Most car dealers still use traditional methods of advertising, like newspaper ads, radio, and television. These are tried and true methods of driving sales and have their place.

But…online advertising, especially on Facebook and Instagram, is targeted, cost-effective, and agile. This is the new way to communicate with your potential customers.

Let’s look at each of the above claims as they relate to Facebook and Instagram advertisements:

Targeted – Using the power of artificial intelligence (AI), such as the kind we use at SimpSocial, you’re able to show potential customers exactly the car their looking for or one that meets their criteria. What we mean is: when they search for 4×4 pickup trucks online, their computer will track that information. When they next go on Facebook, they’re shown ads of the actual inventory you have on the lot.

Cost-Effective – Since you’re only paying for the people who actually see the ad, you’re going to get a better ROI (return on investment). With a newspaper ad, you pay for the total number of people that buy or read the paper; the publisher has no idea how many people actually read your ad. With AI and Facebook/Instagram tracking, we can see exactly how many people saw your ad, how many clicked to call you, and how many visited your website. We can even make it all VIN-based to make sure that everyone who searches for your exact vehicle will find it on your lot.

Agile – Because it’s all digital, you can change your inventory in real time. Sold a car? It comes right out of your ads. Brought in a truckload of cars? They will be automatically added to your advertisements. Everything runs through our exclusive CRM (customer relationship management software). For there, you’re able to see everything about the customer and track every step of the sales process. Or it can be loaded through your CRM, as well.

What is Dynamic Advertising?

Have you ever seen the movie Minority Report? As the main character, played by Tom Cruise, walks around, the advertisements in the shopping mall change to speak to him, by name and based on his prior purchases. That’s dynamic advertising.

We can do that for your potential buyers online – minus the iri scans that are used in the movie. As soon as they start searching for vehicles online, Facebook, using a cookie tracker that the customer authorized, knows they’re doing it.

When they log into Facebook to see what’s going on or for a good laugh, they’ll see your ad. As soon as they click on it, the Facebook user can become a lead for your dealership.

Lead Generation and AI

Generating leads is the key to sales, especially big ticket items, like cars. Using Facebook and Instagram ads, we can help you generate more leads than any other form of advertising. It doesn’t require that the customer or any more than click on your ad.

Once they’ve done that, they enter our CRM and become part of the sales process.

In essence, we’re able to integrate social media in the front to the backend CRM through an AI portal. The artificial intelligence processes everything to your CRM with all the data and lots of guidance.

Less Time Wasted by Staff

Your staff can spend a lot less time chasing after weak leads. For example, when someone steps on the lot and had no idea what they want, your salespeople can spend hours going through the cars with them just to help them narrow it down.

Using Facebook Lead Ads, you’ll not only know exactly what vehicle they clicked on and were interested in, but their information will be populated into your CRM and show as a new lead.

These are essentially “self-vetting leads.” The customer is telling you exactly what they’re looking for before you even begin a conversation with them. Hours of guesswork are eliminated. Even if the client changes their mind, they’ve started with an idea so you have some of their preferences to start with.

Success is Trackable

If you buy a $2000 newspaper ad or a billboard, you have no idea if that’s the thing that brought the customer to you. Of course, those things are great for marketing, the process of building a name in your area. They aren’t great for targeting that one individual with just the right ad at just the right time.

Using Facebook/Instagram ads, we can target the right search words and present the ad to the prospect. More importantly, we can see how many people saw the ad, how many clicked, and how many decided to call you. You will have proof that the ads are working. This information includes the date and time that they clicked on the ad.

Changing Business Efforts

Here’s a scenario that you might find interesting: Imagine we find out you have more people clicking on ads on Saturdays at 2 pm than any other time. We can run an ad that invites them down to your business on Saturdays for a special discount or a free item for a test drive or whatever you want to do. We can tell when people are looking so we can adapt your marketing efforts to that information.

Answering a Few Questions

“Facebook is an international website. How can I be sure that only people in my area see my ads?”

Of course, you don’t want to pay for people in Duluth to see your ads. Facebook and Instagram let us set up audiences that can be restricted by location (and gender, income, interests, and much more). This lets us make sure that everyone who sees your ad is someone who might actually buy from you.

“I don’t want to sell cars online. I want them to come to my business and buy.”

These ads will include vehicles that are actually in your inventory, but it doesn’t force you to allow people to purchase online. It will let them see the ad and push a button to call you. They might call and say that they saw the red F-150 and will be right over to test drive it.

“I don’t have time to upload a lot of photos and information to you guys.”

That’s okay. We get our information from whatever you’re doing right now or through our exclusive CRM program. You take photos, enter the basic data, and our artificial intelligence takes over. It creates the perfect ads for you and posts them to automatically online. Our team reviews performance regularly and fine tunes the system when needed.

Summary

Using Facebook and Instagram ads for your auto dealership is one of the most cost-effective advertising techniques you can use. Best of all, there’s tracking data that proves that it’s working.

Multi-vendor reports are a pain, right?

If you sit down and look at all the reports that you get from multiple vendors, the total sales they take credit for exceeds the total sales you had in that time period.

So, what’s happening?

ROI (return on investment) with marketing and advertising is difficult to track. Unless you have customer who tells you what prompted them to show up at your showroom, you have no idea if it was the newspaper, the billboard, the radio ads, or the text messages that prompted them to come in.

Here are some of the things you need to do track your marketing ROI:

The last contact gets the credit – You can look at the billboard and the radio ad as branding if the last thing to get some in the door was an email they got that morning. When you track ROI, whatever the customer recalls seeing last is the vendor/outlet that gets the credit. 

Talk to your vendors – Sit down with each of your vendors and let them know that you’re changing how you track their success. You’ll be looking at only giving credit if the customer recalls their particular outlet. If the outdoor signage company doesn’t get any credit in a month, they might not be around the next month. These might be hard conversations, but in the end, you’ll be a lot happier and making more money from your marketing and advertising dollars.

Track what you can – Some things, like Facebook ads, text messages, and emails can all be tracked right though your CRM. If someone got a message on Sunday afternoon and they show up on Tuesday morning, you can attribute that sale to the latest message. 

Ask the customers – This is a shocking idea, but it’s important. “What brings you in today? Did you get a text message from us or see an ad?” Most customers don’t mind you asking. If they don’t remember, you can move on. It’s important to ask the customer what they remember and to track it.

Add tracking – Have you ever noticed those TV ads that say to text a word to their number? Did you ever notice that the word changes? That’s tracking. If I want to know if overnight Saturday ads, which are cheap on TV, are really working, run an ad that has tracking built in. The same for a newspaper ad. Include a texting number and have a special word in the ad. Use a word that’s easy to remember, not some strange code only you understand. When you get those messages, you’ll know exactly where they come from. Even a billboard or a bus stop bench can have a special code that says, “Text TRUCK to 12345 to get a special financing offer.” You’ll know precisely where the customer came from and what they responded to.

Things you shouldn’t accept

The days of “tens of thousand people a day drive past it” are gone. There are far too many ways to track exactly who saw what and when and what they did about it to accept the old idea that eyeballs on ad justifies its price.

Don’t bother with newspaper ads that aren’t trackable. As we noted above, it’s not hard to put tracking into these advertisements, but you need to plan ahead and do it well. 

What about multiple vendor packages?

If there are multiple vendors under a single contract, simply assign them a portion of the sale each. If there are four vendors under a single contract and you can’t figure out which one helped make a sale, they get ¼ of a sale each. 

End of month totals

At the end of the month, add up each source to figure out where you’re getting the best ROI. The number of sales credits should be less than your total sales for the month. If it’s more than your sales, someone is getting credit they shouldn’t. 

This process might take time, but it’s worth it. Eventually, you can narrow down where your sales are coming from and invest more money there. This increases your ROI and reduces your cost per sale. And isn’t that the goal of all advertising? A great ROI?

Selling cars across generations – Texting for Auto Dealers

From the Silent Generation (1924 to 1942) to the Millennials(1981 to 1996), there are a lot of people who have very different ways of communicating. 

The Silent Generation can remember party lines and payphones. The Millennials have always had cell phones and can barely remember flip phones. 

So how can you market to all of these generations with one simple communication channel? Texting or SMS.

• 96% of Americans own a cell phone¹
• 81% of Americans own a smartphone¹
• 97% of Americans who own a cell phone text at least once a day²

Text messaging is the number one way to communicate on cell phones. 

They’re Already Here

With almost everyone who owns a cellphone using it to text, it should make sense that texting is a great way to sell cars. More than that, they’re already using their phones and tablets to research cars. “More than half (53%) of automotive internet shoppers use a mobile device in their quest for automotive information.”³

With more than half of auto shoppers already using mobile devices and all of them texting, it’s time for auto dealerships to start using text messages to sell cars.

If you’re not sure what’s going on with your customers, look in the repair waiting area, look around Wal-mart, take a walk in a park. Everyone is looking at their phones, young and old. 

How to Make Texting Work for You

There are a few steps you should take before you start using texting for your dealership.

Get a sales floor cell phone. This is the number you will publish online and in your print ads. 

Your sales team will take over your text messaging if you let them. This will present a whole bunch of problems for you. First, you won’t have access to those numbers later to market to. Second, you have no idea what was said by any salesperson to a customer. Third, if they’re busy, the text will go unanswered.

Remember: Over 95% of texts are read and most of those within five minutes. (If you don’t believe those statistics, consider your own phone use). People expect a quick response from texting. Be sure they get it.

You will want to get your messages onto a computer screen where they’re easier to manage. There are a lot of services available that will let you send and receive messages on your computer. Both Android and iOS have free applications that will do it right from your texting app. Most other applications will let you send bulk text messages to market your dealership. Again, over 95% of text messages get read. There is no other way of contacting your customers that’s more effective.

Have the computer application where someone can watch it, on the manager’s computer, or the receptionist’s, or on a shift phone that someone is assigned to carry around every shift.

Build a text marketing strategy

Using an online service to send bulk messages, create a text marketing strategy. Look to use those text messages to promote specials on the lot or to remind customers when it’s time for an oil change. 

You can increase your brand loyalty through text messages by being consistent, not texting too often, and giving good information that everyone can use. 

Be sure that any incoming texts are responded to quickly, within five minutes, and that your outgoing texts are professional and informative. Keep it short and don’t hard sell via text. Through text messages is not the time to start asking a thousand questions and doing the “Come down and we’ll show you,” tactic. Be cool and responsive. That’s what people who text are expecting and need.

Text messaging as a superpower

Text marketing has not been adopted by many dealerships, in spite of the number of people using it and how easy it is. 

If your dealership starts doing text marketing, you have a good chance of dominating your area and building a whole new group of loyal customers.

Kicking and Screaming – Your Sales Team and the Future

The world of selling vehicles has changed a lot. 

The classic car salesman (and they were mostly men) waited for the customer to hit the lot. The customer usually arrived because they knew the make of the car or the dealdehip was the “best one in town.” 

As soon as a toe crossed the line, the salesman would ask the question, “How are you today?” Oddly, everyone knew that he didn’t care. It was a formality that really meant, “How fast can I get you into a car and earn a commission?”

That’s all changed. Today, the buyer is in charge. The world is different and sales people are finding that they need to adapt.

Using the Modern Tools

Recently, we sat down with one of our long-time clients, Oliver. He discussed why he was using SimpSocial and how it affected his business.

SS: Why did you choose to use SimpSocial?

O: Well, I realized that everyone around me was using social media. My kids, my grandkids, my sales people – everyone is social media all the time. I asked my adult daughter how often she went on Facebook and she told me that she looked at it about five times a day. That convinced me that I needed to look at using social media to promote sales.

SS: How did you decide to use SimpSocial?

O: When I started, I had no idea what to do. I gathered my sales team, a group of younger men and women, and asked them what they thought. I don’t really use Facebook or Twitter or any of those other platforms, but I know that they all did. “What do you think we should do?” I asked.

They told me that we should do social media advertising, then use text messaging and emails to develop a relationship with the lead. 

One of my salespeople, Kelly, showed me some messages she got from a competitor. They were interesting. 

SS: Then you started looking for the right service?

O: I asked my sales manager to bring me some recommendations. He came to me with three different companies. We chose SimpSocial because it was the right price, the right services, and is oriented specifically to auto dealers. 

We looked at a couple of other companies, but they didn’t specialize in what we do. I’m sure they can do a fine job, but I don’t want to have to explain our goals and priorities. SimpSocial was the answer.

SS: And how has it been?

O: Great! SimpSocial created Facebook Lead Generation ads for us and linked them to the CRM. They helped set up a communication system that pretty much runs itself. My sales manager assigned someone, Kelly, in fact, to keep track of leads and sales. 

The leads we get have been very productive. Kelly tracks leads from the time they first fill out a form to the time they buy a car or truck. We’ve been well into the 30% success rate and that’s just in six months. I’m told there are leads that might not pan out for a year or so, but that they’re moving through the sales process and will buy. 

Since I don’t have to pay per lead and I don’t pay someone to sit and make calls all day long, it’s a great return on investment.

SS: What do you say to dealers who are thinking about their advertising and sales?

O: I would say, look at social media. Everyone is doing it. I’m an old guy and it’s not my thing, but it doesn’t have to be. The best part about hitting SimpSocial is that I didn’t have to learn to do anything but read a screen on the CRM. I can see what the lead has been doing, what they clicked on, and if they’re active. 

Once in while, I just open the CRM and make a couple of [one calls. All I do is introduce myself. 

SS: How has it affected your advertising budget?

O: Honestly we’ve gone ahead and cut out most of the ads that we used to do. No one buys the paper, the phone book is a thing of the past, and billboards were never all that great for us. SimpSocial and my team have turned this new technology into a really great tool for our dealership.

I’ll tell you the truth. I was dragged kicking and screaming to this idea. I know I make it sound like I was relaxed and happy about it, but in reality, it was something I resisted until my daughter convinced me that it was probably the easiest way to reach people. 

Like I said, I’m not young, so these ideas are not foreign to me, but I’m glad I listened to her and to my team.

Managing Auto Salespeople – The Next Growth Stage

Salespeople are notoriously hard to manage. Auto salespeople doubly.

The industry has a high turnover, lots of rookies, and a bad reputation as a place to work. 

There are some things that a manager can do to change that climate, keep their staff, and improve their business. 

Why should you care?

The high turnover on the sales floor has a huge impact your business. Many dealerships have simply learned to deal with it, but it hurts your business.

• Customer satisfaction – Your customers come to your business to work with experts to buy a car. Today, they can buy a car online without ever speaking to anyone, why should they come to you? They look to someone to answer all their questions. If that person can’t, because they’re new to the company or even new to selling, they might find themselves going someplace where people know what they’re doing.
• Employee morale – Many dealerships have a core of salespeople who stay for years. They might joke about it, but the constant turnover is taxing. There’s always someone new to train, someone else that has to be broken in. They waste time teaching someone enough to get them on the floor and that person is gone in a few weeks. It’s exhausting and dieting.
• Management time – You’re wasting time hiring someone new all the time. The resumes, the paperwork, the training, the schedule – everyone comes to you with their own life and you have to accommodate. You find yourself needing to get used to a new  person every few weeks, follow them around to how their doing, and retrain them in the ways of your business. Plus you’re responsible for their performance. How can you meet your goals if half the people who are supposed to be selling for you have been here a week?
• Cost of hiring – Every new employee costs you money. The cost of the ad. The cost of the processing and paperwork. The cost of training. There are a lot of costs associated with bringing someone new on.

What can you do?

There are three major changes you can make that will help you keep your staff.

Training – Take the time to train your staff and retrain your staff. Look for new tools, new techniques, new information to share with them. Rather than seeing their work as a job, help them to see it as a career. 

Training the “old guys” will be tough. They often walk into a room thinking they know it all. They’ve been selling cars since Edsel was a baby. You will need their buy-in to pull it off. The best way to do that is…

Explaining – Explain to the old guys why training is important for keeping the new people. Explain to the new people how training will help them make more money. Explain policy changes and new structures to everyone so that they can see how the change makes the company better. 

If you can, bring your staff into the decision-making process when changes are needed. If you can’t, at least respect them enough to tell them why the change.

Accountability – Hold everyone accountable equally. There should be a set of expectations for the team and everyone should be held to those expectations. If someone doesn’t meet their goals, hold them accountable. 

Part of accountability is retraining and teaching. If someone is struggling, take the time to not only tell them what they’re doing wrong but to teach them the right way to do it. This will create loyalty. You’re not just yelling at them and expecting them to figure it out. You’re helping them to improve. 

Times have changed

There’s a myth that Millennials are snowflakes who want to be coddled and aren’t willing to work hard. The reality is that they, and almost everyone else, understands that most companies aren’t loyal to their employees and that there are a lot of people who just skate by. “Why work hard if that guy doesn’t have to?” 

Times have changed. The old days of seeing salespeople as endlessly replaceable are over. It’s expensive to replace them and many are willing to make working for you a career, if they have the guidance and respect they deserve. You get a team you can count on for years. They’ll not only help you meet your goals, but will make it their goal to impress you.

How much money should you put in Facebook advertising?

According to the National Auto Dealers Association (NADA), over 56% of all dealer advertising dollars went to the internet. Some of the old staples, like TV, radion, and newspapers, have fallen off a cliff. 

While we lament the loss of great local papers, business must continue. 

So the big question in 2020 is: Where should I put my internet dollars?

Website – You must have a great website. Period. Many people won’t even visit a business that doesn’t have a great website. It’s like the front window of your business. 

You don’t need a big fancy website, but it’s wise to have one that makes it easy to search your inventory and to ask questions. 

Social media – Check out these numbers from Hootsuite:

• Digital consumers spend nearly 2.5 hours on social networks and social messaging every day.
• 69% of U.S. adults use at least one social media site.
• The average American Internet user has 7.1 social media accounts.
• 88% of American 18- to 29-year-olds use social media.
• 51% of 18- to 24-year-olds say social media would be hard to give up.

All of these numbers indicate one thing: You need to advertise on social media.

Which social media platform to use

YouTube is the number one social media platform. Yes, it’s considered a social media platform because you can comment on things, leave information, and read what others think. However, very few people open YouTube to communicate with their friends. 

The number one social media platform that’s real platform is Facebook. Almost all of the 69% of Americnas who have a social media account have a Facebook account. It’s that simple. 

What about Instagram? Instagram has over 1 billion active users. Facebook, by contrast, has over 2.45 billion users worldwide.

So why’s that important? Facebook owns Instagram. When you set up an ad on Facebook, you have the option of showing it on Instagram without having to create another ad. 

How much should you spend on advertising on Facebook/Instagram?

Here’s the thing: There seems to be no limit to how many leads you can generate using Facebook Lead Generation ads. 

On average, dealers spend about $20 per lead. 

So if you want leads, you just need to figure out how many times you can afford $20 for a viable lead. 

Facebook offers some success stories on their website:

“Hub City Ford reached auto shoppers in the market and drove purchases over a 60-day period between November 2017 to January 2018.

Hub City Ford generated qualified leads, resulting in:

• 154 leads generated
• 34 cars sold
• 22% of leads from Facebook ended in a sale
• Number one sales month ever achieved during the campaign in December 2017.”

“Camping World improved its shopping experience and connected with shoppers showing purchase intent. Between January 24 and April 17, 2018, Camping World’s ongoing campaign delivered:

• 3X return on ad spend
• 40% average decrease in cost per lead with dynamic ads for lead generation using dynamic ads for auto.”

Even Facebook’s own direct numbers indicate that they generate leads that buy cars. 

Even if you low ball the average price of Ford at Hub City Ford to $25,000 per vehicle, they made $850,000 in sales in two months. There’s no way to spend that much on ads in the same amount of time. 

Their ROI was massive.

Facebook at $20 per lead

Again, if we consider the average auto is $25,000 and the average lead on Facebook costs $20, Hub City only spent $3000 on ads. The other $847,000 they made was ROI.

In more competitive areas, you’ll end up paying more than $20 per ad. You might pay less. Either way, it’s nearly impossible to not get your money’s worth. Particularly since Facebook charges you for the lead, not for the impression. If someone doesn’t click on your ad, you don’t pay for it.

How much should you spend on Facebook ads?

As long as you’re setting the ad up correctly (and we can help if you need it) and you have a follow-up plan (we can help there too), you should start at $1000 per month. See what results you get and how you might improve your process. 

No matter what you do, you’re going to get a more traceable and proveable return than you ever will with a billboard, a newspaper ad, or a radio ad.

Try it and see if you can generate all the leads your team can handle. We’re betting you can.

Facebook Lead Gen Ads: Your Superpower

Facebook lead ads are a unique tool that is more than simply an advertising system. Facebook has created ads that are designed to specifically generate leads. One of its biggest strengths is the ads are created to capture leads on mobile devices. 

Finding new leads is easy with Facebook 

Everyone is on Facebook. Seven in ten (69%) Americans are on Facebook. The vast majority of them go on Facebook every day. 

That means that Facebook is one of the most reliable places to advertise. In fact, only YouTube has more visitors in the world of social media. Yes, YouTube is considered a social media platform. 

Facebook allows you to keep your ads very localized. You can reach out to people at a specific distance from your dealership. 

Pre-populated

The ads on Facebook mobile are unique. The viewer taps a single button and a form pops up. The form is pre-populated. All the person needs to do is confirm that the information is correct and it’s sent to you.

Because this system is as simple as possible, there are many fewer lost leads. Facebook users are able to reach out to you with just two clicks and no typing. 

Targeted leads

Using the Facebook audience defining system, you can target people who are looking for a vehicle, either actively or passively. 

This audience function is the hardest part of the job. You must define your audience well and completely. 

Customization

One of the major advantages to the Facebook contact forms is you can add your own questions. This allows you to start the qualifying process well. 

Start by asking questions that build trust and help you understand the lead. The questions shouldn’t go straight to trying to sell a vehicle. They need to be more subtle and help you build a profile of what that person needs. 

After that first round of questions on the contact form (no more than 2 or 3), you can send messages or emails to learn more about this person and their needs.

CRM integration

Facebook ads integrate directly to your CRM. All the data, including the day and time, are delivered directly to your customer management system. 

This is the most powerful part of their system. Having this information in your CRM instantly, you can trigger everything. Send a text. Launch an email. Schedule a call. The sales process isn’t delayed waiting for data to be downloaded. 

The different forms of ads

Your lead ads can be designed to do a lot. 

• Quote – Your ads can easily be designed to allow you to call the lead with a quote about a specific vehicle or class of vehicles. You might consider setting up your ads to the lead contacted with financing information or even simply an answer to a question.
• Appointment – Your ad can help the lead schedule an appointment to visit your showroom. They can bypass the telephone or email and go straight to planning a visit. 
• Subscriptions – Many dealerships send out a monthly newsletter to tell everyone what your brand is up to and special deals that you can offer. 
• Special discounts – Offer a special discount just for people who respond to a certain ad. This can be incentive, enticement to share their information.
• Special event – Invite people to a special event. They can RSVP right though Facebook. The event can a be whole family affair with less car sales and more community building.

The choice is yours as to how you want to entice your lead sto click the button. 

Use Facebook Lead Gen Ads

Once you’ve created the pipeline and started to get leads, you will start seeing those soft leads turn into sales. The process can be almost entirely automated, so that the leads arrive in the showroom ready to buy.

KPI v ROI – Real Service in Marketing

Marketing has a major issue, an issue that has quickly become its Achilles heel: most of the information that marketing agencies give to their clients means nothing.

The KPI Problem

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are the numbers and metrics that show how an ad campaign has been performing. 

Most lists of KPIs include a lot of numbers that mean very little:

• Cost per Lead
• Sales Revenues
• Inbound Marketing ROI
• Lead-to-Customer Ratio
• Organic Traffic
• Social Media Traffic and Conversions
• Customer Lifetime Value

All of these jargons dance around the real issue. The thing that every business—especially an auto dealer—needs to know is how much money did they make from the money they invested.

Return on Investment (ROI) is the one thing that everyone needs. How much money are you making from the marketing and advertising you’re paying for?

Make the Change

If you’re a dealer, you should require your marketing agency to help you calculate ROI. In the age of everything being trackable, they will be able to help you figure out exactly how much you’ve made from every advertising dollar.

If you’re an agency, you need to create an ROI pathway for your clients. Show your clients how you can make them money by tracking each client from initial contact to purchase. This change for agencies, especially digital marketing agencies, will bring back credibility to a field that has gotten a lot of money in the recent past, but has left some companies feeling taken to the cleaners.

Go Big or Not at All?

There are a few really big advertising agencies that outsource work to smaller agencies. They will get big contracts from businesses. The agency will then hire a smaller agency to do the work, usually for much less than the work is worth. 

Many of these big agencies overcharge for their services, selling a lot of “pie in the sky” and not a lot of actual performance. 

These agencies don’t have the clients’ best interests in mind. They are there to grab as much money as possible and leave the contractors holding the bag. 

Smaller agencies have struggled against these big agencies. They try to make inroads, but many dealers and other businesses will opt for BIG, instead of local.

How to make the change

The most important changes that need to happen are:

1. Marketers and agencies need to deliver ROI figures, not just KPIs. KPIs are a great place to start understanding what’s happening, but the agency needs to make it clear that they have made money for the clients.
2. Dealers should work with local, smaller agencies. Having someone in the local area is a great opportunity to work closely together, integrate marketing with sales, and build a strong and powerful marketing program that can deliver results in the long-term.
3. Marketing needs to be part of the sales process. Today, most marketing professionals are divorced from the sales staff. The two teams don’t interact. An important part of getting the most from social media marketing is to have the two teams talk. This will let the marketing people learn from sales what they hear from customers. Salespersons can learn from marketing what the marketing program is working on and what emotions they’re trying to get from the customer.

Making a Difference

At SimpSocial, we work on ROI, not just KPIs. Our job is to deliver sales, not just a lot of clicks and follows. 

Social media is a place where you can get a lot of activity, but not all of it is productive. Knowing how to get the most from your social media marketing is a matter of experience, training, and understanding. 

We can show you how marketing can drive sales, not a “general” concept, but in numbers and facts.

Facebook and Your Dealership

Here’s a newsflash for you: Facebook is not the place to market your best-priced vehicles! It’s the place to market the emotions of auto ownership.

A bit of history

Back in the day, every dealership set up a Facebook page and invested a lot of money and time in getting “fans” or likes to their page. 

It didn’t take very long before they realized that all those likes weren’t translating into sales. 

The marketing guys start talking about “Facebook is for branding, not sales.” While branding is important, auto dealerships live and die on sales. 

That’s when it got worse. Many dealerships paid someone a few hundred dollars a month to maintain their Facebook page. Usually, it was a low level employee who had no power to make anything happen and wasn’t looking for creative ways to engage people. They were just putting up posts to keep the page alive.

Facebook Advertising

The next stage was Facebook ads. At about the same time, Google ads became a thing and everyone stood around confused as to which to use. 

It took awhile for everyone to figure out that Facebook ads and Google ads did two different things.

• Facebook ads brought buyers who weren’t ready to buy yet. They might be thinking about it or simply responded to an ad that had a great image of a car or truck. They might buy in the future, but they weren’t ready to buy today.
• Google ads were delivered to someone who searched for a car or a car dealership. This is great! These were people who were ready to buy. The problem was every dealership figured this out in a few seconds and they all started buying Google ads. Today, Google ads for most car dealerships are too expensive to make it worth it. A single viable lead can cost thousands.

Facebook Lead Generation Ads

Then, Facebook changed their ads and created Lead Gen ads. These are ads where a person can click a button that takes them to a contact form. The form is prefilled. If they’re on a mobile device on the bus, they don’t have to type in all their information on a tiny keyboard. 

These customers are still “high funnel”, meaning they aren’t necessarily ready to buy right away, but they’re prompting the contact. They’re ready to talk to someone about something. 

The leads generated this way are people that you’ll nurture to the sale. Take your time, provide them with information and contacts, and help them make a decision about buying a vehicle. 

Text Messages

One of the best ways to do this is to use text messages. Craft texts that are low-key, don’t push sales too hard, but keep the lead informed about what you’re doing and how they might be able to get a vehicle soon.

The strength of text messages is that over 90% of them are read and about 70% are responded to. Make them personal, speak to what that person might like, and you’re likely to get a sale sooner rather than later.

Your Salespeople

There needs to be change in how your salespeople approach these contacts.

Many Facebook leads aren’t ready to buy just yet. They need to be approached with a bit more of a delicate touch. 

Salespeople need to build a relationship, ask questions, and even talk about the person’s personal life. How many kids? What type of work do they do? Do they travel a lot? Do they need a vehicle that they can work out of? 

The difference will be that they should work on really getting to know the contact rather than pushing to get the sale immediately. 

Make sure that everything is put into a CRM so it’s there for the next person or not forgotten by the salesperson.

Facebook is a Powerhouse

While the Facebook pages didn’t work, Facebook Lead Gen ads are great for auto dealerships. They allow you to target the right area, the right demographics, and people who are really interested in your vehicles. They might not be ready to buy yet, but they’re ready to learn about what you have to offer.

Impact of social media on consumer behavior

There are two types of buyers in the world of automobiles: transactional buyers and emotional buyers. 

A transactional buyer is a haggler, a competitive shopper, who isn’t swayed by the beauty of a machine. They want to know that they got the very best deal on a vehicle. They see paying more than the next guy as an insult. 

An emotional buyer is exactly the opposite. They don’t care as much about the price they pay as they do about getting the car that makes them feel a certain way. You can sell to an emotional buyer with the feeling of the drive, the way that everyone will see them behind the wheel, and how much pleasure they’ll get from the car.

Auto dealership marketing – now and then

Throughout most of the auto industry’s history, the only people that most dealerships saw were the in-market customers, people who are ready to buy as they stepped onto the sales lot. Most of these people were emotional buyers, people who were inspired by an ad to purchase a car. 

Traditional advertising operates almost entirely on the emotional level. TV commercials that show people driving cars on mountain roads, along beaches, and with lots of beautiful people in the car are emotional images. Most will end with a shout-out to the transactional buyers with a list of costs, rebates, and more.

Once the social media revolution arrived that changed. Dealers began advertising for in-market transactional shoppers, people who were ready to buy based on the price they could get. 

This new customer base is somewhat problematic. These are people who expect the very lowest prices. This causes a rush to the lowest price by all of these dealers. Many were within a few dollars of losing money. While dealers were making sales, they were barely making money on a sale.

Using Social Media to market your dealership

One of the most powerful aspects of social media marketing is that you can market to both types of people. With Facebook advertising, dealerships are able to run multiple ads to multiple audiences. This allows dealers to speak to each type of buyer in their own language. 

Emotional Buyer Marketing

For the emotional buyer, the key is to try to get them to imagine themselves behind the wheel. 

The power of social media to use images, videos, and more to set the emotional hook. Then you can convert them and get them in the door at the dealership. This makes Facebook incredibly powerful and probably the ideal way to market an auto dealership.

Selling to emotional buyers requires an emotional buy-in from the salespeople. Salespeople need to love the cars that they sell and be able to convey that.  Now this is a problem for dealers as most are set up to handle transactional shoppers, those looking for great deals, not for those who are buying for the experience of the vehicle. 

How to Leverage Facebook Ads to the Two Types of Buyers

Facebook ads can bring both types of buyers to your auto lot, but each type of customer needs to be treated differently. 

For the transactional buyer, the logical way to get started is to simply pull out a calculator and start crunching numbers. Get to the bottom line, talk about financing, and keep everything aimed at how much they’re going to spend.

With emotional buyers, salespeople need to learn to take their time. This is the time to get them into the car that they saw in the ad or into an upgraded vehicle. 

This will be difficult. If you’ve ever walked onto an auto lot, you’ll get the breathless feeling that the salespeople need you to sign on the dotted line and make way for the next person. With emotional buyers, they’ll want to slow down, take their time, and love the cars with the buyers.

Where to Start

The key to getting these two types of buyers in your door is to setup two separate Facebook ad campaigns, one for the emotional buyers and one for the transactional buyers. Use the audience information to retarget those people with type of ads that will keep the conversation going. 

Using the specificity of Facebook ads, your dealership can work to bring both types of buyers to the table. Once there, you can adapt your selling style to the customer’s approach. You’ll end up with more closes and have loyal, new customers who feel heard and appreciated.

Are you wasting leads?

The sales funnel for vehicles has changed. One of the most significant changes is that potential car buyers are entering the funnel earlier. 

The unwilling contact

Today’s car owner enters the sales funnel even when they’re not ready to buy, just yet. For example, when someone goes to a website to find out how much their car is worth, they might be told they’re upside down with their loan. 

Of course, as soon as they enter their contact information, it gets sold to a car dealership. Now they’re suddenly getting emails from all of the dealers in the area trying to get them to buy a car or truck.

The buyer’s response is, “I’m just looking.” This gets exhausting. Many dealers stop contacting the lead because they’re not getting immediate results. 

Too often, dealerships are only committed to the short term. They’ll only keep contacting someone if they’re likely to buy in the next couple of months. With the leads entering the funnel much sooner than ever before, lots of leads are being lost to a short attention span.

How to make the most of long leads

There are a number of ways to make a long lead work for you.

Email – Email is a great way to stay in touch with people. Make sure that your email addresses their issues and concerns. If you create an email series that’s geared toward people who are “just looking,” you can answer their questions and nurture their business.

Emails that address issues like, “How to deal with a vehicle you’re underwater with,” and “Can I buy a new car owing a balance?” will go a long way to helping people make up their minds and move forward with a purchase.

Text messaging – Texting is one of the most powerful ways to stay in touch with people. Over 90% of texts get read. That means that you can count on people to see them and react.

Your texts can direct them to articles that interest them, great financing deals, or even special vehicles that they might be interested in. You can host a “No Pressure” event where they can come to your dealsherhip, look at vehicles, and get their questions answered, without being pressured to buy a vehicle right away.

Standing out from that crowd

The best way to stand out from the crowd is to forge a relationship, not just a chance to sell a vehicle. So often, dealerships and sales people are so hungry for the sale they forget what it’s like to be on the other side and feeling pressured to make a decision now!

What about the immediate sales? How will you survive?

This idea doesn’t mean that you should give up what you’re doing now to make sales and pay the bills. This nurturing concept is in addition to your current strategies. 

After about 6 to 12 months, you’ll suddenly find yourself with a bunch of customers who have been reading your messages for a while.

Can you use both email and text messaging?

Yes. Absolutely. 

The emails can contain longer content and help people to learn about buying a new vehicle. Text messages are invites to special events or just a touch base to talk about whatever is on their minds.

The key is to build a relationship. Become the organization that your leads think of when they consider buying a vehicle.

Never throw away leads

The only leads you should get rid of are the ones that tell you not to contact them again. Otherwise, every lead is a lead that you need to stay in touch with. This includes people who just bought a car or tell you they’re just looking. 

Every lead you get, no matter how you get it, is worth money because it cost you money. Don’t give up one someone just because they’re not ready to buy a car today. 

Use the tools that you have to contact them and they’ll reward you by becoming a customer instead of a lead.

Google Ads versus Facebook Ads for Auto Dealerships

When online advertising started, Google ads were all anyone talked about. You could get your business listed on the top of the Google search page and it generated a lot of auto sales.

Then the price started to go up and the return started to go down. Why? Everyone else discovered that Google ads were a great way to find new customers who were looking to buy a car. Suddenly, every dealership in the area was competing for the same clicks. It doesn’t help that the manufacturers were also dumping millions into any auto-related search.

So the price skyrocketed and the ROI dropped, fast. 

Here’s part of the reason: “The top two sites for online car buying were third-party sites (78 percent) and dealer’s pages (53 percent). (Source)”  – from CBTNews.com. 

The reality is that nearly 80% of auto sales coming from searches are going to third-party sites. That’s an article for another day, but you will want to make sure your inventory is in there. Then 53% are going straight to a dealer’s website.

To make matters worse, according to PCG, 80% of Google Ads response that put up an auto dealers ads are searches for that dealership name. This means that you’re paying Google to do what they do for free – act as the phonebook for the 21st century. 

What makes Facebook different?

Facebook ads are different because people use Facebook differently.

Everyone goes to Google just to search for that one item and then they leave. People go on Facebook to surf and read and watch videos.

Average time spent per Facebook visit is 20 minutes. (Source: Infodocket) 

50% of 18-24 year-olds go on Facebook when they wake up. (Source: The Social Skinny)

The average person spends 35 minutes a day on Facebook, second only to television. (Source: Sproutsocial)

This means that everyone is on Facebook, they’re on it multiple times per day, and they’re there for over half an hour a day. 

Proactive vs Reactive

Google ads are reactive. The customer has to search for a specific phrase to get the search responses and that’s when the ad will show up. In other words, someone has to do and think something specific first. 

With Facebook ads, it’s a proactive process. The ads are placed in front of people who are your audience – age, income, location, etc. They don’t have to search for cars to get cars in their Facebook feed. 

Imagine that you’re able to place a TV ad in front of a thousand people, in our area, every single day for just a few dollars. That’s what Facebook delivers. 

What about posting to Facebook?

Doing Facebook posts is a great idea, but there is a lot going on there. It’s really easy to simply be ignored. 

Every 60 seconds on Facebook: 510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded. (Source: The Social Skinny)

That means that your competing with over one million new pieces of information on Facebook, every second.

You should definitely maintain a Facebook page and post regular updates so that people have something to look at when they look you up, but… don’t think that that’s going to drive a lot of sales your way. 

Ads, on the other hand, are strategically on the page, usually as the second or third thing on the page. In order to get to the rest of their feed, users have to scroll past your ad. That’s an impression. 

According to a report from Microsoft, it takes a minimum of 13 impressions to make a sale. That’s what each of your Facebook ads is doing. No one is realistically going to search the same thing 13 times on Google and certainly not in a few days.

How to make the switch?

The power of Facebook (and Google) is the ability to focus your ads to a specific group in a specific location at a specific time, etc. This requires experience and learning. 

While it might seem like something you can do all by yourself, you can get help from professionals who can help you build an ad campaign that will help your ads get in front of the right people at the right time.

Using Facebook for your dealership will probably give you a much higher ROI than advertising on Google. It’s just a different way of marketing.

Facebook Lead Gen Ads for Dealerships

There are a lot of sources for leads that auto dealerships can tap into. From third party websites to lead generation companies to Google advertising to email lists, everyone is trying to sell you “leads” that you can sell to.

The biggest concern: can you make money with those leads? What is your return on investment? 

You can look at a lot of statistics, like cost per lead, the number of leads, the quality of the leads, the clickthrough rate of your marketing efforts, and on and on. The real issue is ROI – how much did you make for what you spent?

Third Party Auto Sales Sites

For a while, the third party sites had control over the entire auto sales market. You couldn’t search for a car or even a car part without suddenly getting an ad from a third-party auto sales site.

That has relaxed a little as Google has realized that they aren’t doing the thousands of dealerships any favors by giving every search response to four or five third party sites. Facebook never had this problem since their ad service is much more geographically-based. 

Lead Generating Ads on Facebook for Dealerships

“Lots of people want to hear from your business, but filling out forms can be difficult on mobile. Facebook lead ads makes the lead generation process easy. People can simply tap your ad and a form pops up—it’s already pre-populated with their Facebook contact information and ready to be sent directly to you.” – https://www.facebook.com/business/ads/lead-ads

That’s the most powerful explanation that you can give for what makes Facebook lead generating ads so powerful. Since Facebook already has a user’s email address and probably their phone number, their ads can fill out a contact form for them.

The ad shows up in the user’s newsfeed. As they scroll through pictures from their friend’s birthday party and funny cat memes, there, in the middle, is a photo of a gorgeous car or truck. You can include the price, the monthly payment, and anything else that you want. 

When the user clicks the ad, it will take them to prefilled contact form. One more push of a button and a message is sent to your dealerships that someone is interested in that vehicle. 

This is a radical change from Google ads that require that you build a form, a landing page, or that you send them to your website. Everything is just two clicks away and you have a new lead. 

Because you only pay per lead, not per view, it can be a very low cost per sale. You’re only going to hear from people who are really interested in buying a car. 

A Little Too Good

There is a problem with these ads when they’re well-designed and well-placed: dealerships get overwhelmed with too many leads. 

That might sound like a fantasy, but there have been a number of dealerships that have found that the volume of leads exceeds their capacity to contact and handle everyone. In that case, you can dial back the amount your spending, thus the number of leads you get in a day or you can simply bring in some new staff to help.

Not a Saturated Market

Unlike Google ads, the Facebook lead generating advertisements aren’t saturated with dealerships. It has been a slow move among dealerships that are used to getting leads the old-fashioned ways, whether that’s newspaper ads or through Google, the new Yellow Pages. 

The idea that a social media website can generate quality leads organically is a bit hard for many advertising managers at dealerships to grasp. That’s good. That means that if you use these ads, and you’re among the first in your area, you’re going to end up with a lot of leads that your competitors are still sitting on Google looking for.

Advertise where people are

There are no billboards on the tops of mountains or the bottom of the ocean. Why not? There’s no one there. You want to put your ads where everyone is and where they go all the time. 

69% of US adults are on Facebook. – https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/16/facts-about-americans-and-facebook/

That means that nearly 70% of everyone you meet has a Facebook profile and everyone is checking it every day. That’s why you want to be advertising on Facebook. 

Using lead generation ads on Facebook for auto sales is a match made in heaven. Facebook even has a whole page dedicated to success stories of auto industry businesses and Facebook ads: https://www.facebook.com/business/success?categories[0]=automotive&categories[1]=lead-ads#

Make Facebook lead gen ads a major part of your business and you’ll see it grow fast.

Facebook Ads Success Story – Hub City Ford

154 leads generated in 60 days
34 cars sold in that time
22% of Facebook leads result in a sale
December, 2017, Number One sales month ever!

There are a lot of Facebook ads success stories that you’ll hear if you surf the internet. Many of them are a bit dubious. You aren’t given a lot of facts and the sources might be a bit questionable.

The story of Hub City Ford in Lafayette, Louisiana, comes directly from Facebook. The numbers above are impressive. Consider that there isn’t really any other lead pipeline that delivers a 22% sell-through rate in 60 days. 

Hub City is a 40-year old dealership that had served its community well in that time with sales and service. 

The 2-Step Facebook Plan

Hub City accomplished their sales in two stages. 

Step One: the ads were targeted to lookalike audiences from their website and based on the vehicles that people were interested in. 

These ads were targeted with ad sets that spoke to the interests of that group. Ads were divided by car model. This way the contacts saw similar cars again and again in their Facebook feeds. 

Facebook offers dynamic ads. These ads are built by the Facebook ads artificial intelligence (AI) from a catalog of images and models. The AI sees what the user is interested in and customizes ads just to them. 

Because the dealership’s inventory was linked to Facebook, it only showed vehicles that were in stock. 

By using carousel ad designs, they were able to show a series of images, each with a different but related model. For example, if someone loved Ford muscle cars, they would see a series of those cars in the carousel. They were less likely to see a truck or an economy car. 

Step Two: the second set of ads were retargeted ads to people who had visited the website. This is possible because Facebook will put a small cookie on the customer’s browser that tells the system the customer had visited the website. The AI then sees the cookie and creates ads targeted at that customer. 

The fact that over 70% of all Americans are on Facebook, this retargeting effort can be very successful. 

Offline Tracking

One important aspect of understanding whether you’re getting a return on your investment is offline tracking. When someone crosses the threshold at your dealership, you need to know how they got there. It’s important that you and your staff ask every time. If you don’t then there’s no way to know how they arrived there.

A hint that a customer has been targeted by Facebook ads would be if they come in asking for a specific car in the inventory or a very specific model. This tells you that they’ve seen your ads or have been to your website. 

During the sale of a car, there’s always a lot of time to talk. Your sales team needs to be trained and held accountable for asking all the right questions. 

“Did you visit the website?”

“How did you find the website?”

“Are you on Facebook?”

“Did you get one of our emails?”

Since the customer is usually sitting there for a while for financing and paperwork, there’s lots of time to ask without sounding strange. 

Some dealerships will actually simply come out and say what they’re doing. “We want to make sure that we’re able to find more great customers like you. How did you find us?”

The key to success

The biggest key to success for Hub City Ford was planning and a clear understanding of how Facebook ads can work.

Often, people will simply create ads and let them run, but Facebook has created immensely powerful tools that can deliver customization, targeting, retargeting and deep analysis to the ad campaign. The old days of buying newspaper ads or paying thousands of dollars to be in the Yellow Pages—with no idea if it’s working—are gone. 

Building a New Marketing Funnel for Auto Dealerships

A look at an old funnel

Back in the good old days, just about anytime before 1999, every dealership created its own funnel. They put ads on the radio, TV, in the newspaper, they even sponsored Little League teams, all in an effort to be “top of mind” when the customer thought about buying a car.

The manufacturers ran ads that inspired emotions, sold the safety and economy features, and generally built the brand. 

There was a system in place that had worked well for everyone for a long time.

Then Google came along!

The new funnel

There was a new place to market vehicles: Google and other search engines. 

This was easy. Someone would go on the internet, type in what they were thinking about, and results would pop up that were relevant to their thoughts. If they wanted a small economy car, they typed that in and, in microseconds, they got a bunch of responses. 

Google began selling ads on its search engine. The manufacturers and the new group of third-party sellers jumped on that. After all, what could be better than paying to have the answer to the customer’s question be, “Our cars!” It was awesome. 

Rather than needing to build the entire funnel from brand building to sale, companies and even dealerships were able to simply raise their digital hand and capture the sale.

And it worked. In fact, it worked too well!

Everyone started buying Google ads. And with Google’s massive market penetration and nearly complete coverage of the internet search game, the big boys began buying all the ads. They outbid the local dealerships. 

Sure, you might be able to find a way to pay for ads that would be for “local Fiat dealer near me,” but why would you? If you’re the only game in town, your website and Google My Business listing will pop up anyway.

All of this created so much competition on Google ads that most dealerships were simply priced out of the market or, at least, they weren’t getting the ROI that they need to make it worth doing.

Building the new dealership marketing funnel

If Google is no longer the place to advertise and the old funnels aren’t delivering the returns that they used to, where can you go? Where are the eyeballs and wallets that you need to keep the doors open?

The short answer is Facebook.

The longer answer is Facebook ads. 

Because of the highly local nature of Facebook, ads on the platform are still offering a return on your investment. 

With the right Facebook ad campaign, dealerships are able to target their area, retarget people who have already visited their website, and keep their ads right where the customers are looking – several times a day. 

Because you’re not competing with the manufacturers and the big third-party sites, the prices are still relatively low and well within reach. 

Using Facebook ads, you can hit every part of the funnel, from the top where you’re building your brand to the bottom where the customer is ready to buy. 

Facebook ads allow you to refine your targeting to the point that you’re only reaching people who are likely to buy from you and are in your area. With a television ad, you’re broadcasting all over the place, even if your dealership is on the other side of the city from the potential customer. Facebook ads will let you narrow your ads down to a specific distance from your business. This keeps the focus directly on you. You won’t find yourself advertising models that are on your lot but end up getting sold by the dealership on the other side of town.

The sales funnel still exists, but the good old days of Google handing dealerships the bottom of the funnel are gone. Facebook makes it easy to recreate the funnel. All it takes is some planning and a little experience.

To do this right, it makes sense to enlist the help of experts. There are entire books dedicated to using all the tools that Facebook ads provide you – and all of the books are out of date by the time they get to print. Let a team of experts in auto dealership marketing build the right ads, the right funnel for your business. 

No leads were lost. reduced overhead.

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