For any car dealership looking to dabble in the world of dealership marketing and blogging, Google Alerts is an invaluable tool for keeping up with industry chatter/ customer feedback.
Basically, this program allows Google to “alert” you any time a particular word or phrase is mentioned on the web or in the blogosphere.
I’m going to explain how to set this up in a minute, but first lets discuss some useful and practical ways to leverage Google Alerts in your car dealership marketing strategy.
First and foremost, Google Alerts is great reputation management tool. Auto dealer marketing mangers and executives should always set up an alert with their dealership name and name of each key employee to monitor what people are saying online regarding your dealer or service experience.
Google Alerts is also a great way to keep up on breaking news within your particular industry– which is of course a handy way to come up with relevant blog topics that draw traffic from your “ideal clients” searching for answers/ help in that particular area.
So now that we’ve discussed some of the ways to properly use Google Alerts, the following is a brief tutorial on how to get set up.
Step 1: Log into your Google Account. Do this by going to http://www.google.comand signing in at the top right hand side of the page. If you don’t have a Google account, you will need to create one to sign up for Google Alerts.
Step 2: Once you login, click on “Alerts” under “My Products” on the main dashboard.
Step 3: Enter your desired term in the “search term” box. Then choose how often you want to receive the notifications (once a day, as it happens, etc) and make sure the alert will be delivered to the proper gmail address. *Note: use quotation marks on your alerts to keep specific words together– such as “brown daub kia” .
Step 4: Hit “create alert” and you’re all done! Now just sit back and wait for the notifications to start hitting your inbox!
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About Robert Ring, Auto Dealer Marketing Strategist
Robert Ring is an experienced car dealer marketing strategist and consultant for auto dealers seeking to increase brand awareness, generate more leads and increase their bottom line with the power of online dealership marketing, To accomplish this, Robert helps dealers set up websites that work (and outrank the competition in search), install CRM and email marketing systems designed to generate fresh leads or sales of aftermarket products, social media strategies to reach prospective buyers on their own turf and holistic inventories of the effectiveness of each dealership he manages. For more information on Robert’s services or to contact him directly, please email ring@yeschant.com
I’m looking forward to getting more information about this topic, don’t worry about negative opinions.