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
Bing and Yahoo! local listings: Bing holds the second seat in U.S. search share at approximately 12 percent, and Yahoo! comes in at a close third at 11 percent. Lucky for you, both of the runners-up in the search engine business have partnered with the third-party site Yelp to auto-populate reviews in both Yahoo! and Bing local search results. THIRD-PARTY SITES Yelp: Yelp is by far the biggest name in online reviews. Since its start in 2004, "Yelpers" have written more than 77 million lo- cal reviews, and Yelp had an average of approximately 142 mil- lion monthly unique visitors in the first quarter of 2015 alone! As a first step, it's important that you set up your Yelp profile to make sure that the information listed about your dealership is accurate. As with Google, you have the opportunity to log in and respond to reviewers. Over the years, there has been a level of controversy sur- rounding paid advertising on Yelp. While the company says that advertising has no bearing on positive reviews floating to the top and negative reviews fading to the bottom of the list, with such significant traffic, a small advertising investment may make sense if, and only if, your dealership is seeing a lot of traf- fic and reviews on the site. Angie's List: Angie's List is available to consumers on a subscription basis, and its ratings and reviews offer a higher level of clout than some of its online competitors. While con- sumers have to pay a fee to view ratings and reviews, business owners like you can access your information for free. The site offers owners nice perks, including marketing materials and review notifications. With 2.4 million paid households trust - ing the site, it's worth checking it out to make certain that your listing paints your dealership's products and services in a posi- tive light. CitySearch: CitySearch focuses on delivering locally tar- geted listings for its users, making it a great avenue for busi- nesses like yours to connect with consumers right around the corner. In order to respond to CitySearch reviews, you need to create a free business listing that also allows you to update in- formation, including your address, website URL, phone num- ber, hours of operation and more. SOCIAL MEDIA Facebook: A well-managed Facebook presence is not only an informational portal with content that you post out to your fans, but a collection of recommendations for your business from consumers as well — all reviews of your dealership will show up on your timeline. If you aren't seeing any ratings or reviews, check your Face- book settings to ensure that your page category is set as a "Local Business" — without this key setting, your fans won't be able to rate your dealership on Facebook. Twitter: While Twitter doesn't offer reviews per se, it's critical to monitor Twitter's hyper fast-paced conversations — a negative review here can quickly snowball! Monitor all Tweets that mention your dealership, interacting with them just as you would on any review site, being sure to "Favorite" and "Retweet" positive mentions. YOUR WEBSITE Finally, your most prominent online space is the venue where you have total and utter control of what you share. Cultivate your positive reviews from all of the online locations we've cov- ered in this article and share them in a dedicated reviews and testimonials section. Be sure to give site visitors an option to submit reviews of their own, so that you can consistently update your site with rave reviews from happy customers. There's no need to limit these kind words to your testimonials page; con- sider adding testimonials to your home page, landing pages and product pages for maximum impact. Managing all of these online reviews and listings can become a bit of an overwhelming task. Services like ARI Premium Di- rectory Management can help you simplify the process by man- aging your dealership's information across online directories and review sites, giving you a one-stop portal to manage online reviews across the web. Talk to your website or digital market- ing services provider to see what tools they offer to make the overwhelming task of monitoring your online reputation much easier. Colleen Malloy is the director of mar- keting at ARI Network Services. Prior to joining ARI in November 2013, Malloy served as the editor of Mo- torcycle and Powersports News. She is dedicated to the mission of help- ing dealers improve their operations through the implementation of ever- evolving best practices paired with ARI's suite of an award-winning data-driven software tools and marketing services that help dealers "Sell More Stuff!" — online and in-store. ARI removes the complexity of sell- ing and servicing new and used inventory, parts, garments and accessories for customers in the outdoor power equip- ment, powersports, marine, RV, automotive tire and wheel, and white goods industries. More than 22,000 equipment dealers, 195 distributors and 140 manufacturers worldwide leverage ARI's website (www.arinet.com) and eCatalog platforms to "Sell More Stuff!" FEATURE STORY www.outdoorpowerequipment.com OUTDOOR POWER EQUIPMENT SEPTEMBER 2015 27 OPE While the good old over-the-fence recom- mendation 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.