Your Reputation Becomes Your Brand

[jhmcarsct]

• When shopping for a new car, Internet shoppers used to visit 5 dealers – now it’s 1.5 dealers
  
• Shoppers indicate that they are more likely to visit stores with best reviews over lowest price.

Did you know that 46% of vehicle buyers believe that they HAVE TO bring the car to the same dealership that they bought it from in order at to keep warranty? A Cobalt survey also reveals that customers think that if they bring their vehicle to a different dealer for service than where they purchased it:

21% believe they’ll pay more,
14% think they’ll wait longer and
11% feel they’ll be treated poorly

Of course, any service manager would welcome a new customer regardless of where they bought their vehicle.

How can Internet Sales Manager use this? Get a handle on your online reviews then show your ratings and those of your competitor's service departments.

At time of sale and ask: “Do you want to sign up for 3 years with their service department or do business with us?”

[Jack Salat]

What Are People Saying About Your Dealership?

As an Internet Sales Manager you are the prime candidate to monitor what people are saying about your dealership online. Whether it is positive or negative reviews, general inquiries about vehicles that you may have, or service and parts opportunities you should be aware and prepared to respond appropriately.

The minimum tools to online monitoring include:

• BackTweets.com: a fresh new take on a Twitter search engine: It UN-shortens and catalogs URLs sent via Twitter and notifies you when your dealership’s URL is part of their message.
• Google.com/Alerts: get email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news) based on your choice of keyword, topic or your dealership name.
• Search.Twitter.com: every public update sent to Twitter is instantly indexed and made available via real-time search. Search for any keyword or phrase to discover what's happening right now.
• YackTrack.com: search for comments about your content or dealership. If you comment on a blog post, you can find other people that join the conversation on other sites such as Blogger/BlogSpot, Digg, Disqus, FriendFeed, Google Blog Search, Google Reader, Identi.ca, IntenseDebate, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter, TypePad/MoveableType, WordPress blogs and more.