“Put This To Work” - The Secret Weapon Your Competitors Don’t Know About | Michael Cirillo, CEO at FlexDealer
Most dealerships want more visibility.
The interesting question is whether they’re fully using the visibility they already have.
In this episode, Michael Cirillo breaks down an overlooked opportunity inside Google Business Profile and how dealerships can use it to get in front of more high-intent local car shoppers.
Google Business Profile is already helping shoppers find the store, read reviews, visit the website, call, get directions, and make purchase decisions. Michael’s point is simple: if shoppers are already moving through that channel, there are practical ways to make the experience work harder for the dealership.
Michael uses Strosnider Chevrolet as a real-world example and walks through a simple execution anyone at the store can understand.
The practical takeaway is straightforward:
Before adding another tool, another platform, or another process, make sure you’re getting everything you can from what your dealership already has.
Timestamps
(00:00) Coming Up
(00:53) Flex Dealer Plug
(04:42) Napoleon Quote
(05:17) Why GBP Wins
(09:09) Social Reality Check
(13:22) Reviews Matter
(14:28) Updates Section Hack
(19:22) Repurpose Everywhere
(22:55) Do It Today
(23:44) Wrap Up
(24:20) Final Thanks
Episode Brought To You By FlexDealer
Need Better Quality Leads? FLX helps car dealers generate better quality leads through localized organic search and highly-targeted digital ads that convert. Not only that, they work tirelessly to ensure car dealers integrate marketing and operations for a robust and functional growth strategy.
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Episode Transcript
(00:00) Coming Up
Google actually suggests, as a best practice, that this section be promotional in nature. And so there's a strategy that you can deploy here that feeds the human algorithm, because again, what are we leveraging? We're leveraging the fact that you already have an audience here. We're leveraging the fact that this section is already driving people to action, into shopping activity on your website.
Guys, this is available to absolutely everybody. This is something you can start doing this afternoon. This is something that does not have to be perfect. It is simply exactly what you saw. It is leveraging the tools and resources already at your disposal, in a new and refreshing way, to match your local audience. Help establish greater dominance and authority in your local market through a channel whose express purpose is local dominance: your Google Business Profile.
(00:53) Flex Dealer Plug
One of the things that I enjoy most about producing the Dealer Playbook is hearing from you, the messages that I get of people who are getting so much value out of the podcast, applying it to their day to day workflows, and finding a thriving career right here in the retail auto industry. It means the world to me.
And, you know, one of the ways that we make doing this possible is through my agency, FlexDealer. And of course, in the spirit of providing value, I think this is a perfect time to head over to www.flexdealer.com. To show even further support for you, my beloved DPB gang, right now, if you go to my website, flexdealer.com, you can get a full free PDF of my number one bestselling book, Don't Wait, Dominate.
And the reason I think it's so special is that a lot of the topics discussed in this book are even more relevant today than ever, with this surge in popularized AI and people wondering, "Well, what can I do next? How can I have a competitive advantage?" Well, that's all here in this book. And so I'd love to be able to offer you a free copy of this if you go to flexdealer.com.
It would mean the world to me, because that is how we continue to produce this show for you.
Hey gang, welcome to this episode of the Dealer Playbook Podcast. So excited that you're here, delighted even, because we're gonna do something different. We're gonna be talking about how to increase your visibility to high intent car shoppers, utilizing tools and resources already at your disposal.
You know that this is a topic that I care about. I love any time we can discuss utilizing what you already have, in a practical way, to drive more car shopping activity to your dealership.
We're gonna get into that in just a minute. I should say that because we're gonna be doing something different, you might see me looking down here, for those that are watching, and it's because I have another screen in front of me. We're gonna be doing some screen share. So for those of you that are maybe just listening on Apple or Spotify, I love that you're here. Maybe pop over to the YouTube channel or thedealerplaybook.com and look at the latest episode, so you can watch what we're doing. There's gonna be a portion here where I do some screen share, and I would love for you to be able to follow along. Again, how to drive high intent shopping activity, utilizing the tools and resources that you already have.
In fact, this one's not gonna cost you any extra money. Okay? Some of you might already be doing some things I'm gonna talk about today, but leveraged in a different way. If you put the puzzle pieces together slightly differently, we'll maximize, we'll help compound the strategy for you.
Before we get into this episode, I have to share that this is gonna work whether you're in Australia, Canada, the United States, all the way over to where my pal Paul de Vries is in the Netherlands. When I was there speaking, some of you may actually not know this, Paul's the first guy to give me an international speaking opportunity, for which I'm always so grateful. He's a dear friend of mine. I love he and his wife. They are friends of ours. But this will work. I've talked about this overseas, in his events that he puts on, his dealer events, which are phenomenal. But this strategy works no matter where you are in the world. So don't think, "Hey, whatever he's gonna share is only gonna work in North America." No, this absolutely works everywhere. But definitely you're gonna wanna check out the screen share, 'cause it'll make a little bit more sense.
(04:42) Napoleon Quote
To kick things off, I wanna start with one of my favorite competitive quotes from the famed war general Napoleon, who famously said, and I quote, "Do not interrupt your opponents when they are busy making mistakes."
Think about that for a minute. "Do not interrupt your opponents when they're busy making mistakes." Let me call out the mistake that I see many making. And there's some context here, so just go with me. I'm gonna do my best to share with you what I mean.
While your competitors are tying up precious time and resources and energy trying to go viral on social platforms like TikTok, Meta, or YouTube for that matter, they are missing something.
(05:17) Why GBP Wins
What I can guarantee, if you were to look at your Google Search Console data right now, is the driver of the majority of the organic traffic to your site, into shopping activity, is your Google Business Profile.
There's a lot of aspects to your Google Business Profile. We're not gonna get into all of them today. I wanna share one practical piece of information that I believe will allow you, if you're already doing video, to leverage Google Business Profile in an additional way, again, on the channel that is already driving the majority of your organic traffic.
But before we get into it, I wanna share why it works. Number one, your competitors are not paying attention to their Google Business Profile because they don't know all of the power that it contains. So herein is the opportunity for you: let your competitors continue to tie up all of their time, energy, and resources trying to go viral on TikTok, while you come up through the middle on your Google Business Profile and bolster up the channel that already has high intent shoppers flowing through it.
Why are they flowing through it? Well, I'm gonna kind of simplify this, but it comes down to Google, and now Google expands to large language models, right? AI models have two primary purposes. Number one, relevance: they want to show a relevant answer or a relevant resource to the thing the user is searching for. And number two, accessibility: how accessible is that information to the user, and how accessible is it laid out for the robots so that they can index it, cite it, or rank it?
When you break it down to that simplistic level, the path forward becomes much more clear. It's less about this monotonous grind of two hundred ranking factors. It really becomes about how authoritative, relevant, and accessible can I be to my target audience? What questions do they have? What do they wanna know? What do they want to see in order to make a more informed purchase decision?
When you break marketing down to its most simplistic sense, it's really about moving people to action by solving problems, right? Well, your Google Business Profile is already moving people to action. Again, if you were to look at your Google Search Console data and look at the channels that are driving the most traffic to your site, Google Business Profile is gonna be in the top three, guaranteed. And so what I love about this is, while they're over there diverting focus, you can pour some energy and attention into your Google Business Profile with a very similar strategy and bolster up that profile so that you become the undisputed authority in your market.
Now, don't get me wrong, okay, and let's not cross wires. I am not saying social platforms are bad. I am not saying that you should not put attention there.
(09:09) Social Reality Check
However, when we look at the masses, and we look at the questions that I get most often, those questions have to do with, "Hey Michael, how long should we be posting videos before we get a lot of traction?" And then the Pandora's box opens. I have to ask questions. Well, define a lot of traction, right?
When I first started podcasting and producing podcasts for others, they used to talk to me about their goals, and they'd say, "Yeah, we wanna be Conan O'Brien or Joe Rogan." And I'm like, I don't wanna be the bearer of unfavorable news here, but you're never gonna be Joe Rogan. You know why? Because Joe Rogan's already Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan was a celebrity for thirty years before he hit record on a podcast. He already had a built audience. He was a stand up comic. He was an actor. He was the guy from Fear Factor. You're not him. It's like Gary Vee used to say, "A penguin can't be a giraffe, so it should focus on being the best penguin it can be." And unless you have that kind of baked in audience, the statistics of you becoming that are just very slim. So why even bother getting discouraged?
Instead, you should know where your best efforts are suited. Well, Google Business Profile, it's slightly different. Why? Because you've already got an audience there. You just haven't thought about them as an audience. If you were to look at all of the data of the traction, the leads, the phone calls, the website visits that are coming from your Google Business Profile, you might be, dare I say, flabbergasted. It's a different word, isn't it? You'd be flabbergasted to see how many people are already moving through a channel you own.
You see, social platforms are good because they do send signals to the algorithms. So that's great. But you are missing the one that is sending strong signals and already driving traffic to your site. So now the question becomes, well, imagine what would happen if you started putting some of that energy into your Google Business Profile.
So I mentioned earlier there's lots of things that you can do to your business profile. Let's go ahead and share screen here. I've already got one pulled up. This is for Strosnider Chevrolet, a pal of mine, Kevin Strosnider. (Note: guest dealership name pronounced two ways in the recording; confirm exact spelling before publishing.) He's in one of the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia area, and we've been working a lot with his Google Business Profile, and he's been putting in a lot of effort here, and I believe seeing appropriate gains.
So your Google Business Profile, you've probably seen it before. If you haven't, it's this, on the sidebar here that we're looking at, and it includes several factors. There's the photo section, you can upload photos and videos. There's your business name, a brief description of your business, the website button, that's the guy right there that's driving a ton of traffic through to your website. There's your departments. You can have categories, there's up to eleven categories that you can have optimized for your business. Your phone number, your products and services, reviews, updates. You can put frequently asked questions. In fact, a lot of people don't know this, but as the business, you can actually ask and answer your own questions. And the reason this is getting underutilized is because a lot of people don't know what you can actually do with this.
There are aspects of your Google Business Profile that tie directly to relevance and accessibility, like your photo section. Not a lot of people know that you should have more than twenty photos there. A lot of people don't know that you can be creative with these photos. You can highlight the departments of your store. You can highlight your people. You can really use them to tell a visual story about what people can expect when they come to your dealership. I would definitely recommend that.
(13:22) Reviews Matter
The section that I wanna focus on mostly, though. Actually, before I do that, I do wanna talk about reviews. One area that most dealerships are missing is replying to their reviews. Absolutely reply to your reviews, good and bad. I would even submit this: instead of wasting energy trying to remove negative reviews, even if they're unsubstantiated, I would reply to them as the business. You know why? Human nature, psychological triggers. It's easy to reply to a good review. It's easy to say, "Oh man, thanks so much, I love doing business with you." It's a different story to reply to a negative review with poise and decorum, with problem solving. You know why? Because that's actually gonna send a stronger human signal, if it doesn't send a stronger digital signal. It definitely sends a stronger human signal to other individuals, to see how you take care of people when the circumstances are unfavorable. So that sends a strong human signal. Definitely reply to your reviews.
(14:28) Updates Section Hack
But to move on, here's the section that I believe we should be paying attention to. I will be upfront and say that this section, there is no known algorithm benefit to this section. And it is this section right here. It's the Updates section. Most people don't know that you can upload updates to this section, both photos and videos. "Well Michael, didn't you just say it doesn't feed the algorithm?" Yes, I did just say that. But you know what it does feed? The human algorithm. Why? Because the opportunity is this, okay, and hear me out. Google actually suggests, as a best practice, that this section be promotional in nature. How many times have you been to a conference, an event, or maybe listened to another podcast that said, "Hey, don't pitch, you can't pitch, people don't do well with the pitch here"? This section, Google wants you to promote. It is an update section about your products and your services. And so there's a strategy that you can deploy here that feeds the human algorithm, because again, what are we leveraging? We're leveraging the fact that you already have an audience here. We're leveraging the fact that this section is already driving people to action, into shopping activity on your website.
And because we're leveraging that, we are contrasting against the fact that people are worried about trying to go viral on social platforms and getting discouraged because they're only getting two or three views. I would say refocus that energy into putting video content and regular social style updates, promotional in nature, on your business profile, because your competitors are not doing it.
Now, this is the part of the game where you go and look up one of your competitors and say, "Michael, they are posting." Yeah, they are. And then go look at all of their competitors, and see how whatever agency they're paying, one of the OEM approved agencies, is posting the exact same thing. What I'm saying is this section could be utilized. Let me open this section up. Let's get to the end here, and I'm gonna show you a couple of unique things. You can already see there's pictures of real people's faces. There's a story that he's sharing. But let's go view all. And oh look, did you just see it? Here's the first one that I see.
This is a strategy that Kevin and I worked on together, because it feeds the human algorithm. Do you want me to say human algorithm one more time? What he's done here is a selfie video, standing in front of the front three quarter of the vehicle, and he's simply utilizing a simple script that goes something like, "Hey, Kevin here at Strosnider Chevrolet. Listen, I'm standing in front of this amazing Corvette with the black stripes down the middle. If you're in the market for a 2025 or a 2026 Chevrolet Corvette in Hopewell, Virginia, give me a call," inserts phone number, "or click the link to view our in stock Corvette inventory."
And you know what Kevin did, with a lot of discipline, is he went through every vehicle on his lot and did a similar video. You can see he's even reposted that same video, because why not, they expire after a certain period of time, you might as well repost it. But guess what it's doing. Let's break the dynamics apart, because at this point, Google Business Profile just kind of becomes the excuse to get the video going. Imagine your sales team, who's already probably doing videos, maybe they're already doing social videos, doing a vehicle specific video for every vehicle that's on the lot, that gets posted to the Google Business Profile.
Three components off the top of my head. Number one, they get to see your face and hear you speak. Remember relevance and accessibility? Remember authority, establishing presence in your community? Remember most of your organic traffic to your site is already coming through here, you already have a baked in audience? Well, use it to get your face and your voice out there. Number two, you're being promotional in nature about active in stock inventory that you already have, right? Number three, you are helping build the confidence of your team to do more video, in a way that is immediately impactful for them. Here's a fourth one, okay, I'm gonna bring this one up as a bonus.
(19:22) Repurpose Everywhere
Repurposing strategy. Take that same video that you posted here, fifteen to twenty seconds long, imperfect, go and upload it as a YouTube Short on your dealership YouTube channel. Title, "Best Deal on 2025 Chevy Corvette," "Best Prices on 2026 Chevy Silverados," "Best Selection of," insert year, make, model. Your description's simple. If you're in the market for the best price on a, or the best experience on a, or the best deal on. What are you doing? You're feeding now an algorithm that is still to this day the number two search engine on planet Earth, YouTube. You're also feeding the ability to have your vehicle or your video surfaced now in organic search results, not just your Google Business Profile.
So are we paying attention here? Your Google Business Profile, YouTube, and now organic listings, and we have more than enough evidence showing that large language models, Claude, Gemini, GPT, are also pulling that information, where you can be cited as the source of information. All from one maneuver: putting a video in the Updates section of your Google Business Profile.
Am I laying this on thick enough? Don't interrupt your opponents when they're busy making mistakes. I am calling out the mistake here contextually, which is worrying about how much effort you have to put into going viral, knowing in the back of your mind, and not being able to reconcile in your heart, that nobody is buying a car from you. You live in Texas, nobody from Sri Lanka is buying a car from you, where the majority of your views there are coming from. Okay, that's the contextual mistake. I'm not saying social media is a mistake. I'm saying, in this context, the opening is Google Business Profile, where you already have an audience, you're already driving traffic to your website. You're now leveraging it in a way to take the video you might have done on social media, the promotional video you might have done, the inventory video you probably should have done but you procrastinated, and using your Updates section for that exact purpose, to drive the human to human connection.
Google Business Profile is so powerful, not just for its ranking signals, but the fact that it is integrated into Google Maps. It's a local organic ranking source. It's like a citation for phone number and address and all that kind of information. They're now integrating Gemini into all of this. It is like the perfect storm to build the muscle that you should have already built, to repurpose information, to get people to see your face more regularly, to keep sales related activity up so that people aren't sitting there twiddling their thumbs. Get your face out in front of your local community, establish relevance and accessibility, repurpose that content to all of the different platforms, and dominate with minimal effort, for free, on a platform and an audience you already own, that you just weren't paying attention to.
Do you get the picture, guys?
(22:55) Do It Today
This is available to absolutely everybody. This is something you can start doing this afternoon. This is lot walk territory. This is morning cup of coffee territory, or energy drink territory. This is something that does not have to be perfect. In fact, I would recommend that it not be perfect. It doesn't have to be edited. There doesn't have to be music. There doesn't have to be an in depth script. It is simply exactly what you saw. It is leveraging the tools and resources already at your disposal, in a new and refreshing way, to match your local audience. Help establish greater dominance and authority in your local market through a channel whose express purpose is local dominance: your Google Business Profile.
(23:44) Wrap Up
Now listen, I gave a talk on this at an 800% Club retreat, and I went into a little bit more detail and went down through some tangents. We're gonna post that full video, you can get access to it by going to flexdealer.com/800. We're gonna post that video there so you can get access to it. We would love for you to be able to check that out if you want more information.
I hope this brought you a ton of value. Go put it to work. It works. Put it to work. It works.
(24:20) Final Thanks
And as always, thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast. Listen, if you did get value from this episode or any other episode, I wanna thank you from the bottom of my heart. It means the world to me. And you can help us get the word out by leaving an honest review on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. We love seeing your comments and getting your questions, getting your Facebook messages. We love hearing from you absolutely everywhere. But definitely leaving an honest review on Apple or Spotify does the most to help get the word out about the Dealer Playbook.
And listen, I'm curious to know how this works for you, so definitely drop me a line. And if you have any questions, we're always here to answer those. Until next time, keep this playbook open and dominate. Thanks for being here.
Hey, thanks for listening to the Dealer Playbook Podcast. If you enjoyed tuning in, please subscribe, share, and hit that like button. You can also join us and the DPB community on social media. Check back next week for a new Dealer Playbook episode. Thanks so much for joining.
