In marketing, it’s always important to know your audience, and to be aware of the demographics you’re trying to reach. Ultimately, the goal for your dealership is to sell cars, which means you want to market to people who actually want to purchase an automobile, and preferably who live in your area. Marketing to someone who doesn’t drive, or to someone who lives halfway across the world, just doesn’t make much sense.

So when it comes to Facebook Ads, there’s something very important that you should do well before you actually build your first ad campaign. Specifically, you should create buyer personas, which are essentially detailed profiles that help you get a sense of who you’re marketing to.

Basic Demographics for Your Buyer Personas

First things first: Your buyer persona can and should include some foundational demographics such as age, sex, and geography. This information will come in handy as you try to narrow down the targeting of your Facebook ads.

A little bit less straightforward, but just as essential: Think through some of the reasons why your buyers want to get a new car, and why they might choose your dealership, in particular. Are they looking for prestige? For affordability? For a family-friendly atmosphere? For a special kind of vehicle they can’t find anywhere else? What are their values? What are their motivators? What are their pain points? What problems are they trying to solve, and how might your dealership be the solution?

All of this has its place within a buyer persona.

Tips for Creating a Buyer Persona

Now, a good buyer persona may involve a little speculation and guesswork—it may not be possible to truly know exactly why your buyers make their purchasing decisions, for example—but that doesn’t mean you can’t do some research to help inform your hypotheses. For example, you can look through your contact database to spot trends—maybe most of your customers come from a particular town, or a particular zip code. Maybe you tend to sell to more women than men. Also check with your sales team for any trends they may have spotted.

You might even take the step of conducting some interviews—calling past customers, asking for a few minutes of their time, and figuring out some of their motivators, likes, and dislikes from the time they spent at your dealership.

Once you’ve done some research, you’re ready to put together a buyer persona—which is basically a profile of your average customer. Your persona should include both demographic basics and also some of the psychological/behavioral factors we’d addressed here. Generally, the more detail the better.

Learn More About Buyer Personas

Buyer personas can help you be truly precise in your Facebook Ads targeting, which in turn helps you get the best results. To learn more about how to make good buyer personas, we encourage you to check out our book, The Ultimate Dealer Guide to Facebook Ads. Grab a copy today, and become a true Facebook marketing pro!

When you invest money in marketing your dealership—whether through Web design, PPC, SEO, social media, or email—you obviously want to see a return. The question is, how can you tell when your dealership marketing efforts are really paying off? Here are 10 metrics to consider as you seek to evaluate your digital marketing ROI.

Digital Marketing Metrics to Consider

1. Website traffic. Here’s the obvious one: If more people are coming to your dealership website, then your marketing efforts must be having some effect. You always want your website traffic to increase over time.
2. Web traffic source. As you evaluate your website traffic, pay special attention to where it’s coming from—organic versus paid referrers. This can shed some light on which marketing channels are giving you the best results.
3. Time on site. If your website visitors spend a few minutes on your site, it means you’re offering content that engages them. This is a key ranking signal—meaning it’s something Google’s algorithms use to determine your SEO placement.
4. Bounce rate. This is almost the opposite of time on site; bounce rate refers to the people who visit your dealership website and then immediately navigate away. Of course, you want to keep your bounce rate low.
5. Pages per session. This refers to the number of pages a visitor accesses in a single session at your website. Having a high rate of pages per session can sometimes mean that the user in question is looking at a lot of different content—for example, researching several different cars or reading multiple blog posts. As such, it’s generally a good thing!
6. VDP. Especially pay attention to the time spent on your Vehicle Detail Pages—an important way to surmise which of your vehicles are generating the most interest among buyers.
7. Click to call or chat. Are these buttons performing well? Are they driving engagement and conversions? If not, it may be because you haven’t made them prominent enough.
8. Form submissions. Are people filling out forms to request more information, sign up for your dealership email list, etc.? High form submission rates are always desirable.
9. Cost per lead. How much are you actually paying for each lead you generate? This is an important metric as you consider which of your marketing efforts are truly worthwhile.
10. Conversions. This is what it’s all about, ultimately—though how you define a conversion (sales? Appointments? Phone calls?) may vary from one dealership to the next.

Does Your Digital Marketing Get Results?

As you make an investment in marketing your dealership, it’s important to know that it’s all paying off—and if you’re worried that it isn’t, give us a call. The marketing professionals at Get My Auto are standing by to talk with you about ways to improve your marketing ROI. Contact us today to start the conversation!

Craigslist isn’t always thought of as a key marketing tool for used car dealerships, but in our view, it’s utterly essential. Aside from Facebook, there is no digital platform we recommend more readily than Craigslist. With that said, there are right and wrong ways to use Craigslist for moving inventory. In this post, we’ll offer 10 of our most essential Craigslist tips.

How Your Used Car Dealership Can Make the Most of Craigslist

1. It’s not just about the car. It’s also about your dealership. Each listing you post will need to emphasize the selling points of the vehicle in question—but you should also be sharing the selling points of the dealership itself. What are the customer service accolades you’ve received? What are the reasons to pick your dealership over all the others? Talk up your brand, not just your inventory.
2. Include your prices in the ad title… but only if they’re competitive. Ideally, you’ll have some really hot prices to include in your ads. If you’re not able to top competitors’ prices, though, then it may be best to just not mention pricing in the ad title.
3. Know who you’re marketing too. The selling points you mention and the language you use will vary from, say, the mom seeking a new minivan to the middle-aged man seeking a sports car. Customize your approach according to your audience.
4. Know your market. You may find that some days are better than other for posting new vehicle listings.
5. Include high quality photos. Make sure cars look nice! We recommend taking photos someplace beyond your showroom—ideally a scenic, grassy area in town.
6. Include a strong call to action in each listing. Don’t take for granted that people will pick up the phone to call you. Actually ask them to reach out with any questions they have, or to find out if the vehicle in question is still available.
7. Be ready for calls. Even if the vehicle someone calls about has just been sold, don’t let that lead off the line. Share other, similar vehicles you have in stock, or ask what they are interested in driving.
8. Track everything. Keep records of what seems to work for your dealership on Craigslist, and learn from past ads.
9. Don’t post too much. Remember to brush up on the Craigslist terms of use, and don’t do anything to get your account suspended!
10. Get professional help. If you’re ready to work with an experienced Craigslist marketing team, Get My Auto is always available.

Indeed, we are digital marketing professionals who work exclusively with used car dealerships. We’d love to show you how to use Craigslist most effectively, as part of an integrated digital marketing plan. To learn more, we encourage you to reach out to the Get My Auto team today.

As a new year approaches, it’s only appropriate to take stock of the last several months—and to assess how the auto industry has fared throughout 2017. The last few years have seen new sales records set time and time again; will 2017 go down as another milestone year, or as a disappointment?

Assessing 2017: Was it a Good Year for Dealerships?

The National Auto Dealers Association (NADA) recently released its midyear report. Though we won’t know 2017’s final sales statistics for quite some time now, these preliminary numbers provide useful benchmarks.

Based on this data, it seems clear that 2017 will not be another record-breaking year for auto dealerships. That may be disappointing, but the news is ultimately very positive. While auto sales didn’t break records this year, they remained very robust. The overall health of the auto industry is quite strong, and many independent auto dealerships are reporting sustained growth.

Specific Findings from the NADA Report

Here are a few specific data points, as well as general observations and trends, from the NADA report.

– Last year’s sales numbers were so high, topping them was always going to be a challenge. This year’s sales numbers seem to be hovering right around last year’s, both for new and lightly-used vehicles.
– Light trucks and SUVs continue to surge in popularity—and for these categories, sales may actually top last year’s, by a little bit.
– Dealership employment and payroll numbers both rose in 2017—great signs for overall growth, and certainly positive developments for dealership employees!
– Dealerships have also benefited from an uptick in service and parts business; most dealership service centers reported some profit growth in 2017.

The report also lists some noteworthy trends that are state-specific; you can consult the full report to see if any of these trends impact your state.

Where Dealerships are Headed

While this news isn’t exactly earth-shattering, it is certainly very positive. The question is, what’s next for independent auto dealerships?

There’s obviously demand, but that alone won’t propel dealerships to new heights. In order to maintain these positive trends, dealerships will need to optimize their marketing efforts, ensuring that they’re both targeting new customers while also staying connected with previous buyers.

In the new year, we recommend dealerships take stock of their current marketing efforts—and consider making upgrades/additions in the following categories:

– Dealer website
– Local SEO
– PPC ads
– Targeted Facebook Ads placement
– Craigslist posting
– Video content

These represent just a few of the opportunities dealerships have for building on 2017’s strong numbers. To learn more about any of these marketing avenues, or to discuss specific ways your dealership can grow, consider reaching out to the Get My Auto team. Contact one of our marketing professionals now!

How can your auto dealership expand its customer base and expand its profits? For years, there has been one basic answer to that question—provide enticing discounts on great automobiles. That strategy may not be quite as effective as it used to be, though. In fact, a recent study suggests that relying on discounts alone won’t drive auto sales nearly as much as dealers might like. It might actually be the worst way for dealerships to focus their marketing efforts!

Significant Findings for Auto Dealers

According to the study—as reported in Media Post—some “19.3 percent of adults online plan to purchase a new car or truck in the next year. The survey includes nearly 16,000 online consumers 18+ in the United States.”

The question is, how can dealers get those buyers to their dealership? The automotive category may be rich in opportunity for technological savvy and marketing prowess, yet many dealerships aren’t quite delivering on either category. They are missing out on key avenues for exploiting psychographic data and improving their own consumer reputations, the study shows.

Understanding Purchase Intent

“One priority should be to pay attention to ‘purchase intent’ of the consumer — their thoughts, emotions and behaviors that influence not only if, when and what they buy, but if they want to buy it from your specific dealership,” reports Media Post.

So why do consumers buy new cars?s The top reason is that they want to buy a new model; that’s where more than 27 percent of all purchases originate. For 21 percent of buyers, though, the motivating factor is that they’re having trouble with their current car. And for 20 percent, the primary concern is acquiring a new vehicle for their family.

The least important reason, cited by just over eight percent of auto consumers? Deals, discounts, and other incentives. Clearly, these things just don’t move units like many dealers think they do.

Implications for Dealerships

“Instead of promotions, automakers should focus their marketing on enticing shoppers with reasons for getting a new model: better technology, increased safety features, and slick body styles,” Media Post concludes, summarizing the findings of the study.

Indeed, rather than focusing on discounts, dealerships are smart to focus on what consumers want, why they are looking at new vehicles in the first place—and really playing up the ways in which they can address consumer needs.

Marketing for Dealerships

This leads naturally to a robust marketing endeavor—one that starts with consumer data and buyer personas, targets buyers based on their purchase intent, and emphasizes the dealership as a place for service and solutions.

That’s not an easy thing to pull off, but it’s something your dealership can do with the help of Get My Auto. Our automotive marketing experts can help you draw from data to position your dealership for success—without the need for ineffective discounts and deals. To learn more about what we can do to help you, contact Get My Auto today.

There is a common misconception about the members of the millennial generation—specifically, that they aren’t much interested in buying cars, perhaps preferring to lease or simply to rely on services like Uber. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

As a recent article from Dealer Marketing points out, “In 2016, [millennials] accounted for 29 percent of new car sales, and that number is expected to increase to 40 percent in 2020. They also made up 36 percent of the lending market in 2016, a number also expected to grow.”

The bottom line: For your dealership to succeed, it has to sell to millennials. And before you can sell to them, you have to get them to your showroom or lot—and that means effective marketing!

How to Market Cars to Millennials

As you seek to engage millennial buyers in your dealership marketing, here are a few considerations you’ll want to make.

Affordability is hugely important to millennials. Younger buyers are not primarily concerned with status or prestige, at least not when it comes to their vehicles. Rather, they want good value. What this means is that budget is often their top concern. A related point is that, compared to older generations, millennials are quite happy to look at used vehicles—great news for used car dealerships!

They do their research. Millennials tend to spend a lot of time—more than three months on average—researching cars before they choose one. More than half of that time is spent doing research online. Having educational resources on your dealership website and on social media platforms is essential to reaching this younger demographic.

Millennials do not want to haggle. The thing they don’t want to do is spend a lot of time negotiating with you over the price—something most young people just find to be frustrating. Emphasizing a straightforward, hassle-free sales process can really help you make in-roads with millennial buyers.

Efficiency goes a long way with millennials. More than anything else, it’s beneficial to have a sales team that is ready to provide a smooth and easy path to car ownerships. You may get millennial customers coming in knowing exactly what it is they want, and being able to accommodate them with minimal red tape is a huge advantage for your dealership.

Marketing for Millennials

Your dealership needs to market carefully and precisely to the people who are most likely to come in and buy a car—and that may very well mean millennials.

For help marketing to people of all demographics, contact our team at Get My Auto. We’d love to help you build your brand and reach out to online consumers.

Is your dealership website simply a placeholder, occupying space on the Web—or does it actually work for you? A really good dealership website can be nearly as valuable as a full-time employee. (Indeed, your website works for you 24/7/365!) But what are some of the specific things your website should be doing? Here are some suggestions from the automotive marketing professionals at Get My Auto.

Your Dealership Website Should Rank

First and foremost, your website should be discoverable by local customers; after all, if nobody can find the site, it might as well not exist. This means having a site that ranks well in local Google searches.

You can go a step further and invest in AdWords, too—ensuring that your website truly canvases the Google search engine results page (SERP), and that it’s highly visible to local buyers at each stage of their search journey.

Your Dealership Website Should Inform

Once buyers find your website, they’ll expect it to provide them with some valuable information—about your dealership and about your inventory. But remember that this content isn’t truly about you; it’s about your customers, and the value they will get when they buy from you.

Ensure that your website is a true hub of information; this entails solid content writing, blogging, how-to guides and other evergreen content, and more.

Your Dealership Website Should Capture Information

As readers seek information from your website, you can also harvest information from them—and use it to follow up later, moving these warm leads through your sales funnel.

There are many ways to capture information. One of the simplest is to have an email newsletter sign-up, where your website visitors can input their contact information in exchange for regular updates from your dealership.

Your Dealership Website Should Convert

Ultimately, your dealership website is meant to move the sales needle. It’s meant to prompt your visitors to either pick up the phone and call for an appointment, or simply come down to your showroom to browse.

A good website is sales-oriented, and that means offering a clear value proposition as well as a strong call to action. Make sure you have a call to action on every single page of your website!

Your Dealership Website Should Convey Authority

Finally, remember that your website is a direct reflection of your dealership’s reputation. It should convey your professionalism, and make you out to be a truly trustworthy place for consumers to buy automobiles.

This requires good content, but also a sleek and professional design. Basically, it requires you to remember that your website is the virtual storefront for your dealership—and it’s critical to make a strong first impression.

What is Your Website Accomplishing?

Bottom line: Your dealership website should be working for you—and there are a number of things it ought to do. Make sure your website is pulling its weight. Reach out to the marketing team at Get My Auto right away.

Even at a used car dealership, there is such a thing as a vehicle that’s just too old. Aging inventory—cars or trucks that languish on the lot past the 60-day marker—take up space, eat into profit margins, and only grow harder and harder to sell. Here are some tips for independent auto dealers looking to address their aging inventory issues.

Always Collect Data

First and foremost, remember that your inventory provides you with some important data points. Which cars sell quickly? Which ones seem to sit on the lot for 45 days, 60 days, or beyond?

Always keep tabs on current sales trends, and be aware of which cars do and do not work well with your buyer demographics. If there’s a car that doesn’t seem to be capturing anyone’s eye, well, that tells you something for the next time you acquire inventory.

Think About Craigslist

Far too many dealers overlook the selling power of Craigslist. Not only is it a powerful driver of website traffic, but Craigslist customers tend to convert fairly quickly. They are ready to buy, and often, what they really want is a great deal—something your older car or truck can likely afford them. If it’s not selling in the showroom, put it on the Web! Use Craigslist to your full advantage.

Keep Them Looking Nice

It goes without saying that an old car won’t sell if you confine it to a back corner and allow it to collect dust and cobwebs. Here’s a good policy: Ensure that the vehicles in your lot are washed, polished, and detailed every 15 days or so. Even a car that’s been in your inventory for a while needs to be kept looking its best.

Rotate Your Promotions

Along the same lines: Consider giving your older inventory a chance to shine—even alongside your newer cars. Yes, you obviously want to put the flashier cars on prominent display, but leave a little room in your showroom or along the side of the road to rotate in some older vehicles.

Eventually, You’ve Got to Discount Them

You may be reluctant to discount your aging inventory, knowing that it will erode your margins. Then again, when you buy inventory with floor plan financing, every day a car stays on your lot it’s losing you money—and eventually, it’s better to just cut your losses and move on.

How Will You Handle Aging Inventory?

Every independent auto dealership has to contend with aging inventory. The question is, how will you market and promote your cars—even older ones—to turn them into profits?

Get My Auto can help you brainstorm some solutions. Reach out to our automotive marketing experts today, and ask about our services in Facebook Ads, Craigslist, and beyond. Contact Get My Auto right now!

One of the most basic tenets of marketing is that you have to know your audience—and you have to be able to tailor your message to address their particular pain points and consumer needs.

For used car dealerships, a big part of the buying audience is made up of women—and the dealerships who don’t market specifically to women are doing themselves a disservice.

That’s because, in most families, women drive the purchasing decisions. A recent Dealer Marketing article elaborates: “More and more studies show that the decision-maker is female. Women drive 70 percent to 80 percent of all consumer purchasing, whether through their direct buying habits, or perhaps more importantly, their influence over friends’ and family’s buying habits.”

Marketing to Women Requires a Multi-Faceted Approach

Women matter to auto dealerships not only because they are influential over family purchasing decisions—but also because they tend to play complex roles within that family. Indeed, women are often the ones most active in the day to day care of children, in considering the needs of the extended family, and in ensuring that major purchases—like a new car—are beneficial to the family as a whole.

What Dealerships Can Do

Given the important role that women play in informing used vehicle purchasing decisions, dealerships need to do everything in their power to make the buying journey more welcoming to the ladies—but how?

One important step is to put some women on the sales team. Dealer Marketing explains why: “Women feel more comfortable buying from women. If women make up more than 80 percent of influencers, it should be no secret that females need to be well-represented across your sales and management teams.”

Another important step that dealerships can take? Enhancing their customer service offerings.

“Women tend to have higher expectations when it comes to customer service, and several technologies are popping up in the automotive business to help with the instant response these buyers expect,” says Dealer Marketing.

These technologies include text-based appointment reminders, online scheduling for test drives, and more.

The Reward of Marketing to Women

It may take some work for dealerships to improve their outreach to women—but in the end, the reward can be quite significant. Women, after all, tend to be loyal customers—at least, to the businesses that strive to earn that loyalty.

“A Frost and Sullivan survey that used responses from 1,500 male and female vehicle owners in the U.S. revealed that women tend to be more loyal than their male counterparts to both dealers and independent aftermarket technician,” says Dealer Marketing.

How will your dealership strive to earn the loyalty of women? Get My Auto can certainly provide you with some marketing strategies to brand your dealership as service-centered and welcoming to all. To learn more, we encourage you to contact the Get My Autodealership marketing team today.

When you post to Facebook from your dealership account, you’ll have the option to “boost” your posts—basically helping you get more views and greater reach for the post in question. On the surface, this might seem like a great way to advertise your dealership. And it’s true: There are some real benefits to boosting your posts. With that said, there are also some significant drawbacks to this practice—enough that we actually don’t recommend you use the boost post feature. In this blog, we’ll try to explain why.

What Happens When You Boost a Facebook Post?

For starters, let’s consider what actually happens when you hit that “boost” button. Basically, this function was rolled out so that business owners can advertise without ever having to leave their Facebook page—that is, without having to actually go into the Facebook Ads control panel to fine-tune their campaign.

As such, boosting posts is certainly easy and quick. You can start getting more views on your post more or less right away. The downside is, you’re also sacrificing a lot of the customization and functionality that Facebook offers—so while it’s an easy route to take, it’s by no means the most effective way to advertise on Facebook. In fact, it can really be a waste of money.

When you boost a post, you get four basic choices to make—choosing your CTA, your audience, your budget, and the duration of your campaign. But when you actually use the Facebook Ads dashboard, those four options expand into something like 30—offering you much greater control over your campaign.

What You CAN’T Do When You Boost Posts

There are a lot of options that your Facebook Ads control panel gives you that simply boosting posts will not. Here are just a few of them:

-Retargeting your website traffic
– Creating “lookalike audiences” to expand your Facebook reach
-Preventing people who have already taken the desired action from seeing the post again (something that can save a ton of money)

Your options are really hampered, whereas actually creating a new ad campaign in the Facebook Ads platform allows you to go much deeper and to create a much more effective and affordable campaign.

So Why Do So Many Business Owners Still Boost Posts?

Still, the reality is that boosting posts is pretty easy, even for the Facebook Ads novice. Using the full Ads Manager is a better option, but it requires a higher level of knowledge and strategy.

But lack of knowledge shouldn’t keep you from using Facebook Ads to its full potential—not when you have Get My Auto on your side. We have unparalleled experience in running effective Facebook Ads campaigns for dealerships—and we can deliver real results for your dealership, far more than what boosted posts can offer.

Take advantage of our expertise. Don’t boost your posts anymore; instead, contact Get My Auto about the rich range of options we can provide.