Reputation 101

This is always an enjoyable topic for me to discuss, since the reaction from the audience is usually that of shock, then enthusiasm, and then action! My opinion is that, of all of the opportunities in the dealers’ digital marketing arena, Reputation Management is clearly a situation where “the dealership is on fire”. For many dealers who are ignoring their online reviews, they literally have everything to lose, but also everything to gain.

In 2011, we saw Reputation Management take on an entirely new level of importance for car dealers; with consumers posting more reviews, and Google emphasizing these reviews on the Places pages and on SERPs.

What changes will we see in 2012?

I’m taking a stab at offering five (5) of my top recommendations for Reputation Management strategies.

1. Get committed to Reputation Management.

Any recommendations begin and end with the dealership (at the highest level) committing to managing their online reputation. Dealers who have operated in small, local communities like my own here in Gainesville, FL may be the most inclined to understand the importance of this.

What was the impact of a detractor 50 years ago? A customer who had a bad experience with a dealership in a small community would share their story at church, at bingo, at the corner grocery, etc..... If a dealer was to survive in any small community, they needed to limit (or eliminate) detractors, and encourage more promoters. Today, the Internet makes large markets behave like small communities, since opinions are both easily shared and easily found. Online Reviews are part of the DNA of every dealership in 2012.

While the importance of online reputation reinforces the importance of taking great care of customers, there is also much we can learn from the feedback received. Areas for process improvement, problem employees, and new product/service opportunities can all be learned from reading and digesting the content of online reviews. This feedback should be considered in making both tactical and strategic decisions at the dealership.

2. Monitor your reputation regularly.

If you are doing this manually, setup Google Alerts, Twitter searches, and regularly check the online review sites (Google, Yelp, etc.) There are also some good monitoring systems out there that can automate this for you.

If you use these systems, regularly monitor your dashboards and spring into action quickly, because each day negative reviews from detractors live online, your valuable brand and good name deteriorates. I’ve heard a fair number of dealers complaining about potential “review fraud” occurrences, where disgruntled employees, competitors, or others post negative reviews for the dealer.

Some industries have moved more toward sales-driven-reviews, where only recent customers have the ability to post a review. This is definitely the year for review verification. We’ll see how this finds its way into Google’s world.

3. Respond very quickly to negative reviews.

To the online shopper, no response from the dealer means, “the review is the truth”. If the dealer responds quickly, then the consumer will consider both sides to the story. If you find a negative review don’t immediately jump in and type your response. Take a few minutes to cool down, digest everything, and think about how to professionally respond.

Taking a defensive or aggressive approach with your response will only escalate the problem, adding fuel to the fire. Instead, show your concern, apologize for the problem and let them know you want to handle it right away. Ask anyone posting negative reviews of your business to contact you directly and thank them for their feedback.

Be very brief, take it quickly offline, and whatever you do, don’t get into an online debate for everyone to see (forever).

4. Promote positive reviews.

This is also referred to as Review Suppression Plans. This method will be far more effective than trying to control or simply responding to negative reviews, and while the initiative can be a tough one, it is the only way to truly separate yourself from your competitors.

My former General Manager and myself implemented and executed his process very effectively. We were at a Buick GMC store, if it can be done there with quick effective results, I am confident it can be used at your store.

Even if you do an incredible job taking care of customers, don’t expect positive reviews to "just happen" without your involvement. You must create a strong internal process to gain these reviews from your customers. When most people have a positive experience, they simply smile and drive down the road. If you’re lucky, they’ll tell a few people. In rare instances, these customers may actually go online without prompting and write you a positive review, but don’t count on it.

Since you can’t get rid of negative reviews (you can only respond to them, and improve processes at your store), you must get committed to bombarding the few negative reviews with an onslaught of positive reviews.

How can you do this?

There are many techniques, including postcards in the store, iPads in the F&I office, email campaigns, and personal outreach. (All of which we utilized) I personally think that an online approach; either during the purchase process or afterwards with an easy click-thru survey will yield the best results. But remember, in general, people will not give you positive reviews without you prompting them to do so.

5. Balance your Reputation Management work across multiple review sites and mobile.

It sure would be nice and easy if all online reviews were housed in a single location, but that is not the case. Google, Yelp, DealerRater and many more exist, and you need to balance your approach. Start with measuring which of these sites is driving the most traffic to your website. A simple “Top Referrers” report in your website analytics tool should do the trick.

How much traffic comes from your Google Places page? From Yelp? From DealerRater? Your initial Reputation Management strategy should focus on where the most eyeballs are, prior to visiting your site. If you find that several review sites are delivering decent traffic to your site, then balance the strategies across the various sites.

Which sites are driving your mobile reviews? I’m a big user of both Google and Yelp, and have both posted and read many business reviews on the mobile versions of these tools. What I’ve noticed is that these mobile reviews are much shorter and to the point. I also find myself more willing to read through them since they are small and easy to digest. Dealers need to pay attention to these short reviews, which often appear in the form of “tips”.

It seems like the world is a bigger place than it has ever been, while in reality, the Internet has made it a much smaller one. Dealers need to manage their reputations just like they did before the digital age, or perhaps even do a better job. Never before has it been so easy for consumers to quickly find out what other people think of your store. If you have “2 stars”, and plenty of negative reviews, trust me…your store is on fire, and any goodwill you think you have will be ashes in the future.

Consumers have choices, and they will choose products and people who are more highly rated than their competitors.......You have a choice too.

Take action today, and don’t be left behind with your online reputation.

Future of Dealership Websites??

When I first joined the auto industry, I was shocked to learn that some dealers had yet to solidify their web presence with a full-featured web site. After all, the Internet is the most utilized research tool in the vehicle purchase process and the easiest way to garner attention toward your vehicles from those who are in the market. Fast forward a few years and we’re now at a point where the vast majority of dealers use a third party website provider to manage their web presence. It was a slowly adopted change that was necessary for the advancement of the industry, but now that all dealers have their own website, what’s the next step?

What will it take to adopt the latest trends and break free from the pack of like-minded web properties?

One Sided Experience

As it stands, the function of the “dealer website” that we’ve all come to know so well is highly one sided. The experience of the vehicle shopper is similar to that of a classified site whereby the content is dominated by specials, promotions, and inventory that the dealer thinks the user will appreciate. We’re guilty of this as well. We tag vehicles as specials that we believe will attract attention in the hopes of generating quality leads, but do users really care what the dealer thinks is important?

Innovation From Netflix

Netflix has an amazing website that tailors the experience to the interests and browsing patterns of each visitor. They do all of this with the help of some fairly robust infrastructure & engineering teams, but the principles remain relevant — give users what they want so they’ll spend more time on your site& come back more frequently to utilize your tool.

Every visit to the Netflix website is different, providing a sense of identity for an individual user that is unmatched on other platforms. Furthermore, Netflix makes use of prediction models to suggest content on the site that will be relevant to an individual user. The more accurate the prediction model, the easier it is for users to find what they’re looking for and the higher the likelihood that they will return in the future.

Application on Dealer Sites

Modern dealer sites are a great tool for taking a selection of inventory and filtering down options to ultimately reach a match that suits the user’s tastes. From a macro perspective though, this process requires a fair amount of work on the user’s behalf before any tangible decision can be made and there is no tool available to bypass this process during a return visit. We can start utilizing modern web technologies to create a new breed of dealer sites – sites that function as more of a smart web app than a standalone classified tool.

Prediction Models

The average dealer does not have the resources available to implement complex prediction algorithms in the same fashion as Netflix. Luckily, there are third party tools and APIs available for developers to utilize these functions without having to invest in the entire infrastructure necessary to predict content. As time goes on, these tools will become increasingly accessible to the forward-thinking dealers – the question is whether or not this is of any priority to website vendors (or dealers for that matter) in the industry and who will make the first move in adopting the technology.

Once implemented, the experience on a dealer site quickly turns toward a user-centered shopping experience similar to that of Amazon where the site is not only a listing of all available inventory, but also a tool for helping the user find what they’re looking for based upon their unique interests.

Favorites

For the first 4 months of 2012, 30% of dealer web traffic consisted of returning visitors. Many of these visitors will have undoubtedly viewed inventory and gone through the process of filtering vehicles multiple times before eventually moving elsewhere. Is it in our best interests to force them through this same monotonous process each time they visit?

User favorites are a current trend being under-utilized in the auto industry. I recently noticed Edmunds.com added a tool for saving vehicles (without requiring registration), but I have yet to see a widespread adoption of this idea across individual dealer sites. When users save vehicles, they have an increased incentive to return to your dealership’s website because they have already shown interest in something and they’ve made it easy to locate. Smart websites like Amazon use this data to offer increased incentives for returning visitors to convert online and increase revenue. With so many dealers being involved in a single shopper’s buying decision, every additional tool counts.

Browsing Activity

Prediction models make use of browsing activity in their algorithms, but when I refer to browsing activity, I’m talking exclusively about tracking the pages that users view via cookies. Keep in mind this doesn’t mean that some webmaster is sitting in a room looking at every single page that you’ve viewed on your computer at 2am. This is merely a method of tracking browsing history in order to create a tool for users to access information that they’ve already seen on your site.

We’re aiming to make the experience on a dealer site as easy and painless as possible, so if I have to go back to a search page and repeatedly input filters to find vehicles, then we’re doing it wrong. Giving users access to vehicles they’ve already viewed is a great way to easily get them back to that vehicle details page to convert and start working with your sales team.

What do you think? Are these features important enough to your dealership/group to implement?

What challenges do we need to overcome as an industry to make it happen?

Evolution of the Sales Manager

Sales Managers of today need to encompass both Internet and Traditional skills, with a progressive forward thinking perspective.

Today’s automotive market place no longer rewards dealers who still use draconian methods to sell their inventory. Simply adding a few thousand dollars profit on top of the cost, putting it on the lot for sale and hoping to get lucky. Depending on the source used 80-87% of all vehicles sales now originate online. If you are not competitive in today’s technology driven buying world your days in this business will be short lived.

Having a solid grasp on all aspects of front-end operations will be essential. A multi-dimensional manager will be the foundation of any successful automobile dealership. Technology has propelled the evolution of the car buying process to a completely new dimension. Dealerships holding on to the “Old School” mentality and process will be forced to either play catch-up or to eventually close the doors. Understanding how to implement a successful Internet marketing strategy will be the key component in the success of all auto retail stores of the present as well as the future.

Rapid inventory turn and high volume with a focus on customer retention will replace the dated theories of yesteryear car guys. This business model will significantly boost profits and increase the dealerships customer database. Every statistic available goes to further prove the fact that dealerships are evolving and fixed-ops departments are where profits lie. Front-end departments will build solid lasting customer relations and the fixed-ops departments will be responsible for the retention and longer-term profits, maximizing annual bottom line profits.

I.e…. 5 cars on an average of 17 day turn @ 800/600 front profit equals $7000 front gross as opposed to 2 cars on 45 day turn @ 2000/600 equaling 5200 front gross, not only are you 1800 ahead in gross BUT you also have added an additional 3 customers to your database!!

Dealerships who still operate under the old school mentality of “Gross is King” are the ones struggling to keep their used car departments afloat. Why is “Water” in the used car department such a chronic problem across the country? It is the lack of intelligent, forward thinking managers. Until this industry purges itself of the guys who have no desire to grasp and understand the tools that will be come the mainstay of this business it will not get better. I am referring to the guys that think “I am the best car guy in the business, there are no books or computers that can tell me how to do my job better, I know everything about used cars.” A “gut feeling” is all they go on for appraisals, stocking and pricing of their used car departments. Neither market data nor any other analytical factors play a part in these crucial decisions. Once these root issues are addressed by the dealerships of the today they will position themselves in a place that enables a market share shift within their respective region. Steal market share from your competitors and sell cars, how much better can it get than that?!

New/Used vehicle success requires a new way of thinking. Traditional mediums of the past are falling to the way side at an unbelievably fast rate. Everything is shifting to the internet for ease and thoroughness of information available. A more intelligent shopper requires more intelligent dealership personnel. Online advertising, tools and staff will be the key factors in a dealerships success.

Over the next couple of years we will see the “Internet Sales Manager” and “Sales Manager” positions meld into 1 position. A sales manager who can not effectively oversee the internet driven traffic and sales will no longer exist. This merging of the 2 positions into 1 will bring forth the best people with the most knowledge and foresight to implement and execute a successful plan to keep the dealership sales bolstering. Superior managers utilizing the best technology available will be a requirement for any dealership who wants to remain & thrive in the automotive retail industry.

Managers who spearhead the sales department’s tactics will no longer rely on the antiquated methods of yesteryear.

Communication, comprehensive understanding of implementation & execution of technology, personal skills and a willingness to evolve with the industry will be essential management requirements.

Sam Griswold