It’s not news to anyone that Covid-19 has changed our world forever. It’s changed the way we work, the way we socialize, and the way we shop. Like all other business sectors, the automotive world was rocked in early March when Covid started hitting the country hard.  OEM brands like Toyota reported a 37% drop in sales in March alone, reported by CCN Business.

Shoppers made a rapid pivot from visiting dealerships to researching deals online, and dealers made a rapid pivot to capture this increase in online traffic by upping their game digitally. Pickup and delivery options for vehicle purchases and service appointments exploded. Dealers had this message plastered all over their websites and digital advertising. With all these customers now spending more time online researching each dealership before deciding on where they’re going to purchase their next vehicle, customer reviews became one of the sole factors in their decision-making process. While we have always stressed the importance of customer reviews to our clients, they are now more important than ever. According to Inc.com, 91 percent of people regularly or occasionally read online reviews, and 84 percent trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Due to Covid-19 guidelines, consumers are less likely to discuss recent experiences with their friends and families and are turning to the web for these “personal recommendations.”

Let’s take a deeper dive into why reviews are now more important than ever and what you can do to stay ahead of them:

    1. More people shopping online now than ever

Covid-19 has certainly changed the way we shop, especially when it comes to a large purchase decision like a new car. While we used to be able to visit multiple dealerships in a day, people are being more cautious about the amount of people they are exposed to so they’re turning to the internet to narrow down their search. Before a customer even makes it to your site, they will browse your dealership via Google and social sites, like Facebook. These sites provide information and reviews from other customers, rather than what appears on your website, which can be perceived as an advertisement and somewhat one sided.

    2. First thing customers see when they Google you

When consumers are deciding where they want to make a purchase, the first thing they usually do is “Google” the business. Whether the customer is searching for your dealership or just browsing dealerships in their neighborhood, they look to Google to get more information. When your dealership pops up, your Google My Business (GMB) page will appear on the right-hand side of the search, which includes your Google review rating. The review section of the GMB listing is highlighted by 5 gold stars, immediately drawing in the customers’ eye. Whether you have a 2 star review or a 5 star review, they want to learn the why behind it and will move on to reading a few reviews to get that information.

    3. Transparency – People trust other people more than your online claims

As an automotive digital marketing agency, it’s our job to ensure your website contains key claims that highlight your positive attributes and what makes your dealership stand out over your competition. As a dealership, it’s your job to ensure your store delivers on those claims, and your customers are going to hold you to that. If your store isn’t adhering to the Covid-19 guidelines and you claim on your site that your store is a safe place for customers to visit, you can be sure you will receive negative reviews on Google and social media from customers letting others know your store isn’t a safe place to visit. It’s negative reviews like these that will change people’s minds about visiting your dealership before ever even stepping foot on your showroom floor.

How to stay ahead of online reviews?

So how do you make sure your dealership is being viewed in a positive light online?  This starts with your internal operations at the dealership. Make sure your staff is following all Covid-19 guidelines, inform your staff on special offers your advertising so there is no miscommunication between your employees and your customers, and encourage your customers who have positive experiences to share them online.  Every business is going to have their occasional 1- or 2-star review, but you want to keep your rating at a 4.5 or higher. A higher rating will increase your customer pool, which will directly correlate to more sales.

During these trying times, it’s important to keep in mind customers aren’t going to physically shop around as much as they would have pre-Covid. Your online presence needs to shed a positive light on your dealership, so they take that next step down the funnel to visiting your website and eventually making it into your dealership to make their sales or service purchase. It’s crucial to keep your employees aware of the importance of your customers’ satisfaction and encourage your happy customers to review your store on social media and Google.

If you would like to learn more about Digital to Dealer Direct’s reputation management services and how we can help increase your Google and social media ratings, give us a call at 877-958-4524 or contact us today!

Social Media became a major part of dealer’s marketing strategies in the last decade and continues to be a front and center part of everyone’s daily life. As Social Media evolves to maintain audience interests, so must advertisers to stay front and center. In this blog we’ll discuss the biggest changes in social media in 2020 and how to stay ahead of the curve and in front of your potential customers.

Facebook Algorithm Changes

Facebook’s algorithm changes in 2020 are focused on getting their user experience back to their roots of providing connections between family and friends. As Facebook grew and sought to expand revenue through heavy ad placements, news feeds were becoming so cluttered with brand activity that users were becoming frustrated by the lack of user generated content that they were there for in the first place. In 2019 Facebook implemented stories to help remedy this, and in 2020 they’re continuing their push by placing user generated content even more front and center in feeds.

As a dealer, this means you have more competition than ever for users to see your content. The posts with the most engagement will get through, and the best way to overcome that is reinforcing your organic strategy with a paid one.

This paid strategy could take on a variety of forms. We’ve found consistent success with precisely targeted lead ads set up to come directly to our clients’ CRMs. These ads typically get good levels of engagement to serve strong volumes of impressions, keeping your dealership in your customer’s news feeds.

Another strategy to consider is consistently boosting your organic posts with small budgets each day. A few dollars behind a post will push your message out to far more people than just trusting Facebook’s algorithm to distribute it. If those users engage with that post your post will get a leg up on the other organic competition and continue to spread. Eventually a consistent and well targeted boosting strategy like this will yield continuously stronger organic results and a more engaged audience.

Facebook and Instagram Stories

Facebook stories premiered in 2019, but their importance has increased tremendously when coupled with the above mentioned algorithm changes. Facebook and Instagram stories are designed to be short snippets of the user’s day. They capture everything from mundane DMV waits to extraordinary footage of unfolding events and broadcast it for the world to see in real time.

Dealers can tap into these stories by consistently posting happenings at the dealership. Videos and images of new car deliveries (with customer permission of course!), interesting vehicles in for service, dealership events, and day to day life at the dealership can keep you in customer story feeds. The key to these stories is consistency and relevancy. Don’t turn each one into a sales pitch, keep most of them lighthearted and as “slice of life” as possible. Consistently updating your story will help audience members forge a connection with you staff and your dealership, especially if you engage with them.

A Push toward Groups

If you’re personally active on Facebook, you’ve probably noticed a rise in people tagging groups related to posts and your interests. Facebook is continuing to foster the rise of groups based around people’s interests because it fosters the exact kind of interaction they want on their platform: meaningful conversation and content sharing between like-minded people.

To tap into this movement, employees and social media managers at your dealership should be involved in groups related to your brand, especially the local ones. Many car enthusiast groups receive hundreds of post interactions and comments per day, and they’re not just limited to performance and sports cars. There are local groups for almost every make and model, where your customers go to chat about your brand, offer and solicit mechanical advice for problems, and socialize with like-minded people who share a common interest. If you or your employee can become a trusted member and contributor in these groups, it positions your dealership as a thought leader and an authority within the community on anything and everything related to your products.

BUT don’t get carried away! Participation in these groups should not be an unsolicited sales pitch! People participate in these groups to get away from that sort of thing, and if you’re constantly pushing your sales your credibility and good will in the community will drop. The goal isn’t to directly advertise, but to become the go to person for any time someone asks a question directly related to your products or business. If someone asks where the best place to service their vehicle or the best place to buy a car you sell is, having someone in the community tag you or your dealership with a recommendation is worth vastly more than any advertisement, no matter how well timed and targeted. The more you honestly contribute to the community, the more you will get out of it. Facebook groups are truly a two-way street.

As social media evolves to give the user base what it craves, dealerships must evolve their strategies to fit into the new meta. As an automotive digital marketing agency, we see a lot of these changes happening before they necessarily hit the mainstream of social media. That gives us an advantage to take in the changes and pivot in the best direction for our dealerships. If you have any questions about your current social strategy and would like help adapting to the everchanging environment, reach out to one of our specialists. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you have and help your dealership socially thrive.

In the automotive industry transparency is the core of establishing a great relationship between dealerships and customers. Transparency is so critical because customers in the automotive industry are particularly focused on their overall car purchasing experience now more than ever before. Customers want to be genuinely informed throughout the process of purchasing a car.

The average customer doesn’t walk into a dealership until they have done their research. They typically walk in knowing a dealership and its competitors specials as well as the pricing and features for the vehicles they are interested in seeing. This is when customers can test for themselves if a dealership is truly transparent or not.

Here are what customers in the market expect:

• • Customers in the market for a car are not looking for a negotiation. They are looking for a good experience with a fair price up-front.

  • Often a dealership’s website doesn’t always present customers with certain fees and other pricing information. To avoid this as much as possible, the sales department should be knowledgeable on their vehicles online asking prices and sales process.

  • If a dealership promotes on their website, or other online platforms such as social media, how well their customer service is, a customer is expecting that be delivered once they walk into the dealership. Customers don’t want to walk into a dealership and not be greeted or attended to quickly.

  • Customers expect their salesperson to be patient with them throughout their car buying process. They don’t want to feel like their salesperson is pressuring them into something they are not comfortable with. Instead, the salesman should listen to the needs of the customer while also validating the offer that they are presenting to the customer is fair.

Transparency is the core of building lasting relationship with customers. When customers visit dealerships, they want authentic experiences. A way to deliver this is by starting to think about customers as individuals who have unique needs rather than just “customers”. Delivering an excellent car purchasing experience goes beyond providing useful services and resources.

To go above and beyond your dealership can begin with creating customer profiles. This way every time your dealership is in contact with a certain customer, they can be addressed by name without having to be asked. This may seem to have little to no importance but to a customer it’s a big deal! In addition, by creating customer profiles your dealership can also track customer’s purchases and services. This helps to better cater to their needs.

Dealerships should also make the effort to show customers that their relationship is valued. Your dealership can show this by offering reward loyalty such as discounts and special offers to long term customers.

After a customer purchases a car from your dealership don’t treat the interaction as a collection of funds and move on… follow up with the customer! Whether it may be a quick call or a short email, reaching out goes a long way. You never know if the customer has questions on their new car. Being there to answer those questions could be the reason they go back to your dealership for their next car.

The most successful dealerships deliver fair pricing up-front to customers, are knowledgeable on their online sales vs. dealership sales and deliver exceptional customer service experiences. The growth of a dealership is not something that happens overnight. Your dealership needs to set a strategic plan in place to start seeing results. Customers in the automotive industry are going to continue pushing for dealership transparency. If your dealership hasn’t done so already make this a priority!

Struggling with your dealership’s current customer reputation? D2D offers reputation revival. Our team can help your dealership when it comes to the real reputation management that impacts sales! We will help increase positive reviews and help spread awareness of your reputation to new and lost customers.

For more information on how to restore your dealerships reputation and how implement transparency in your marketing strategy, give us a call today at 877-958-4224 or contact us today!

Maybe you know the team and our philosophy at D2D very well, but if you’re reading this, chances are you don’t! If you don’t, we won’t hold it against you. Now is the time for you to learn all about what makes D2D stand out in a sea of automotive marketing agencies!

D2D Philosophy

Our philosophy is really quite simple and can be drilled down to 3 words: Control, Consistency, and Innovation.

1. Control – At D2D, we pride ourselves are being prepared and making sure all our clients are prepared. Gone are the days where our dealerships don’t know what’s happening with their marketing strategies on a regular basis. We make sure all our contacts are informed every step of the way so that they and we can maintain control over the marketing. Putting a fantastic marketing plan together doesn’t work if no one at the dealership knows what’s going on.

2. Consistency – Our philosophy of consistency is based on the ever-changing data that a customer’s journey to purchasing a vehicle is based on so many different factors. Currently, it’s reported that there are 24 touch points, 19 of them digital, before a person walks into a dealership. That means the better consistency your marketing strategy has, the faster you hit those 24 touch points with a consumer. That’s why D2D clients display a consistent message across ALL marketing platforms from their website to social media to SEM and display campaigns.

3. Innovation – At D2D, we strive to always provide the best and the newest technology to our clients. To us, it’s not enough to offer the standard automotive digital marketing We are constantly looking at how we can better our data and advance our programs to offer our clients the best and the absolute latest. We want to stay ahead of the competition so you can too.

D2D Team

In addition to our philosophy, there is a huge factor that sets Digital to Dealer Direct apart from the other agencies and vendors you might work with. Like a lot of companies, we think our team is pretty special, and so do our moms! But seriously – the thing that sets our team apart from a lot of other vendors is our in-house dealership experience. From the service department, to BDC managers and a Dealer Principal, we know the inner workings and challenges dealerships face, and that makes us uniquely qualified to work with our clients.

In addition, our team is trained specifically for automotive compliance for ALL manufacturers and are certified in Google AdWords and Google Analytics as well as all digital marketing services.

Customer Service Experience

One thing we know for sure is that there is no creative or technology that can withstand poor customer service. Whether it’s waiting days for a response, or getting no response at all, we know this is the reality a lot of dealerships face. This is probably the single biggest thing that makes D2D different. Not only is our team 100% there for you, but we will make sure you get whatever you need whenever you need it. We have quick turnaround times – sometimes instantly if that’s what you need! We know that the automotive retail business is fast paced and things can change on the fly. That’s how we work -fast paced and on the fly because, as I mentioned before, we understand car dealerships and their needs. We know how frustrating it can be to wait days, or sometimes even weeks for something to be done. With D2D, you’ll know instantly that we are on top of it, and we won’t miss a deadline!

If you’re concerned your current marketing partner isn’t up to par, download our 2020 marketing checklist and guide to see where they stand. For a no-obligation demo of our service, give us a call at 877-958-4524 or contact us today.

The automotive industry is certainly experiencing some interesting trends right now, but there is one thing we know for sure. The summer selling season is quickly approaching, and you need to be ready to capture potential customers over the next 3 to 4 months. While it’s true summer has some selling lulls as pockets of family vacations hit, it is still one of the busiest times for car dealerships. To help make sure your dealership is prepared, here are some tips for the automotive summer selling season!

Evaluate your Digital Advertising Presence

As you gear up for the summer selling season, it’s a good idea to sit down and evaluate your current automotive digital marketing presence. Now is when most dealerships start to ramp up to cover the increase in online research being done by consumers. So, your PPC spend might not go quite as far as it did during the winter months, and now is the time to look at your budget and what you might need to shift or add to keep an aggressive dominant digital presence. You might want to consider adding in some conquest campaigns to try to capture customers who are interested in competitor makes or dealerships. Search retargeting is a great way to conquest in-market customers.

Ask yourself (or your agency) the following questions when evaluating your advertising:

• • What is currently working?
  • Should we increase our budget on what’s currently working?
  • How are we combatting comparison shopping?
  • What are our competitors doing?
  • What does our geographic area look like in the summer? (Do traffic patterns or shopping behaviors change?)
  • How are we conquesting from our competitors?

Don’t be Afraid to be Bold in the Summer

When the factory comes out with great incentives and programs, it’s a good idea to mirror what they do. Remember that it takes 24 touch points before making a purchase. Mirroring the factory helps create that synergy and reach those touch points faster. However, if the manufacturer doesn’t produce something compelling for the month, don’t be afraid to go out on your own and create a really bold promotion. Use bright colors and fun creative but be sure to keep it clean and professional. And, of course, if needed, you’ll want to run it through compliance as well.

You also want to get your promotions out there quickly. Don’t wait until the 10^th of the month to put pricing up. Just because the second half of the month tends to be busier doesn’t mean the research starts in the second half of the month. These customers are online and decided between trim levels and choosing between you and your competitor. You don’t want to be the one without pricing which can greatly impact a buying decision.

Be Strategic, and put a Plan in Place

Heavy selling times call for a plan! Being delayed or not having a solid marketing plan in place can cause your dealership to lose momentum during these heavy traffic months. So, get with your automotive marketing agency, or schedule meetings with your vendors and review the strategy for the selling season. At Digital to Dealer, we are always on top of our game plan when it comes to planning out the marketing. This way our D2D team knows exactly what is coming up and so does everyone at our dealerships. This can really help things go smoothly and help keep everyone on track to what is happening and upcoming. If your agency doesn’t currently do this, we recommend you suggest it for periods like summer, Black Friday and Year End sales. Take a look at our previous blogs for tips on advertising during Black Friday and Year End.

If you’d like some help getting ready for the summer selling season, give us a call at 877-958-4524 or contact us today!