Remember the days when dealerships’ commercials owned the radio airwaves? And for that matter, the TV airwaves? A dealership’s jingle or tagline could be repeated by almost anyone; even children could identify a dealership from their commercials. It was great for name recognition, but dealerships were spending a lot of time and money reaching everyone for the sake of reaching just a few in-market shoppers. Those kids who could sing the local dealership jingle weren’t likely to take advantage of the promotion the dealership was actually trying to advertise. But that was just the cost of doing business— until digital advertising, and now social media came along. 

Now, 42 percent of advertisers plan to scale back or eliminate TV spend.* Why? They’re turning to digital advertising platforms like Facebook instead. Sixty percent of SMB advertisers are advertising on Facebook, a drastic jump from the 33 percent that were advertising in 2015.* Many dealers already know why Facebook is powerful — it helps you to reach your customers where they already spend a significant amount of time and allows for hyper-targeting. But Facebook is only powerful if you know how to leverage the platform. You’re already on Facebook, but here are four ways to do it better.

Start with Your Goal

Before you go any further, think about the goal of your Facebook advertising campaign. Are you trying to share Service promotions with customers whose warranty is about to expire? Do you want to bring new customers into your dealership? Understand your goal first and the decisions that follow will all flow from there.  

Maximize Your Bid

Now that you’ve identified your goal, start developing your campaign. When you create a campaign, you first must select what your advertising goal is, and what kind of ads you’ll create. Are you driving website clicks? Optimizing to conversion goals? Looking for page likes? Brand awareness? (If you choose the option “conversion,” you’ll have to think through what a conversion looks like and set up the appropriate pixels on your website to track the conversion.) Once you’ve selected your ad type, think about how you’ll bid. Test different biding options like optimizing to “Visit” instead of just a “click”.  Or an even better technique of bidding to a “VDP View”. Some out-of-the-box platforms can optimize your campaign for customers that are “buyers”. Again, these will ladder up to your overall campaign goal.

Focus on Creative – Pick the Right Ad

Now that you’ve identified your goal, think through the creative that would drive your target audience to take the action you want. Imagine yourself in their shoes. What are the types of ads you would click on? First and foremost, choose high-quality, eye-catching imagery that will stop the scroll. Then think about what words will work best — you can change the ad copy, link title and link description to further entice customers to click through. But it doesn’t end with a click. Ensure that customers actually take the action you intend by connecting the initial impression all the way through the final action you want them to take.

Find the Right Audience

Next, it’s time to choose your audience, which should align with your goal. While Facebook allows for granular targeting, it’s important to weigh the trade-off between strict and broad targeting. While strict targeting ensures you’re reaching exactly the customers you wish, you might be missing out on potential new customers if you get too specific. Instead, test different audiences by targeting in different ways — for instance, target with custom lookalike audiences, retarget website visitors or target those likely to be in market. Facebook’s off-the-shelf targeting options will only take you so far. If you want to get the right mix, consider modeling your audiences from data you already own, like those already in your DMS or CRM.  An advanced method is to find new customers who look like actual buyers at your dealership. This method isn’t found in the standard Facebook console. (Hint, CDK Global is really good at this.)

When you’re building your next Facebook advertising campaign, consider these tips and you’re likely to see a drastic boost in engagement and a greater return on investment. And if you need help better understanding all that Facebook advertising has to offer and how to take advantage of it, we’re always here to help.

*Borrell Research, 2016