Sure, you know how to get a car clean. But your car wash location isn’t just where the suds hit the side panels; it’s where you solidify your relationship with your customers to ensure that they keep coming back. Are you adequately marketing your car wash operation onsite? Here are some ideas to build your brand.

CREATE A BRAND MASCOT

This theme has triggered something of an arms race in the auto-insurance industry, with Progressive heavily featuring its humorous spokeswoman, Flo; State Farm showcasing star basketball player Chris Paul and his fictitious twin brother, Cliff, who is an insurance agent; Geico featuring its ubiquitous gecko lizard mascot; and Allstate using an actor portraying a character called Mayhem, who shows the various ways things can go wrong for drivers.

At Progressive locations, it’s common to find life-sized cardboard cutouts of Flo that customers sometimes take pictures with, and every time one of those photos ends up on Facebook, the company’s brand is being promoted. Car wash chains could use similar mascots, such as person dressed in a costume holding a sign advertising the company to motorists passing by.

But a word of caution: Choose your mascots carefully. In 2011, the Ice Cream Family Corner and Sandwiches shop in Ocala, Florida, got national media attention when its mascot, a man dressed as an ice cream cone, was mistaken by some motorists as a member of the Ku Klux Klan because the costume featured a white hood adorned with rainbow sprinkles. Such a misstep can doom a brand.

But don’t be afraid to look a bit ridiculous. Umair Suri, who owns more than a dozen retail locations across northeastern New Jersey, said paying someone to stand outside your location in an outlandish costume can be a very effective way to market onsite. Suri said he frequently hired people dressed as video game icons Mario and Luigi to stand outside his Play N Trade video game stores.

Ahead of Valentine’s Day, he’d hire someone to dress as cupid and stand in front of his Edible Arrangements locations. As Mother’s Day neared, the costume switched to a chocolate-covered strawberry. And to attract families to his Carvel ice cream locations, he’d pay a man to dress as SpongeBob SquarePants, even though there is no clear connection between ice cream and the cartoon character. Still, it worked.

“At first, I was against buying these elaborate costumes because they can be expensive to buy or rent, as much as $600,” Suri said. “But I have to say, these things work. I always got my money back because they bring people to your stores.”

USE FURRY FRIENDS

Americans are nuts about their pets. Just ask the American Pet Products Association, which estimates that in 2014, U.S. consumers will spend $58.5 billion on their pets, a figure that has climbed from $17 billion in 1994.

Businesses of all kinds sometimes have a resident dog or cat who becomes a fixture at the store, part of the location’s personality and something of a local celebrity. Those animals are especially popular with children, who often are the gateway to their parents’ wallets. If a customer is running errands with children and knows he can get an equally good car wash at several locations, he’s more likely to choose the one his kids want to go to, and a cute, four-legged friend can be the tiebreaker.

SPRUCE IT UP

Suri said that when any of his retail locations needed upgrades, he frequently would use it as an opportunity to have an anniversary/grand reopening celebration — even though the stores had never really been closed. He would repaint, create new displays, make signage for the event, then would invite local politicians and media outlets such as hyperlocal newspapers to a ribbon-cutting ceremony as a way to get free publicity.

EVERYONE LOVES TO WIN

Suri said he frequently would hold raffles for prizes and allow store visitors to enter the drawing upon each visit. In some cases, the prize would be something as small as a free Edible Arrangements fruit basket or a Carvel ice cream cake. But one year, he raffled off three Wii U video game consoles ahead of the holidays at a time when they were new, hot and scarce. The response was overwhelming and brought many new customers to his store. After all, everyone loves free stuff.

FOCUS ON COMMUNITY

For Milford, New Jersey-based Shammy Shine Car Washes, the most effective marketing campaigns are those that reinforce the company’s brand as part of the local community. The company, which has 14 locations in western New Jersey and the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania, makes sure customers know that it’s invested in the community.

Tom Halford, who handles marketing for the company, said Shammy Shine’s most effective marketing effort centers around Grace for Vets, a national program in which veterans and all active military personnel can get a free carwash on Veterans Day. Shammy Shine promotes this program with signage at each location well in advance of the event, and the community response is positive.

“We outfit our locations with a lot of signage ahead of Veterans Day,” Halford said. “The reason it’s our most effective promotion is that it’s something everyone can get behind. Other car washes might be on busier interstates and can attract transient customers, so their signage might be all about a cheap car wash or a discount to try to generate traffic flow that way. We operate differently. Our model is geared toward the community.”

“We’re attracting people who are running errands in the area. They live in the neighborhood. They see us every day, so we want to be a company that the community can get behind. The Grace for Vets program attracts the paying customer as well because people would prefer to spend money at a business that they know they can back.”

Shammy Shine also heavily promotes its gift cards and participates in a profit-sharing program with local groups such as the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Little Leagues and Parent-Teacher Associations. Those groups sell gift cards to Shammy Shine locations as part of their fundraising efforts, helping to promote Shammy Shine’s brand in the community. The company advertises its partnership with these popular, local groups at its locations and with billboards in the community.

Halford said the gift-card promotions are especially effective around the holidays because they make great gifts for the person who has everything and is especially hard to shop for. The customer buying the gift card often gets a free car wash with a gift card purchase above a certain amount, making that customer feel good about the purchase. And the recipient of the gift card is likely to become a paying customer in the future.

Shammy Shine also promotes township festivals such as Milford Alive, an annual celebration that features music, a parade and other attractions, on its menu boards at each location.

“Anything we can do to be involved in the community, it seems to come back to us tenfold,” Halford said.

PROMOTING THE PRODUCT

As for the product itself, Shammy Shine heavily promotes its unlimited-wash program at each location, with banners attached to traffic arms that rise to let cars into the car wash and with freestanding signs in those areas. The signage focuses on the savings customers can enjoy over the long term.

But when it comes to signage, sometimes less is more. Christopher Northey, the marketing strategy manager at Tucson, Arizona-based Mister Car Wash, which operates 134 carwashes, said his company is conscious not to overload the customer with too much signage.

Mister Car Wash promotes its unlimited-wash club with signs and banners that get the message across in as few words as possible and rely on imagery to tell the tale. A typical sign might feature a freshly washed car with a just a few bullet points, such as “Unlimited carwashes start at $X,” “Wash as often as you like,” and “No contracts.”

Northey said signs greet customers as they pull up to the location and in the lobbies of full-service locations, but when it comes to the cash-register areas, signage is kept to a minimum to keep that area neat and clean.

“We really try to simplify it as best as we can,” Northey said. “We try to rely very little on text-heavy signage. Thoughtful imagery is something we’re really big on, and if we do use text, we try to keep it to a bare minimum. Making the message simple is really our main objective. We want to push the benefits of the program to the customer.”

Northey said when it comes to signs and banners, bigger and more aren’t necessarily better, since having extremely large displays or too many displays can be overwhelming to the customer. It’s also important to vary the signage from time to time so that the messages continue to resonate with consumers. Over time, the same old signage can blend into the location like old wallpaper.