Cobalt leverages Social Media for some awesome PR and Reputation Management

Last Monday I was going through my normal Monday morning Twitter catch up. Making sure I didn’t miss anything of importance over the weekend.

As I was browsing my stream, a particular tweet happen to catch my eye.

Just Saab had posted a small rant about Cobalt turning off their dealerships’ splash page with no warning of doing so. Ouch! At the same time they grounded Cobalt, expressed their new love for Dealer.com. I’m sure Dealer.com was loving this.

Apparently someone from Cobalt’s team (I had a feeling I knew who this might be) had caught the tweet and contacted Just Saab, verifying that Cobalt  had indeed messed up. They took down the 2 dealerships’ splash page with no warning, and with no way of reversing the removal of the page.

Cobalt with the help of @auto_marketeer (our friend Jade) obviously wanted to “make it right” with Just Saab and shifted the lingering bad taste in their mouth to one of goodwill. Cobalt decided to do something a bit on the creative and personal side. They searched JustSaab’s Twitter stream and found the following tweet:

At that point, (speaking with Jade) the Cobalt marketing department made the decision to send Just Saab an Xbox System and Forza Motorsport 4. Since the entire dealership was affected, not just this one individual, they sent over Skyline Chili lunch for the whole dealership the Friday after.

This resulted in the following:

WOW. It was impressive to watch this go down. Let’s all agree, from a company that we would least expect it from (sorry Cobalt). Maybe those GenY employees do know what their doing.

Is this a sign of a new, more dealer-centric Cobalt?

This reminded me of the awesome Gary Vaynerchuk Keynote speech at DSES. Word of mouth is the strongest form of marketing and today’s word of mouth is online. However, business/dealers continue to spend money on traditional forms of marketing hoping to win the sprint while not conditioning for the marathon.

Are you following your dealerships reputation on Facebook and Twitter?

B2B “Social” – Industry Example. Kudos to Cobalt. is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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In yet another show of why brand management is so important and content is key, Chrysler has fired its agency, New Media Strategies, due to an errant tweet sent yesterday. The tweet, meant to be sent from the strategists personal account but mistakenly sent from the @ChryslerAutos handle, read “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive.”

Chrysler immediately jumped into action and sacked the agency, issuing this statement on their blog today, “So why were we so sensitive? That commercial featuring the Chrysler 200, Eminem and the City of Detroit wasn’t just an act of salesmanship. This company is committed to promoting Detroit and its hard-working people. The reaction to that commercial, the catchphrase ‘imported from Detroit,’ and the overall positive messages it sent has been volcanic.”

Good for Chrysler for jumping into action after narrowly avoiding a serious brand mistake.

Lesson of the day? Ensure the people around you and working for you believe strongly in your brand and what it represents. Everybody needs to take up the call when it comes to your messaging and identity.

How many people at your dealer have access to tweet on behalf of your dealerships twitter account?

Oops! New Media Strategies Sacked Over Chrysler Tweet is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Cars.com will be going live March 15th with their Dealer Reviews.

Many of us have several questions like “Why is Cars.com getting into dealer ratings?” I asked Nick Hummer, Product Manager at Cars.com if he would take some time and join me for an exclusive interview / Q&A for DealerRefresh. He was happy to do so.

Before we get into the exclusive interview, a quick reminder that Cars.com will be holding a 4 hour online live web conference right at your desk Tomorrow March 9th starting at 11am ET. You can sign up here!

Lets get started!

Jeff: Nick, why has Cars.com decide to get into the dealer rating business?

Nick: Reviews have become a standard part of any shopping process online, regardless of industry. Automotive has lagged a bit behind most industries, but we’ve heard over and over that consumers are actively seeking out this content. Reviews are quickly becoming a consumer expectation that shoppers look to find on our site. We added consumer vehicle reviews two years ago and they have been very successful. By offering a comprehensive site experience with all of the information shoppers need to make key decisions, we are able to provide the most value to our advertisers by bringing more shoppers to our site.  In other words – we expect that by adding reviews to Cars.com, we’ll increase consumer satisfaction making them more confident in contacting our dealer partners and ultimately buying cars from them.

We also expect dealer reviews will be a great merchandising tool for our dealers, giving shoppers the confidence they need to make a purchase decision. Since the majority of dealer reviews are positive, reviews are a great way to close a sale.  In many ways, we view reviews as the next step up from multiple photos, chat and video.

Jeff: Dealer Review sites are popping up everywhere, our members noted Edmunds review beta a while back.  What & how is your service is different from the other Dealer Review sites?

Nick: Let me stress that our goal wasn’t necessarily to create something similar, or even to specifically create something different.  What we really wanted to do was pay attention to the feedback we heard over and over from dealers – keep this easy. This is why we incorporated our reviews into our existing dealer tools -  we wanted a tool that would be familiar and would not require a new process to manage. On the consumer side, there is a lot of great information available as to what works and what meets shoppers’ expectations, so we worked with our reviews partner BazaarVoice to incorporate best practices from other sites into Cars.com Dealer Reviews.

That said, there are a few key points I always like to make on Dealer Reviews:

• Our focus is on reputation management not mediation: Reviews on Cars.com are about influencing future purchases through owning your reputation, not mediating disputes. We encourage dealers to respond to reviews, discuss resolution to any problems in a given review and proactively invite the shopper to contact them to make it right offline. This is the model we felt worked best for us after many conversations with dealers and consumers. Our research showed that many reviewers simply want to see that a dealer is staying on top of the process and being responsive. Similarly review writers told us they are just trying to help future shoppers as opposed to seeking resolution from the dealer online in this venue.
• Our reviews are found where people shop: We wanted to directly link reviews with the shopping experience, putting reviews where our shoppers go to search inventory. On Cars.com, reviews will be both on our dealer locator as well as integrated into listings. This does two things: First, as reviews grow in importance to shoppers, having reviews alongside inventory keeps the shopper heading down the path to our dealers, instead of abandoning a vehicle they may be interested to go do more research (which brings us back to the initial goal – giving consumers everything they need to make them ready to reach out and ultimately buy a car). It is also a powerful way for dealers to merchandise their store, directly where they are trying to sell cars. It also gives dealers a platform capable of driving meaningful review volume. One of our goals throughout the process was building a platform to help dealers build their reputation online, regardless of their current level of expertise.
• Credibility: I want to stress why we are approaching reviews the way we are. A lot has already been said here with respect to managing fraud and preventing dealers from stuffing the reviews ballot box in their own favor, or worse, against a competitor. At Cars.com we have always prided ourselves on striving to be one of the most credible information sources. It is one of the key reasons our site is so valuable to consumers. We are taking a similar approach with reviews. We are taking this extremely seriously, partnering with the leader in review moderation and even bringing in a new position at Cars.com to address any issues. This is one of the reasons we are not currently accepting reviews from other sites – we want to be sure we can stand behind the content.  We also want to continue to pursue the goal of an even-playing field.  If we import reviews from elsewhere, we do help many dealers build immediate volume, but we also run the risk of creating a negative dealer experience on day one for those with pre-existing reviews.
• We’re here to support dealers with the process: While other sites are expert in reviews and ratings, we feel our strength is at the local level. Cars.com is committed to our dealers’ success with online reviews. We’ll be arming stores with a full suite of in-store and direct marketing resources to help solicit reviews and best practices for managing reputation. We are bringing in leading reputation management and social media experts to give dealers advice on how to effectively manage the new reality of online transparency, on Cars.com and across the net (this is where I plug everyone to stop by and talk with me at the Cars.com Reputation Management Lab at NADA).
• Giving all dealers a fresh starting point: As mentioned above – We know that not every dealership is currently engaging in reputation management, but it is becoming a vital part of online business. We want to help every dealer get in the game, giving them a no-cost product, free tools to help drive review volume and an easy to follow process for success.

Jeff: Did you ask your dealers opinions first? -If so, how many did you seek out and what did they tell you?

Nick: In a word – absolutely.  We take the feedback of our customers very seriously and don’t make many changes to our site without first getting their feedback. We’ve been talking about dealer reviews for more than three years now, and started in-depth research and focus groups more than a year ago with hopes of bringing this feature to market in 2011. Over the course of 2010, we did hundreds of market visits and a formal research study that involved 40 individual dealerships of all shapes and sizes. We also took the concept to our largest dealer groups and industry consultants. We universally heard support for reputation management and an understanding that this is simply part of doing business online today. Most dealers understood that this is a move Cars.com needs to make to keep shoppers coming to the site and searching their inventories. We also heard many valid concerns about how dealers would manage the process in their stores, how we would manage fraud, etc. We took that feedback to heart and as a result, delayed our launch schedule to give dealers more time to prepare and put process in place. We put features like automatic notification of reviews in place to make the process as easy as possible for dealerships to manage.

I’ll also stress that our rollout schedule is based in large part on the feedback we heard from dealers – it was made very clear that the more time we give everyone to get ready, the smoother and easier this will be.  This is exactly why we’re talking about this now, when we won’t actually be making changes to our site for almost two more months – and that’s when the Beta starts.

Jeff: Will you be charging for dealers to participate?

Nick: No, all dealers will receive the benefits of Dealer Reviews at no additional charge. While we know reviews will add value to the sales process, the goal is to improve the consumer shopping experience so we can continue to drive the value dealers have come to expect from our core listings products. Even non-customers will receive reviews on Cars.com (with a slightly different mechanism for responding).

Jeff: How visible will these ratings be? -on Cars.com VDP -in Search Engines (i.e. Google Places), exclusive dealer review pages on cars.com?

Nick: Dealer Reviews will be prominently featured on the Cars.com website and will be accessed from the Cars.com homepage, through our Dealer Locator and also on individual vehicle listings. Additionally, each dealership will have a unique Review page with a unique URL where you can direct shoppers to read or write reviews about your store.

We’re building those pages with SEO in mind, but we’re also aware that we’ll need some tweaks and some volume built up to really get everything truly optimized.

Jeff: What is “best case” for a dealer that participates?

Nick: Quite simply, “best case” is selling more cars. We’ve talked to so many dealers who have told us embracing reviews and reputation management has transformed their stores. Even those that were initially reluctant to get behind their store’s reputation management initiatives, have been surprised by the results.  In addition to more vehicle sales, they are seeing lifts in their service business, increased customer loyalty and highly motivated staffs that are more engaged in delivering an excellent experience than ever before.

Jeff: Can a dealer “opt-out” of the Cars.com Reviews?

Nick: Initially, this will be an opt-in feature, given dealerships the ability to choose whether or not reviews of their store can be submitted to Cars.com.  We encourage dealers to opt-in as soon as they are ready, so they can start building review volume that will help distinguish them with shoppers.  Over time, all dealers will become eligible for review and will not be able to opt-out of participation, regardless of whether or not they are a customer.  This ensures the most credible product for dealers and consumers. As we talked to both dealers and consumers in researching this feature, this was important to both groups. They wanted to be sure we had a level-playing field for all dealerships and a place shoppers could use to get and share information about any store.

Jeff: If reviews have “power”, then abuse of power will follow.  What are you doing to POLICE false reviews?

Nick: All reviewers will be required to submit an email address along with their review. Every reviewer must validate their address with Cars.com before a review is published. Our comprehensive review moderation process will further verify that a review is indeed from a legitimate consumer. To manage this process, we have partnered with BazaarVoice, the leader in consumer generated content. They power reviews for companies like P&G, Home Depot, Best Buy and more, and have a proven process in place by which to weed out reviews that either don’t meet our criteria or are not legitimate. Every single review is put through human moderation. We are backing this process up with a new position at Cars.com, dedicated to overseeing the credibility of the reviews environment and working to resolve any challenges to that system.

We’re also putting steps in place to guard against fraudulent reviews from competing dealerships. We are taking this really seriously, and dealers caught posting fraudulent reviews, positive or negative, will be penalized. Dealers that try to engage in these activities to get short-term gains, ultimately lose in the end. Shoppers can typically sniff out false reviews and at the end of the day, they do more to damage a store’s credibility than they do to enhance its reputation.

Jeff: How do you “validate” a consumer and the dealer they are reviewing?  (I skipped this one, since I think we got it above). Will dealers be allowed to dealers to respond to positive and negative reviews?

Nick: Cars.com dealer customers will be notified whenever a review passes moderation and is posted to Cars.com. At this point, they’ll be given the opportunity to post a response to any review, positive or negative. We know from talking with shoppers that this response goes a long way in showcasing the dealer’s commitment to customer service. It shows shoppers that the store is paying attention and that they take customer feedback to heart. We did not want the response process to be cumbersome for dealers, so we’ve made it as simple as possible. In addition to automated alerts, we established a single response model, so the dealerships response is the last word on any review. In the case of negative or critical reviews, we encourage dealers to use their response to take the conversation offline and invite the customer to contact them directly to address a situation.

Jeff: A dealer is made up of several departments, sales, service and parts. Will all 3 departments be seen as one, or, will it be departmentalized?

Nick: On Cars.com’s Dealer Reviews consumers will be able to review any aspect of their sales or service experience. Both sales and service will form a store’s aggregate rating, but each individual review will be clearly marked.  In addition to an overall star rating, shoppers will be asked to rate Customer Service, the Buying Process, Overall Facilities and Quality of Repair on a one- to five-star basis. All shoppers will also be required to submit a written review of their experience offering context to their rating and offering valuable feedback to your store.

Jeff: How will reviews on cars.com factor into a dealer’s SEO strategy (i.e. appearing on Google places for that individual dealer)?

Nick: Cars.com dealer reviews will be optimized for SEO, driving consumers to Cars.com as a destination to read and write reviews of local dealers. Moreover, reviews of each dealership from Cars.com will be picked up by Google Places, giving dealers additional SEO prominence.  Again I’ll stress, there will be a ramp-up period here – once we get reviews online, well need to work with the secret sauce to get them indexed.

Jeff: Nick, truly appreciate your time today. It’s going to be exciting to see how this plays out. I have already signed up all my dealers for Car.com Dealer Reviews and waiting patiently for the service to go live.

Nick: Thanks Jeff, for the opportunity to speak with yourself and the DealerRefresh community..it’s been a real pleasure.

Exclusive Interview with Cars.com on Dealer Ratings and Reviews is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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NADA 2011 Reputation Management Labs with Cars.com

Great News!!

Cars.com Dealer Advantage is hosting an array of Dealership Reputation Management workshops and Mini Labs during this years 2011 NADA.They’ve done a stellar job aligning some of our industry professionals and vertical Online Reputation Professionals for these workshops and mini labs.

Click here for the Full Schedule.

If Dealership Review and Ratings are at the forefront of your dealerships overall strategy for 2011, I would highly recommend that you attend one, several or all of the scheduled workshops Cars.com will be hosting.

If by chance you say to yourself – “but Jeff, I only have time for 2.” Well, I have an answer for ya!

Put these on your Calendar and DO NOT MISS THEM!

Sunday 8-9:30am
Rise-and-Shine Breakfast: Embracing Radical Transparency

I’ll be introducing Andy Beal, the Author of “Radically Transparent”. This IS A MUST SEE!

I have personally attended Andy’s workshops and can promise you, you’ll walk away enlightened with some great information that you can take back to your dealership.

People are talking about your store online. What are they saying? How do you find out? How do you respond? And how can you use the conversation to your benefit? The explosion of social media has ushered in a new era of digital transparency that puts the power to enhance or destroy a reputation in the hands of the consumer. In this session, learn from one of the world’s most respected experts in online reputation management how to harness the power of social media with proven tactics and strategies for every phase of online reputation management.

Monday 10-10:30am
Fueling Sales with Online Reviews

One of my personal favorites; Jack Simmons – Cars.com Training Manager, will be drilling myself and the one and only Tom White, GM of Suzuki of Wichita on how our  dealerships use reviews to drive more service appointments and accelerate new and used car sales. And we have Screen Shots!!

It should/will be good. I’m looking forward to sharing the stage with Tom, someone that’s a real pioneer on our industry.

Don’t miss it!

Reputation Management Lab Schedule – #NADA2011 is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Cars.com Introduces Dealer Reviews

Today, Cars.com announced they would be introducing Dealer Reviews come spring of 2011. This is a huge announcement in my opinion and one that will continue to change the landscape for dealerships. A customer will now not only find the vehicle they’re interested in but at the same time decide if your dealership has the reputation they expect.

Cars.com is the first major 3rd party online inventory listings portal to dive into Dealership Reviews and with time, I’m sure we might see others jump on the wagon.

Boy, do we have our work cut out for us?

If you’ve been reading DealerRefresh, you understand the importance and already have a process down for managing your dealers online reputation. If you have yet to get on-board with online reputation management, you might want to consider now a good time to get on-board!

I was privileged to be part of a dealer panel during the Cars.com Sales Summit just a few weeks ago for the announcement of  Dealership Reviews.  I can attest that Cars.com is taking this this new service very serious. They took a great deal of time and resources to figure out how this fits into their service from a dealers and consumer perspective.

I’m personally truly excited about this new offering and believe it’s a huge game changer.

How do you feel about Cars.com offering Dealership Review? - Speak up and share your thoughts and comments. We plan to have an exclusive interview with Cars.com in the next several days. Some of your comments will help round the interview.

“Dealer Reviews is an exciting new feature on Cars.com that allows you to use word-of-mouth marketing to accelerate sales. That’s right, it puts the power of word-of-mouth marketing where shoppers can read your reviews and then quickly access your inventory. It also gives you the power to manage your reputation and advertising in one location. Visit dealers.cars.com/reviews to learn more before the spring beta launch.”

Cars.com Dealer Reviews Will Be Going Live Spring of 2011 is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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I often get the question “How can does one get their individual DealerRater reviews posted on their Dealerships Facebook Page ?” We’re referring to your dealerships fb page “Wall” and not a tab.

I decided to cut a quick video. It’s easier to show than write about it….

I know this might be a little 101 for some, but unless you know where to look for – it’s not too obvious and you need to know where to grab the URL from.

Are you posting individual DealerRater reviews to your dealerships Facebook Wall?

UPDATE: Our good friends over at DealerRater did watch this video and quickly took action on the suggestion we pointed out in the video. Now when you post an individual customer testimonial on your dealers Facebook fan page the DealerRater logo posts as well. Thanks Chip!!

DealerRater Reviews to Facebook FanPage Wall – How to Video is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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1 Question Dealership Online Reputation Survey is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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I’m sure by now you’ve heard of foursquare and gowalla. They’re a location service-based social network; a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you levels of “badges” for “checking-in”.

Ok, that’s all good and fun right?

But now, Yelp has decided to jump in the game (I’m sure others will follow). Yelp is looking to make their current service even more interesting by adding a location based feature that allows reviewers to show how many times they have “checked-in” at a location while at the same time allowing users to write a review right from the Yelp mobile app.

You’re following me right?

Let’s say Mary Smith brings her Nissan 09 Maxima in for service. She finds herself waiting in the lounge 30 minutes past the intended time. Just as frustration sets in, the unfriendly service writer finally enters the waiting lounge only to let her know it’s going to be another 20 minutes (and forgets to apologize). Mary’s car is finally ready; she deals with an insensitive cashier and finally makes her way to her Maxima tightly parked between 2 other cars in the parking lot. As she approaches, she notices a scratch on the driver side front fender.

By now she’s had all she can handle and has determined that she’ll no longer be returning for service. She reaches for her iphone, fires up her mobile “check-in/review” social app and in less than 5 minutes has written about her whole experience before even leaving the dealer!

Mary just happens to have her Yelp and/or foursquare account tied into her Twitter and Facebook account. So not only will her negative review of this dealer be posted on this dealers Yelp business page but also automatically makes it’s way to her Facebook page and twitter stream. TRIPLE WHAMMY!!

Can this really happen? You bet it can.

If you’ve been reading DealerRefresh for any length of time, you have a keen understanding of the importance of your dealer’s online reputation. As this new wave of social/review app continue to surface, it’s going to be even more imperative that you have a pro-active and re-active reputation management process established.

Are you currently tracking your dealer reviews on Yelp and other social business review websites?

Mobile Social Networking Apps WILL Threaten Your Dealers Online Reputation! is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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Search “Car Dealer Review Websites” in Google and your results are something like this…

How do they rank using Compete.com?…

Comparing review sites exclusive to car dealers ONLY.

Are you using these sites to your advantage, and if you are..which one(s) are you leveraging or watching?

Car Dealer Review Websites – Compete.com Results is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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If word of mouth is the most trusted form of advertising, what has the Internet done to extend its power?  Why is the traditional business approach to fear it?

In 2007 Jeff wrote an article about whether dealers should be using Social Media – you know…those facebook, myspace, and twitter sites.  Here we are 2 years later and I am finding quite a few dealers on all of these mediums!  Forget whether you agree with dealers being there or not, and let’s talk about how you track what is going on around your brand.  I think we can all agree people are using these sites to talk about you.

What are people saying about you on blogs and forums?  What are they tweeting while they’re sitting in your F&I office?  Did you just get flogged on Google?  How do you find out?

These are just a few tools you can use, for virtually zero cost, to keep score of your reputation online.  They’re valuable in other ways too.  Of course, the methods listed above are not all the ways to do it.  There are thousands more!  And thousands more appear each day.

Got anymore you want to add – drop a comment on this article, or join the conversations in the DealerRefresh forums “What Online Reputation Management Tools are you using for your dealer?“

Reputation Management Tools is a post from: Internet sales manager training

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