ATLANTA, Ga. — February 18, 2012 -– Powersports Marketing™, a subsidiary of Dealership University™, the industry’s leading training and marketing firm, today announced the official launch of a revolutionary online reputation management system called the Local Web Dominator (LWD). This new and innovative marketing technology ensures powersports dealers have the best online exposure possible through the systematic acquisition of positive reviews and ratings, as well as accurate listing information in all online business listing directories. Additionally, dealers are able to filter ‘Lost Customers’ who are dissatisfied and place them into a customer re-activation campaign.

“Having a positive online reputation is now a foundational key to the success of dealers for two very important reasons.  One, what your customers say about your dealership will always be more compelling than what you say, and two, the majority of all consumers are now conducting their research online where reviews and ratings are prominently displayed,” said Rod Stuckey, president of Powersports Marketing.

The Local Web Dominator program promises to be an extremely powerful sales and marketing tool for Powersports dealers across North America. A compelling example of the potential impact of this system is Wolverine Harley-Davidson®; as an early adopter of the LWD, they received over 165 positive, 5-star reviews in less than 72 hours and an additional 25 lost customers eligible for re-activation.

Eric Pedretti, Powersports Marketing’s account executive for Wolverine Harley-Davidson®, stated that their General Manager, George de la Nuez, viewed these lost customers as an opportunity for improvement. According to Pedretti, “He contacted a customer that had left negative feedback, was able to find out why they were upset, and resolved their issue. But, it gets even better. The customer was so pleased with Wolverine’s commitment to customer satisfaction; George’s team was able to sell them a bike on the spot!”

The Local Web Dominator program is available in three levels to meet the various needs and budgets of powersports dealers throughout the U.S. For more information about the program or to enroll, please click here  or call (877) 242-4472.

The first question you must ask yourself prior to crafting your email is “What is my objective?” In other words, what is the desired outcome of sending this e-mail to your list?

Some possible scenarios, include:

• An incentive for visiting the store for an upcoming event, promotion, group ride, etc…
• Clicking a link to complete a survey or visit a landing page for CSI, or list segmentation
• Purchasing a product via your e-commerce solution
• Calling the dealership
• Opting into your face book or other social media
• Or, simply just creating affinity with your list

Once you’ve defined your objective, it’s time to closely analyze your list to ensure your communications will be relevant to all recipients. If you notice your message isn’t applicable to all, you should segment your list accordingly.

When crafting your email, consider it as ‘Salesmanship in Print’. All of the basic fundamentals of sales are also applicable when creating ad copy. You should have a proper greeting, look to develop rapport, build value, and ask for the sale. In the case of e-mail the ‘ask for the sale’ is the offer to accomplish your objective.

You may have heard Rod refer to the Collier concept, which was originated from the great copywriter Robert Collier. Collier coined the phrase – “Tapping into the conversation already going on in the heads of your customers” as a way to illustrate how to make your copy more relevant and compelling. One of the best ways to accomplish the Collier concept is leveraging Holidays and other current events. All of which are great excuses to e-mail your list. Here are some examples of monthly e-mail campaign themes.

January – New Year’s Celebration

February – Valentines & Daytona Bike Week

March – St. Patrick’s Day

April – Spring Has Sprung

May – Memorial Day

June – Hot Deals Summer Open House

July - 4th of July Independence Day

August – Owner’s Birthday Celebration Party!

September – Extend the Riding Season

October – Halloween Event

November – Thanksgiving Promo

December – Christmas and New Year’s – Shop and Save Event

By hitching your wagon to holidays and other current events, you’re able to substantiate your offer in the eyes of the recipient. Additionally, as you probably already know, it can be diffi cult to make your e-mails relevant to all on your list due to different interests and sub categories of products. If you’re e-mailing a special offer on ladies riding jackets, there’s a good chance many who receive that e-mail will not have interest in that offer. Too many emails that miss the mark, ultimately lead to poor open rates. One of the great benefits of creating your e-mails around holidays and events is you can make them applicable to all.

So what about negative reviews?

Sure, the knee-jerk reaction is the desire to see just how tightly you can get your hands around the idiot with no life’s neck who took the time to craft that scathing, one-sided, unreasonable, nasty review about your dealership (but in most states this really creates more problems than it solves. : )

Many years ago, Rod gave me some great advice. When someone gets you fired up with a letter, e-mail or nowadays an online review, follow the 24 hour cool down rule. Don’t respond for 24 hours so you have time to get past the immediate emotional response. Then you can begin to address things in a productive and logical way.

By the way, regarding reviews, I’ve identified three categories of dealers that I’ll take a second to mention here. Dealers tend to fall into one of these three camps when it comes to online reputation management.

The first group read a bad review, may get upset (it’s natural), and then look to see what led to the bad review. They try and understand what happened – the true cause, and if a shortcoming in their systems or performance made the review valid, they take corrective action. They then respond in a timely manner to the reviewer and work to salvage the relationship. They also put systems in place to proactively create positive reviews.

The second group reads negative reviews and gets upset, blames it on the customer, and just hopes no one sees them. No investigation as to the legitimacy of the review, and no response to attempt to salvage the relationship with the customer. Hope is not a strategy online. It’s too transparent. Typically, these dealers have more bad reviews than good ones.

The third group is absolutely oblivious to the entire subject of online reputation management. They’re ‘too busy’ changing tires, selling spark plugs, and desking deals to even claim their Google Places page. I’m not going to address the remainder of this article to the bottom two groups because they aren’t reading it anyway. They’re too busy creating new open point opportunities for those of you who are reading this newsletter.

So, you have a bad review. The first thing you need to know is that it isn’t the end of the world. The occasional bad review will happen to everyone. As a matter of fact, never having a bad review can actually harm credibility – nobody is perfect. Also, properly handling a bad review actually BOOSTS credibility because it shows that you care and your customers are important.

According to Ted Paff, the president of Customer Lobby, there are three components to handling negative customer reviews:

1. Own the issue.Your first objective in a response is to communicate that: you are paying attention to the issue; the issue is important to you; and that you are sorry the reviewer had a problem. Your prospects will be reading your reply with rapt attention. Write this for them. Tell them that when someone has a problem, your business will hear them. It doesn’t matter if the reviewer lied or only told half of the story – own whatever issue they wrote about.
2. Describe how future customers won’t have this issue.A critical part of any response is to tell your prospects that something has changed and this issue will not happen to them. This is a golden opportunity to market your business. For example, writing that ‘we have put a new process in place…’ tells your prospects that your company is good and is getting better.
3. Offer to fix the issue.Your business will spend a lot of time and money on sales and marketing. Although you can’t always fix every issue (sometimes you don’t want to), your offer to fix a reviewer’s problem is a great marketing investment. In the response, suggest that theycontact you directly so you can try to resolve the issue.

So, the takeaway is that occasionally you are going to get a negative review. But if you handle it properly, in most cases you will be able to turn the situation around and have it become a positive for you and your dealership. The important thing is that you’re aware of what’s being said online and take appropriate action when necessary.

By the way, we’re currently looking for a small group of leading edge dealers to pilot our soon to be released ‘Reputation Management’ marketing technology. If you’re interested in being one of our beta dealers, shoot me an e-mail at bcannon@dealershipu.com or give me a call at 877-242-4472 ext. 104.

It’s the New Year (or really close), and often that brings with it a new sense of commitment about goals both personal and business-related. That being said, I encourage those of you who have never used e-mail as a marketing method to commit to doing so this year, and those of you who have to take it up a notch.

Why? According to a DMA study, the average ROI for e-mails in 2009 was $43.52 for every dollar spent on it.

I’m going to stop typing for a second so you can let that sink in…☺

So given the importance of e-mail, and in the spirit of new starts for the New Year, let’s take a look at the core of what we’re trying to accomplish and one of the foundational elements that needs to be kept in mind for all e-mail marketing.

What are you trying to accomplish with e-mail marketing? Sure you wanna create sales opportunities, but that starts with relationship building. Carol Ellison of Destination CRM says “Best Practices in e-mail marketing demand communications that go beyond advertising, respect the customer, and speak in a familiar one-on-one style.”

Seth Godin, author of many landmark marketing books including Permission Marketing, has been integral in transforming e-mail marketing into what it has become today. Godin said it a little more plainly when he commented, “E-mail is the most personal advertising medium in history. If your e-mail isn’t personal, it’s broken.”

What this means to you and I is that the days of sending out an e-mail that looks like a color full-page magazine every month and calling it an e-zine are over. Sure, the occasional “brochure” type e-mail is okay, but sending out more personalized “from-a-person-to-a-person” e-mails regularly is what brings returns.

Jack Burke, author of Creating Customer Connections paints the picture best for me in describing the difference between personalized e-mail vs. flyer style mailings when he said “Too much e-mail marketing is one-off offers written as if recipients like to run off at the end of the day and turn on Home Shopping Network so they can be targeted 24×7 by commercials.”

A mantra here at Powersports Marketing is “People buy from people they know, like, and trust.” Successful e-mail marketing lets people get to know you, you share a common passion so you can be friends, and that friendship breeds trust. It’s okay to relax and tell a short story in your e-mails, or better yet to stretch it between a couple before you bring it back to a sales message. When your customers think of you as their friend down at the shop, it means that they like you. It also means that when they need that new bike or the parts that go on one, they’ll be in to see you.

Talk again soon,
Brad

Okay, so let’s take a step back and think about the big picture for just a minute. You may have a billboard, radio ad, TV ad, newspaper ad, Value-Pak ad, sign at the local baseball or football field, and/or any number of other methods you use to let people know that your dealership exists. That being said, when all is said and done, where do you think that most of them end up prior to actually visiting your dealership?

The Internet.

And even though you gave your web address in all of those mediums, they can’t remember what it was exactly, but they can remember your dealership’s name (or enough of it to do a search), or what city your dealership was in (a different search). Perfect, you say. They’ll find me, right? Chances are they will. But 80% of what they find will lead them someplace other than your site – where you have no control and no idea what people might be saying about your dealership. This reminds me of an old comedy bit I saw Bill Cosby do years ago. He was talking to a friend of his who was telling him he really ought to try cocaine.

Bill said, “Why would anyone want to try cocaine?”

His friend said, “Because it accentuates your personality.”

Bill replied, “But what if you’re an A-hole?”

The comparison here is that there are dealers who are spending a lot of money on advertising in an effort to get top of mind awareness in their community and more customers coming through their doors, only to have those people look them up on the Internet and see that they have a really lousy reputation. There are dealers are spending money to inadvertently let everyone know why people shouldn’t come to their dealership. Are you one of them? Would you even know? Are you suddenly feeling a little uncomfortable?

The sad reality is that this is a relatively common thing in the Powersports business, and I have a lot of data to back it up. Another reality is that I used to be the Director of Operations for a four store dealer and if somebody had approached me with this kind of information I would have lost a lot of sleep just trying to figure out how to get my arms around everything I needed to know – much less how to fi x what I might find.

So what? So, there has to be a system and a tool to operate that system. And, it has to be very easy to use, because quite frankly, dealers are in the business to move metal not sit in front of computers.

Over the past several months, we have been working very hard behind the scenes to build a systematic technology-based solution for you to get a solid, accurate, objective view of your dealership as it appears to people on the outside looking in. We now have a tool that allows you to log in and see your dealership’s overall visibility on the Internet, reviews from all the major review sites in one place, and mentions of your dealership in blogs, forums, and web sites. Plus, you can manage your social network sites (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare) with pre-scheduled posts and comparisons to your local competition.

I am convinced we have put together the most comprehensive reputation management system in the Powersports business and made it easy enough to use that anyone can improve and/or correct their online presence.

I have included a picture of the dashboard for you to see above. Take a second and look at it. What you see when you log in is a very simple to understand overview – or snapshot – of the dealership’s Visibility, Reviews, Mentions, and Competition. In one quick glance, you can easily see how your dealership is faring overall in the online community. Across the top you have tabs that take you to the details for each element, plus social management. In a few minutes per day (or week) you have the ability to understand and influence the 80% of places that your potential customers will end up.

Over the next few issues of the UMM newsletter I will be revealing the details of how each of the tabs work, how they benefit you directly, and how it fits into the overall Local Web Dominator platform.

Oh, and if you don’t want to wait on the articles to get a better look at the program, contact me directly at 770-692-1750 ext. 104 or bcannon@powersportsmarketing.com and we can look at it together.

Okay, maybe you are asking yourself – “What’s the best way to get customers in here with the least possible expense?”

Clearly e-mail is the most viable media.

Your customers expect to hear from you. In fact, if they don’t hear from you, they feel as though you are apathetic towards them and they will return the favor.

E-mail is an extremely easy (and inexpensive) way to keep in touch with your customers, and can be used very effectively to draw them back into your dealership to spend money with you. Keep in mind that ‘Toys R Us’ isn’t the only toy store in town this holiday season. As far as your customers are concerned, your dealership is one as well, and e-mail is a great way to remind them that you have a great selection of goodies for the Powersports enthusiasts in the family.

E-mail is also a great way to bypass all of the clutter that shows up in the mailbox by the road and get right in front of your customer with your message, reminding them of what you have to offer.

Many retailers are saying this year that they’re going to avoid the “Black Friday” chaos by offering their sales over a longer period of time than just the weekend after Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s time to shoot out a series of e-mails just before Thanksgiving reminding folks that they can get exactly what their loved ones want for Christmas at your store. Whether or not you offer discounts is up to you, but you definitely want to be on their minds. Oh yeah, and don’t forget about Cyber Monday, it’s another great excuse to make compelling offers to your list via e-mail.

I’ve also seen some really neat e-mail sequences go out that were related to the 12 Days of Christmas. Each day highlighted a different type of product from gloves, to helmets, to apparel, accessories, and even some parts. Again – discounts optional, stress best selection.

The idea here is to make sure that during what is arguably the most hectic, chaotic, time of the year that your customers are still thinking about you and how stopping by to spend money at your dealership will be fun and make their loved ones happy.

Beats the heck out of going to the mall.

If you are reading this and know that your Holiday e-mail strategy isn’t quite up to par, or your list isn’t exactly as large as you would like, we’ve got some solutions that just might be the perfect fit. All you have to do is call.

Talk again soon,
Brad (bcannon@powersportsmarketing.com)

The first thing we needed to figure out was where to stay. Clearly, a huge decision – one that could make or break the trip. So what did I do? Using Google Places, I found condos in the part of town where we wanted to be. There were a lot of them, and immediately those that had no reviews got crossed off the list. I was not willing to risk my vacation on a place that had no outside opinions given. Too risky for me.

I immediately went to those who had the most reviews. I looked through them and found a place that had really good reviews overall, and a particularly nice review that talked about how they had left their digital camera behind when leaving and the condo management had shipped it to them across the country
at no charge. Place to stay – check.

Next I had to book a fishing trip. It would be the first salt water fishing trip ever for my wife, daughter, and son, so the pressure was on once again. I have heard it said that there is a very fine line between fishing and standing on a boat looking like an idiot holding a stick. I wanted us to resemble the former and not the latter. Again, Google Places to the rescue.

I looked up fishing charters in the area and once again those that had no reviews were eliminated immediately, and I began looking through the rest from most reviews to least.

I found a charter service that had mostly stellar reviews – except for one guy who had a bad experience. This charter service was run out of a local shop very close to where we would be staying, and according to this guy he bought a fishing pole from the shop. He said he had trouble with it, and went back to refund it. Long story short, based on what he said in his review, I was inclined to believe that the trouble was due to the fisherman rather than the fishing pole. Didn’t matter to him though, he was mad and wanted to tell everyone about it. The shop took the high road, and with that in mind as well as what was said in all of the other reviews, that is the charter I picked. At the end of the day, these guys got business from me in spite of having a bad review because I took the time to look at the big picture and make my buying decision based on the overall impression I got from their reputation. My behavior is not unusual, most people will look at the big picture when bad reviews are in the minority – after all, sometimes things happen and not everyone who posts reviews is reasonable.

So what is the takeaway? A bad review is not the end of the world – but it has to be handled properly, and the only way to know that you have a problem is to be on watch. Are you? If you need some help putting together a system that will allow you to see what is being said about your dealership and where, shoot me an e-mail or give me a call. I have a few spots open for a program that can change your dealership’s bottom line.

By the way, we stopped counting fish at 50….

Yeah, I’m showing my age, but back then I thought the song totally kicked butt. The line that I remember most clearly was the way Jett shouted “I don’t give a D*mn about my bad reputation!” Yeah, Joan rocked….

Well, just as music has changed, so has marketing. As a dealership owner, a bad reputation can be fatal.

This leads me to an enlightening performance analysis recently conducted by Marchex Inc., a leading digital solutions provider.

In March of this year, Marchex analyzed search results for more than 150 businesses and found that more than 80% of search results did NOT point to the web sites of these businesses.

Further analysis revealed that user generated content – such as reviews across social and local web sites make up most of the results. Stop and think about that for a second. What YOU are saying about your dealership is in large part overshadowed now by what customers are saying about your dealership.

This is why proper reputation management is THE NEW FRONTIER of powersports marketing best practices. First you have to know WHERE people are talking, then you have to know WHAT they are saying, and if it is damaging to yourreputation, you have to know HOW to properly respond.

I’ll give you a real life example of how your reputation can hurt you:

I have an ATV, and I needed to get it worked on recently. So, I pulled out my trusty iPhone and started my Google Places app to find the closest place to get my ATV repaired.

The usual suspects popped up, as expected, you know – the franchise dealerships. I clicked on the closest one and saw that there were some reviews, so I checked them out. Glad I did. Based on what I read I don’t want to ever visit them. So I went to the next one… and the next.

The third closest place was an independent shop that doesn’t carry any of the major brands, and to be honest, is a place I would never have even considered taking my ATV to get repaired.

But then I read the reviews. There were a LOT of them, a few mentioning the other places I had read about earlier. Long story short, that little shop got my business – and I have recommended them to several other people who plan to go there.

Rocks stars having a bad reputation may be able to achieve success, but in this day and age, it will never sustain in the retail market place.

Dealership University, an industry leader in powersports dealer training and marketing, will produce a program specifically designed to deliver real-world solutions to the problems confronting powersports retailers, said Advanstar, producers of the shows (and parent of Dealernews).

Atlanta-based Dealership University, founded and led by president Rod Stuckey, provides powersports dealers across the country with experienced instruction and curriculum topics including best practices in sales, finance, parts and accessories, service and more.

“Our objective is to deliver an entirely new educational model this year that will deliver measurable value to our show attendees and to build a unique information program for the V-Twin industry at our American V-Twin Dealer Show,” said Advanstar Powersports Brand Director Kerry Graeber. “Dealership University is the ideal partner to work with us in developing a curriculum that will help dealers grow their business. Rod Stuckey and his team bring an incredible insight to the project and truly understand the challenges that dealers are facing in this tough business environment.”

Graeber added that along with the 30-plus individual classroom seminars that will be presented by Dealership University, American V-Twin Dealer Show and Dealer Expo attendees will benefit from a variety of other educational offerings, including an industry leadership panel and workshops.

As part of the overall educational initiative being developed, Dealership University will also provide content for Dealernews, working closely with editor-in-chief Dennis Johnson.  “Having an ongoing presence in Dealernews is part of our plan to offer year round education,” said Graeber. “Dealers will now benefit from even more topical, relevant materials in Dealernews and www.dealernews.com as well as the expanded program at Indy. We plan on using all of the tools at our disposal to deliver a program that truly assists dealers.”

“We’re very excited to be bringing our depth of resources and longstanding tenure in the powersports industry to synergize with such premium brands as Dealer Expo and the newly launched American V-Twin Dealer Show,” said Stuckey. “We’re fully immersed in this industry and understand the current challenges dealers face to maintain profitability in this market. My team and I are really looking forward to sharing our expertise and delivering up-to-date, real-world, money-making best practices through Advanstar’s trade events and through Dealernews magazine.”

Dealer Expo is the largest powersports dealer event in the world, bringing together dealers, distributors, aftermarket parts and accessory companies and original equipment manufacturers in one place each year for a $145 million shopping experience. Dealer Expo is open to qualified members of the powersports retail trade. The new American V-Twin Dealer Show will deliver cutting-edge products and services; a customized educational experience; an exclusive auction of used Harley-Davidson motorcycles; and a unique environment for product buying, education, industry networking and entertainment.

“Really, how many showroom visitors did you have last month, and what was your closing ratio?” the Dealer Principal responded.

The salesperson replied with a puzzled look, “What do you mean by closing ratio?”

To calculate a closing ratio, divide the total number of showroom visitors by the number of customers that purchased a unit.  For instance, if a sales department had 100 showroom visitors and 10 of them purchased a unit, the closing ratio would be 10%.  A showroom visitor is defined as a person with whom you had the opportunity to present and sell a unit to.  It’s easy to dismiss parts and service customers, but many of them represent a genuine opportunity and should be logged.

According to a recent RPM Group Composite Report, the average closing ratio is 19%, or 19 out of 100 showroom visitors purchase a unit. So, to determine your true closing ratio it is necessary to track not only the number of units sold, but also the total number of showroom visitors.  Here are a few common strategies utilized to measure showroom visitors:

• Use a traffic log, daily sales planner, or digital CRM (Customer Relations Management) and ensure that your salespeople enter the information of each showroom visitor they speak with.

• Install a Swing Counter that electronically counts each person that enters your main entrance.  They are very affordable, easy to install, and a great tool to quantify the accuracy of your traffic log. (Online Search: Amseco EBP-407)

• Have someone greet visitors as they enter your dealership.  They can keep a running count of everyone that enters the dealership, notate which department they go to, and track the number of sales department opportunities.

By having an accurate count of showroom visitors and sold customers, you can determine a lot of valuable information.

• A high number of showroom visitors paired with a low number of sold customers may indicate that marketing is strong, but selling skills need improvement.

• A low number of showroom visitors and a high number of sold customers may indicate that marketing needs improvement, or the sales team isn’t motivated, or performing to its potential.

This valuable information can also be used to quantify the skills of individual sales team members.  For example, a high number of showroom visitors and a low number of write-ups may indicate additional training is needed to convert presentations in to write-ups.

There are several ways to improve closing ratios, which lead to more unit sales.  By educating your sales team on best practices individual closing ratios can improve by over 10%.  Best practices include: properly welcoming customers; interviewing; building rapport; performing effective presentations; asking for the sale; writing-up more customer; and the ability to handle common objections.

Another way to increase closing ratios is through effective follow-up with unsold customers.  Let’s take a look at some closing ratios for the different types of customers:

• First time visitors, or visitors that haven’t been in for a while, have less than a 10% closing ratio (walk-ins)

• Visitors that return to the dealership after their first visit have a 65% closing ratio (be-backs)

• Customers that have purchased before and return to purchase another unit have a 70% closing ratio (repeats)

• A visitor that was referred to your dealership by a recent customer will purchase 60% of the time (referrals)

• When a customer calls before showing up to the dealership the closing ratio is between 50% – 70%, depending upon whether an appointment was set (phone-ups)

Often times closing ratios will drop because the emphasis lies solely on walk-ins, which yield less than a 10% closing ratio.  Walk-ins require immediate attention, so utilize the time between walk-ins to follow-up with unsold prospects and sold customers.  Consistent follow-up will generate more be-backs, repeats and referrals, which in turn will increase closing ratios.  There are Call Centers available that will follow-up with your showroom visitors and provide a detailed survey.

The good news is that even with a 25% closing ratio, 75% of your visitors are still hot prospects.  Before assuming that your dealership needs to do more advertising, consider all of the leads that are already in the pipeline.  Besides, this is a lot less expensive than TV commercials and billboards.