Your Guide to Automotive Industry Digital Marketing

For local automotive industry businesses such as car dealerships, repair shops and parts stores, Apple’s new maps app for the iPhone and iPad will have a big impact on how customers find your business.

The new mapping application uses different mapping technologies and online review websites to determine, which businesses appear in a map search. Most notably, “Apple Maps” uses review information from Yelp.

Businesses with lots of glowing reviews on Yelp will have a better chance of showing up before the competition on Apple Maps.

To give you an idea on how it works, suppose you were searching Apple Maps for “car repair” in Scottsdale, Arizona. The picture to the right is what you would see.

Where would you be more likely to take your car… the shop with 17 reviews and a five-star Yelp rating? Or the shop with three reviews and a one-star Yelp rating?

With more than 50 million iPad users and 30 million iPhone users, this is not a channel you can ignore. Mobile local search is only going to get bigger.

To get started with local search, we recommend reading the following postings on the AfterMarketer Club Blog:

• Ways to Get More Customer Reviews on Yelp and Online Review Sites
• Big Changes for Local Search Engine Results with New Google+ Local
• Improve Local Search Rankings with Pictures

For even more local search tips, download our free eBook on local SEO! You’ll get important tips on how to maximize local search engine results.