This is the real value of Dealer Refresh, so thank for for sharing your voice with me.
Ryan Leslie; said:
We aren't talking about loading reviews to the testimonial page of a Dealer's site here, you are creating a page for marketing purposes that has the appearance of an independent 3rd party, that is what is new in this scenario. It doesn't matter if you are talking about a site you bought or built or are just buying the ability to freely remove content you don't like from at your discretion, it is marketing and should be clearly identified as such to preserve credibility in the eyes of the consumer. My point is blurring the lines between compiled marketing and objective reviews isn't consumer friendly.
The branded site is created for marketing purposes, but at the end of the day so is dealer rater. However I disagree that it has the appearance of a 3rd party site. Presto revwies does that and looks like a 3rd party site when is not. To do so they add the PR logo, name, etc as in this example
Harris Ford Reviews | Ford Lincoln Mercury Dealer Lynnwood Washington We dont do that, our pages are 100% dealer pages and they say so. We exclusively have the dealer's name, logo, facebook, twitter, employees, hours of operations, etc
Brien Ford Reviews I understood the possibility of deceptoon and that is why we created them this way. I also understand your point about "
freely remove content you don't like from at your discretion" but let me tell you one thing I have learned about the Internet: You can't control it. I coach my dealers to embraze a complete change and to bravely accept that sometimes we will fail and that some people will just not like doing business with us. To hide a bad review in one website will do nothing for the good of the business. Dont worry too much about that--the Internet knows better.
Ryan Leslie; said:
Where is the need for DealerRater? Man, I want to give a sales pitch here... but I won't. If any of the 20+ sites did what DealerRater does for FREE I would spend more time on the for hire section of this site.
Free stuff can be REALLY EXPENSIVE! I don't know what the going rate for branded pages is, but I will defend the value proposition of DealerRater over any other comprehensive strategy and I don't think I'll lose. DealerRater isn't a place to collect reviews, we train dealers to make Rep management an offensive strategy and we supply the tools and feeds to carry out that strategy. We help setup processes that work and we also consult as needed for everything from handling a specific negative review to leveraging content, and we do all that for $95 a month. If you pay yourself by the hour you'll spend multiples of that just trying to make the 20+ FREE sites list your business correctly.
Ryan--we do that too... and I'm sure the Presto guys too, and Brian Pash, and Ralph Paglia, etc. everyone coaches their clients best they can without putting a $ to every pitch. I went to Brian's seminar in CA and he gave tons of info about online reputation. Branded sites go for $150 each.
Now, in my markets your salesperson has made a mistake because he hasn't sold Dealer Rater for $95/month. Lets be honest about what we do, what it cost, and what it does.
My point was that there web is already full of sites that collect reviews from customers, why one more? When will be enough? Cars.com now has one, Edmunds has one... pretty soon the pin stripe guy will have one too! It is becoming unmanageable and dealers need to take charge by controlling this proliferation and extorsion of the review business.
Ryan Leslie; said:
Well, at least you didn't call me an extortionist
Look, I don't think anybody has us confused with Mother Teresa for Charitable Acts and I know we don't want to be either. We absolutely monetize the site through ads, some dealers love them and are really taking advantage of the opportunity to buy strategically, some don't and that is okay too. We do give first right of refusal to any dealer that certifies and every dealer pays the same price for certification, AutoNation to single point Kia store. There is certainly some gamesmanship, but it is entirely dealer driven and no different than any other competitive property. Are you abandoning your Adwords campaign because you are competing for your make or city with another dealer? Did you bury your head in the sand and delete your website when you found out another dealer was challenging you for page rank? Did you move your dealership when a competitor leased the billboard on your exit? There's other dealers on your place page, and your oem sends every dealer in your PMA the same leads.
The whole "they sell your ad space" stuff is weak. This is the car business, if you're scared of competition in the marketplace go sell... Nevermind, I can't think of a damn thing you can sell if you are that scared of your competition.
At certain point you sounded liek DR is the dealer review police and I tried to point that it is a for profit organization just like anyone else (Yelp, Judysbook, etc). So no intention to harm there, just to prove that yes--Dealer rater is just another site of the hundreds bleeding small biz out of money to add reviews when dealers can do this on their own.
Ryan Leslie; said:
Two things here. I never called anyone a cheat and I don't think you can reduce the discussion to that. The average rating is a 24 month average. You'll find the averages to be lower if you look at all of them as dealers get more successful reconciling as they go, but anything older than 24 months doesn't matter to the customer anyway.
I work with a lot of very involved men and women who happen to have their name on the side of the building that are acutely aware of every negative review. They work diligently to reconcile with that reviewer and they often succeed. I have a dealer principal in OH that gives my cell number to every reviewer he successfully reconciles with and I get a call from the reviewer. He does this, I certainly didn't ask him to! He wants me to know "he fixed it" because his name is on it and I respect that! That is why I get a little riled up when there is any hint that a positive score isn't the result of a lot of work on the part of managers and owners.
I think that you called a cheat to the processof dealers owning their review sites and although I agree that there is a stronger change of that to happen I also think that we are in a time of learning and that many dealers will learn and discover to manage them properly in their own assets.
My point was not to call the DR process a failure but to notice that dealers doing things differently than the DR process are also involved and working hard to get their reviews straight.
Ryan Leslie; said:
1. I did not say that or imply it. I take umbrage with an attempt to reduce the conversation to that. The original post was about a feature we have driving reviewers TO the place page, hardly a "DealerRater or you're a cheat" topic.
2. Agreed, but the credible ones are the ones they don't control the content on. The rest are marketing not objective and customers know the difference.
3. DealerRater works. Some dealers play in the sandbox more aggressively than others, I'm not going to fault them for that.
4. ...and in my opinion, spend your marketing dollars wisely.
1. Ryan, I undertood it that way and I did agree partially with you in the fact that there is stronger chance for cheating to happen. Wait and see that in 6 months all this will be different and that you and I may be taking very different positions.
2. All sites are credible until proven otherwise... (here you are again). Content can be controlled in all sites right now. This will change in the near future with stronger content controls and even laws that may prohibit deception as false advertising of a business.
3. OK (you win this one).
4. Let me expand on this one:
Google 'tom matson dodge' and you will see pissedconsumer riding their name:
tom matson dodge - Google Search
I have identified over 40 websites taking on this type of business-- the bad reviews business. Notice that they actually have just a few bad reviews. Pretty good dealer in fact.
Now check this out and Google 'clyde revord'
clyde revord - Google Search+
The review site that we built for them indexes 4 times in their first Google 10 thus not leaving space for people like pissedconsumer.com.
Yet with this we have not stopped Google reviews, edmunds, insiderpages, yahoo, etc so the customer has access to any and all the reviews they want.
So we set up a process, dont interfiere with the regular review process on 3rd party sites, give the dealer a sandbox to record their experience, and help control their SER plus keeping bad review sites out of the way.
