The amount of competition among automotive dealerships makes it one of the most cutthroat industries in the world. Dealerships aren’t just competing with each other; they’re up against local repair shops, body shops, parts stores and more.

With departments for sales, service, parts, detailing, and even bodywork, every part of a dealership faces its own form of competition in its region.

As competition continues to grow, and customers rely on Google searches to do everything from finding the right business to reading reviews left by their peers, dealers must sharpen their marketing tools to appear in search results and have a chance at earning new business.

Most businesses have one primary Google business profile (GBP) page, but those with departments that operate as distinct entities, typically defined as having a separate entrance on the exterior of the building, can support multiple GBP pages. Fortunately, automotive dealerships are well-positioned to benefit from this opportunity within Google’s systems.

Enter the secondary Google business profile

It’s essential to understand why having multiple GBPs matters. The primary category of your GBP is its number-one search ranking factor. When setting up your business profile, selecting the right primary category for your listing is critical, and you’ll want to note what your competitors are using if you’re looking to rank among them.

Each selection is different, with distinct competitive sets in the Google universe. As such, choosing “car dealer” or “auto body shop” will vastly change the way your business is ranked and discovered by prospective customers. You will rank higher in local search for distinct search categories unique to each business department.

By creating unique GBP pages for your top-level business and its unique, public-facing departments, each business unit becomes independently searchable and findable, helping each unit compete directly with other local businesses. Thus, a dealer can simultaneously compete with other retail automotive dealerships and independent body shops and be much more competitive with the auto body shops by employing a second GBP.

Ranking factors

It’s equally important to understand how Google search works, particularly regarding how your GBP and business are ranked. The top three local ranking factors for GBPs are, in order of importance, GBP information, reviews and searcher proximity.

This makes top-level business information of utmost importance if you want to be found. It’s impossible to show up in search as a “car dealer,” an “automotive service center,” and an “auto body shop” at once. The only way to reliably compete across each of these categories is to have individual GBPs for each business.

Given the weight placed on keyword density and review volume in search, it’s also crucial to ensure that reviews are left appropriately under the right business unit’s GBP. However, it’s worth noting that customers won’t easily find your departmental GBPs where they can leave reviews, especially as you’re getting started.

Your customers are not students of this strategy, and they simply won’t care as much about delineating where the review is posted as you will from the business side.

The effectiveness of secondary GBPs for automotive dealerships

We’ve already established that automotive dealerships are ideal for multiple GBPs, and fortunately, it’s possible to explore what they look like in practice.

Koons Annapolis Toyota, for example, dominates both retail and service searches for the Annapolis, Md., region. Performing a Google search for “Toyota dealership Annapolis Maryland” delivers immediate results that direct you to its sales GBP.

On the other hand, a Google search for “Toyota service Annapolis” brings up the dealership’s service GBP. It’s a distinct and important difference that sets the stage for the dealership to compete against a wide range of businesses, including other dealerships, quick-service shops, national chains, and independent repair shops.

Dealerships are poised to be early adopters of this entirely new marketing channel.

Getting it right from the start

There are plenty of examples of businesses that have multiple GBPs but aren’t getting the benefit because department-specific reviews aren’t being posted appropriately. It’s incumbent on businesses to employ a multiple GBP strategy to help educate customers and prompt them to leave reviews in the right place.

When done well, it creates a vibrant and effective channel that generates high-value leads and bottom-line results. In the case of Koons Annapolis Toyota, they sought help to set up the behind-the-scenes operational mechanisms to drive reviews to the right place and to manage the process of capturing them within the bigger brand.

As a result, Koons enjoys a more proportionate distribution of review volume. Its dealership GBP has 4,752 reviews and an average 4.8-star rating, while its service center has 912 reviews with an average 4.5-star rating.

Setting up and managing your GBP the right way can be complex. Companies engineered to support and understand its ins and outs will remove the guesswork, get you off on the right foot, and track the success of this new and effective marketing method.

 

Matt Murray is CEO at Widewail