I wanted to introduce myself to all the readers and contributors here. I'm the product manager for Dealer Reviews at Cars.com; I'll be doing an interview with Jeff for the site but I do want to make myself directly available for questions and feedback here, including why Cars.com will generate reviews instead of aggregating them.

When we set out to develop a reviews feature, it was important to create a level playing field on day one - all dealers will start fresh and have equal footing with reviews. For those already actively managing reputation and soliciting reviews, Cars.com will offer another opportunity to generate additional content that can be used to cement their online reputation. We'll also be notifying our dealers each and every time a review is posted to Cars.com (after undergoing validation and moderation, of course) so that you don’t have to spend extra time monitoring Cars.com or our backend tools.

Thanks to all of you for your feedback and thanks to Jeff and everyone at DealerRefresh for getting the conversation going. If you have direct questions or suggestions for me, don’t hesitate to ping me directly.

Nick Hummer
312- 601-6004 [email protected]

Great, now there are about 15 websites that can push to our Google Place page.

Interesting point. Taking your concern a little further, it seems likely that the reviews (particularly the negative reviews) would be more of the BDC and lead handling process rather than a review of the whole sales process. This could cut both ways: a good Internet dept (fast turnaround and good pricing strategy) could make a normally marginal dealer shine, while a weak Internet dept. could pull down a normally solid store.

One more place to worry about getting reviews posted and managing them... I wish they would just aggregate reviews from the current primary review sites and go from there. I am following about 12 review sites monthly now and this is one more. The truth is, folks primarily leave positive reviews when you proactively encourage them. If not, typically only the folks that are dissatisfied will go out of their way to leave a negative review. Therefore, as a dealer, I will now have to work at building positive reviews at one more site. I am a big fan of Cars.com, but have mixed feelings at this point...

There are too many review sites.

Autotrader.com has already launched this in test markets. It will be going live in 3 weeks across the country.

I think it is a smart move by Cars.com to make their website more than just an inventory advertising portal. In theory, the site could gain credibility with consumers by having reviews integrated into the shopping experience.

It also opens up a discussion whether dealers who pay for inventory advertising want their advertising partners placing reviews on the vehicle detail pages.

Reviews are an element of the socialization of the Internet so like it or not, actions like the one Cars.com is taking, is adding more transparency to how car dealers operate and treat their customers.

Welcome to the world of the empowered consumer.

The best resource for automotive dealers to learn about new marketing and online marketing strategies, period.

Thanks Ryan! I am looking forward to doing some more exciting stuff this year. I love Dealer Refresh and becoming a community member was the best thing I ever did.

Thanks Brian!

Your community is the benchmark for online engagement in the automotive industry. Your leadership and creativity to birth DealerRefresh years ago has been rewarded not only by an award, but by professionals who come back each day to engage. Congratulations!

I'm glad you pointed this out Jeff: "The member count means little to us – it’s more about the engagement of the community."

Without the community this blog and the forums are worthless. And it isn't the number of participators or readers, it is the quality of the content being left by those who do speak-up.

Thanks to all of you who made DealerRefresh what it was in 2010 - be ready for a really fun ride in 2011

Nice review Jeff. One of my favourite threads was Jerry's Phone Skills.

I just completed the Automotive SEO Study and am already looking forward to the SEM study. If you want to be leading in your market, you need to be always getting continuing education for new ideas and better processes. Brian is one of the best and I encourage folks to join, I'm sure you won't be disappointed!

Trina

The idea is that in order to test A/B landing pages you need to drive enough traffic to see which design is working best. The $1,000 is an approximate number that are suggesting since anything less would mean that you might miss out on A/B testing.

What you learn can of course help you run a small Adwords campaign (<$1,000) you would just be making a call that your design is optimized.

So you don't have to spend it all if you don't want to or the market doesn't draw that much traffic.

Does the minimum of $1000 budget mean that we will have to spend the full $1000, or just what is required to get the results we need? We are in a fairly small (100,000 +) market, and there is very little (if any) AdWords activity in our area, I am unsure of wether or not we would need to spend over $1000 a month.

Pretty sweet deal. Curious to know how many dealers are having Success with Facebook ads.

Thanks Jeff. Please keep them coming.

Worked very nicely. The logo looks good too!

Jeff,

These short "how to" videos are very valuable. I agree with Joe on how easy they are to follow.

Keep them coming!

Thank you.

JK,

LOVE the video. If you didn't use the video to explain the steps, it would be far more difficult to re-create.

thnx

Ask and ye shall receive. DealerRater logo attached to the post when you share it on facebook.

Check my ryan_carchat24 page for dog in heat styles. We need to get a few dealers trying this and posting results on the Forum.

Looks like Toyota has some insane promotion on right now using Twitter:

How Much Is a Tweet Worth? $500, Says Toyota

Thanks Brent. I'm looking to add this to my marketing plan for 2011. Would love to see some dealers try it and post their results/ feedback on the forum.