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Have you been "Flogged" ??

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#11
Angry Buyer floggs retailer... and gets no where.
-or-
The best defense maybe a strong(er) offense.

An angry consumer Flogging you is not a problem until a NEW shopper looks for your name in a Search Engine and sees the moaning and groaning. But! Not all Flogging will make it to the front page.

You can battle flogging BEFORE it becomes a problem with SMART SEO. If you have a great Search Engine Guru in your camp, you're site is raked very well with search engines AND if your site is filled with lots of good information, you can defend yourself by "out ranking" the irate flogger... there by burying them into the lost (rarely viewed) pages of google.

G'Luck,
Joe
 
#13
Joe, you're right, but sometimes dealers need a shield of controlled blogs, reviews, websites, etc. Even outranked results can get noticed if they are somewhere on the front page. Unless you have a nice, inexpensive fleet of sites pushing it down (and sending you leads and traffic, of course) then it's still possible to lose customers through flogging.
 
#15
All good info.
All I can say at this point is that, as a newcomer to the Auto Industry, I am not overly impressed with the efforts I have seen (or not seen) made by dealership staff to really reach out to the customer with absolute top-notch customer care. But remember, now I am one of you and know I must take these things to heart as well as speak them.

In my almost 12 years now of managing web sites and internet marketing, I have yet to see any tool, method, philosophy, tricks, camoflauge, or anything else come even close to the power and clarity of good customer service - this includes honesty, respect, being forthright (that means aggressively transparent), caring and interested.

It does not matter what you sell, but to sell well and sell consistantly (which translates into longevity, or business "Building"), you must at all costs build a relationship with that other human being who is looking into trusting you with their time, their money and maybe even their future (will they be able to make the payments, will they turn into long time customers, etc.).

So many things are at stake above and beyond what someone says about us on a blog. When you reduce the effect that a blog statement made by one person, who probably is not going to become a customer anyway, has on our business, as compared with giving your full attention to those who are already customers, or who just walked in the door, then you'll start seeing things in perspective. And I know for a fact that your sales will go up.

Crap happens and there is nothing you can do about it! Oh wait, maybe there is... maybe going the extra mile, sending that extra email, making that extra call, showing real concern and warmth and putting the customer's concern above my sales numbers might even prevent that "flog" from happening in the first place!

I don't want to appear cynical here, so forgive me if I do. I simply want to make the point that if we give too much attention to the negative, it WILL hinder the positive.

Most of the online businesses who started posting customers comments, both good and bad, have seen sales INCREASE. Honesty is ALWAYS rewarded on the internet, because it's the one place people expect you to be real. If you are not, you are misusing their trust and they will have nothing to do with you, or any fake.
 
#16
Good Service is GoodSEO

A Contrarian’s Perspective on SEO for Car Dealers.
Most blogs about the auto industry fall into one of two categories: those about cars and those about SEO. Search Engine Optimization is one of the fastest growing areas of marketing, and with good re...
 

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