The biggest challenge dealers face RIGHT NOW when it comes to Facebook marketing is ATTENTION.

Take a look around the next time you’re waiting in line somewhere:

• DMV

• Dentist office

• Waiting for the movie to start at the theater

What are people doing?

Scrolling their Facebook feeds.

As marketers, our #1 job is to funnel people’s attentions to our dealership website.

We can do this through a number of channels, like organic social media, a blog, or Youtube channel, but a large part of your target audience is already on Facebook.

That’s why a Facebook ad is your best opportunity for conversion.

Statistics show us that ad spend on social media is rising every year.

So how do you create and execute a successful Facebook marketing campaign?

The first thing you need to understand is how to DAY TRADE ATTENTION.

1. Day Trade Attention

The concept of day trading attention comes from Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary has built a huge following on social media, and runs a successful marketing agency Vayner Media which is built on this premise.

When you’re an attention day trader, you understand that people on Facebook have a finite attention span.

Take out your phones right now, open up Facebook, and start scrolling. There are so many things vying for your eyes right now.

You’ve got pictures of your neighbors’ kids, to commentary on Trump, to local and national news, to videos, with a bunch of ads mixed in.

There’s a lot to parse as you’re scrolling through everything, so what should you focus on first?

That’s where this concept of Day Trading Attention comes in.

Your number one priority should be capturing and holding your target audience’s attentions just long enough for them to take the action you want them to take.

And that starts with an attention grabbing image or video for your ad.

You can write the most brilliant copy for your ad, or get super-targeted with your audience, or have a valuable Call To Action…but if your image doesn’t catch people’s attentions, they won’t click.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

a. Use Canva.com to create these images. With Canva, you can create templates for your ad images that stay in line with your dealership’s brand, and ensure that you have consistency each time you create an ad image. Canva is a free tool.

b. Split test 3 images with each ad campaign. Try 1 ad with a person or people facing the camera, another ad with a value proposition written in text (remember to keep the text less than 20% of the image area to keep within Facebook’s guidelines), and the third image could be a funny image. You could even test black & white images vs color.

2. Objective

Some advertisers fall into the trap of boosting their page posts, instead of running ads. What’s the difference? When you post something onto your Dealership’s Facebook page, only a small portion of people who like the page will actually see that post. That’s because Facebook has limited the organic reach of posts from brand pages so that Facebook users can see more posts from friends and family. When you boost a post, you’re allowing a larger number of your dealership’s Facebook fans to see that post.

The problem with this method is that you can’t set an objective when you boost a post. You’re hoping that people will see the post and take action.

When you run an ad, you’re able to choose an objective for the ad that meets your requirements.

There are lots of objectives, but they fall under 3 main categories:

a. Awareness

b. Consideration

c. Conversion

I recommend you stick with the ad objectives of video views, post engagement, and conversions.

When you launch a Facebook ad, you may want to build up that ad’s social proof. This is where Post Engagement and Video Views objectives will help you do that. You’ll get likes, comments and shares on that ad (just like a regular Facebook post), and then once you have all that engagement, you can switch the ad objective over to conversions.

3. Budget

When setting up your Facebook ad, it’s important to know that there’s a period of time during the beginning that Facebook will be learning how your target audience responds to your ad. This amount of time varies, but you don’t want to spend a lot of money during this learning period. I recommend $5- $20 per day to start. If you are testing 3 ads within a campaign, set the daily budget on the higher end of that scale, around $20 a day.

4. Measure

How do you know whether your Facebook ad campaign is profitable or not? Remember you chose an objective when you set up the ad. If you chose “Conversions”, you’ll want to measure the number of conversions, as well as Cost Per Conversion.

If you’re trying to send traffic to a lead capture page on your website, you can track Click Through Rate (CTR) and Cost Per Click (CPC). If you’re interested in measuring how your video ads are performing, you can track Video Views, as well as Cost Per Video View.

There are a few options with these video views metrics, including Video Watches at 50% which can help you identify whether people are watching your videos.

5. Scale

After you measure and track your Facebook ads, you should assess which ads to scale, and which ones to kill. This is a very important step, because you don’t want to waste money on ads that aren’t producing an ROI. As you’re split testing your ads, you’ll find people engage with certain images, or long form copy vs. short form copy, or even videos vs. image based ads. When you run your split test ads for a length of time where you can clearly identify a winner, shut off the other 2 losing ads, and scale the ad spend on the winner. I recommend scaling up the daily ad spend on your winning ad by 10-15% every 3-5 days. That way you won’t throw too much money at single ad (so your audience won’t burn out too quickly), and you’re incrementally reaching more people with an ad that you know works.

Remember that the AD is only half the battle. Once someone clicks your ad and ends up on your dealership’s website, there needs to be alignment between the landing page and the ad (meaning what they clicked in the ad is what they get on the website). The goal of the Facebook ad is to “sell the click” through to the website.

QUESTION: What's your biggest struggle with Facebook advertising? Post it in the comments below...

Before you start your next Facebook ad campaign, read through this valuable tips from DrivingSales Community members.

1. Why You Need to Avoid Facebook Engagement Bait (And What to Use Instead) – Christina Wofford

What is engagement bait, and why should brands be careful about the type of content they share on their pages? Wofford explains the types of content that could negatively impact your dealership’s reach.

Read more.

2. 3 Ways To Get The Most Out Of Facebook Marketplace – Max Steckler

This buy and sell platform is not just an alternative to garage sales. Steckler reveals how dealerships can get involved with the automotive marketplace within it.

Read more.

3. Define Your Facebook Goals Before Determining A Strategy – JD Rucker

This 4-part series breaks down the types of goals you should be setting before spending money on Facebook ads.

Read more.

4. You’re Doing It Wrong! Why Your Facebook Ads Aren’t Working – Kathi Kruse

If you feel like you’re spending money on Facebook with little to show for it, this post explains the key to running effective ads.

Read more.

5. Facebook Ads Vs. Boosted Posts – Dorsey West

How do you know which method is best? This forum thread highlights what dealers feel about their effective ad spend on Facebook.

Read more.

6. How To Promote ‘Tentpole’ Events On Facebook – Scot Eisenfelder

Have a new product promotion, holiday event or sale coming up? Eisenfelder shows us why a “tentpole” social media marketing strategy on Facebook is a great way to generate social buzz.

Read more.

7. The Complete Guide To Facebook Ad Targeting For Dealerships [INFOGRAPHIC] – Andrew James

Print this chart, and hang it up at your desk the next time you’re wondering which audience to target in your Facebook campaign.

Read more.

Are you trying to incorporate more video into your marketing strategy?

Heading into 2018, one of my goals was to build a Facebook group around a topic I’m passionate about, which is Search Engine Optimization, and video was going to be a big part of my content creation strategy.

Here’s the problem though:
I’m intimidated to be on camera.

I filmed a whiteboard video about SEO for dealerships a while back, and even though coming up with the content for the video was fairly easy, actually filming the video with our production team put me way out of my comfort zone.

Do you feel the same way about video?

The other day I watched an interview about a guy who created a successful Facebook Group by growing it to over 30,000 members, and he did it through live videos and a tool called Zoom.

I’m going to be trying to build up my SEO group, but I thought I’d share a quick and easy process to going live on Facebook with Zoom.

1. Sign up for a free demo of Zoom. They offer different plans at different price points, but try the free plan to see if it’s a good fit for you.

2. Schedule your Facebook Live video within the next two weeks. Giving yourself a due date ahead of time will allow you sufficient time to promote the video to your audience, and also ensure you have enough time to create a plan for your content.

3. When you’re ready to go live, start the live stream within Zoom. This is a fairly straightforward process inside your Zoom account. Here’s how to do that:

a. Ensure the webinar feature in Zoom is enabled.

b. In the webinar section of Zoom, click the More menu.

c. Click Live on Facebook.

d. Log into Facebook, and select the page or profile you want to show your live video.

e. When you’re ready to start broadcasting, click Go Live.

f. Click Stop Streaming in Zoom when you’re finished.

Do you feel overwhelmed with all the advice from gurus? That's one of the downsides of living in a world with so much accessible information. DrivingSales Executive Summit 2018 Keynote Jay Acunzo shares what we should do with the information, and how to separate the possibilities from the answers.

In this video, DSES keynote speaker Oli Gardner talks about direction, and how you can use directional cues and gaze to focus customers' attentions.

Hey there, it’s Andrew James from DrivingSales, and in this quick video I’ll show you 3 ways to get more local traffic this week.

At your dealership, you know that getting customers through the door is your number one priority.

The easiest way to do that is through paid methods like advertising or lead sources. This is a simple way to get your dealership in front of people who are already searching for cars.

If you think about advertising like a machine, as soon as you shut off the ads, you shut off your leads.

Here’s a quick tip you can implement this week to get fresh organic leads to your website, by using local events as leverage.

Step 1: Find a big local event that’s happening in the next 2 weeks

Something like a Farmers Market, marathon or festival where a lot of locals are going to be interested in it.

Step 2: Write about that event on the dealership website

Maybe we’re a few months away from July 4th, and there are lots of fun family activities taking place around town. Is your dealership planning on having a food truck, or bounce house on the lot? That would be a great article that could get a lot of shares. “24 Fun Things To Do In Denver For July 4th” for example, and you’d write up quick summaries of all these activities that are happing, and make sure that the activity at your dealership is on that list.

Step 3: Share the article on social media, and tag all the businesses you include in the list

Think about this step like fishing. Cast out a lot of lines by tagging these businesses, and when one of those businesses reshares your article, you get that content (and your website) in front of a new audience.

So that’s a quick way to get more local traffic this week. If you like this video and found it valuable, please hit that “LIKE” button, and share this video to help us get the word out.

Thanks!

Understanding your target audience is a critical step to running successful Facebook ad campaigns. We've put together an expansive list of audience targeting options your dealership should consider using for your next marketing campaign.

Humans have an incalculable memory, but we lack processing speed.

We process information at about 120 bits per second, and you're currently using 60 of that watching this video.

That's why we're awful multitaskers.

You give someone six tasks, they're not going to do one well and five poorly.

They're going to do six poorly.

So you want to give that person on your website the ability to not overload their "processor".

It takes a person 50 miliseconds to determine whether they'll have a mental breakdown while viewing your website.

Let's take a page out of the online retailer's playbook, because they're better at this than dealers are.

The top 5 online retailers converted 3.3%, and Amazon converts at 13.3%.

What's the difference?

Two things:
• Familiarity, and
• Simplicity

Not making people overthink it.

"Facebook advertising is over."

"DOA."

That’s what a lot of digital marketing “gurus” are saying right now, after all the data and privacy news Facebook is facing.

My thoughts?

I think the way we advertise on Facebook will change, including how we access personal data to build our audiences.

But as far as Facebook advertising goes, it’s still business as usual.

Let’s play devil’s advocate and say that Facebook ads go the way of the dinosaur.

What would happen?

Well, for some dealerships, a majority of their leads would dry up overnight.

These dealerships placed a big chunk of their eggs in the Facebook basket.

But here’s what I think: Facebook is just one of many places that you can get traffic.

In fact, successful dealerships will have more than one source of traffic and leads, and not become too dependent on one.

Take a look at your Google Analytics, and under the Acquisition menu find your top channels of traffic.

That pie chart should have equal representation across organic and paid channels.

So my advice is to stop worrying about things you can’t control, like paid acquisition, and start focusing on building a real, tangible asset through Search Engine Optimization.

With SEO best practices in place, including an easy to navigate website, searchable and indexible content, and trusted sources of authority citing your website, you’ll have a lead generating machine that will continue to work as advertising platforms come and go.

Ever clicked on LingsCars.com? DSES 2017 Keynote Andrew Davis explains what "Where's Waldo" and this website can teach us about marketing.