By: Mat Lee, Sales Engineer

When considering today’s digital landscape, there are countless avenues automotive dealerships can take to connect with digital car shoppers.

One way may be allocating a certain percentage of your dealership’s digital advertising budget toward display, pre-roll, or VIN-level search marketing. Another option is an uptick in your investment in the latest social media marketing methods. Without a doubt, these channels boost awareness of your dealership’s digital presence and drive quality traffic to your website.

Unfortunately, while these investments are important, dealers often undervalue (or altogether miss) the one critical component of a digital strategy that makes it all count.

Imagine this scenario…

Dealership A is intelligently pumping a large percentage of its digital budget into optimized marketing efforts in order to compete with neighboring Dealership B. As prospects engage with Dealership A’s efforts, they encounter one final wealth of information: the dealership’s online reviews.

If Dealership A only has 36 reviews and a 3.2 star rating, today’s digital shoppers will not only write off the store as a viable option, but will be motivated to explore the surrounding dealerships. This scenario cannot be understated: a poorly managed reputation is the fastest way to waste digital advertising dollars and the most effective way to drive shoppers to the competition.

The value that online reviews bring to your dealership is immeasurable. Online reviews have a heavy impact on:

• Consumers’ purchasing decisions, related to where they will buy their next vehicle or where they will service their current one
• Which websites your consumers actually visit and engage with during the discovery process
• Your dealership’s website rankings on search engines

These three reasons make online reviews critical to the success of your dealership, and subsequently, critical to your dealership’s digital strategy.

See How Clift Buick GMC Doubled their Online Reviews.

It is also important to note the extraordinarily small time frame between a shopper reading a poor review and making the decision to look elsewhere. Your online reviews not only directly influence your bottom line, but do so immediately — ultimately confirming purchasing and servicing decisions at your store or driving that business elsewhere.

To frame this with real numbers, nearly 82 percent of consumers may change where they decide to purchase their next vehicle based on online reviews (PCG Consulting).

Dealers using Prime Response,  Dominion’s award-winning reputation and social media management solution, are seeing 20 or more 3rd party reviews added every month, all while maintaining an average 4.5 star rating or better.

If those numbers don’t align with your results – it’s time for a change.

To learn more about how Dominion can get you on the fast track to digital marketing success, call 877.421.1040.