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Automotive Marketing by Area: Fixed Ops Focused

Automotive Social Media: What’s Your Plan?

Balanced Approach: Car Dealership Instagram Marketing

Increase Your Reach with Car Dealership Facebook Ads

Digital Fixed Ops for Customer Reach and Experience

Facebook Automotive Dynamic Ads Overview

Fixed Ops Digital Map for an Enhanced Experience

Increase Your Reach with Car Dealership Facebook Ads

Many if not most car dealers have a Facebook page for increasing brand awareness, but not all of these businesses utilize Facebook ads as part of their digital marketing strategy. With billions of monthly active Facebook users, how does a business owner know an advertisement will not get wasted on droves of users who could or would never use their products or services? 

One thing is for sure, a large segment of your dealership audience is on Facebook. And Facebook has tools to help you find and send the right message to this audience. These ads and messages will motivate them to visit. The first step to getting the most out of Facebook Ads is understanding the vast capabilities Facebook offers when it comes to delivering your marketing message. 

Car Dealership Facebook Ads

Setting your Facebook Ad Goals

Facebook offers multiple advertising objectives, so dealers can customize ads to meet business goals. Selecting the right objectives will help reach these goals no matter if the goal is to increase engagement, encourage users to click through to the dealer website, or find new leads for car sales and services.

Facebook Ad Basics

There are four basic ways to advertise on Facebook.

  1. ~ Boost a post.
  2. ~ Create a page ad.
  3. ~ Create a website ad.
  4. ~ Promote your call-to-action button.

These are all great ways to reach and engage with your desired audience.

Advanced Facebook Ad Options

A dealer can use Ads Manager to create and manage the ads it pays for on Facebook. Ad creation will allow a dealer to access more ad types than are offered from their page. It is where one can find lead ads for lead generation as well as conversions and brand awareness.

Ads for the overall dealership

Trish Fleming of TVI MarketPro3 has spent years researching automotive Facebook Ads, and she says creating the right ad for a dealership “depends on the objective.”

For example, some dealerships would like to use Facebook to brand their name and products. So ads with high impression objectives or high reach objectives are the perfect ads for those customers.

Fleming personally finds the ads that produce leads are more beneficial in the long run. Whether you send the ads to Facebook Messenger or you send them to a lead form does not matter as much as producing the leads so that they can turn into a sale.

Service Department Ads

Lead generation ads work the best for the service department. Nothing is exciting about having to have your vehicle serviced or getting an oil change, so the offer must have a compelling message. Most surveys reveal a 93% use of coupons for those needing vehicle service. Having the ability to provide a customer with a coupon immediately when they engage with your ad on Facebook enables the dealership to convert that customer.

Multiple Ad Creatives

Facebook advertising offers you creatives like video ads, image ads, slideshows, and carousel ads. You can pick the elements that work best for your target audience. Using a variety of creatives throughout your ad campaigns allows you to reach a variety of Facebook users.

Service Ads versus Sales Ads

Everyone in the automotive industry knows that the fixed ops department pays the bills for the dealership, so the dealership must have a Facebook advertising campaign that produces a trackable ROI. Creating the proper budget allocations to service and sales has always been a tricky task.

The dealership should first figure out what its goals are for the year. Service ads tend to drive immediate traffic. But the gross on the sale is low, and sales ads are a larger ticket item in the end. However, they do not convert as quickly. Most dealerships should allocate $1200-$2000 a month for effective service department ad campaigns to run on Facebook.

Facebook Ad Budget

Customize your budget within your ad account by setting Facebook Ad objectives. These objectives should reflect the needs and available budgeting dollars of your dealership. Most ad types have a minimum budget range of one to five dollars per day. Your budget can also be adjusted, put on hold, or stopped altogether as the dealership finances change. Setting up an account spending limit is a way to make sure you stay within your budget.

Targeting Options

As with all marketing, the more targeted your efforts, the better, and a dealer can customize their target Facebook audience by location, demographics, age, and gender. It can also target specified interests, behavior, and connections. More advanced targeting tools like Lookalike Audiences allow you to target people that appear to have the same interests as your ideal audience.

Measured Success of Facebook Ads

You can use the Facebook measurement tools to learn how often people engage with your ads. Each ad you create can be measured using Facebook insights, metrics, and tools. You gain better measurement tools, and you gain a better understanding of ad effectiveness and which creatives drive the best results. You can also access tools that help you find your audience and reach more of the right customers.

A Facebook Meta Pixel measures activity on your website. It might be when someone views a particular service or product. Pixels get your ads shown to the right people or help find new customers. They also help to increase sales and measure the effectiveness of an ad.

Facebook Dynamic Ads

Facebook describes dynamic ads as “the use of machine learning to scale ads when there is a broad range of products or services.” This automatic delivery considers customer interests and actions to send relevant services and offers. It is the reason you see an ad pop up on Facebook that reflects a recent Facebook or Google search.

Instant Ad Feedback

There is nothing better than getting instant feedback from an ad you just posted. Facebook will notify you with ad approval, new reports, and low balances. These notifications will also let you know when people interact with your ad. Reciprocate with these interactions to capitalize on your Facebook Ad efforts.

Facebook ads allow for some of the most targeted audience engagement of all marketing strategies. Dealerships must present a clear, attractive message that allows for customer interaction and must have someone assigned to respond to this interaction for the most impact. This system will help build an online following and get more sales and service customers to the dealership.

For more dealership social media best practices, visit TVI MarketPro3.

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