For local search rankings to thrive at the pumps and on-the-lot, location data and local listings must be accurate across multiple platforms, complemented by hyper-local offers and fast responses to customer reviews. Are your dealerships, gas and service stations fueled up with accurate, relevant data to turn online searches into offline sales?
Many brands in the automotive, retail energy and fuel space have hundreds (and often thousands) of independent fuel and service stations, repair shops and car dealerships. With so many locations to manage, online branding tends to shine globally, but may fall flat locally.
An even bigger challenge are the brands with multiple offerings operating under the same roof. How do you show up in local search to your customers searching for fuel or a spot to grab a bite? Bridging multiple services and offerings such as gas, food and groceries makes perfect sense for consumers looking for a one-stop-shop to refuel their tanks and their stomachs.
But from a local search perspective, this confuses search engines and can negatively impact your local SEO rankings and prevent customers from finding you first.
To solve this problem, we came up with a pin-within-a-pin solution. This innovative solution for the fuel retail world brings together multiple functions all in one location without an adverse impact on SEO.
For example, one location with a fuel station, market and café might look like this:
Boom! Your customers can find you in all three categories now.
The average country has approximately 20 days per year where special holidays occur and special holiday hours and location closures may be mandated. When these changes aren’t reflected on your apps, directories, platforms and Google My Business accounts, your customers will quickly lose trust in your brand.
Save time and ensure customers are showing up at the right times by updating your operating hours from one single source of truth with the Location Marketing Cloud.
Your potential customers will spend hours researching the right make, model, price and reviews before stepping foot on your lot or showroom. Despite all their research, taking a car for a test drive is still one of life’s sweet pleasures, but consumers aren’t visiting as many dealerships as they used to.
Recent research from Google tells us that on average, new car buyers visit two dealerships before making a purchase (down from 5 times). If your lots and showrooms are less than full most days, bad data at the point of your customers’ search may likely be to blame.
With the majority of customers navigating to your locations on-the-go, accurate business listings that include correct location information, opening and closing hours, amenities and promotions across relevant platforms and directories are vital to creating a consistent brand experience.
Voice search is the future of the automobile industry. There are 77 million in-car voice search users in the US every month making in-car voice search, at least for now, more prevalent than in the home.
According to our survey in the 2019 Voice Search Readiness Report, 34% of all voice search users (in the US) are conducting queries from their automobiles.
The future of voice search is more certain in the car because it's hands free. Gas stations, mechanics and car dealers need to be voice search ready to reach consumers making in-car queries for local business information
Manage your brand’s online presence from head office, while giving your local management teams the power to respond to customer reviews and show off the individual locations they manage on social media.
From one easy one easy-to-use, centralised platform your local service stations and dealerships across the city, country or world can respond to reviews in seconds, upload images from an in-store event or fire off a promotion on Facebook — all in real-time.
You decide how many store managers and employees have access to individual features at the local level: from setting editing and approval rights, to responding to customer reviews.
Contact us today to unleash the power of location marketing on your online presence.
The Automotive Guide to Digital Marketing
May 05, 2020
