automotive marketing Archives

Facebook Delivers Quality Car Buyers to Dealership Websites

Posted on March 20, 2017 by Andrew

Online car research and shopping creates ease and convenience for the buyer, but can pose a challenge for dealerships. As consumer behavior changes, you need to shift your strategy to deliver relevant ads to high-quality prospects. What is the best way to reach consumers online and deliver a compelling ad that drives traffic to your site?

Facebook Marketing Science and Oracle Data Cloud recently analyzed 64 auto campaigns, evaluating the quality of audience and scale across a variety of publishers. The study found that auto advertisers should use their data to create high-quality audiences and then execute highly-targeted campaigns to achieve the quality of audience and scale that delivers results.

According to the study findings, advertisers were able to reach more car buyers on Facebook than through most other publishers. In this analysis, Facebook’s audience was above average on the quality index and was particularly strong in delivering auto buyers at scale. Facebook ranked in the top 10% of publishers in these studies and first on 25% of the campaigns analyzed. Combining quality and scale resulted in the best performance for Facebook compared to other publishers.

What strategies can you implement to reach more car buyers on Facebook?

Lookalike audiences: Lookalike targeting gives you the ability to find more qualified prospects by leveraging the data from your existing campaign, reaching people who have not yet expressed an interest in your business, but more than likely are interested in what you have to offer.

We can pull lookalike models directly from the pixels we’ve placed on an advertiser’s website for your specific retargeting campaign and then use that data to target similar Facebook users.

Custom audiences: Creating custom audiences within Facebook enables you to deliver a relevant and effective message to known audiences, increasing efficiency in your marketing campaigns. With custom audiences, you can define groups of existing and prospective customers and serve ads to these targeted groups who have already expressed an interest in your brand.

Dynamic Facebook ads: We offer a relevant, highly-targeted advertising option with our Facebook dynamic ad campaigns. This tool reaches active car buyers by sharing your real-time inventory with them. Our Facebook dynamic ad campaigns show your inventory to the best prospects on Facebook by driving traffic right to the Vehicle Detail Pages (VDPs) for your cars. Dynamic ads are relevant, maintenance-free, and shown to buyers who are lower on the purchase funnel.

By implementing these strategies, you can increase your ROI by targeting in-market shoppers who are looking for cars you have on your lot. Contact us today and we’ll get your social media advertising campaigns working for you.

Dealership Sees Increased Sales After Going Digital

Posted on March 13, 2017 by Andrew

Does your dealership still rely heavily on traditional advertising methods to reach potential car buyers? TV, print, and radio ads may have been effective in the past, but now digital advertising is where it’s at. If you haven’t taken the plunge, consider going all-in with a digital campaign.

Google recently profiled a small-town Canadian car dealership that experienced huge results after abandoning their traditional marketing plans and launching a digital strategy. Recognizing that car buyers were spending more and more time online, the dealership decided to go all digital in 2014. Since then, they have experienced:

50% increase in new car sales
79% increase in website visitors
67% increase in the dealership’s website page views

By advertising to an online audience, the dealership was able to deliver highly-relevant ads to a targeted market. In addition to increasing sales and online traffic, a digital campaign can deliver these three benefits:

Multiple tools: Digital advertising allows you to develop a proactive strategy with the flexibility to adjust as needed. Here are a few tactics that we implement to drive traffic to your dealership.

Paid search ads: By using targeted keyword lists that focus on purchase intent, our paid search campaigns put an ad for your business at the top of the search results pages, giving you increased visibility to local searchers.
Dynamic Facebook ads: After identifying the best audience and determining purchase intent, we serve the most relevant ad to that potential buyer. The ad pulls real-time inventory from your website’s data feed. We optimize the bid to bring the most potential traffic back to your site, generating the maximum amount of VDP views. Dealerships using our highly-targeted dynamic ads are achieving record sales. Compared to standard Facebook ads, dealerships experience increased time on website, increased page views per session, and improved vehicle search conversion rate.
YouTube video ads: Video gives you the opportunity to personalize your dealership and creatively advertise your current promotions and deals.

Increased Engagement Opportunities: Digital advertising offers multiple platforms to boost engagement, build brand awareness, and foster relationships. Through social media, email marketing campaigns, and your website, you can reward buyers with valuable information they need to make an informed decision.

Measurable results: It can be difficult to pinpoint the effectiveness of a TV or radio promotion. With digital, you can track many metrics such as emails, site visits, calls, and car sales. By being able to instantly measure your results, you can spend your ad budget on tactics that deliver the best ROI.

We specialize in digital auto ad campaigns. We have the expertise and experience to create a plan for your dealership that will deliver results. Contact us today to get started.

Boosting a Facebook post or Launch a paid social campaign? Which is best?

Posted on February 25, 2017 by Andrew

When you post on Facebook, it might be tempting to click the “boost” button to increase your reach and exposure, but hold on a second! The “boost” button is not the most effective way to reach your audience. This tool lacks the options available to advertisers who deliver ads to new and existing customers. Still need help making a decision?

Here are three reasons why you should avoid boosting your posts:

1.Limited Posts: You can only boost one post at a time, eliminating any opportunity to test different posts to see which is performing best. You miss out on refining your audience targeting to make sure you’re getting the right message in front of the right people.

2.Limited Targeting: With boosted posts, there are essentially two groups of people you can promote to: “fans and friends of fans” and interest groups.

“Fans and friends of fans”: Fans are interested in what you’re selling, but “friends of fans” most likely aren’t. Don’t waste ad dollars on an indifferent audience.
Interest targeting: Interest targeting is strictly limited to interests. It doesn’t include any demographic or location targeting.

3.Increased Expense: Without the ability to properly test posts and using vague audience targeting, you spend more money for less engagement than an ad that reaches your target market.

Skip the boosted posts and share your message through a Paid Social campaign. Using the following three tools, we deliver your ads to a relevant, engaged audience.

Optimized Bidding: We can optimize your bids to reflect what you want to achieve with your ads. First we determine your campaign goals (e.g. brand awareness, lead generations, and clicks to website), and then we can define optimization goals, bidding strategies, and ad formats that will reach your audience and compel them to take the action you want. Depending on your objective, you can choose to get charged for different actions, including impressions, page likes, and post engagements. By determining objectives and bids, you can efficiently extend your reach and maximize every ad’s potential.

Custom Audiences: Creating custom audiences within Facebook enables you to deliver your message to known audiences, increasing efficiency in your marketing campaigns. With custom audiences, you can define groups of existing and prospective customers and serve ads to these targeted groups who have already expressed an interest in your brand. Extend your reach and increase your ROI by delivering your ad to highly-qualified audience.

Dynamic Facebook Ads: We create an audience of people who are most likely to buy your products. After identifying a potential buyer’s intent, we serve the most relevant ad to that person. This ad pulls real-time inventory from your website’s data feed. We optimize the bid to bring the most traffic back to your site. When the prospect clicks the ad, they are sent right to the product page, creating the highest possibility of conversion. Compared to standard Facebook ads, businesses using our dynamic ads experience decreased bounce rate, increased time on website, and increased page views per session.

We have expertise and experience to help you execute a Paid Social campaign that reaches your target audience. Contact us today.

Facebook Broadens Dynamic Ad Options

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Andrew

Facebooks’ dynamic ads are an excellent tool to show your real-time inventory to in-market buyers. Until now, your audience was limited to potential customers who had already interacted with your website. Now, Facebook is expanding its dynamic ad offerings by allowing you to deliver ads to users who have browsed multiple websites or engaged with content on Facebook looking for a similar product.

How will this work? Facebook’s ad-serving algorithm has added multiple signals and behaviors that will help determine who sees a particular ad. By expanding the retargeting pool, you can expect better performance from your dynamic ads. The updated dynamic ad options offer:

Broader retargeting: The update broadens Facebook’s dynamic ad format beyond basic retargeting. Let’s imagine that you own a car dealership. Instead of being limited to promoting a car to someone who has looked at your website, you now have the opportunity to promote your car to people who looked at similar cars on other sites or followed a Facebook page dedicated to automotive-related content. You can reach these broader audiences of people who have expressed interest in what you’re selling, even if they haven’t engaged with your website.

Improved relevance: By using multiple signals for retargeting, dynamic ads are becoming much better at predicting intent and becoming more relevant. A user could be checking multiple websites for a product, or they maybe clicking content on Facebook that provides Facebook with signals that indicate they may be interested in buying a certain product. Your ad reaches more active shoppers, giving you a greater ROI.

Exposure to new customers: Get your brand in front of potential new customers, in addition to people who already may be customers. You can promote specific products to a buyer who is searching for what you’re selling, but may not know that your business exists.

Benefits small business: In the past, dynamic ads have been most beneficial to big e-commerce companies that drive considerable website traffic. Smaller e-commerce sites have been limited by their traffic, only showing ads to the people who have visited their website. Without that traffic, there are fewer people to reach and fewer ads to be shown. This expansion provides new opportunities to show relevant ads to potential customers since it has broader reach.

But is Facebook dynamic ads right for your dealership? View a case study from one of our automotive clients here. We can get you started with an ad campaign that targets Facebook users when they spend time on the social network. Contact us today.

Auto Dealers Spending More In Digital Advertising Than Ever

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Andrew

The auto industry is embracing digital advertising and marketing more than ever. In a new report from eMarketer, digital advertising spending for automotive is up 18.8% year-over-year.

This confirms what we already knew about digital. Your competitors are jumping into digital spending and you need to be as well. An effective digital marketing campaign can bring you new customers and help convert existing shoppers into buyers.

Looking for a new way to bring people to your dealership? Check out our Conversion Drivers. Conversion Drivers will help you turn more of your online traffic into leads and sales. Competition is only going to increase as more dealers start improving their online presence.