SureCritic
Why Every OEM Needs a “Me First” Relationship Management Strategy
The relationship management trend among OEMs today is to drive positive review count on 3rd party sites such as Yelp in what we call a “spend to send” model. In this scenario, OEMs, either directly or through their franchised dealerships refer customers to these sites to write and read reviews. This makes sense, right? After all, consumers love these review sites and recent surveys have found that up to 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. But there’s a problem. In this strategy the OEM is paying (in marketing dollars) to send people away from its own consumer website and their franchised dealership websites to a 3rd party site where captive consumers are exposed to competitors’ reviews, new and used inventory, and competitor advertisements. While it’s a good idea for OEMs and dealers to be involved in reputation management related to 3rd party sites, there’s another strategy that will move the reputation needle faster, easier, and more cost-effectively while increasing customer retention and reducing customer defection. And, if done right, the outcome will be more satisfied customers resulting in better, organic, non-solicited reviews on 3rd party sites. We’re talking about a “me first” content strategy where OEMs first generate and publish both vehicle and dealership sales and service reviews on their own websites.
Before diving into this new strategy, it’s worthwhile to dig a little deeper into the problems with a traditional “spend to send” model. First, until the OEM has provided content for the captive eyeballs already paid for in SEM dollars, it doesn’t make sense financially or strategically to pay to send consumers to other sites. Many OEMs spend hundreds of millions of dollars to drive consumers to their site only to send them elsewhere for a critical element of the purchase experience, reviews!
Second, the more content provided to 3rd party ad model sites like Yelp and others, the more powerful these sites become in the competition for page 1 Google search engine results page (SERP). Since relevant, timely content is a key driver for SEO performance, the more consumers you push to these websites to write and read reviews, the more likely they will trump you in search engine rankings. Try searching “2015 Toyota Camry reviews” in Google. In a search from Seattle, WA, Toyota’s consumer site doesn’t even come up until the middle of page two! This would not necessarily be negative if most of these sites weren’t loaded with competitive ads and competitive new and used vehicle inventory. This brings to mind a recent discussion I had with an executive at a large automotive manufacturer. During my presentation, he said to me, "But David, customers have been conditioned to go to these sites". My response was "Yes they have, by you because you’re not providing them with a key component of the decision making process on your website!"
Third, dealers are already paying for tools that push customers to these sites, many after pre-qualification questions that practically ensure a positive review and therefore skew the results and potentially mislead potential buyers. There is a risk for OEMs who follow this practice. Consumers expect unbiased information from manufacturers. Jumping into that fray may well produce negative public relations consequences at some point in the future.
A “me first” strategy combats these problems while also being faster and more effective at moving relationship management in a positive direction. OEMs following this strategy first create content for their own websites and those of their franchised dealers. Vehicle reviews is key content on the OEM sites, and dealership sales and service reviews that pop-up anytime a dealership name is displayed. At SureCritic we know the dealership site is a critical place for content because of the significant traffic to our Dealer Review pages that come from dealership website referrals. The second step is implementation of an OEM and dealer process for managing both the content and concern resolution when things don’t go well.
When OEMs create their own content they keep the eyeballs already paid for through SEM on their own websites. They also stop paying to create dealership search competition defined as websites that show competitive advertisement and inventory. By providing less content to 3rd party review sites, they stop contributing to Page 1 SERP results for these sites that advertise competitors’ information. Additionally, this model creates true word-of-mouth digital reputation management. When the OEM is in charge of content it can tie every review request directly to an action that happened in the dealership and is logged in the CRM – whether sales or service. Since only validated customers would be asked to give feedback, the review process would be clean and above reproach. Finally, because of the concern resolution process incorporated into this model, it can help improve customer satisfaction and result in better, organic reviews on 3rd party sites. With control over content and a process to manage it, OEMs and dealers can immediately react to a poor review, resolve the issue, and then post an updated customer comment. This transparent process improves customer satisfaction and engenders trust in potential buyers.
The “spend to send” strategy that is a growing trend among OEMs wastes marketing dollars for both the OEM and their dealers, provides misleading data that can actually hamper process improvement efforts at the dealership level and all but encourages consumers to defect to a competitor. In contrast, a “me first” content strategy retains eyeballs that have already been paid for through SEM by both the OEM and dealer, ensures content is seen by consumers who are already on an OEM or dealership website thus in the funnel, and allows for the opportunity to resolve issues or concerns before they negatively affect reputation across the web. As an added bonus, taking the reins when it comes to reviews is faster, easier, and more cost-effective than pushing consumers to 3rd party sites.
David Brondstetter is CEO of SureCritic, creators of the industry’s first SocialCSI® Customer Experience Management (CEM) platform that combines the best features of reputation management with the best features of CSI. You can reach him at David@surecritic.com.
SureCritic
Why Every OEM Needs a “Me First” Relationship Management Strategy
The relationship management trend among OEMs today is to drive positive review count on 3rd party sites such as Yelp in what we call a “spend to send” model. In this scenario, OEMs, either directly or through their franchised dealerships refer customers to these sites to write and read reviews. This makes sense, right? After all, consumers love these review sites and recent surveys have found that up to 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. But there’s a problem. In this strategy the OEM is paying (in marketing dollars) to send people away from its own consumer website and their franchised dealership websites to a 3rd party site where captive consumers are exposed to competitors’ reviews, new and used inventory, and competitor advertisements. While it’s a good idea for OEMs and dealers to be involved in reputation management related to 3rd party sites, there’s another strategy that will move the reputation needle faster, easier, and more cost-effectively while increasing customer retention and reducing customer defection. And, if done right, the outcome will be more satisfied customers resulting in better, organic, non-solicited reviews on 3rd party sites. We’re talking about a “me first” content strategy where OEMs first generate and publish both vehicle and dealership sales and service reviews on their own websites.
Before diving into this new strategy, it’s worthwhile to dig a little deeper into the problems with a traditional “spend to send” model. First, until the OEM has provided content for the captive eyeballs already paid for in SEM dollars, it doesn’t make sense financially or strategically to pay to send consumers to other sites. Many OEMs spend hundreds of millions of dollars to drive consumers to their site only to send them elsewhere for a critical element of the purchase experience, reviews!
Second, the more content provided to 3rd party ad model sites like Yelp and others, the more powerful these sites become in the competition for page 1 Google search engine results page (SERP). Since relevant, timely content is a key driver for SEO performance, the more consumers you push to these websites to write and read reviews, the more likely they will trump you in search engine rankings. Try searching “2015 Toyota Camry reviews” in Google. In a search from Seattle, WA, Toyota’s consumer site doesn’t even come up until the middle of page two! This would not necessarily be negative if most of these sites weren’t loaded with competitive ads and competitive new and used vehicle inventory. This brings to mind a recent discussion I had with an executive at a large automotive manufacturer. During my presentation, he said to me, "But David, customers have been conditioned to go to these sites". My response was "Yes they have, by you because you’re not providing them with a key component of the decision making process on your website!"
Third, dealers are already paying for tools that push customers to these sites, many after pre-qualification questions that practically ensure a positive review and therefore skew the results and potentially mislead potential buyers. There is a risk for OEMs who follow this practice. Consumers expect unbiased information from manufacturers. Jumping into that fray may well produce negative public relations consequences at some point in the future.
A “me first” strategy combats these problems while also being faster and more effective at moving relationship management in a positive direction. OEMs following this strategy first create content for their own websites and those of their franchised dealers. Vehicle reviews is key content on the OEM sites, and dealership sales and service reviews that pop-up anytime a dealership name is displayed. At SureCritic we know the dealership site is a critical place for content because of the significant traffic to our Dealer Review pages that come from dealership website referrals. The second step is implementation of an OEM and dealer process for managing both the content and concern resolution when things don’t go well.
When OEMs create their own content they keep the eyeballs already paid for through SEM on their own websites. They also stop paying to create dealership search competition defined as websites that show competitive advertisement and inventory. By providing less content to 3rd party review sites, they stop contributing to Page 1 SERP results for these sites that advertise competitors’ information. Additionally, this model creates true word-of-mouth digital reputation management. When the OEM is in charge of content it can tie every review request directly to an action that happened in the dealership and is logged in the CRM – whether sales or service. Since only validated customers would be asked to give feedback, the review process would be clean and above reproach. Finally, because of the concern resolution process incorporated into this model, it can help improve customer satisfaction and result in better, organic reviews on 3rd party sites. With control over content and a process to manage it, OEMs and dealers can immediately react to a poor review, resolve the issue, and then post an updated customer comment. This transparent process improves customer satisfaction and engenders trust in potential buyers.
The “spend to send” strategy that is a growing trend among OEMs wastes marketing dollars for both the OEM and their dealers, provides misleading data that can actually hamper process improvement efforts at the dealership level and all but encourages consumers to defect to a competitor. In contrast, a “me first” content strategy retains eyeballs that have already been paid for through SEM by both the OEM and dealer, ensures content is seen by consumers who are already on an OEM or dealership website thus in the funnel, and allows for the opportunity to resolve issues or concerns before they negatively affect reputation across the web. As an added bonus, taking the reins when it comes to reviews is faster, easier, and more cost-effective than pushing consumers to 3rd party sites.
David Brondstetter is CEO of SureCritic, creators of the industry’s first SocialCSI® Customer Experience Management (CEM) platform that combines the best features of reputation management with the best features of CSI. You can reach him at David@surecritic.com.
2 Comments
SureCritic
Alex, Hope things are well with you and thanks for the comments. How many hundreds of millions of dollars will just one OEM spend to drive eyeballs to their consumer facing site, then promptly invite them to leave to get review information? I used the Toyota example in search for a reason. If you go to Toyota's consumer site and research a vehicle, they have review links on their site that take you away from Toyota's consumer site and land you on a page filled with competitive ads. Try this; go to toyota.com and select the "vehicles" option on the top nav. Then use the side arrow to scroll right until you find the Rav4. Click on Rav4 and scroll down until you see a button that says "View All Reviews and Awards" click on it. Scroll down until you see the KBB and Edmunds ratings widgets which are side by side. Edmunds has no reviews for this YMM, but you can click on the button to see review for all Rav4's. So click on that button for Edmunds that says "view all Edmunds.com Rav4 reviews". I see paid ads for the Town & Country (two separate ones) a couple of paid ads for the Sienna and a paid ad for a Honda Accord. The T&C ad is for a special lease deal with price. This is the worst kind of defection. You have a consumer on your site who is in the funnel and you give them the option to jump off and see competitive deals. The big question I'd have is whether Toyota is paying for the two Sienna ads that presented themselves. Wouldn't that be something, referring consumers and getting charged via paid ads to do so!
SureCritic
Is Yelp Damaging to Dealers?
The below post is in response to an original LinkedIn post by Brian Pasch, entitled: “Yelp Spam Filters Fail to Prevent Damage to Auto Dealers”, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/yelp-spam-filters-fail-prevent-damage-auto-dealers-brian-pasch?trk=prof-post.
Unfortunately, the Yelp spam filter issue isn't going away. Yelp is not a review model business; they are an advertising business. If you look at most of the dealer pages, you'll see multiple paid, competitive ads mostly for the service side, the part of the business (unlike new vehicle sales) that is not captive (by design I suspect). In many cases those competitive businesses all have a better star rating. And then there’s the “best of” section that shows competitors and the “people also viewed” which are competitive.
But Yelp is Yelp. They haven’t exactly claimed to be anything other than what they are, which again, is an ad model. Part of the problem is both dealers, and now OEMs, are trying to manage that, which cannot be managed. The more customers’ dealers send to Yelp either directly, or as a proxy for the OEM under a required program, the tighter Yelp tightens the screws. This is no secret; Yelp says that is what they will do if they detect review solicitation. It appears to be a good model for Yelp, but for dealers, not so much.
We have a number of examples but I know of one example of a great dealership and our numbers show them above 4.5 stars for verified customers. Their Yelp score is 1.5 stars with ten reviews. Now here is the kicker; if you go to their website, they have the biggest Yelp badge you’ve ever seen with text to the effect of “check us out on Yelp”, which of course is what Yelp recommends you should do - https://biz.yelp.com/support/review_solicitation. Worse yet, it’s a redirect link so it takes you from the dealer’s site to Yelp without spawning another window, a serious site defection given where it takes the consumer. We’ve talked with the dealer numerous times to no avail. For some reason, they want that badge on that site even though a click on that badge reveals 10 reviews with a 1.5 star rating and no less than seven competitors all with better star ratings on Yelp. To make matters worse, the way they’ve implemented the badge provides the Yelp page with referential link equity to help compete with the dealer in Google and Bing search; talk about competing with yourself. By the way, this dealer also has 39 filtered reviews, so there is no doubt they are soliciting.
I totally understand the need for dealers to attempt to manage Yelp, but email solicitation of Yelp reviews is not the answer. In many cases, the dealer would be better off doing nothing with Yelp. In studies we’ve done, I’ve seen dealerships with hundreds of filtered reviews. And to make matters worse, OEMs are jumping on board with the “spend to send” model. In this model, dealers and OEM’s pay third-party companies to send their newly minted customers to Yelp and other ad model portals. And of course, the customer is prequalified first so now there’s a level of manipulation going on that’s never disclosed. (Per Yelp, this is one reason why they don’t want reviews solicited: https://biz.yelp.com/support/review_solicitation). When these programs are initiated, review submission velocity skyrockets. A Yelp executive told me that they refer to this as “unnatural velocity”. That in turn (presumably) tightens the algorithm. We’ve done studies on Yelp review scores, Yelp review count and Yelp filtered numbers for over 10,000 dealerships; most of whom are using an OEM sponsored program. Based on our findings, solicitation programs lead to higher filter rates. For example, we did a study for all US based Chevy Dealerships (who have RepMan as a requirement). At the time of our study, 70% of Chevy dealership Yelp reviews were in the filtered (not recommended) status. Seventy percent! We used one other OEM who did not have a required program as a baseline. Their filter rate on Yelp was 56%.
The bottom line is that dealerships and manufacturers need to start thinking about a “me first” strategy for reviews. They need to start generating reviews outside the typical ad model portals and get that content in front of customers. Only then, when they’ve created content for their captive eyeballs, should they focus on creating content for their ad competitors. If you think about the captive, in market consumers that OEMs and dealers have on their sites, you really have to wonder why only a few have content that doesn’t belong to an ad model portal.
Consumers are on the OEM site and the dealership sites. Give them content, don’t send them away to see ads from your competitor, and then provide valuable user generated content to someone else. OEMs generate millions of page views on their consumer site, but only a few have ratings and reviews on those sites. Dealers are better, but most have a link out to a competitive ad model portal or sites that show a competitor’s inventory. This is business 101; don’t compete with yourself. In business, it’s the one thing you have complete control over.
David Brondstetter is CEO of SureCritic, creators of the industry’s first SocialCSI® Customer Experience Management (CEM) platform. You can reach him at David@surecritic.com.
20 Comments
Autofusion Inc.
Great post! I tell most of the dealers I work with to ignore Yelp unless they want to put significant effort and money into it. Four dealers put up Yelp banners and stands at their dealerships. All four saw an increase in bad reviews. My guess is that customers who may have had a bad experience were reminded of Yelp on the way out of the dealership and now they had a platform to vent their frustrations.
Launch Digital Marketing
We've taken the approach of semi-ignoring Yelp. We're aware that it's there and what's being said about our stores (which isn't all that much) but we don't do much more than that. And I think it's becoming clear that Yelp still hasn't figured out a good way to monetize their platform as the rumor around town is that Yelp is now looking for someone to buy them.
Stream Automotive
Great Post David...good to hear from you again. Recently, some of our clients have opted to pay $100 per rooftop to claim their profile and block all competitors from their page. $50 for sales location and $50 for service location (as these fall into different Yelp categories). They've never received much traffic to their site from Yelp, but now we have specific offers and a call to action on each profile page (again, as a result of the Yelp business model which is pay for play). We are hopeful that this small investment will result in an increase of interaction with the dealer via Yelp. One thing is for certain, as Chris mentioned above, Yelp is tough to ignore with its tie in with iOS.
PCG Consulting Inc
David, thank you for continuing the discussion on Yelp and all online review platforms that impact the business of auto dealers.
Dealers Marketing Network
David, great information about Yelp, and as court cases have decided; Yelp owns the real estate on their website and can remove any reviews or other content they please. They like Google are an advertising platform and do not give away anything for free. Anyone using a Google product needs to be aware that Google and their advertising algorithms monitor content in every email sent or received to a Gmail account, the content in Google documents, and every search consumers do on Chrome browsers or in the Google search engine page is tracked, cataloged and leveraged for the benefit of Google. We need to see search engines for what they are: the Yellow Pages of the Internet age. When was the last time your Yellow Page provider offered your business free pages of ads in their Yellow Page directory? Oh yeh, Never! Google Ad Revenue in 2014 exceeded $59 billion. A person or business needs to be very naïve if they think Google is giving them something for nothing. Again, thanks for your post.
Waikem Auto Family
Great post. We just abandoned Yelp last month. Agree on all fronts.
SureCritic
Thank you all for the great responses and thanks to Brian Pasch for shining the spotlight on the issue with his LinkedIn post. Clearly, this is still a hot button issue and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future. It's either Yelp changes or everyone else changes. It's encouraging that many of you have already come to the conclusion that there are better things to spend time on than trying to manage Yelp, which in my opinion is a change for the better.
Automotive Internet Management
Important topic and especially on this venue. Allow me to go off track a bit. This venue (DS) an advertising avenue like Yelp allows people with in the dealership to rate vendors, even if those people from the dealership are not the end user of the product. ie, they don't sign the contracts or actually determine if the product is of value. Check out the vendor ratings on this venue (DS). Negative reviews are false for our company, and could be for others, as could be the positive ones. Allowing in this venue(DS) or Yelp for people to post who do not use, creates, false information and use of time for those being rated. This venue (DS) might want to rethink their own policies on allowing false ratings. D- Score to sway others about your credibility to have an opinion????
Silver Star Motor Car Co
I've been urging our sales staff to direct our customers to Yelp...but in the last month or so, I have changed my mind and I am trying to come up with a better plan for our reviewers. We are never going to stop clients from going into Yelp on their own, but I agree that we should not send them there. I am open to hear from some of you what other sites will be more helpful to us...is Google+ a good place to put your trust and hope that they don't also fall to the lure of making money off you?
Automotive Internet Management
Thanks for the Response Chris DS has in fact not verified that the reviews placed about my company are from the actual user. And in fact they are not. I contract my services with owners and GM's only, not sales staff. So the only qualified party to rate the product is the actual user, which is not the sales staff. My product helps the Principles manage and measure their asset which is their staff, which often includes disciplining them and termination. To allow that asset to rate my product on your site is false. Any principle rating on your site who has used my product is fair. What (DS) is doing in the vendor rating is as unfair as Yelp.
DrivingSales LLC
Great discussion! Thanks @David for sharing this blog. We appreciate your feedback @William and recognize Vendor Ratings isn't perfect – no rating service is. Part of that is because people aren't perfect and there will inevitably be dishonestly. However, that doesn't mean rating services cannot be of value. We at DrivingSales spend a lot of resources calling to verify each vendor rating came from someone within a dealership. If our callers determine it's unlikely the job title does not use the product being rated, they do ask the dealership professional if they use that product and confirm. If they do not say "yes" the review is blocked. Can and should we do more to improve Vendor Ratings so it's better for all parties involved? Yes. In fact, we're in the process of upgrading the entire site with an emphasis on Vendor Ratings. We know the product has value and we are currently consulting with dealers and vendors (including consultants) to improve the product to increase the value, so this feedback is awesome and vital to Vendor Rating success. @William-We'd like to schedule a call and hear more of your feedback. Now's is a great time as our dev. team is in the engineering process. Let me know if you're interested. Thanks!
Automotive Internet Management
In response to Chris Yes I take my business and your ratings serious and the notion that I should not take them serious is devaluing of your own product. Poor suggestion, you correct this system to properly allow the person who actually signs my contract to tell other dealers of their experience. The sales staff who went on your site and rated my services are not the leaders in their respective stores they are the block to the stores results, and we are brought in to identify them. My service provides profits that the dealer was not currently realizing, and not the reverse of the staff providing money to hire me so the dealer can spend it. Can only imagine how you voted. My Tip: Get your site corrected so companies like mine will take it serious and you provide the valued claimed to dealers. Thus we don't spend our time blogging our defense and begging for positive ratings to off set false ones you have allowed Mike: give me a call if you would like for my ideas and suggestions you requested Bill 949-374-2750
eXteres Corporation, eXteresAUTO LLC
Not sure how this post ended up being about DS. Back to the dealers - When it comes to the review landscape the most prominent sites are Google, Yelp, DealerRater and Cars.com (in that order of presence as determined by a study we recently conducted examining search results for commonly searched dealer centric phrases. Note that Yelp is the second most prominent result next to Google. To say that Yelp should be ignored seems counter-intuitive to its share of the review landscape. Now to be clear I'm no fan of Yelp or Yelp's business model and to be sure Yelp lends itself to be more of a negative forum. That said, it is possible to achieve a reasonable rating on Yelp but probably not as high as you might achieve with the other sites, but a 4.3 star rating on Yelp is definitely better than a 2.5 star rating. How long it takes to improve your Yelp score is simply a matter of how long before you put an effective solution in place to address it. The longer you wait the more negative star ratings you will have to overcome (mathematically speaking). As for review management (procurement) solutions go, these are perfectly viable options - surveying your customers so that you can either address shortcomings or provide better service is the pinnacle of good customer service practices. Done right, this type of solution can really help dealers not only improve consumer perception of their business but also allow the dealership to improve in areas that are lacking. Finally, the dealership customer is going to go to the internet and search - period; therefore, whether we like it or not, the dealer cannot ignore these properties and these properties influence consumers perceptions in essence acting like a third party endorsement. I think that the consumer is going to put more stock on a third party review than non-third party reviews on the dealer website. To be sure never link away from the dealer site, but open a new tab or window. In closing, there are many things I either dis-agree with or don't like about any number of these sites and to be sure Yelp, but reality is, embraced the right way, we can turn that to our benefit, it might not happen over-night but it can and does happen.
Automotive Internet Management
This turned to DS because its the same subject matter of ratings being of no value when they are negative oriented and in DS case false, as I am sure many of Yelp are. If your going to preach to dealers via your Blog, you might want to self examine your own principles of engaging in the like conduct as a company. I don't believe you are suggesting that Dealers focus on pushing clients to increase their yelp ratings rather than fix the core issues of whats causing the rating. So I think addressing Yelps inaccurate rating system is what the title of this blog suggests which is why it related to DS vendor ratings being similar. I will exit this Blog, which is what I think you want, with the belief that Both Yelp and DS desire to help the consumer, and their clients, and that both need some reality check and adjustments to make that happen.
The Auto Gallery
Any luxury or high-end dealer, such as we are, is thwarted by the yelp algorithm . The problem is that yelp publishes the reviews of its "frequent yelpers" and marginalizes the Reviews of those who are not frequent contributor's or reviewers as "filtered" reviews. That leaves slackers, college kids, and generation X unemployeds to be the "frequent contributors." The typical CEO or successful entrepreneur who is our customer, does not have countless hours to spend posting reviews on yelp. Hence, almost every "relevant" review of a real customer, (assuming we can convince them to do an honest posting), is "filtered" and marginalized on the lower right of the page in a "containment area" for infrequent yelpers. There is 5% weight given to the reviews of our "real" clients, and 95% weight given to the reviews of college kids walking into our Porsche dealership with $110,000 cash given to them by their Asian friends or parents. They then trash us on yelp because we won't sell them a Cayenne, as we suspect it will be promptly Exported- which we get in trouble for. Hence, we have horrible yelp reviews, and wonderful dealer Rater reviews. Why don't we all gang up on Yelp and force them to give 100% weight to every review, since they are currently abrogating the right to free speech- by picking and choosing which reviews, posted in the same fashion- all for free, can be seen- and which cannot?
Launch Digital Marketing
My issue with Yelp has always been the elitist attitude and nothing speaks to that more than their unwillingness to accept real reviews from real people unless very specific criteria are met Here are just a few things that will make a Yelp review get filtered: You're not a frequent Yelper. You were referred to a Yelp business page via email. Your Yelp profile isn't completely filled out. Your location is too far away from where the business you review is located. Your review is too short. Your review is too long. Look, it's Yelp's business and they can run it how they want. I do find it interesting however that Yelp is practically begging for someone to buy them right now when just a few years ago they were turning down a lucrative acquisition offer from the Google. What changed? Perhaps they found out when you piss off en masse the very businesses you need to monetize your platform, it's very difficult to make money off of them.
SureCritic
Is Yelp Damaging to Dealers?
The below post is in response to an original LinkedIn post by Brian Pasch, entitled: “Yelp Spam Filters Fail to Prevent Damage to Auto Dealers”, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/yelp-spam-filters-fail-prevent-damage-auto-dealers-brian-pasch?trk=prof-post.
Unfortunately, the Yelp spam filter issue isn't going away. Yelp is not a review model business; they are an advertising business. If you look at most of the dealer pages, you'll see multiple paid, competitive ads mostly for the service side, the part of the business (unlike new vehicle sales) that is not captive (by design I suspect). In many cases those competitive businesses all have a better star rating. And then there’s the “best of” section that shows competitors and the “people also viewed” which are competitive.
But Yelp is Yelp. They haven’t exactly claimed to be anything other than what they are, which again, is an ad model. Part of the problem is both dealers, and now OEMs, are trying to manage that, which cannot be managed. The more customers’ dealers send to Yelp either directly, or as a proxy for the OEM under a required program, the tighter Yelp tightens the screws. This is no secret; Yelp says that is what they will do if they detect review solicitation. It appears to be a good model for Yelp, but for dealers, not so much.
We have a number of examples but I know of one example of a great dealership and our numbers show them above 4.5 stars for verified customers. Their Yelp score is 1.5 stars with ten reviews. Now here is the kicker; if you go to their website, they have the biggest Yelp badge you’ve ever seen with text to the effect of “check us out on Yelp”, which of course is what Yelp recommends you should do - https://biz.yelp.com/support/review_solicitation. Worse yet, it’s a redirect link so it takes you from the dealer’s site to Yelp without spawning another window, a serious site defection given where it takes the consumer. We’ve talked with the dealer numerous times to no avail. For some reason, they want that badge on that site even though a click on that badge reveals 10 reviews with a 1.5 star rating and no less than seven competitors all with better star ratings on Yelp. To make matters worse, the way they’ve implemented the badge provides the Yelp page with referential link equity to help compete with the dealer in Google and Bing search; talk about competing with yourself. By the way, this dealer also has 39 filtered reviews, so there is no doubt they are soliciting.
I totally understand the need for dealers to attempt to manage Yelp, but email solicitation of Yelp reviews is not the answer. In many cases, the dealer would be better off doing nothing with Yelp. In studies we’ve done, I’ve seen dealerships with hundreds of filtered reviews. And to make matters worse, OEMs are jumping on board with the “spend to send” model. In this model, dealers and OEM’s pay third-party companies to send their newly minted customers to Yelp and other ad model portals. And of course, the customer is prequalified first so now there’s a level of manipulation going on that’s never disclosed. (Per Yelp, this is one reason why they don’t want reviews solicited: https://biz.yelp.com/support/review_solicitation). When these programs are initiated, review submission velocity skyrockets. A Yelp executive told me that they refer to this as “unnatural velocity”. That in turn (presumably) tightens the algorithm. We’ve done studies on Yelp review scores, Yelp review count and Yelp filtered numbers for over 10,000 dealerships; most of whom are using an OEM sponsored program. Based on our findings, solicitation programs lead to higher filter rates. For example, we did a study for all US based Chevy Dealerships (who have RepMan as a requirement). At the time of our study, 70% of Chevy dealership Yelp reviews were in the filtered (not recommended) status. Seventy percent! We used one other OEM who did not have a required program as a baseline. Their filter rate on Yelp was 56%.
The bottom line is that dealerships and manufacturers need to start thinking about a “me first” strategy for reviews. They need to start generating reviews outside the typical ad model portals and get that content in front of customers. Only then, when they’ve created content for their captive eyeballs, should they focus on creating content for their ad competitors. If you think about the captive, in market consumers that OEMs and dealers have on their sites, you really have to wonder why only a few have content that doesn’t belong to an ad model portal.
Consumers are on the OEM site and the dealership sites. Give them content, don’t send them away to see ads from your competitor, and then provide valuable user generated content to someone else. OEMs generate millions of page views on their consumer site, but only a few have ratings and reviews on those sites. Dealers are better, but most have a link out to a competitive ad model portal or sites that show a competitor’s inventory. This is business 101; don’t compete with yourself. In business, it’s the one thing you have complete control over.
David Brondstetter is CEO of SureCritic, creators of the industry’s first SocialCSI® Customer Experience Management (CEM) platform. You can reach him at David@surecritic.com.
20 Comments
Autofusion Inc.
Great post! I tell most of the dealers I work with to ignore Yelp unless they want to put significant effort and money into it. Four dealers put up Yelp banners and stands at their dealerships. All four saw an increase in bad reviews. My guess is that customers who may have had a bad experience were reminded of Yelp on the way out of the dealership and now they had a platform to vent their frustrations.
Launch Digital Marketing
We've taken the approach of semi-ignoring Yelp. We're aware that it's there and what's being said about our stores (which isn't all that much) but we don't do much more than that. And I think it's becoming clear that Yelp still hasn't figured out a good way to monetize their platform as the rumor around town is that Yelp is now looking for someone to buy them.
Stream Automotive
Great Post David...good to hear from you again. Recently, some of our clients have opted to pay $100 per rooftop to claim their profile and block all competitors from their page. $50 for sales location and $50 for service location (as these fall into different Yelp categories). They've never received much traffic to their site from Yelp, but now we have specific offers and a call to action on each profile page (again, as a result of the Yelp business model which is pay for play). We are hopeful that this small investment will result in an increase of interaction with the dealer via Yelp. One thing is for certain, as Chris mentioned above, Yelp is tough to ignore with its tie in with iOS.
PCG Consulting Inc
David, thank you for continuing the discussion on Yelp and all online review platforms that impact the business of auto dealers.
Dealers Marketing Network
David, great information about Yelp, and as court cases have decided; Yelp owns the real estate on their website and can remove any reviews or other content they please. They like Google are an advertising platform and do not give away anything for free. Anyone using a Google product needs to be aware that Google and their advertising algorithms monitor content in every email sent or received to a Gmail account, the content in Google documents, and every search consumers do on Chrome browsers or in the Google search engine page is tracked, cataloged and leveraged for the benefit of Google. We need to see search engines for what they are: the Yellow Pages of the Internet age. When was the last time your Yellow Page provider offered your business free pages of ads in their Yellow Page directory? Oh yeh, Never! Google Ad Revenue in 2014 exceeded $59 billion. A person or business needs to be very naïve if they think Google is giving them something for nothing. Again, thanks for your post.
Waikem Auto Family
Great post. We just abandoned Yelp last month. Agree on all fronts.
SureCritic
Thank you all for the great responses and thanks to Brian Pasch for shining the spotlight on the issue with his LinkedIn post. Clearly, this is still a hot button issue and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future. It's either Yelp changes or everyone else changes. It's encouraging that many of you have already come to the conclusion that there are better things to spend time on than trying to manage Yelp, which in my opinion is a change for the better.
Automotive Internet Management
Important topic and especially on this venue. Allow me to go off track a bit. This venue (DS) an advertising avenue like Yelp allows people with in the dealership to rate vendors, even if those people from the dealership are not the end user of the product. ie, they don't sign the contracts or actually determine if the product is of value. Check out the vendor ratings on this venue (DS). Negative reviews are false for our company, and could be for others, as could be the positive ones. Allowing in this venue(DS) or Yelp for people to post who do not use, creates, false information and use of time for those being rated. This venue (DS) might want to rethink their own policies on allowing false ratings. D- Score to sway others about your credibility to have an opinion????
Silver Star Motor Car Co
I've been urging our sales staff to direct our customers to Yelp...but in the last month or so, I have changed my mind and I am trying to come up with a better plan for our reviewers. We are never going to stop clients from going into Yelp on their own, but I agree that we should not send them there. I am open to hear from some of you what other sites will be more helpful to us...is Google+ a good place to put your trust and hope that they don't also fall to the lure of making money off you?
Automotive Internet Management
Thanks for the Response Chris DS has in fact not verified that the reviews placed about my company are from the actual user. And in fact they are not. I contract my services with owners and GM's only, not sales staff. So the only qualified party to rate the product is the actual user, which is not the sales staff. My product helps the Principles manage and measure their asset which is their staff, which often includes disciplining them and termination. To allow that asset to rate my product on your site is false. Any principle rating on your site who has used my product is fair. What (DS) is doing in the vendor rating is as unfair as Yelp.
DrivingSales LLC
Great discussion! Thanks @David for sharing this blog. We appreciate your feedback @William and recognize Vendor Ratings isn't perfect – no rating service is. Part of that is because people aren't perfect and there will inevitably be dishonestly. However, that doesn't mean rating services cannot be of value. We at DrivingSales spend a lot of resources calling to verify each vendor rating came from someone within a dealership. If our callers determine it's unlikely the job title does not use the product being rated, they do ask the dealership professional if they use that product and confirm. If they do not say "yes" the review is blocked. Can and should we do more to improve Vendor Ratings so it's better for all parties involved? Yes. In fact, we're in the process of upgrading the entire site with an emphasis on Vendor Ratings. We know the product has value and we are currently consulting with dealers and vendors (including consultants) to improve the product to increase the value, so this feedback is awesome and vital to Vendor Rating success. @William-We'd like to schedule a call and hear more of your feedback. Now's is a great time as our dev. team is in the engineering process. Let me know if you're interested. Thanks!
Automotive Internet Management
In response to Chris Yes I take my business and your ratings serious and the notion that I should not take them serious is devaluing of your own product. Poor suggestion, you correct this system to properly allow the person who actually signs my contract to tell other dealers of their experience. The sales staff who went on your site and rated my services are not the leaders in their respective stores they are the block to the stores results, and we are brought in to identify them. My service provides profits that the dealer was not currently realizing, and not the reverse of the staff providing money to hire me so the dealer can spend it. Can only imagine how you voted. My Tip: Get your site corrected so companies like mine will take it serious and you provide the valued claimed to dealers. Thus we don't spend our time blogging our defense and begging for positive ratings to off set false ones you have allowed Mike: give me a call if you would like for my ideas and suggestions you requested Bill 949-374-2750
eXteres Corporation, eXteresAUTO LLC
Not sure how this post ended up being about DS. Back to the dealers - When it comes to the review landscape the most prominent sites are Google, Yelp, DealerRater and Cars.com (in that order of presence as determined by a study we recently conducted examining search results for commonly searched dealer centric phrases. Note that Yelp is the second most prominent result next to Google. To say that Yelp should be ignored seems counter-intuitive to its share of the review landscape. Now to be clear I'm no fan of Yelp or Yelp's business model and to be sure Yelp lends itself to be more of a negative forum. That said, it is possible to achieve a reasonable rating on Yelp but probably not as high as you might achieve with the other sites, but a 4.3 star rating on Yelp is definitely better than a 2.5 star rating. How long it takes to improve your Yelp score is simply a matter of how long before you put an effective solution in place to address it. The longer you wait the more negative star ratings you will have to overcome (mathematically speaking). As for review management (procurement) solutions go, these are perfectly viable options - surveying your customers so that you can either address shortcomings or provide better service is the pinnacle of good customer service practices. Done right, this type of solution can really help dealers not only improve consumer perception of their business but also allow the dealership to improve in areas that are lacking. Finally, the dealership customer is going to go to the internet and search - period; therefore, whether we like it or not, the dealer cannot ignore these properties and these properties influence consumers perceptions in essence acting like a third party endorsement. I think that the consumer is going to put more stock on a third party review than non-third party reviews on the dealer website. To be sure never link away from the dealer site, but open a new tab or window. In closing, there are many things I either dis-agree with or don't like about any number of these sites and to be sure Yelp, but reality is, embraced the right way, we can turn that to our benefit, it might not happen over-night but it can and does happen.
Automotive Internet Management
This turned to DS because its the same subject matter of ratings being of no value when they are negative oriented and in DS case false, as I am sure many of Yelp are. If your going to preach to dealers via your Blog, you might want to self examine your own principles of engaging in the like conduct as a company. I don't believe you are suggesting that Dealers focus on pushing clients to increase their yelp ratings rather than fix the core issues of whats causing the rating. So I think addressing Yelps inaccurate rating system is what the title of this blog suggests which is why it related to DS vendor ratings being similar. I will exit this Blog, which is what I think you want, with the belief that Both Yelp and DS desire to help the consumer, and their clients, and that both need some reality check and adjustments to make that happen.
The Auto Gallery
Any luxury or high-end dealer, such as we are, is thwarted by the yelp algorithm . The problem is that yelp publishes the reviews of its "frequent yelpers" and marginalizes the Reviews of those who are not frequent contributor's or reviewers as "filtered" reviews. That leaves slackers, college kids, and generation X unemployeds to be the "frequent contributors." The typical CEO or successful entrepreneur who is our customer, does not have countless hours to spend posting reviews on yelp. Hence, almost every "relevant" review of a real customer, (assuming we can convince them to do an honest posting), is "filtered" and marginalized on the lower right of the page in a "containment area" for infrequent yelpers. There is 5% weight given to the reviews of our "real" clients, and 95% weight given to the reviews of college kids walking into our Porsche dealership with $110,000 cash given to them by their Asian friends or parents. They then trash us on yelp because we won't sell them a Cayenne, as we suspect it will be promptly Exported- which we get in trouble for. Hence, we have horrible yelp reviews, and wonderful dealer Rater reviews. Why don't we all gang up on Yelp and force them to give 100% weight to every review, since they are currently abrogating the right to free speech- by picking and choosing which reviews, posted in the same fashion- all for free, can be seen- and which cannot?
Launch Digital Marketing
My issue with Yelp has always been the elitist attitude and nothing speaks to that more than their unwillingness to accept real reviews from real people unless very specific criteria are met Here are just a few things that will make a Yelp review get filtered: You're not a frequent Yelper. You were referred to a Yelp business page via email. Your Yelp profile isn't completely filled out. Your location is too far away from where the business you review is located. Your review is too short. Your review is too long. Look, it's Yelp's business and they can run it how they want. I do find it interesting however that Yelp is practically begging for someone to buy them right now when just a few years ago they were turning down a lucrative acquisition offer from the Google. What changed? Perhaps they found out when you piss off en masse the very businesses you need to monetize your platform, it's very difficult to make money off of them.
2 Comments
Alex Lau
AutoStride
Yes, a ton is wasted.
David Brondstetter
SureCritic
Alex, Hope things are well with you and thanks for the comments. How many hundreds of millions of dollars will just one OEM spend to drive eyeballs to their consumer facing site, then promptly invite them to leave to get review information? I used the Toyota example in search for a reason. If you go to Toyota's consumer site and research a vehicle, they have review links on their site that take you away from Toyota's consumer site and land you on a page filled with competitive ads. Try this; go to toyota.com and select the "vehicles" option on the top nav. Then use the side arrow to scroll right until you find the Rav4. Click on Rav4 and scroll down until you see a button that says "View All Reviews and Awards" click on it. Scroll down until you see the KBB and Edmunds ratings widgets which are side by side. Edmunds has no reviews for this YMM, but you can click on the button to see review for all Rav4's. So click on that button for Edmunds that says "view all Edmunds.com Rav4 reviews". I see paid ads for the Town & Country (two separate ones) a couple of paid ads for the Sienna and a paid ad for a Honda Accord. The T&C ad is for a special lease deal with price. This is the worst kind of defection. You have a consumer on your site who is in the funnel and you give them the option to jump off and see competitive deals. The big question I'd have is whether Toyota is paying for the two Sienna ads that presented themselves. Wouldn't that be something, referring consumers and getting charged via paid ads to do so!