Proudly serving the industry for which it was named for more than 50 years, Outdoor Power Equipment provides dealers who sell and service outdoor power equipment with valuable information to succeed in a competitive market.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/559325
Earlier this year, ARI teamed up with Outdoor Power Equipment (OPE) magazine to publish our first OPE Dealer Marketing Benchmark Study. If you haven't read it, I'd absolutely recom- mend you go to www.outdoorpowerequipment.com/ARI_white_ paper and download it for free to see how your marketing initia- tives stack up against your fellow OPE dealers. In that study, we asked dealers to rank the effectiveness of 19 marketing tactics. Word of mouth ranked #2 in the study, finishing behind only websites. This begs the question: If word of mouth is the second most effective generator of new business for your deal- ership, how much time and effort are you putting in to cultivate it? The answer is likely that you aren't spending enough time har- nessing the power of word-of-mouth advertising to promote your dealership. And, while the good old over-the-fence recommenda- tion is still alive and well, many of your prospective customers are going to turn to their trusty search engines to help them vet your business through online reviews. The most important thing you need to do is be aware of all the online reviews for your dealership and respond to those reviews in a timely manner. Even if you receive a less-than-flattering review, it can work in your favor. How and when you respond to reviews is key. Respond swiftly and politely, and offer to make good on any mistakes offline. Engaging with a negative reviewer confrontation- ally will never go well for your brand. This article will walk you through many of the online review channels that your team needs to be aware of to ensure that you're taking full advantage of the positive online recommendations from your customers — a component of the practice known as "online reputation management" or "ORM." While I won't dive deeply into the offline activities you can do to support positive online reviews, I will kick things off with a few basic pointers: Ask happy customers to go online and share their experience with their friends and family via their favorite online recommen- dation engines. Ask new customers how they heard about you — if a cus- tomer referral or positive online review drove the sale, reward the referrer or the reviewer with a discount on his or her next purchase. Harness your positive online reviews for your next print piece — a quote from an online testimonial is a great piece of social proof for this season's direct mailer. Ready to find all of your online reviews? Let's take a look at some of the primary online locations you need to ensure that you're tuned in to. THE SEARCH ENGINES Google My Business: Let's start with a quick exercise. Go to Google and type in your dealership name. In the right-hand col- umn, you'll find a box that looks like the one pictured below, fea- turing Google Reviews. Anyone can leave a review for your business — good, bad or ugly. You can and absolutely should keep tabs on these high- profile online reviews by signing into your Google My Business Account, scrolling to "reviews," and clicking "manage reviews." From there, you can click "view and reply" to write a response to your reviews. If you don't have a Google account, you must first claim your listings. Amplify the power of word of mouth How to get the most out of positive online reviews ■ BY COLLEEN MALLOY FEATURE STORY | Website Solutions 26 SEPTEMBER 2015 OUTDOOR POWER EQUIPMENT www.outdoorpowerequipment.com