On average, a person sees 332 ads across the internet each day. If you want to be remembered, you must create ads that wow your audience.

So how do you create this “wow” effect? Tune into Auto Marketing Now to learn how to leverage social media in your dealership and to overcome your phone process obstacles.

Last week, Denise Casagrande, the Director of Social Media at PCG, let listeners in on her top strategies to optimize social media within your dealership. With organic reach declining to 2%, Facebook ads have become necessary to reach your audience.

When Facebook was first released, businesses had great success with organic ads. But as the platform experienced tremendous growth, news feeds became overcrowded. Thus, Facebook stepped in and created an algorithmic method so users can see the most relevant posts on their news feed.

So how do you optimize these Facebook ads? Check out Denise’s tips below:

Create Shareable Content

The best way to create successful ads is to create shareable content. In the automotive industry, we recommend using an 80/20 approach; 80% being outside content and 20% being your own content to result in the greatest levels of engagement.

Outside content can be anything that may be relevant to your consumer. For example, if there is a state fair coming up you may want to post information about it. When consumers interact with these posts, it tells Facebook that they are interested in your dealership’s posts, and your future posts will show up on their news feeds.

Form a Connection

Another way to increase your reach is to stick with the brand voice of your business. Many times, OEMs provide videos that can be quite useful, yet these videos do not replace the need for your own brand videos.

Videos filmed in your dealership featuring the employees customers may engage with when visiting your store will humanize the buying process and enable them to form a connection with your brand.

If you are a dealership in New York, there wouldn’t be palm trees in the background of a vehicle. Be mindful of the climate surrounding your dealership, and take advantage of upcoming holidays to give your ads a boost.

The main idea is to show your vehicles in a setting that consumers can see themselves in. As you can see below, the Pacifica is portrayed as a great family minivan as it is being used to drop the kids off at a Halloween party.

Change in season can also be a great opportunity to connect with consumers. In the ad below you will see a New Jersey dealership’s spin on the popular television show, Game of Thrones.

Be creative with your ads and aim to get consumers involved, even if they are not in the market for a new vehicle. In the video shown below, Ford implements a fun and clever play on words to escape with the Escape. This features a man doing yoga in front of the vehicle.

A video like the one above can be used to target two audiences. In this case, we targeted anyone looking to buy a Ford, as well as yoga lovers. Surprisingly, yoga lovers clicked just as often as in-market shoppers.

While the yoga lovers may not be looking to purchase a vehicle, they are likely to remember your brand when the time comes!

Utilize Lead Tools

Facebook has an ad format that allows consumers to automatically fill out a lead form. The form is filled out with the information Facebook knows about the user. The leads will then go back into the publishing center in the back end of insights on Facebook, and from here you can download a CSV document of your leads.

Some tools are integrated with Facebook, but for the most part Facebook doesn’t send the leads directly into your CRM.

Take Advantage of Custom Audiences

Using custom audiences, you can take unsold prospects from your CRM and put them to good use. All you need is a first name, last name, and email address in order to match potential Facebook accounts. You can then advertise to those matches.

Think Local

Local awareness ads are a great way to get awareness out. The objective of these ads is to reach as many consumers as possible within your targeted area. Once your perimeters are set, anyone logging into a desktop or mobile device within your area will see your ad. These ads are priced using a cost per impression model, meaning that businesses are charged every 1,000 times their ad is shown.

Currently at PCG, we are running these ads for less than $1 per impression.

Facebook ads are powerful, and are extremely cost-effective. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg declared that Facebook eventually wants their ads to feel although it is a user’s friend sharing a post on their news feed.

Phone Call Tracking

This week on Auto Marketing Now, Cassie Broemmer, the VP of Business Development with CarWars, discussed the modern issues with many dealerships’ phone processes.

If your calls are not identified as sales, service, or parts, then all of your ROI calculations are incorrect. CarWars implements dynamic number insertion (DNI) for all outlets of your marketing strategies. They then inspect the call and alert managers in real time when scripts are not being followed.

CarWars then categorizes appointments into firm and soft appointments. The purpose of this is to allow sales representatives to contact the soft appointments and try to transform them into firm appointments. CarWars enables dealerships to pursue customers by displaying no shows and stranded customers who should be contacted by a manager.

Customers can find almost all of the information they need online. Therefore, when they call your store they ultimately want you to sell them on your brand. CarWars provides dealerships with a CSI score for their sales process, which is why their system has helped improve countless phone processes.

For more on automotive marketing be sure to tune into Auto Marketing Now for the most effective strategies in the industry!

About the Author

PCG Digital Marketing is an award winning digital agency headquartered in Eatontown, NJ. We help our clients get found online through innovative search, social and online advertising campaigns.