Re: GM Rep Management "Required"
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.
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.
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.