Social Media for Car Dealers
At Simply Social Media we are passionate about helping car dealers and auto dealerships utilize social media successfully!
Social media marketing is an opportunity for you to connect with car buyers like never before.
Your social media presence is becoming too important to ignore.
Social Media for Car Dealers
At Simply Social Media we are passionate about helping car dealers and auto dealerships utilize social media successfully!
Social media marketing is an opportunity for you to connect with car buyers like never before.
Your social media presence is becoming too important to ignore.
It is 2020, and social media is influencing up to 40% of all auto sales.
If your dealership ignores social media, your digital marketing strategy, and likely car sales, will fall behind this year.
A large part of this has to do with mobile-first auto consumers, who base their decision on research done through their smartphone. According to a Facebook research study on auto buyers’ digital research journey, buyers did up to 74% of their research on their mobile or tablet device. Social media is one sure way to take advantage of this rapid move to mobile research.
Why does social media make sense for car shoppers? Because 72% of car shoppers would even drive 20 to 60 miles to a dealership with good reviews on their social media pages. That is huge.
Your Goals for Social Media
1.
Build Your Brand
To reach those mobile-first consumers, social is a crucial piece of the puzzle.
With the average U.S. user spending up to 5 hours a day on their mobile device, and 36% of that time (almost two hours!) is spent on social media apps alone, the opportunity is ripe for the taking.
Building a presence on social media doesn’t happen overnight, but commitment to a consistent posting schedule, tone and social advertising strategy will set your dealership up for success. We at Simply Social Media can help you with that task.
Keeping the conversation alive provides long-term value for customers and potential buyers because they’re receiving a personal interaction with your brand. Do away with the “set it and forget it” mindset and start embracing two-way conversations on your social platforms.
2.
Increase Loyalty
Integrating social media as a component of your overall digital marketing strategy is key for auto dealerships.
With an active social media presence, you can capitalize on mobile-first researchers and increase awareness for your brand and dealership. Long term, this increases the value of your dealership’s reputation and drive new shoppers to your lot. Social media also plays a role in search engine optimization, impacting how easily people find you on search engines.
The past couple of years haven’t been the greatest for social media companies, especially the most influential, popular, and notorious one: Facebook. But Facebook is still the most popular and best.
What this means for automotive dealers and marketers is that social media marketing, especially Facebook, remains a critical component of a successful advertising strategy, and is also vital for reputation management and consumer word of mouth.
Facebook Marketplace is visited by 550-plus million shoppers every month. Sell your used inventory on Facebook Marketplace to target local customers looking to buy.
On average, we are seeing our dealers selling five to eight vehicles and getting 25 to 30 qualified new leads submitted through Facebook Marketplace. Have a plan to monitor Facebook Messenger and respond to interested buyers, as Messenger is the default communication channel for Marketplace.
This is another great reason to use an AI-powered intelligent messaging solution that can answer questions and route the communication to a team member that’s monitoring a centralized communication dashboard—not the phones, a website, email, cell phone, and Messenger separately.
Almost all dealerships have some form of online social presence these days, but there’s a difference between a perfunctory effort such as a hastily created, rarely updated Facebook page and a comprehensive, multi-platform strategy that utilizes the full sales and marketing potential of social.
As a dealer, you need to start with clear goals. Is your dealership trying to gain name recognition and generate more foot traffic, or manage its reputation? It can do all that—and much more—but prioritizing is key.
3.
Attract New Clients
Using a healthy mix of content types on social media can help your car dealership capture customers in every part of their sales journey.
Using a healthy mix of content types on social can help your dealership capture customers in every part of their sales journey. Community polls and fun photos can draw in people who may be new to your business, while content about lease specials and current seasonal events can attract customers who are ready to buy. Staff features and photos of community events can even help you stay top-of-mind for past customers.
And remember, keeping your social posts varied can also help you stand out against your competition across town.
Read more on how to attract new clients with social media.
4.
Customer Service
The Basics:
- Auto ads have 2x greater click-through-rate on Facebook compared to other markets.
- 75% of car buyers and 68% of service customers say internet research, including social media and review sites, was the most helpful medium when selecting a car dealership.
- Slightly more than one-third (34%) of new-vehicle buyers using social media for automotive information post a picture of their new vehicle on a social site.
- 84% of car shoppers plan to watch relevant auto video the next time they are in market for a car.
- Customers expect to be replied to within 24 hours after posting on a dealerships Facebook page.
Read more on using social media for customer service.
5.
Education
Facebook Marketplace is a great tool that allows dealers to post their pre-owned inventory for free and have access to an actively looking buyer population.
Shoppers can learn a great deal about your inventory on Facebook Marketplace.
For those dealers that use one of Facebook’s inventory partners, Marketplace can be an invaluable tool for reaching customers when interest is high, and especially for interacting with them directly.
It can mean the sale is faster and smoother because you can chat directly with the buyer about a specific car, and move them down the funnel rapidly.
Facebook ads for auto can bring in 23 times ROI on ad spend, and Comscore found that Facebook ads boost VDP visits by 50%, and lift overall website visits by 37%. This is definitely an area to invest in.
Placing a Facebook pixel on your website will allow you to target your shoppers with even more precision—for example, if you’re running a special on certain VDPs, a pixel can allow you to track all the visitors to those pages and retarget them on Facebook with relevant ads.
Eighty-five percent of all consumers search for businesses online, so you want to make sure car buyers and service customers like what they see—especially on Google.
Review sites with high volume are now showcased on the first page of Google search results. Pay attention to which sites show up on page one or two, and create a plan to get more five-star ratings on those sites.
Use new Google tiles to highlight positive reviews or hot deals and make your dealership stand out from your competition. Graphics can be uploaded to create a virtual billboard. This helps to increase leads from search while reducing your PPC costs.
Our clients have been able to get up to nine times more positive reviews from texting their happiest customers’ requests for feedback, which can then lead to more positive reviews. We have extensive experience with dealerships on social media.
6.
Play Smart...
...and make your life easy.
Get specific with your content. Depending on your intended audience, your ad copy, image, and call-to-action will change. Smart audience targeting is important to reach the right people with your ad spend! According to a Facebook study on targeting auto buyers, the quality and scale of their platform’s lookalike audiences are in the top 10% of advertising publishers. This means Facebook ads are highly likely to reach the interested car buyers and fans you’ve been chasing. Just like the search engine results page (SERP), there are two types of traffic on social media: organic and paid. There is a major difference between organic and paid reach on social media, especially on Facebook.
Read more on how to play smart and make your life easy with social media.
To learn about how to get started with our Simply Social Media services, contact us to see how your dealership’s commitment to social media can drive your online marketing success. We’re doing it for others right now.