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GM Reputation Management "Required"

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#11
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"

DrewAment said:

Cobalt
DigitalAirstrike
NakedLime

Those will be your 3 choices form what I hear. I just don't understand the thinking at GM behind making a dealer (independent business) force choose a vendor to do business with. Whatever happened to the free market... and letting the best product/solution sell itself based on its own results or values.

Cost appears to be less... but the "GM Packages" that these vendors will be offering are a watered down version of their whole packages... my thinking is that they will be trying to up-sell the dealers.

Should not affect anything that you have already done on the major review sites - facebook marketing - yelp - and others... as most of these programs can "plug-in" and build on what you already have. Or, for the dealers that have nothing.... build it from scratch.
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Thanks Drew for that info! I was disappointed to not see Dealer Rater in your post, but I am holding my breath they are in the game on this one. We have over 170+ positive reviews and I don't want to have to offer 2 review sites to our customers, iMR required and Dealer Rater. The whole Google+ review fiasco that was so hyped up for a while proved to be nothing in the end! (That could be a whole separate post on that crap)

Yes GM is forcing its hand on the dealers in a lot of ways these days. Some of it has been coming a long time as they have been slack compared to other OEM requirements, such as facilities. Some of it though seems liek who can scratch whose back the best. Such as only one iMR approved web vendor; Cobalt. I have disliked for a while now they only have 1 iMR web vendor, there needs to be choice. So I am glad to see that they will offer choices with the "required" Reputation Management. I am just worried if they are the best solutions for dealers, and cant be gamed. I like Dealer Rater for those simple reasons.

As for cost, it better deliver a damn good solution for $300-$500 and not watered down in any way. We dont pay that now and it would force me to rethink our reputation management vendor strategy. Something I really don't want to do because we are very satisfied with Dealer Rater, and would hate to lose my reviews.
 
#13
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"

mikeelmore said:
Thanks for the post Eley, did you pull the screen shot of the dashboard from the Webex I'd like to see/ learn more about this great sounding new program, boy o' boy, this is gonna be fun!
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Thanks Mike. Yes, snapshot from the WebEx. Its suppose to coming in a deck you can review, or posted on Global Connect. Oh yea, tons of fun!
 
#14
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"

ajholland said:
I agree, dealers may view this as the manufacturer getting involved in their business, but manufacturers are protecting their brand. I haven't seen any numbers, but maybe the GM dealers on a national level are struggling so GM felt they needed to require it.
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AJ, in the WebEx presented to us, GM said only 20% of its dealers have positive reviews, and this is a driving force behind this move.
 
#15
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"

Eley Duke said:
AJ, in the WebEx presented to us, GM said only 20% of its dealers have positive reviews, and this is a driving force behind this move.
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Eley, why are they bothering the dealers with the good reviews? It doesn't matter what software programs that GM comes up with, if dealers treat customers poorly, they will continue to get bad reviews. You benefit from this.
 
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#16
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"

Eley Duke said:
I was disappointed to not see Dealer Rater in your post, but I am holding my breath they are in the game on this one. We have over 170+ positive reviews and I don't want to have to offer 2 review sites to our customers, iMR required and Dealer Rater. The whole Google+ review fiasco that was so hyped up for a while proved to be nothing in the end! (That could be a whole separate post on that crap)
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DealerRater will be "in the game" no matter what happens with this program, Eley. Your hard work won't go unnoticed by your consumers.

No disrespect intended to any of them, but DealerRater doesn't do what these companies do.

We strike a unique, and often difficult, balance for dealers AND consumers. Since the site was built 10 yrs ago we've focused on providing dealers with a platform to collect and leverage positive reviews while reconciling the not so positive ones. But we ALSO serve the consumer as a decision-making engine with trusted content they can ONLY get from a true third party.

Consumer's trust of third party reviews is second only to traditional Word of Mouth according to the Nielsen graph ddavis shared here a couple weeks ago. What the dealer says about itself on a branded site, ie. marketing, is not as credible to the consumer, therefore less effective for the dealer. There are reasons why we do what we do, and why we've been doing it so successfully for a very long time...

On that note, guess what percentage of GM stores are currently on our Certified Dealer Program? Here's a hint: It is very similar to the number of GM Stores with positive reviews ;)

Ryan
 
#20
Re: GM Rep Management "Required"

Ryan Leslie said:
DealerRater will be "in the game" no matter what happens with this program, Eley. Your hard work won't go unnoticed by your consumers.

No disrespect intended to any of them, but DealerRater doesn't do what these companies do.

We strike a unique, and often difficult, balance for dealers AND consumers. Since the site was built 10 yrs ago we've focused on providing dealers with a platform to collect and leverage positive reviews while reconciling the not so positive ones. But we ALSO serve the consumer as a decision-making engine with trusted content they can ONLY get from a true third party.

Consumer's trust of third party reviews is second only to traditional Word of Mouth according to the Nielsen graph ddavis shared here a couple weeks ago. What the dealer says about itself on a branded site, ie. marketing, is not as credible to the consumer, therefore less effective for the dealer. There are reasons why we do what we do, and why we've been doing it so successfully for a very long time...

On that note, guess what percentage of GM stores are currently on our Certified Dealer Program? Here's a hint: It is very similar to the number of GM Stores with positive reviews ;)

Ryan
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The fact that you are not means that your program is probably the best one!
 
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