DealerRater

Not Responding to Reviews Is Costing You Money

Picture this: You’ve just finished dinner at a new restaurant with your friends. The food was delicious, service impeccable. As you’re walking out, you pass by the owner of the restaurant and share an enthusiastic “Thank you!”. But instead of smiling warmly and thanking you in return for your business, the owner just stares blankly […]

The Rise of the Super Platform

Facebook and Amazon will command nearly 25 percent of all digital advertising dollars spent in 2018.[i] These two brands are more than powerful advertising destinations. They are super platforms, or self-contained universes offering businesses – including automotive dealerships — a vast audience and tools to reach them. The rise of super platforms is an example […]

How Personalization Is Changing Automotive Shopping

Automotive dealerships are now trying to please consumers whose expectations for a great customer experience are set on non-automotive sites such as Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and Tinder. These online destinations have successfully responded to a new breed of consumer who demands a more personalized shopping experience. They’ve flourished in part by using machine learning to […]

Three Ways Dealers Can Close the Year Strong

It’s make-or-break time for automotive retailers. U.S. automakers reported that the average selling price of a new car is increasing based on August auto sales, but the demand for passenger cars is dropping, and as the industry approaches the fourth quarter, clouds are on the horizon in the form of expected higher interest rates and […]

The Untapped Source for Attribution Learnings: Customer Reviews

Understanding the factors that influence a customer’s purchase decision is such a thorny issue that our industry devotes an entire conference focused solely on analytics and attribution. Dealerships continue to invest in tools that provide only a partial view of how and why a customer purchased a vehicle. To get a more complete picture of […]

Go Ahead, Text Your Customer

Let’s just open it up with a confession. Last night, I was online shopping during my kids’ bath. I know. I should have been giving them 100% of my attention to soak up every minute of their fleeting childhood. To be fair, I was sitting right in front of them, glancing up every 30 seconds […]

How and Why You Should Build Brand Ambassadors

Salespeople sell cars. But brand ambassadors make your customers so happy that they tell other people about you and return to do business with you time and again. It’s obvious which type of person a dealership would prefer to have on staff. And more than ever, dealerships possess the tools required to cultivate brand ambassadors. […]

Does Your Automotive Marketplace Pass the Friction Test?

Let’s talk about friction. Friction doesn’t just play a critical role in physics. Removing friction from the automotive shopper’s journey is the key to automotive dealerships prospering in an industry fraught with the challenge of running a modern dealership. Twenty years ago, an automotive retailer needed to be proficient with one-to-three traditional media outlets to […]

It’s About “Creating Connections, Not Just Leads”: A Conversation with Shaun Kniffin, Germain Motor Company

Germain Motor Company is embracing the future of automotive by giving customers what they want. The company, which operates dealerships in Florida, Michigan, and Ohio, places less emphasis on promotion and more on using data to understand customers and then customizing the experience for each one. Tools that provide customer insight, like Clarivoy, AutoHook, 3 […]

10 Lessons from NADA 2018

At NADA 2018, the entire Cars.com family – Cars.com, Dealer Inspire, and DealerRater — was busy connecting with customers everywhere, ranging from the exhibition floor to special events. What we heard during informal conversations and speakers onstage underscored the importance of the 4Ps of Automotive Marketing™ — product, price, place, and person – to the […]

How Findlay Toyota Rocks Automotive Retailing

John Barr, general manager of Findlay Toyota in Henderson, Nevada, comes from a rock-and-roll background. Before he got into the automotive business, he worked with music stars such as Sammy Hagar and Ozzy Osbourne. And now he’s a rock star, managing a successful automotive retailer and being named the Leukemia and Lymphoma Man of the […]

Why Your Customers Love or Loathe You

What motivates your customers to write absolutely glowing reviews – those five-star shout-outs that attract more customers to your lot? On the other hand, why do customers write blistering criticisms that cost you sales and create permanent heartburn? At a time when eight out of 10 shoppers use online car reviews and car dealership reviews […]

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