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Dominion introduces handful of new services

Dominion Powersports Solutions released three new services aimed to help its current dealers and other interested dealers analyze metrics, manage their online reputations and create new traffic.
All three products were first demonstrated at Profit Xcelerator, Powersports Business’ conference and expo, Sept. 25-27.

Dominion Insights
Dominion Insights is a website that brings three of the company’s products together — Cycle Trader, PowerSports Network (PSN) and Traffic Log Pro (TLP) — to provide data to its dealers.

Dealers who are clients of at least one of the services can sign up to receive free weekly updates of how their data compares to the other 3,200 Dominion dealers in the country. The real-time data is also available online at any time at www.DominionInsights.com.

Cycle Trader dealers will be able to compare their prices, times from posting to sale, merchandising and stock levels to others, without specifically naming the other dealers. PSN customers can view and compare page views and visitor numbers, and TLP dealers can see how they track their leads, how long it takes from a lead to close a customer and how follow-ups compare.

Other data included will come from eBay, Craigslist and other third-party sources. Ziios’ dealer management system data will be added some time in the future.

“This is a showcase for everything we do,” said Scott Owens, director of business development for Dominion Powersports Web Solutions. “Real-time data for our industry has never been available before now. Dealers need to see the impact of their online marketing efforts, and Dominion Insights gives them measurable ways of doing that.”

Dealers can search the TLP data by new leads, pending leads and stale leads. Cycle Trader and PSN data can be viewed as a whole, or by vehicle make, model or segment. Inventory levels from Cycle Trader and PSN can also be viewed. And dealers have the option of checking their overall dealership performance as compared to others.

Dealers will be ranked in each category, so they can see how they measure up to others. They will also receive a checklist of what they can do to improve their scores.

“We think of Dominion Insights as a kind of virtual 20 group, but with many more dealers and no costs. It’s a way to see how you compare to other dealers in key performance areas,” Owens reported.

Non-dealer industry members will have the ability to request the free national weekly reports, and OEMs and other interested companies can also purchase data that’s more specific by state, region or zip code.

Online reputation management
Dominion has also added online reputation management to its service lineup.

The service helps dealers better handle their reviews – whether they’re on Google, Yahoo, Yelp or other websites. For each dealer who signs up for the reputation management program, reputation managers based out of Dominion’s Dealership Call Center in Clearwater, Fla., will continuously search the entire Web for mention of the store.

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Once mentions are found, the reputation manager will distribute the good reviews through the dealers’ social media channels and alert dealers to bad ratings. Dealers will receive updates about their ratings via email and can also access the results through an online database.

“All of this is managed for the dealer; there’s nothing they need to do,” explained Kelvin Stroud, TLP’s director of dealer development tools.

Because the reviews are publicly found online, dealers can also request to see those of their specific competitors.

Also, to encourage better reviews of the dealership, Dominion’s online reputation management program emails surveys to customers after sales and service visits.

“Nine out of 10 potential customers are turning to online reviews and social networking to help make buying decisions. It is critical that our powersports and RV dealerships embrace a proactive approach to not only tracking but also influencing what is being shared about their stores online,” Stroud said.

The online reputation management system can be purchased separately from TLP’s customer relationship management program, and it’s available for less than $100 per week.

Fast Deals
Coming this fall, Cycle Trader will begin offering Fast Deals, a Groupon-like experience specific to the powersports market.

Using the Sold.com platform, Fast Deals will present special offers from advertisers targeted at motorcycle enthusiasts. Advertisers will have their deals posted on the Fast Deals site for one week. Each posting will be featured until the next deal pops up a couple days later, and the posting will appear as a weekly deal lower on the homepage for seven days. Also, an email will be sent out each Monday, Wednesday and Friday to 99,000 subscribers that features the deal of the day. The Fast Deals will also be distributed through Cycle Trader’s Facebook page, which has 10,000 fans, on CycleTrader.com and through clubs, communities and groups, which can add a Fast Deals widget to their websites.

Each deal is required to offer at least 50 percent off the MSRP of a product. The site will open with only national deals from OEMs, aftermarket companies, distributors, dealers who have national e-commerce availability and others in the industry. The benefits include no upfront costs and the ability of companies to unload unwanted inventory, said Paige Bouma, sales development manger for Cycle Trader.

The site was set to debut at the end of October.

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