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If you’ve read this newsletter for any length of time, you know that we have very deep convictions about training here. Incredibly deep. Training happens every single morning, and for some departments again at the end of each day – no joke.

It was during one of these training times that we were discussing our Local Web Dominator program, going through the features and benefits and comparing them to other programs on the market that the title of this article went through my mind.

We were dissecting a call that one of our Business Development Reps had made, and going through the different objections she heard. As we listened to each one, and the responses we gave outlining features and benefits, it highlighted why the program is so good, and why so many dealerships are taking advantage of it.

I won’t get into the specifics of the call, but it’s worth talking about some of the features and benefits that make this program great.

First, let’s talk about the current marketing landscape. There are a ton of different media methods that dealers use to advertise their businesses - everything from newspaper, radio, T.V., direct mail, and billboards in the offline world, to hundreds of digital methods available today. I have some strong opinions about what methods work and what don’t, but that’s not really important right now. What IS important is what happens almost every single time one of those methods catches the interest of a potential customer. According to the latest studies by Google and a few other companies, somewhere in the neighborhood of 95% of people will go online to research a product and/or company before buying. 

So what?

Well, what if they go online and don’t find you because your online presence is so fragmented, incomplete, or contradictory from one listing site to another that Google isn’t really sure who you are, and because of that you don’t show up on page one of search results? Search engines rely on N.A.P. (Name, Address and Phone number) information from directory sites and listing sites as one method to verify businesses and give weight to who they say they are. Google is all about providing accurate information quickly. If your web presence doesn’t match up from one directory or listing site to the next, or it’s incomplete, Google won’t be sure who you are, and they aren’t in the business of ranking based on guesses.

If you have recently physically moved your dealership, renamed your dealership, just purchased a dealership, or just opened a dealership, I can tell you with nearly 100% surety that this is going to be an issue with your dealership. If you can check more than one of the items I just mentioned, odds are right at 100%. You need a way to check and correct listing information for your dealership to make sure accurate information is available anywhere you might be found online, and that it matches all other sites that mention you.

The LWD program has a dashboard that shows your online listing information for all of the most important directories and search engines so that you can build a uniform presence online. This is huge, because you can go to one place to see and correct your info rather than having to try and tie a string around your finger to keep track of each one.

Okay, so what else?

How many online reviews do you have? What is your star average? From a statistical and human nature standpoint, unless you are very actively engaged in acquiring reviews, you’ll have a handful of reviews at best and more from upset customers than happy ones. That’s just how it works.

Google studies have shown (as does common sense) that the more reviews a business has, the higher the likelihood that someone is to do business with that company.  These same studies show that an increased average star rating from 3 to 4 can actually increase revenue numbers by 10%. That’s significant.

The LWD program ACTIVELY harvests reviews for a powersports review site as well as Google reviews in a totally legitimate Google approved fashion. It’s not unusual for clients to have more than 100 reviews and a 4+ star rating in just a few months.

What about people who are really pissed off? It happens. As part of the review acquisition system, customers who have had a “less than excellent experience” are asked to provide details rather than a review – which are then sent in an email directly to the dealer principal (or GM) who can respond and save the relationship.

Angry customers are dealt with privately, rather than “on stage” in the review arena for the whole world to see.

Sounds pretty good, what else?

AdWords is huge, that’s what. In the online arena, there are some really big players and unfortunately dealerships aren’t. In many searches, OEMs show up high in the rankings, as do larger commercial sites like cycletrader.com, etc. These are national (international for OEMs) sites that are huge, been around for a long time, have tons of links to them, great optimization, and will outrank an individual dealership every time. It’s the nature of the beast. AdWords levels that playing field. 

There’s no way an individual, local dealership is going to be able to do all of the optimization necessary to outrank the big boys organically, but with AdWords you can still show up on page one of search results, giving you the same visibility and odds of getting that lead that the big boys have. Now, AdWords is a complex animal, and it can be really easy to spend way too much to achieve results so you have to be careful.

Or you have to be on the LWD program. At the Gold level, you have a team of certified Google and Bing experts who manage over 1 million dollars annually in ad spend specifically in the powersports industry actively managing your account to achieve the best ROI possible for you on your web site. You won’t get that anywhere else.

The bottom line is this, when it comes to marketing today, all roads lead to the internet – no matter what media method you use. Because of this, you have to have your digital house in order. I’ve given a 20,000 ft. helicopter view of the Local Web Dominator platform (that quite honestly really doesn’t do it justice because I barely scratched the surface of what it does) but even from that high up it’s pretty obvious that it’s an incredibly powerful program that can significantly impact the success of a dealership. If you aren’t on the program already, I encourage you to give us a call and get the full picture of what it can do for you. And make sure you ask about the new component that’s in beta testing now, it’s a game changer.

Talk soon…