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Thread: Dick Hanna Honda - The Benchmark for Dealer Reputation Management

  1. #1
    Super Moderator ISM's Avatar
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    The Benchmark for Dealer Reputation Management

    Online Reputation Management requires a complete culture and mindset change at the dealership. It can be time and resource consuming, but the results are worth it! Implemented the right way, it will significantly increase incoming calls, boost employee morale, have people in the dealership looking for reasons to go above and beyond what customers expect and ultimately lead to improved CSI in sales, service and body shops.
    • Customer reviews are the #1 source for driving traffic in all of Social Media
    • If you’re looking to surprise your spouse with a trip to Jamaica how would you select the hotel?
    • When you're visiting someplace you've never been, would you trust a hotel based on what its website says about itself, or what a friend tells you or shows you with digital pictures or video clips?
    • If you wanted a special meal, would you trust a restaurant ad over what people who ate there say on a user-review site such as Yelp.com?

  2. Social media has very clearly accelerated a process that has been going on for some time, whether dealers see the value or not and whether they like it or not. Reputation management must be a process; get everyone’s email address & ask everyone for a review. Then send them an email with a direct link to the review site your dealership needs help with.

    Do a Google search and click on reviews for your dealership; see what your customers are saying about you. You'll quickly see which review sites need your attention. Some review sites are better known than others and where you're located will certainly influence that. One very well-known site not mentioned below is Yelp.com, where you should consider setting up an account.

    Dick Hanna Honda implemented a Reputation Management process in 2009 and the results speak for themselves. This dealer went from:
    17 reviews with a 2.7 out of 5-star rating in 2009 to > 1000 reviews with 4.9 out of 5-star rating
    As of the 8th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando Dick Hanna Honda sported the following reviews:


    Does it pay off? Review-sites generated 5 phone ups in 2008 and 150 review-site generated phone ups in 2009. Want more proof this program works? Take a look at more Dick Hanna Honda customer reviews and please reply if you can point to a different dealership with a better managed reputation management program.
Last edited by ISM; 05-16-2010 at 08:07 AM.
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  • #2

    Dealer Review Sites

    Quote Originally Posted by ISM View Post
    I'm nowhere near Portland, I know about DealerRater, but my GM doesn't want to "pay" for reviews, and I've never seen my dealership mentioned in Insider Pages or SuperPages. What do you think the critical sites are for dealership reviews?

  • #3
    Super Moderator ISM's Avatar
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    Dealer Review Sites

    I don't know about importance Ryan so I'm listing alphabetically. This list is not all inclusive, but certainly a good place to start.

    AngiesList.com

    BBB.org

    CarDealerCheck.com

    CarDealersReview.com

    Citysearch.com

    DealerRater.com

    Edmunds.com

    Google Reviews

    JudysBook.com

    Local.Yahoo.com

    MyDealerReport.com

    SuperPages.com

    Yelp.com

    Does anyone know of any to add?
    Last edited by Matt Lamontagne; 07-25-2010 at 09:57 AM.

  • #4

    Critical Sites for Dealership Reviews

    CitySearch is not exclusive to Portland and works great in any metropolitan area; it’s free and quick to join as are Insider Pages and Superpages.

    The fact that your dealership has not received negative reviews on any particular site is a positive thing and you should claim your dealership on those sites. You can then solicit reviews from happy customers and direct them to post there. That doesn't mean direct the customer to a specific review site verbally, but after they’ve agreed to review your dealership to share a positive experience send them an email with a link directly to that page.

    What’s more challenging and the first order of business is to repair the damage already done on review sites. You know that reviews about your dealership are posted much more frequently when a visitor is upset than those that want to say something positive. Google your dealership and click on reviews to the right of the map. If you haven’t already done so, go through the process of claiming every review site where applicable. You can upload photos, videos, hours, why buy here and so on to truly make it your own.

    After each site is set up, sign out then click on “Write a Review” as if you were a customer that was about to do so. Copy and paste the URL into a template to be emailed to customers for each site starting with the one with the worst reviews working your way through to those with no reviews at all. The goal is to bury the bad reviews you already have with positive comments and you’ll likely find that it will be quite some time before moving on to sites with no reviews at all.

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