Boat Dealer Marketing and Reputation Management
Building a boat dealership is hard work. You do not want that hard work to be undone by comments made about your dealership online in the marine industry.
Ideally, problems can be resolved quickly and quietly. The Internet has made it so that there is more open communication between businesses, customers, and potential new customers. Now, word of mouth travels faster than ever.
If customers are pleased with your business, that is fantastic. However, if they are unhappy, a complaint on a social media network can quickly turn into a disaster.
To combat this, keeping a watchful eye on all platforms users could leave a review should become a routine task. This allows you to work quickly on resolving and defusing problems, keep an eye on customer feedback, and make recommendations to improve the business when necessary. Including a social media account in your marketing strategy is a great way to interact with your customers and quickly turn around poor experiences for happy ones.
If you prepare and plan how to handle online criticism, the impact of complaints is greatly reduced. You will be able to respond quickly and effectively to minimize potential damage. There are things you can do in your marketing plans to monitor and protect your reputation online.
Keep an Eye on Social Media
Your boat dealer marketing team must keep an eye on social media so that you know what people are saying about your boat dealership.
Begin by looking for anything that references your business name, services, and products. Also search for include seasonal campaigns, special offers, sales, and the names of CEOs and stockholders.
Once you have a good idea of how your business appears on social media websites, run similar searches for competitors. This will help determine if your online reputation is better or worse than theirs.
If it’s worse, determine what other boat dealers are doing well. Find out what dealers with bad reputations are doing wrong to ensure that your boat dealer marketing team does not make the same mistakes.
Boat Dealer Customer Service via Social Media Marketing
Tracking and monitoring your social media reputation is only the beginning. In order to leverage social media efficiently, your boat dealer marketing team needs to interact and talk with your customers.
If someone posts praise about your products or service, reply to the post and thank the person for their kind words. Another option is to offer them a small, one-time discount. If someone posts a negative comment, reply, and ask what your company can do to resolve the issue.
You cannot satisfy every customer. Even if they remain unhappy, you’re showing others in the boating industry that you take customer service very seriously.
If you become an active participant in these conversations, you are increasing your reputation, brand awareness, and boat dealer marketing.
Maintaining Your Boat Dealer Social Media Presence
In today’s technological world, many businesses have some kind of social media presence. However, many of them treat their social media pages the same as static web pages.
A social media page and a static website are completely different. A social media page needs frequent attention. You should be adding photographs of new boats, giving special offers to social media users, and of course, linking to your business’s website.
Simply posting is not enough – you also need to engage. Ask your followers what new products and services they would like to see. Take customer satisfaction polls or run contests specific to social media.
The more comments you can generate, the better your online reputation will become. Just remember to read what people are posting and respond in a timely manner to both the good, and the bad comments.
Turn Unhappy Customers into Happy Ones
One or two unhappy comments can become a problem quickly. If your dealership gets a negative comment or receives a bad review, the most important thing to do is keep calm. Address the issue, be professional, and attempt to solve the problem at hand.
When dealing with negative feedback, don’t take it personally. It will stop you from taking an honest look at what improvements need to be made. For example, if you get a lot of negative feedback about a particular site feature, prepare to take immediate action to improve that feature.
When it comes to boat dealer marketing, one of the main points when dealing with customer complaints is empathy. In most cases, unhappy customers are simply looking for a solution to their problem. They have merely chosen social media channels to voice their concerns, opinions, and problems.
Empathy helps to set the tone for any public response. Remember in many cases, customers just want to be heard in the digital world.
Even with positive comments, you should still keep track of what they seem to think you are doing right. Thank them and share their comments with others when appropriate.
Don't Opt Out of Reputation Management
Many dealerships don’t realize the importance of reputation management.
Negative comments can rank on search engines when someone does a business name search. People frequently search for businesses online by using their business name. Having negative comments and other bad stuff rank in search results can directly impact the bottom line.
Online reputation management and repair has been a large part of boat dealer marketing for many years. If a boat dealership neglects to develop their digital marketing presence, they may pay the price later. This means lost revenue and additional hours repairing damage.
While not engaging in online media is bad, handling social media badly can be much worse. Nobody can cause as much damage as you can if you don’t know anything about boat dealer marketing.
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