How to Use Keywords to Rank Higher on Google

What Exactly are Keywords?

Any time you type a thought, question, or concept, into a search engine, the phrasing and important identifying words you use are known as keywords. Keywords are the best pieces of information used when performing a search and tell Google what you should expect and how specific it should be in its results. Google will then rank results simply by relevance to your keywords, quality of content , and site format. Google likes websites that are easy to identify and require little work on their end, so make sure your website fits the bill. Study keywords, select a keyword, after that write about that keyword— it’s that easy.

How Do Search engines like Google Use Keywords to Determine Rank?

Search engines use keywords to spot, categorize, and retrieve pages based on how people are searching. But what exactly does this mean for you? As a business owner, it means a lot. What your potential customers are searching for that leads them to your business is very important for you to figure out. In order to drive more traffic to your site , and business, you should be creating targeted, high-quality content on social media, Google My Business profile , and website, continuously updating and transforming your website design and layout, and weaving in keywords where you can, without stuffing your articles or posts. When you target keywords, you focus the page on a specific topic in order that it is able to rank in relevant search engine results .

For Which Keywords Should I Rank?

When harnessing the power associated with SEO , it’s crucial to know what appeals to your audience, and know how to reach them. Watch the language your target audience is using on social media marketing, in emails, or in discussions, and take note. When producing content for your internet site or social pages , utilize the words your customers are using. If you use terms on your website that people are searching for, you’ll be more likely to show up on search engine results. Appealing to your customers through a comparable tone and voice will also help to build trust . When you target keywords, you focus a given page on a particular topic. You are trying to get that web page to rank in search engine pages for relevant searches. Since Google aims to deliver the most useful details to the searcher, your content will display as a top result for that problem.

How to Use Quality Content to Rank Higher on Google

When making content for your website, GMB user profile, and social media accounts , it can be difficult to compose relevant, quality content, while also including keywords and making sure it is optimized meant for search . When writing content for your business, it should function to remind the reader of the services and products you offer, your competitive advantages , and draw the potential customer in. Your articles should be well-written and spell checked, include both long- and short-tail phrases , and include relevant keywords without stuffing so that you can build and maintain strong SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION.

Focus on Sharability

In order to get your website seen by potential customers and build strong SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, your content needs to have a catchy name or image, be clickable, and most importantly— shareable . One of the best ways to get new customers interested in your company, and transform your SEO , without lifting the finger is by making your content articles something you, your friend, your own mom, or your coworker might want to read on social media. If you are a massage therapist and you write an article entitled “The Beauty of Massage”, that may not be the most enticing article to read while scrolling on Facebook. But if a person publish a blog post entitled, “What Kind of Massage Do You Need? Take the Test Now!”, that would be an interesting article to most viewers. And the a lot more shares you get, the stronger your SEO is going to be .

Concentrate on Niche Topics

Another way to make sure that your content is high-quality is simply by choosing appropriate, niche topics where one can have domain name authority . While there are most likely thousands of articles on Google about different sorts of massages, if you wrote an article particularly targeting the benefits of Swedish massages intended for pregnant women, you will greatly limit your own SEO competition. As a result, your content is going to be seen by more people, since it nears the top of Google search outcomes.

How to Use Backlinks in order to Rank Higher on Google

Backlinking isvcertainly powerful, but often a forgotten method to help improve your SEO. As a small company, you actually have a competitive advantage in this area over larger companies. A backlink is when another web site links to your article from theirs, allowing a new range of clients to see your content and your internet site, and improving your SEO at precisely the same time.

How to Build Backlinks

Building healthy backlink relationships with local businesses, such as having your products featured in their virtual gift guide in exchange for adding their restaurant to the “local recommendations” section of your website, will not only enhance your local communications, but also improve your ranking on Google .

Local newspapers, blogs, or other local avenues are other areas to explore. These publishers love to work with local businesses and will often help to promote you, mainly because you are a small business and that is the audience they serve . Such publications can also be a huge boost not just for a few quality backlinking, but also for good press for your business and eyes on your website.

Using Google My Business to Rank Higher on Google

Google My Business and SEO may well not seem like they have much in common, nonetheless it is actually the building of your GMB profile that will help to greatly strengthen your SEO. While your website remains a crucial ingredient to the results of your business, Google is making it simpler for potential customers to get what they’ re looking for directly in a find. Google My Business is to be able to enhance this experience when it comes to local searches . More than ever, it is vital to make sure your Google My Establishment profile is created, claimed , enhanced, and updated regularly in order to can be of help build strong SEO for your corporate, and help get found by the nearest customers.

Although not their traditional online business directory , Google My Companies acts in a similar fashion as Yelp or Foursquare in the sense that it provides vital information and reviews about your business to consumers. Info on your GMB listing is public-facing, making it essential for this information to be on-point and fleshed out.

How Google My Business Impacts Ranking

Your business’  Google My Business listing impacts your ranking in Google search engine results as well as Google-maps . The more complete and ideal your listing is, the higher it can rank. Businesses with a complete and accurate Google My Business listing get 7x more clicks than those lacking and are 70% more likely to gather visits. This is hard evidence why Google My Business not only expands your search ranking, but also your sales and chances of success. The impact most typically associated with inaccurate or inconsistent listings is definitely not one you can afford. A complete Google Much of our Business listing includes:

• Business title
• Address
• Phone number
• Category
• Website
• A number of hours of Operation
• Review
• Photos
• Q& A

In certain industries, there may be new fields as well. When your Google About Business listing is complete, the business will be favored by Google search results, your website and foot traffic will increase, and potential customers will be able to find and contact your business faster and easier. Collecting reviews , changing information as it changes, and creating relevant details to your business will assist you to improve your ranking and get you additional customers.

Checklist for Using Google My Business to Improve Your Rank

Overall SEO is impacted by a variety of factors. Google My Business is just one of them, consider Google is the largest search engine, it’ s a great place to start. Unlike all other SEO building tactics , setting up and customization your GMB profile is not only easy to do, but it’s quick, easy, and free. Google My Business also offers a strong competitive advantage that the majority of other SEO techniques may not, due to its direct connection to Google Maps, it will assist you in getting seen and found by the most critical customers of all— the ones in your neighborhood. The local SEO Google My Business can provide is invaluable to any  other comparative service or strategy.

Google has many applications and features that integrate directly with Google My Business, such as Local Search results . Google Local Search will pull up a map of businesses that the possible client has searched for in that industry, among them “spas near me ”. The more accurate and complete your listing often is compared to others in your area, the more likely your business interest is to be at the top of the list, helping to further build your local SEO . Businesses are synced and updated along with GMB, so the more active you are on your GMB profile, the higher you will rank in results.

If your business isn’t appearing any longer under local searches, or falling far down the page, then it is time for a Google My Business renovation. Consider the following when updating your profile .

Do you possess reviews, and are the reviews valuable?

If you are low in this area, don’t be afraid for ask loyal customers to put in a good word for you on Google My Business, or offer a small incentive to have reviews written. Many customers would be happy to spread the word about the excellent services you offer if they are pleased with their experiences. If you have negative reviews, make sure you are responding quickly and professionally.

If your information is current, is the description complete?

If your description is too short, for instance “electronic repairs”, you will get away from customers wondering about the specific tech services you offer. Think of a short heading that would accurately sum up the majority of your services, without getting too bogged down in details.   Write a strong elevator pitch for your business and include it.

Do you have great photos?

When you upload photos to your GMB profile , make them to both relevant and high quality. Snap shots of in-store events, classes, or of your storefront are all great options to include your Google My Business profile. You’ll want to update these photos regularly for top level local results.

Are there Questions and Answers on your own profile?

Google’s new Q& A section provides you with the ability to answer customer questions exclusively in your business listing. The benefit of this is that you can preemptively answer questions that valued clientele might otherwise not know the answer. This can impact their decision to use your business. For example , “Do you have vehicle? Yes, there is a parking lot for customers.” may be enough to turn a recurring onlooker into your next customer. Utilize this section wisely and always respond to points quickly. As a business owner, you can also submit frequently asked questions and answer them yourself.

Google My Business is an incredibly powerful free tool that helps improve local SEO, get your small business found by more people, and help generate potential customers . By keeping your GMB profile up to date, professional, and fully completed, you will be giving your business a leg up on the competition.

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Making Meaningless Guidelines

Companies need rules. However, rules have to be designed with respect for the individual, and not be a quick attempt at generating order. From overzealous rule-making concerning attendance, to cutting down on employee benefits, there are many rules with which the supervisors annoy their staff. When workers feel the need to check their six, they begin to look for another place to function.

Letting Great Work Go Unrecognized

Rewarding achievements is more than making someone feel good. It’s also about demonstrating that you pay attention to who works well and who doesn’t. Recognition, in one type or another, can help create a better atmosphere for success. When you make recognition difficult to find, you send away your best employees.

Employing Mediocre Employees

To many people, the opportunity to work together with intelligent and competent co-workers is a crucial part of the satisfaction that comes with their work. This means that when managers hire thoughtlessly, they take away a good part of the reason existing employees come into work. Cautious, well-planned hiring is an important part of the manager’s job.

Treating Everyone exactly the same

Kids need to be treated the same as everyone else. This works for children because they aren’t graded on performance. The grownup workplace is different. Here workers are usually ranked based on how well they execute their duties. Bringing the equality rule from the planet of children to the grown-up world can cause problems. Adults who work hard and are talented need to be graded on the quality of their work. Grading everyone exactly the same only results in loss of motivation. Supervisors need to be willing to reward quality.

Being Lax with Poor Performers

People don’t always perform at their best and need a little slack every now and then. Laxity all the time, however, can make it seem as though poor performance is acceptable. Best performers anywhere can begin to really feel unappreciated when others at work have the ability to slow down without consequence. It’s important to reward those who perform and use discipline on those who don’t.

Getting Trustworthy

Whether it is a promotion or a chance to create a speech before the CEO, promises to employees need to be kept. When promises are kept, you begin to appear reliable. When promises are not kept, you can’t be relied upon. Since trust is an important part of the work that managers do, it’s important they never do something that erodes this quality.

Managers often stroll a thin line; they need to become the voice of the management and also from the workers. The difficulty of this position, nevertheless , disappears when you realize that all it requires to do well is to be trustworthy and honest.

This particular post appeared first on CBT Automotive System .

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• Social media monitoring = Caring for your customers simply by monitoring social media for messages straight related to your brand and addressing those messages appropriately.
• Social media listening = Understanding your audience plus improving campaign strategy by being able to access the full spectrum of conversation about your industry, brand, and any kind of topics relevant to your brand.

In essence, monitoring lets you know what , hearing tells you why .

Monitoring tackles the symptoms, and listening reveals the main cause.

Social media monitoring definition

Social media could be the #1 channel for brands who would like to connect with their audience.

Social monitoring is the first stage towards powering these connections, assisting brands in finding conversations they can become a part of.

That’s why social media monitoring is so essential.

On social, you are able to monitor…

• Your brand name and common misspellings.
• Your product names and common misspellings.
• Mentions of your main competitor.
• People searching products in the area your serve.

Example:

Let’s say your brand is Best Yoga Pants on the Planet Inc. You want to know what people are saying about your brand, not just if they tag you on social, but when they mention you in any capacity

Social media monitoring tracks the key terms and phrases important to your company and surfaces them for you to respond to.

This can also include that brand new Cool Yoga Tank that your brand name released.

And it can range from an upcoming event you’re likely to attend, running or just attending. Like the Greatest Yoga Conference in the World.

By failing to monitor social media mentions — equivalent to ignoring the phone line— many brands leave behind important business intelligence that could inform more strategic decision-making.

Monitoring therefore is important to your brand’s communications pipeline. Your social media managers and customer service agents should own most of this interaction, essentially playing air traffic control to what’s being released across your social networks.

To ensure your social team is on the road to success, consider a two-pronged approach. First, centralize your social profiles into one platform that enables message monitoring with scale. Then create alerts to help keep your agents apprised of situations where your brand is being discussed (either directly or indirectly). The brand’s handle and broader mentions. Also, account for common misspellings, nicknames, flagship products, and industry-adjacent terms.

By getting these alerts, your social media department will be better able to block and tackle on your brand’ s behalf, answering FAQs while routing various other critical messages to different departments in your organization, from HR to product sales.

To get even more advanced, your community managers can also determine potential entry points to guide purchasing decisions. But be careful: This tactic is really as much an art as it is a technology.

Social media listening description

Description:

Social media listening refers to analyzing the discussions and trends happening not just about your brand, but around your industry as a whole, and using that information to make better marketing decisions.

Social media listening helps you discover why, where and how these conversations are happening, and what people think— not only when they’re tagging or mentioning your brand.

This helps you form future promotions, improve content strategy and messaging, outpace your competition, construct an effective changer program and even build more impactful brand partnerships.

Monitoring is the entry point. Listening is the graduate degree. While brand names can certainly hunt and peck to interact in the most basic monitoring on nativ platforms, a comprehensive social listening technique absolutely requires a third-party tool to assess large volumes of data. Said another way: While you can look at trees and shrubs one by one at the ground level, you need a helicopter to scan the whole forest.

Executing a social hearing strategy may seem more difficult than daily monitoring, but it doesn’t need to be. Start with turn-key solutions, then move on to more intricate techniques. Effective, automated listening tools that require minimum setup can deliver just as significant actionable data as customizable types.

For example , analyzing your brand’s @mentions on Twitter within a given timeframe and appearing frequently mentioned hashtags, keywords, plus associated terms can help you gauge sentiment and understand what people say regarding your brand, products, and strategies. All this is possible without fine-tuning complicated search queries or relying on algorithmic sentiment triggers. Just simply hearing what is being said alongside your own brand mentions is enough.

On the more advanced side, listening options that not only return aggregate quantity but also aid pattern recognition, reveal trends, and calculate share associated with voice among groups of keywords or even queries can provide tremendous value.

However you approach it, the goal is to reach clearly defined final results within your brand’s larger interpersonal strategy. If monitoring tactics lead to enhanced engagement and listening attempts to inform more strategic decision-making, you’re well on your way to achieving unquestionable success.

This article was initially published on SproutSocial.com. Go and check out their Listening Solutions as well as Social Management, Social Marketing, Customer Care, Employee Advocacy, and Data and Intelligence

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When you pair both monitoring plus listening tools, you find trends which you might not have noticed before. Each system is different, though, so your listening technique should be customized per network.

What is Facebook Listening?

Facebook listening is basically the process of digesting all of the information you’re given on Facebook, likes, remarks, recommendations and private messages, and identifying trends in the activity.  It’s an active analysis of your passively gathered data. Listening gives you a clearer viewpoint of how customers feel about you (brand perception), to help shape your next or existing advertising campaign.

You rule out anomalies, which may be absurd comments, trolls, and near-do-well diatribes, and find the underlying message in the greater balance of the overall engagement that you can work with.

Facebook monitoring compared to listening

Facebook monitoring is similar to typical social monitoring but with less flexibility. Due to privacy issues and API limitations, Facebook limits the types of data it provides to third-party apps. On Twitter, you can conduct and save search criteria. But on Facebook, it’s more difficult. A myriad of private and closed groups, private messages and billions of posts a day makes it impossible to compile all of the search results.

So what should you monitor? As a brand, you should review your own Messenger activity, public posts, comments and interactions in related industry Groups. If there are regular or periodic press releases, you can check on how well they perform with a service like Buzzsumo and it’s Content Analyzer.

Understanding your goals and how they play into your Facebook monitoring is essential. If Facebook is used as a default customer service platform then you should focus your monitoring activities around customer comments, service issues and complaints.  If your customer base isn’t aware that Facebook isn’t their customer service portal, make sure to monitor other assets online to cover your base.

An example of using another asset is using Facebook’s recommendations feature to collect reviews. After you release a new product that for the sake of our conversation is a “reliable”, reviews are sure to follow. Monitoring would be reading the reviews and possibly responding to each review and thanking them. Listening would be noticing complimentary language using the description “reliable,” and then taking action to incorporate the products reliability into the marketing assets.

While Facebook monitoring is a more reactive process, Facebook listening is proactive whereby the intel gleaned is inserted into the marketing.

Implementing a Facebook listening strategy

Starting a Facebook listening strategy includes the same first steps as any network. You begin with setting up your tools and understanding your goals. Why are you using a listening strategy and what do you hope to learn? If you’re brand new to this, we recommend setting up monitoring as a first step and then seeing what kind of information you gather.

SproutSocial.com has a listening solution that definitely needs some looking at.

Native search in Facebook offers you the top posts for your terms and should be one of several listening posts (so-to-speak) in your listening arsenal. For example, searching for your brand, industry related terms and competitors is a good use of the search function. You can narrow these results down to those that you follow, any Group, any location and any date.

Finally, to set up a monitoring strategy on Facebook to track your competitors, navigate to Insights, Overview and then to Pages to Watch. Here, you track Pages in your industry or of your competition to see how their weekly posts are performing. Watching these trends could help you think of new ways to reach your own customers.

After you set up your monitoring, schedule time in your calendar to review all of the data. It can be done at your monthly or quarterly reports review. Unless you’re analyzing a short campaign, a daily or even weekly review may not provide enough information to analyze.

Examples of Facebook social listening

Let’s take a look at how other companies are using social listening for Facebook. With the below examples, you’ll hopefully take away some actionable ideas for your own company. Each brand uses social listening differently. Some may use it to inform a product feature while others might also use it for customer sentiment. Social listening isn’t an either/or scenario.

Samsung

In the retail sector, Samsung looks at their competitors to see what their most common complaints are. In its launch of the new Galaxy S9, the company posted a series of videos highlighting the differences between the Galaxy and the Apple iPhone X. The videos are sarcastic and funny, with each one focusing on one feature that Apple customers often complain about. The style is much like a comedy skit and short for maximum impact. In this example, Samsung used listening on their competitors to inform their campaign strategy by tracking down commonly voiced complaints about the competitor product.

Burt’s Bees

Noticing trends in your own industry and developing products to go with them is a natural part of a company’s growth model. Burt’s Bees saw face masks on the rise and developed their own version that fits their brand. Product research was conducted through social listening of competitors and internal analyses of what customers wanted out of them. The result was a set of new face masks responding to the problem areas that customers most wanted to fix.

Kraft

Cool Whip and Jell-O are both owned by Kraft. But they serve slightly different audiences. While campaigns for both are targeted to adults or those with buying power, Jell-O is more fun for kids. Kraft used social listening to understand what each of these brand’s customers want and target their products accordingly. Even the content for each is different. In the first example, Jell-O’s all about playing with the food and giving parents play ideas. In the second example, Cool Whip is oriented to those who host parties and need an easy recipe to execute.

Conclusion

Using Facebook listening as part of your social listening strategy gives you a leg up against competitors. Not only does it improve your own marketing strategy but it also helps develop your other departments. On Facebook, customers aren’t afraid to tell you what they like or don’t like about your products. And when a competitor is failing in one area, social listening will help you step in and fill the gap faster.

Remember, Facebook is just one piece of the puzzle for social listening. While the network does have the most widespread audience, your other social channels need to also be incorporated. One customer may be more vocal on Twitter than on Facebook. Ignoring the other channels will only limit your view of the data that you need.

This article was initially published on SproutSocial.com. Go and check out their Listening Solutions as well as Social Management, Social Marketing, Customer Care, Employee Advocacy, and Data and Intelligence

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Meanwhile, TOMS continues to use their Instagram to respond to customer queries and comments. As Instagram continues to grow, its position as a customer service portal will compete against the likes of Twitter and Facebook. TOMS treats with great import what their customers feel about their products and takes measures to sew those concerns and ideas into the fabric of their company and marketing strategy.

TOMS also has hundreds of thousands of users self-generating content on Instagram. In addition to activism and customer service, they’re likely keeping a close eye on product popularity.  Instagram helps them gauge what works and what doesn’t as they develop products to match the needs of their customers.

Remember: Instagram listening is about more than mentions, comments and #hashtags

Now that we know what Instagram listening is, we should know what Instagram listening isn’t.

 

Instagram listening and Instagram monitoring are different.

 

Social media monitoring is the act of tracking mentions, comments and hashtags. In a nutshell, monitoring is data collection, and listening is acting on that data.

But while these interactions are important, they aren’t the only important  conversations happening on social media surrounding your brand. Not every mention of your brand is hashtagged. In fact, most are probably not.

 

More precise monitoring through social media tools such as Sprout, among others may help you uncover more conversations that impact on your brand.

Similarly, think of all the other conversations and hashtags in your industry that you might miss if you’re just looking for mentions of your brand name or campaign keywords and phrases. With hashtag analytics, brands can see which tags get people engaging and which tags can help them expand their overall reach.

 

Through Instagram social listening, brands actually take the feedback from the aforementioned conversations and data points on Instagram and translate them into action.

How does Instagram listening work?

 

Instagram listening involves creating queries based on your business, location, hashtags and keywords relevant to your business. Sprout’s social media listening features help do the legwork by aggregating those specific conversations.

 

In addition, brands can create their own listening queries for Instagram using boolean syntax and rules logic.

 

Non-technical translation; listening is easier when automated.

 

Social listening is a form of sentiment analysis. In other words, how are folks reacting to your brand on Instagram? Sentiment analysis can directly inform you what you need to do to better to curry favor with your Instagram followers.

Conduct competitive analysis

Perhaps one of the best uses of social listening is competitive analysis.

Consider ultra-competitive verticals such as the beauty industry where new products appear day by day. Listening to tags and popular posts from other businesses in your industry can help you better position yourself in the competitive mix.

Product Improvement

If you want to know how to improve your own products and services, who better to ask than your own customers?

 

Just remember that not all feedback from your followers is going to be direct. Look at likes, comments and shares as abbreviated reviews of your products or services and treat them with a certain degree of importance because much of the data you gather may very well be in this form.

Identifying potential customers

Social listening is also about attracting new customers.

 

Industry and community-specific hashtags are valuable for finding people who might be interested in your product, influencers and taste-makers abound and can impact businesses of every shape and size. This alerts people who don’t know about you yet or may be looking for a business like yours.

 

Let’s say you’re a local restaurant in search of potential customers in your locality. Instagram is a gold mine of exposure and insight regarding what potential customers desire.

Discover industry trends

Social listening is invaluable for tracking industry trends. In addition to knowing the tags your audience follows, it’s smart to understand how they’re responding to such trends to influence your own marketing campaigns.

Inform your content strategy

On a related note, Instagram listening can keep you from copycatting your competition.

 

For example, brands need to differentiate their tone, content calendar and captions if they want to realistically stand out on Instagram. Effective listening can help you uncover tags and trends that your competitors might be missing out on and how you can fill the void.

 

 

Monitor your customer sentiment

Let’s say you’ve launched a new product or campaign.

 

Naturally, you want to know if it’s generating a buzz.

 

You may not always get those answers from direct mentions, but chances are there are users out there who can provide an answer to your question. Here’s a great example from the #beersnob tag:

What Instagram listening tools are available?

Let’s say you want to go all-in on Instagram listening.

 

While basic brand listening is possible through native searches on Instagram, manual searches take far too long.

 

After all, brands need to be able to track multiple tags and competitors in addition to their own mentions. Given the sheer amount of content posted to Instagram daily, sifting through it all is no small feat.

 

With the help of an actual Instagram listening tool, however, digging into industry conversations on Instagram is a cinch.

 

And with that, we wrap up our guide!

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Value of social hearing on Twitter

Tweets is a prime platform for interpersonal listening. Its users are active, socially aware and aren’ t scared to speak up when they’ re unhappy with a company or even product.

 

In the 2018 Sprout Social Index, we found that 57% of customers who reach out to brands have a question and 45% have an issue with the product/service.

 

But what about those who don’t mention the brands at all or are merely discussing general trends in the industry? Social listening picks up on these trends and informs your company’s next steps.

 

Listening is not limited to only your brand. It includes everything from your competitors to major discussion points on Twitter. For example, your hotel might need to drive up interest in a certain city. By listening in on geographic micro-influencer conversations, you’ll glean tips on the best new restaurants and shops nearby. You’ll also be able to use listening to find new influencers.

 

In a 2017 survey, Clutch found that 25% of business use social listening to improve their products, 24% for attracting customers and 21% for providing better customer service.

 

One thing to keep in mind as you explore social listening is that each network is different and that social listening is only a slice of the overall listening pie. Other listening channel options include tracking press articles, forum discussions and review sites. As you begin listening, you’ll learn how your customers and competitors utilize each network. Twitter may be used more for customer service while Facebook is for recommendations.

 

But you won’t know anything if you don’t put get your social listening strategy in place.

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An extremely simple way a dealership can start to build trust, loyalty, and retention among service clients is for salespeople to introduce vehicle and truck buyers to the service department when the vehicle is in the process of being purchased. But a new survey of consumers shows that such handoffs occur less than half time.

In December, DealerRater polled for Set Ops Journal over 16, 000 consumers who purchased a new car from a dealership in the recent past.

Of those, 42 percent mentioned that the dealership introduced them to the service department upon making as purchase. One-fourth of the customers surveyed said there had been simply no such introduction, and another 25% stated they couldn’t remember whether they met service employees— an indication that no such introduction had occurred or had enough impact to be memorable. Luxury-brand dealerships were somewhat more efficient at conducting sales-to-service handoffs, producing introductions 46 percent of the time, compared to 41 percent for dealerships promoting less expensive mass-market brands, according to the survey.

M5 Management Providers, a dealership fixed operations contracting firm, says the handoff “should be an important focus point inside your sales process.” Customers, the firm says, “want to be familiar with the individuals and facility where they obtain service. “

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According to the latest research, car dealers are losing as much as $266 billion dollars a year in service revenue with a mind-boggling $15. 9 million per average new car dealership because customers either don’t trust them or it’s an exercise in inconvenience.

The latest findings from a  Cox Automotive’s Service Industry Study, released last month, concludes that 70% of customers who purchased or leased a vehicle from a franchised dealership did not return for support in the past year.  Facty is; they’d rather tale their chances elsewhere. Rates of satisfaction expressed by service customers with dealerships are about equal to indie repair shops, the research says.

Service visits to dealerships decline as vehicles age which quite frankly is contrary to what you’d expect, but, it’s the reality.  Dealerships continue to lead third-party rivals in their overall share of program visits, the study notes, but client satisfaction and loyalty are falling among all providers.  The study suggests that the solutions to this money-bleed include; allowing service customers to pay their bills online, schedule service appointments on mobile devices, have the dealership pick up and then deliver serviced vehicles to a customer’s home or even workplace, and repair cars and trucks outside the shop, the study says. Cox Automotive would like you to know that they provide dealerships with software brands such as Xtime, which processes service appointments and is designed to improve other aspects of fixed operations.

“Dealers have to figure out how to get your vehicle to the service, or your service to the vehicle,”  Jim Roche, vice president of marketing and managed services at Xtime, told Fixed Ops Journal. The Cox study suggests that most service clients are willing to pay more and drive further for a better service experience, Roche adds.

The study identifies 5 opportunities for franchised dealerships to develop their strengths and attract and maintain service customers:

1. Conquer a vehicle owners’ reluctance to return to the dealership for service by picking up vehicles for repair and maintenance, and then delivering the fixed vehicles back to the owners, as well as providing mobile service away from the dealership.
2. Giving customers a more specific idea of how the amount spent on service helps to maintain a vehicle’s value, and providing them the trade-in value of their car or truck when they bring it in for service.
3. Making service customers more aware of their capability to schedule appointments on the dealership’s site. About one in five car dealership service visits are scheduled on the web. Among customers who don’t book appointments online,  more than one-third don’t know that this is an option, the study says.
4. Providing price ranges for services, including those of competitors, on the website. The majority of consumers say they would choose a car dealership for service over a competitor if this gave cost estimates during on-line scheduling, the study says.
5. Enabling service customers to use the particular dealership website to monitor their vehicles’ service history and get recall notifications, service reminders and maintenance suggestions.

Roche states the way dealerships provide service may be “changing under our feet.”

Service clients, he says, “don’t want the lowest price — they want a fair price and a good service experience.” Younger customers are the most dissatisfied with dealership service and especially want to do service business online, he adds.

The Cox study cites Temecula Hyundai in California for an example of a dealership that provides a customer-centered service experience and disdains excessive upselling. Its director of operations, Steve Nicholson, describes his shop’s philosophy: “Rather than take a great deal from a few, we want to gain just a little from a lot. We want to see the client more than once.”

The study is based on surveys of three or more, 550 dealership service customers plus 404 dealership employees involved in set operations.

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