DealerRater your new Ally?

DealerRater Dealer page

Just last month my girlfriend and I made a last minute decision to drive to Manhattan for the weekend. Without months to plan the trip we needed to book a hotel quickly. After spending only one night scouring Hotels.com, Trip Advisor, Travelocity, and another dozen sites, we settled on a destination. The hotel turned out to be great and the user review sites really helped us make the right decision in choosing our crash pad for the 3-day excursion.

Enter the car dealership. When I was on the sales floor I quickly understood that referrals and word of mouth were a big part of our business. Dealers should realize that it is just as important to be aware of what potential customers are reading and writing about their dealership. If you want to do a quick test, try typing “Toronto Toyota” in a Google search and make note of the dealers that appear beside the map (7 pack in geek terms). You will see that beside the phone number, the reviews of these dealerships are showcased. Such powerful reviews are just one click away from your potential customers. Ratings can be posted directly on your Google Place page or extracted from various review sites such as DealerRater. Want to see a dealer that has hit it right out of the Rogers Center on to Front Street? Try typing “Toyota dealer MA”. The last time I checked this dealer, Acton Toyota, it had 1,019 reviews associated with their dealership listing, with the vast majority of reviews coming directly fromDealerRater. Since Google Maps is so visible, it is critical for a dealership to have their page loaded with positive reviews from their customer base.

What the heck is DealerRater? –

Founded in 2002, DealerRater® established the first car dealer review website worldwide. As a social network and user review website, DealerRater.com features more than 30,000 US and International car dealers, 190,000 user reviews and over 1,000,000 classified ads. The site attracts more than 3 million consumers every year who visit the site to search for car dealerships, read current reviews, write their own descriptive reviews, and find car deals – all for free. Car dealers are rated on the criteria of customer service, quality of work, friendliness, price and overall experience. In addition, both consumers and car dealerships may post free auto classified ads. DealerRater’s users may request vehicle quotes and the company’s Certified Dealers receive free vehicle leads.

Source – DealerRater.com

How do I make DealerRater work for me?

With more than 250,000 people joining the DealerRater user community each month, DealerRater is quickly becoming an important online resource for anyone seeking third-party information on car dealerships. The site is equally important to today’s car dealers for a number of reasons. DealerRater helps Dealers stay in touch with customer feedback and also gives Dealers access to an ever expanding market of potential customers. In addition, the content on DealerRater’s site is jam-packed with customer reviews and classified ads, all of which appear in organic Google Search results. As a result, as a dealer you are able to expand your online presence and achieve higher search engine ranking across the Web with the help of DealerRater’s user-generated site content.

But what about negative customer reviews that may pop up from time to time? Through DealerRater’s Certified Dealer Program, DealerRater offers qualified dealers the opportunity to actively monitor and respond to customer reviews and save relationships. Certified Dealers can take advantage of a two-week reconciliation period to communicate with unsatisfied customers through a privatewebsite panel before negative reviews are publicly posted. Given this key feature of DealerRater’s Certified Dealer Program, as a Certified Dealer you can actively manage your online reputation and address customer feedback, enabling you to retain more customers and generate increased business.

Dealer Panel

Another interesting feature DealerRater offers its Certified Dealers involves complete integration with the popular social networking site, Facebook. This recent addition offered by DealerRater allows a Dealer’s most recent positive user reviews to automatically feed to a custom tab on the Dealer’s Facebook Page, which is updated real time. A Dealer’s classified ads also can feed to a custom tab on the Dealer’s Facebook Page, and are updated daily. As a result, as a Certified Dealer, you can draw leads directly from your Facebook fan page.Additional Program Highlights

• Positive Review Testimonial Feed – As a Certified Dealer, your most recent 10 positive reviews feed to your website and automatically update as new reviews are added, enabling you to gain instant website client testimonials that are labeled “Powered By DealerRater.com”.
• Unlimited Vehicle Leads - Certified Dealers receive instant email alerts for all leads generated for their brand in their state. Leads can be fed directly into a CRM system.
• Employee Review Pages - Certified Dealers have “MyReviews Pages” for your employees to showcase their respective reviews.
• Unlimited Auto Classified Ads -As a Certified Dealer, you can place an unlimited number of auto classified ads on DealerRater’s website. Ads also appear on AutoSpies.com and in organic Google search results. DealerRater provides inventory upload management from your Dealer Management System to the DealerRater database. Dealers can list vehicles with multiple photos and Dealer notes to generate leads on specific vehicles in your inventory.

There are a number of user- based review sites all over the Web that dealerships can utilize. DealerRater has created a model that works for both the buyer and the seller. Stop storing those thank you cards on your desk and start getting those positive reviews in front of potential customers.

By: Ryan Thompson

“Ryan is an active on-line marketer, blogger, and Canadian Account Manager for Car Chat 24”