Online Reputation successfully built, now what?

[JesseJ]

I've been with my current dealership for about two and a half years now. When I started we had about five or so reviews on dealer rater and a 1.7 rating. We now have 54 authentic (seriously) reviews and a 4.7 rating. We have a number of reviews on cars.com, google, Yelp (not great in quantity or quality), Edmunds, and probably a few other spots that are slipping my mind.

What's even better about this is our neighboring dealerships seem to put no effort or thought into this process and this is reflected in their online reputation.

We've done the work to gain a big advantage as far as online reputation goes but how can we leverage this? I can count on one hand the times I've actually heard a customer mention our online reviews. We have around 10 dealers of the same brand within reasonable driving distance so we aren't short on competition.

 

[ryan.leslie]

I've been with my current dealership for about two and a half years now. When I started we had about five or so reviews on dealer rater and a 1.7 rating. We now have 54 authentic (seriously) reviews and a 4.7 rating. We have a number of reviews on cars.com, google, Yelp (not great in quantity or quality), Edmunds, and probably a few other spots that are slipping my mind.

What's even better about this is our neighboring dealerships seem to put no effort or thought into this process and this is reflected in their online reputation.

We've done the work to gain a big advantage as far as online reputation goes but how can we leverage this? I can count on one hand the times I've actually heard a customer mention our online reviews. We have around 10 dealers of the same brand within reasonable driving distance so we aren't short on competition.

Congrats! You've got the building blocks for a terrific opportunity to win business away from your competition. The first step is establishing a consistent process to engage consumers for review content, clearly you've got that box checked. The next step, as you've already figured out, is to start thinking like a collector and make a plan to really utilize this competitive advantage.

I used this analogy at The NY Auto Dealers Association Training Center and again at DealerCON last month. It may help. Think of yourself like a coin collector. A coin collector acquires coins, but they never throw them in a glass jar and hide them on a dusty shelf, right? If all you are doing is collecting review content you are doing the hard work without the payoff! A collector has every valuable coin in its own sleeve and displayed in a way that it can be appreciated, right? In some ways, the appearance of value is amplified by the display. Here is the slide from my workshop for a visual:


I could write more than you would want to read on this subject and give you a ton of boring stats too, so I'm going to offer some thoughts in bullet point format:

1. Engage your team- Get them thinking like collectors... start displaying that valuable customer winning currency. They should be proud of all that they've accomplished and prepared to "show off" their record of excellent CX. I didn't see a testimonial feed on your website, but that is an easy first step to starting the conversation.
2. Differentiation in lead response- Are you highlighting your review content at the tail end of ZMOT? You absolutely want to plant that seed of doubt that there are ANY other options than you. If you are battling for lead to show with a dealer that isn't paying attention to this you absolutely need to capitalize on the unique selling proposition. You own the trump card! "Mr. customer, I know you are looking for the best deal and the best buying experience, right? Have you looked at the reviews of Ford dealers in our area? We are very proud of our commitment to customer service and would love for you to see what other consumers like you have had to say about their purchase experience. Please let us know if we can be of any assistance..." you get the idea. You don't need to bash anybody, there is a good chance that unsatisfied customers have already done that.
3. Share reviews early and often - There are countless ways to leverage the content. You intuitively know it matters to the consumer without me presenting you a ton of stats, but I'll share one that we got back from our joint study with RL Polk. "Dealers with an average star rating of 4.0 or higher had a 21% greater increase in sales than those with a 2.0..." What your customers say about you is the new online marketing. Consumers are ambivalent, and in some cases hostile, to advertising. They don't want to be advertised or marketed to, they want guidance and are most comfortable getting that guidance from a peer. Embrace that and give them what they want, it is a win for them and a win for you too.

Full Disclosure: I very intentionally tried to share only basic strategies here that you could implement without incurring any costs. because I'm hypersensitive to anything that looks like selling in a forum. In the interest of full disclosure, the most exciting strategies I share with my partner dealers involve some tools that are specific to our certification program. It is tough sometimes to talk about what you believe in strongly without it coming across "salesy" so I tried to just avoid it. If you want information about what we do please just PM or email. Hopefully this was helpful.

Ryan

 

[JesseJ]

Ryan thank you so much for the response. Looks like your inbox is full. Clear it out if you could and send me a pm. I'd love to continue this discussion.

 

[Nick Sennett]

I think one of the first things I always ask dealers is about the quality of their data on their showroom traffic. A customer won't mention they saw you on dealerrater or another source, but it influenced them quite a bit. If you ask specific questions, you may get a better feel for how to leverage that data, things that go beyond "how did you hear about us" and into the realm of "what was the most important reason you choose us?".

One of the best i've seen was in a store in Jersey I work with, they printed a large desk "menu" of all the places they advertise. They had sources like cars.com and other lead providers next to newspapers tv and dealerrater. They asked customers at delivery to circle where they had seen their store, what they found was almost everyone was circling their review site and a couple elead sources.

Then you can advertise the rating's you've worked so hard for, either on your own site or elsewhere and in all dealer communications like Ryan mentioned. You just need to get a good baseline to find out just how many customers are already influenced, then you can work on reaching the others.