customer engagement? Your campaign should have a specific, measurable goal. For example, instead of saying, “we want more memberships,” a better objective would be, “Increase our carwash memberships by 3 per cent over the next 30 days.” This clarity is the secret sauce that will help guide your content and overall strategy. And, while you might not hit those goals during your first few campaigns, narrowing down that desired metric is key to staying on topic and on target.
- Define the length of your campaign: On a calendar, plot out how many days, weeks, or months and which days your campaign will run. This gives you and/or your team an outline to build content towards. When building promotional campaigns that have a set date, like a holiday, we will schedule several “lead-up” posts prior to the event (typically two to three weeks ahead of time), one or two “day of” posts, and at least one “follow up” post to round out the campaign and thank supporters or followers who participated.
- Build your content: With your outline in place, building content becomes a little easier. Stay within the confines of the campaign and do your best to brand designs consistently across the entire length of it. Additionally, creating clear start and stop points on either end of the campaign creates a feeling of finality once the campaign has expired, signaling a return to “regular programming” in your social feeds.
- Digest your metrics: You don’t need a data science degree or a deep understanding of granular analytics to check in on the success of your campaign. Sometimes the tools built into the social media platforms are enough to get an educated glance at what worked and what didn’t work. Take note of posts within the campaign that received a spike in engagement or impressions and try to identify what worked in the design or the content that resonated with your audience. Look at the time of day that your posts went out to identify when your followers are most active, and delve into your demographic information to help shape your next campaign.
On To the Next One
Engagement with your campaign is a fleeting thing, but the life-cycle of the content that you made doesn’t have to be. One of the biggest mistakes we see across the industry and across social media management as a whole, is discarding content after it’s been used.
When your campaign wraps up, don’t let all that awesome content you made go to waste. Give your top-performing posts a second life by repurposing them – find new ways to make them shine! Here are some easy ways to recycle some of your hard work:
- Build a blog: Write a mini blog (~600 words) and host it on your website recounting some of the details of your campaign. If the campaign included an event at your business, attach some photos or testimonials of customers that attended.
- Send out an email blast: If you have a customer list, consider recycling some of your social media content and send out a mass email recapping the campaign.
- Recycle individual posts: Refresh the captions on your post and reuse the graphics or video you built on a future post. This not only saves some time in the design process, but hits new follower’s feeds with content they may not have seen in the past.
A good social media campaign can drive serious results for your carwash. It’s all about setting clear goals, knowing who you’re talking to, sharing content that grabs attention, and tracking what works. Do that, and you’ll boost your brand, sign up more members, and get more cars rolling through. Social media doesn’t have to be complicated and overwhelming – just start where you are, plan it out, and watch your effort and wash queue grow.
Mel Ohlinger is the CEO of OhmCo, a leading carwash marketing agency based in Wisconsin. With over 20 years in marketing, design, and web development, she’s a creative force in the industry. A former cryptologic technician for the NSA, Mel’s background in Morse code and precision laid the groundwork for her expertise in branding and strategy.
