To draw an important parallel, I was watching CNBC’s Business of Innovation, and the panel of business leaders was asked a question dealing with using technology to become better, in essence, more effective. One member of the panel eloquently stated that sector leadership is driven by what you do with technology, not simply what technology you install. The underlying observation from my vantage point, looking at a sector that often lacks motivation for innovation, is that creative utilization of technology isn’t easy. In fact, it’s quite hard! But by creative thinking you will create value for your dealership.

Let’s apply this concept to the truth discussed above. There are multiple ways to develop Internet leads. If you hold beliefs similar to mine, you know that if you could have one third-party lead or one lead from your web site, you would choose the latter. And the data supports your inclination. But here’s where this gets tough – is it easier to call your lead provider and increase the number of third-party leads you receive each month, or is it easier to put in motion the steps to implement a Google ad word campaign coupled with a search engine optimization strategy? As long as there are salespeople working for the lead providers, the former will be easier, much easier.

This brings everything thus far to an important summation – if you’re willing to push through status quo car business operations and choose to take on a more difficult task that will ultimately result in more vehicles sold, your dealership will become a sector leader. Now, if you are willing to take charge of search engine management, I’ll help cut some of the brush that lies before you with a key list of search engine strategies.

Know The Key TLAs (three letter acronyms)

Before you make your first phone call or e-mail inquiry for search engine answers, make sure you know the fundamental differences between SEO and SEM; search engine optimization and marketing, respectively. SEO is the process by which your web site appears higher on a desired search without paying the search engine for the privilege. On Google, this would move your site higher in the non-sponsored results section on the left side of the page. SEM, on the other hand, is a pay-per-click service where your web site is listed in order of keyword bids in the sponsored link section. Don’t get these mixed up – especially when you’re dealing with a firm that promises results. Even if a firm uses optimization loosely in communication, don’t be surprised to be charged a sizeable fee for its service, and then be asked to select a monthly ad budget to pay for your ads. You have been warned, and you can avoid this easily by simply knowing SEO from SEM.

Find Your Target

The first step in our search engine program is to develop a list of areas you would like to target. For most applications, this is completed for a geographical target area. However, as the landscape changes, your target may need to adapt appropriately. But for now, start by finding a map and center it at your dealership. Figure out what distance customers are willing to travel, and construct a list of all cities and towns that call within your target radius. More importantly, be complete – leave nothing out, and then select your top five target area keywords.

Develop Your Search Items

Go ahead and spend an hour with your dealership managers to create a list of words that describe your dealership. If you’re a Chevrolet dealer, your list may include: Chevrolet, Chevy, cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, Corvette, Monte Carlo, Aveo, Impala, Tahoe, Trailblazer, Blazer – you get the idea. Don’t leave anything out or you will be missing opportunities to do business. Also, don’t forget to include service and parts terms, as well as finance keywords. Then, select the top 20 keywords from this list to be featured.

At this point, you should understand the difference between SEO and SEM, and have two complete keyword lists and two highlighted keyword lists. This will allow you to make the most out of your additional fact-finding and have educated conversations with the various firms that render search engine strategies.

As always, if you have questions regarding this topic, I’d be happy to help you find the right answers.

Chuck Barker

 
Chuck Barker has been CEO of his two companies, Impact Marketing & Consulting Group, LLC and Impact Summit, LLC, for the last 24 years, both located in Virginia. His experience ranges from an executive with Harris Corporation (16,000 employees) one of Fortune Magazine’s largest companies to the automobile industry where he has performed all executive positions. His companies specialize in growing businesses, dealerships and people. He delivers unparalleled sales & service development programs, management leadership workshop programs and dealer/principal business & profit improvement ideas for automobile dealerships. He has recently published the first comprehensive ‘in-house’ sales training solution program for dealers entitled The Dealership Success Guide.

We used to hear the slogan, “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas,” but now we know anything happening there will be on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook within minutes…if not seconds.  If you don’t believe it, just ask Prince Harry!

As an auto retailer, you need to be very aware of how your business is perceived online.  That covers a broad spectrum of items from posts on social media sites, customer reviews, and tweets mentioning your name, to videos on various video content networks like YouTube.

We have all read the articles about customers who choose not to purchase vehicles from a dealership because of something seen on an employee’s Facebook page that the prospect thought was indecent behavior.  The dealer knew nothing of this until the potential customer brought it to his attention and said she was buying the vehicle from the dealer across town.  Unfortunately, the large majority of dealers will never discover why a prospect purchased elsewhere.

Whether we like it or not everything is more transparent in the business world today. Again, there are no secrets, and we are naked for the world to see.  So, let me ask the question, “If you have to be publicly exposed, wouldn’t you at the very least want to look your BEST?”

I strongly suggest to all my dealer clients they start making concerted efforts to improve their online appearance and to develop a culture in their dealerships that encourages every employee to “look better” too.

Starting To Work Out

Don’t worry, this doesn’t involve actual calisthenics. But, if you want to do a few dozen crunches that is okay with me!  It involves taking a top down, eagle eye look at your organization to identify the weak links and potential trouble spots that might need some remedial attention.  Identify sales or service employees that might be struggling with customer satisfaction issues. Stress to them the importance and significance that every customer transaction and touch point is an incredible and often lost opportunity for them to build and strengthen their customer relationships.

If you have received negative reviews online, print them out and share them with team members in your dealership.  Mind you, not for the purpose of putting blame on someone, but for the purpose of using them as a teaching moment.  Discussing the issue is the proactive approach for you to take.

For your staff members, who are doing a great job of taking care of your customers, please be vocal in your praise of them.  This recognition often creates easily understood word pictures for others to duplicate over and over again.

Customer reviews are taking on more importance than ever.  According to a recent Digital Air Strike Report, 68% of consumers surveyed said dealership reviews helped them in their vehicle purchase decision.  What is your current strategy to gather reviews?

In the landscape of dealership reviews, it’s still the “Wild Wild West” before the days of Wyatt Earp and other lawmen brought some stability to the frontier.   I’ve researched just about every solution out there and here, at a high level, are my summaries of the options available.

• The homegrown solution where a dealer collects the reviews and posts the good ones on their website.
• The third party review source that provides a process and/or platform where dealers can take reviews and again select which ones they want to appear.
• The independent vendor that automates the invitation process so all customers (both sales and service) can complete a review while in the comfort of their home. All comments are then posted to the review site and available to post on the dealer website as well.

I will say with certainty that having some solution is better than having nothing at all on your website.  Now let’s look at the options.  A dealer’s first instinct is to have nothing negative anywhere about their dealership, but remember we are “naked.” Customers will find the truth on the Internet.  Hear this loud and clear;  if prospects  find contradictory information about you elsewhere vs. what you are telling them,  you lose credibility and the trust factor has gone out the door.

If you visited a website for a particular dealer and saw that all of the 200 plus reviews were positive, would you believe anything you saw on that dealer’s site? The reality in auto retailing is that most of your customers leave satisfied and if you make it simple for them to post a comment or review they will.  Don’t be afraid to have a few negative posts as the overwhelming majority of your customer’s comments will be positive.

Check out all the vendors, their solutions, and see what makes sense for you and your dealership.

Vendors again leveraged celebrities to attract attention to their booth. I have to admit I enjoyed having my photo taken with NASCAR legend Richard Petty, and briefly glanced (ha) at one of the Playboy Playmates signing autographed pictures for attendees whose wives were a bit more liberal thinking than mine. The convention was professionally managed and well organized. I especially liked the NADA app for my smartphone which allowed me to locate virtually anything inside the convention. Very cool!

As I always gather information for my training courses and articles for Dealer Magazine I enjoyed speaking with several dozen dealer owners and vendors during the event and posed two basic questions to them to gauge how the auto industry is addressing new market issues and challenges.

The first question I asked was, “How successful do you feel dealers are managing social media?” The reaction from virtually every dealer and vendor was immediate laughter or they replied, “they’re not”. It was pretty clear from their reaction and/or their comments that they felt dealers for the most part had no real grasp of what they were doing and, more importantly how effective (or destructive) any of their efforts were on social media channels.

I was hit with a feeling of déjà vu. I remember when BDC’s were the hot new item back in the early to mid 90′s. Dealers weren’t quite sure what they were, but they knew they had to have one, so they set up BDC departments. They all felt it was going to be the magic switch to turn on business flow. Then, within a matter of months most of them were shutting down because dealers said “they didn’t work”. The failures in most cases were attributed to the lack of proper processes and training individuals charged with running the department but most importantly they were lacking managerial accountability. Who, managerially was actually assigned the responsibility to lead the department? This meant developing the processes, training the folks, reconciling the data and maintaining it for the long haul. In most cases, no one was put in charge. Sales managers avoided the BDC like it was a toxic waste dump so that sent a signal to the sales team “it must not be that important”. And, it became just that.

BDC’s were followed by websites which were followed by CRM software which was followed by social media initiatives which has now become the new flavor of the month.

In virtually every instance where lack luster performance was present, there was little to no formal process, accountability, reconciliation and no one empowered with the authority or designated responsibility to insure proper utilization; so naturally the initiatives for the most part failed or at least, did not match expectations.

To many, social media today is the Wild Wild West, and many dealerships allow their sales, service and/or other employees to post virtually anything they want on their pages. The problem is many of these folks have difficulty spelling and/or utilizing socially acceptable grammar and then there are those who have trouble reading and/or interpreting messages. And of course, there is always the huge risk of using inappropriate or bad language that’s never appropriate for any workplace communications much less your public exposure.

My next question to the dealers was, “How important do you feel is online reputation management?”  This one got more of a serious response. Everyone agreed it was becoming more and more important, but opinions varied on the best way to manage online reputations. It seems that there is no shortage of vendors offering their version of how to best address this issue. Many do a pretty good job for dealers, but again the end result often depends upon how the dealership approaches the solution. Using a the best hammer with crooked nails will not get you the best results.

Many dealers are still trying to hide or manipulate negative reviews (crooked nails), so their site or the review site only shows a near perfect score for the dealer. Dealers taking this tact are doing themselves a disservice. Key Point; If dealers do not show all the reviews and support a high level of transparency they risk losing the trust of their customers and prospects.

Remember, on the Internet there are no secrets. Anyone can find anything in just a matter of seconds. So reviews on one site that vastly contradict what is on a dealer’s website just paint that dealer as someone who isn’t playing fair or has something to hide. Dealers are almost better off by not putting any reviews on their sites instead of putting up only good reviews because consumers are being instructed if this occurs – stay away from that dealer.

If you offer a great customer experience don’t worry about a few negative reviews. The positive ones will overpower those negative ones, but be sure to reply to the customer and work to resolve the situation.

Abe Lincoln said it best – “Reputation is like fine china: Once broken it’s very hard to repair.”

If you need a few pointers in this area, shoot me an email and I will share with you what I have learned.

Chuck Barker

Chuck Barker has been CEO of his two companies, Impact Marketing & Consulting Group, LLC and Impact Summit, LLC, for the last 24 years, both located in Virginia. His experience ranges from an executive with Harris Corporation (16,000 employees) one of Fortune Magazine’s largest companies to the automobile industry where he has performed all executive positions. His companies specialize in growing businesses, dealerships and people. He delivers unparalleled sales & service development programs, management leadership workshop programs and dealer/principal business & profit improvement ideas for automobile dealerships. He has recently published the first comprehensive ‘in-house’ sales training solution program for dealers entitled The Dealership Success Guide.