The fastest and most effective way to build up your sales pipeline and get your inventory out to many car shoppers is by running an online advertising campaign. While there are many online advertising channels that can be leveraged to market your dealership, Facebook has become one of the largest and most efficient advertising channels. It gives automotive dealerships a means to reach car shoppers in their zip code as soon as they show car buying intent. 

With over 2 billion active users on Facebook, businesses (both small and large) are leveraging the platform to run ad campaigns and increase sales. Automotive dealerships are just one of the many business types to also jump on this bandwagon and reap the benefits. 

What sets Facebook and Instagram apart from other online advertising channels is its affordable price and wide range of campaign targeting options. However, in order to capitalize on Facebook’s advertising functions, you need to make sure you have an experienced advertiser creating and managing your campaigns. 

To help guide you in the right direction, we’ve prepared some tips on how you can run high-performing Facebook automotive ad campaigns. 

1. DEFINING YOUR CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 

Before you decide to launch any campaign, you need to make sure you have a campaign objective. 

AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS

Awareness campaigns are great at generating interest in your dealership. If your dealership has recently opened, run a brand awareness campaign to tell people what makes your business valuable. 

CONSIDERATION CAMPAIGNS

Consideration campaigns pull people to want to seek out more information about your dealership. For example, if your dealership is offering a special promo or sale, running a campaign about this might drive people to visit your website or give you a call to learn more. 

CONVERSION CAMPAIGNS

Conversion campaigns encourage people interested in your dealership. For example, you can run a retargeting campaign for people that have visited your website encouraging them to stop by your dealership. 

Having a campaign objective will help you formulate the Facebook ad and determine what audience is best to reach out to. 

2. TARGET THE RIGHT AUDIENCE

As a car dealer, you probably know everything there is to know about the cars you’re selling, now you need to make sure you understand the people who will purchase them. Where are they located? What are their interests?

Facebook provides the targeting tools needed to reach out to your target audience at the correct time. Make sure you are targeting the right audience with your ads (based on their location, their age, their interests, etc). 

To narrow your target audience, make sure to exclude certain types of people from your ad campaign. For example, people below the age of 16 are most likely not in the market to buy a car so you are better off excluding them from your target audience. 

3. TEST OUT VIDEO ADS

Video ads have become a popular ad type over the years. More than 4 billion+ video views are generated on Facebook each day. What’s great about Facebook ads is they allow you to make videos in the format of slide shows, which means you can turn a set of images into an easy to watch a video of your inventory. 

Using a video helps you share multiple aspects of your dealership and vehicles in one ad. 

4. CAPITALIZE ON RETARGETING ADS

Retargeting ads are ads that target your website visitors that did not complete any action. Facebook allows you to use its ads as a reminder to past visitors as to why they should buy from your dealership. When running retargeting ads, make sure you include a sense of urgency or exclusive offers as an incentive for your audience to reach out. 

5. PERSONALIZE YOUR AD EXPERIENCE WITH DYNAMIC ADS

Dynamic ads allow you to retarget your visitors with ads that are personalized based on their activity on your website. Prospective customers will be able to see ads that direct them to the vehicle they showed interest in. 

6. INCREASE CONVERSIONS WITH LEAD FORM ADS

Leveraging lead form ads increases the chances of gathering leads from your targeted campaigns. Lead form ads direct your target audience to a pre-filled form with the contact information, increasing the chances that people will submit the form to get a callback. 

CONCLUSION

The above tips are some of the tools/methods we are currently using to run successful advertising campaigns for our dealerships. For as little as $100 a week, our customers are bringing over 150 new website visitors to their website and capturing 20 to 30 solid leads a week.

We target car shoppers that are within 100-200 miles from their dealerships and run several targeting campaigns to convert their visitors into a lead! 

If you’d like to have your Facebook ad campaigns created and managed by experienced advertisers don’t hesitate to reach out and learn more about our advertising services.