Enhance Google My Business With a Vehicle Inventory Carousel

One of the biggest opportunities in 2020 for local search visibility in automotive retail will be through an expanded use case of Google My Business (GMB). Most auto dealers have ignored the many updates and enhancements to their GMB accounts. Even more dealers have only one GMB account for the dealership which is hurting their Fixed Ops and part revenue and profits. Every franchise dealer should have three GMB accounts: sales, service, and parts.

I would like to encourage dealers to upgrade their GMB listing for their SALES department with new car and CP inventory carousels. If you look at the SERP below for Dolan Toyota, you will see that their GMB listing for sales has a carousel for each of their new models:

The red arrow shows that this dealer has leveraged the two additional hyperlinks that GMB provides: one for new car specials and one for service appointments.

The blue arrow points to the new car carousel which when clicked, gives the consumer a brief overview of the vehicle, and then provides a shopping link right to their Roadster search results page (SRP).

The yellow arrow shows that you can group your vehicles into categories. In this example I followed the categories that are on the Toyota national website. You can also add a category for CPO vehicles as well.

I created a short video to show automotive marketing professionals how to add a vehicle carousel to GMB.

Focus on GMB to Increase Local Search Visibility

In my latest book "Hyper-Local Marketing Handbook" for automotive retail, I cover all the latest changes and opportunities for car dealers using GMB. Following the strategies in my book will result in significant gains in local search visibility in Google Search and Google Maps. It is not uncommon for dealers to see local impressions on Google increase 10,000 - 50,000 times a month when GMB is fully merchandised and maintained.

I will also be hosting a one-day Google My Business workshop in West Palm Beach, February 4, 2020 for dealership marketing managers and OEM field trainers. You can register for the workshop here: https://www.brianpasch.com/google-my-business-workshop/. You will not want to miss this Master Class on GMB, especially if you work at a dealer group with many locations.

Want to Outsource GMB Marketing?

If you would like to discuss having my GMB team work with your dealerships(s) to update, maintain, and merchandise your stores for stronger organic traffic, send me an email to: [email protected]. The first step is to claim/create listings for sales, service, and parts which often is missing.

I'm excited to share how cost effective it can be to leverage GMB in an outsourced environment. I'm taking a personal role in training and mentoring the GMB team so you will be getting the best strategies implemented before your peers.