We’re all taught the importance of “Please” and “Thank you” at an early age. Since before most of us could walk and talk, our parents were helping us develop manners. I can clearly remember drilling this concept into my daughter Harper roughly 97,340,309 times between the ages of 2.5 and 5. Generally it sounded something like “What’s the magic word?”. At some point we pick it up. At 8 yrs old, Harper nails it about 75% of the time and I’m pretty good with that.

In the business world, these manners are the foundation of customer service – “Good afternoon, this is Jody at Checkered Flag Toyota, how can I help you?” – some version of this plays out thousands of times a day across the country. It’s the right thing to do and we train our teams to cover these basics from day 1.

From our customer’s perspective – this is the cost of entry. People want to feel acknowledged, appreciated and respected. However – the “Thank you” game is changing with the advent of increased online retail activity. There are measurable benefits to any local business, car dealers included, of saying thank you the right way.

We talk a lot about keyword strategies in digital marketing. In SEO specifically, we focus on ensuring that we are using the name of our business, our products and services and geographical locations we serve on our website. This is good content for the reader and for the search engines – Google and others need to know WHO you want to come to your site.

There is a new player on the SEO block for local businesses, hidden in plain site on your Google My Business page – customer reviews. Reviews aren’t just for the next prospect to get a pulse on the business or for the current customer to praise or criticise their experience – they fuel the Google local search algorithms with the information needed to properly understand your business and direct traffic. [Read more…]