Does your dealership have a positive online reputation? When was the last time you searched for your company and saw what came up?
Your dealership online reputation is one of the most important things you should manage and be aware of regularly. If you receive negative feedback through reviews or negative comments on posts, its time to manage your reputation. Of course, having little to no actual reputation to manage its time to get online and figure out how to build your reputation.
Here are a few tips that can help you create a much better dealership online reputation.
Audit your search
When customers search for your dealership online, what do they find? Do your pages have problems that need to be addressed? Is your star rating low? Can customers see your Google My Business information? Use incognito mode to audit your online reputation by looking at your brand to see if it’s recognizable. Does your dealership show up at the top of the search pages for the brands you sell? Learn how your company ranks among other dealerships and identify areas of improvement. Use your website like a customer and make sure everything works as it should.
Check the online comments and reviews
Your dealership online reputation hinges on reviews and comments. What are your customers saying about their experience with your team? Are there any negative reviews you need to address? These comments and reviews are the drivers of how people view your company online. This is now the word-of-mouth system that is quickly shared with all other customers as soon as a review is posted to your pages. Make sure someone on your team manages any negative reviews or comments about your company.
Create some written goals
The first part of your goals can be to ask all of your sales team members to work toward receiving at least one positive review per week to help improve your reputation. Another task that you should address is removing negative comments about your company. Some comments could be untrue and extremely negative, which should be removed without a response. If comments are true and address experiences at your dealership, work to address the problem and add comments to show what actions have been taken to improve your reputation.
Are you being notified?
Is anyone on your team tasked with reading comments and review as soon as they come in? Someone on your team should be tasked with this project, and it shouldn’t take away from their normal daily work. Many reviews will be positive, and your team should thank the customer for their review, but some will need to be addressed. Part of improving and building your dealership online reputation is to ensure comments and reviews are read and addressed quickly.
How do you address the negative?
Some might call this crisis management, which it can be. Your online reputation is everything in today’s world. Most customers start their search and decision-making with a review of the company’s review rating when you have customers that are unhappy and leave negative comments and reviews, it’s time to take action. Who handles the crisis when it happens? Take control of the situation and make comments that show what your team is doing to handle the negative feedback and reviews.
Focus on your content structure
Is your content consistent? It’s important for brand recognition that your content is consistent and uses the same brand logo and imagine across all digital platforms. Users who visit your social media pages should see the same colors, logo, and images across all platforms. This consistency allows you to have a brand that your potential customers can see and easily recognize when they visit your pages. Using branded keywords can help. This means allowing your dealership content to be filled with brands and models from the vehicles you sell.
Join the conversation
Engaging with your customers isn’t a post-it-and-forget-it activity. You need to actually engage with them and join the online discussions. While this won’t directly lead to reviews and positive comments, an engaging dealership has a much better online reputation than one that doesn’t respond when customers add comments or opinions to various posts. When customers get to know your team through these comments, you’ll boost brand trust and improve what customers think of your team.
Your dealership online reputation is one of the most important things to manage and improve to ensure your customers want to engage and work with your team. How are you managing this reputation?