Social media emerged as the ultimate place to reach people when it first started taking off in the automotive industry back in 2009. Unfortunately, by the time that many dealerships and marketers started figuring out how to take advantage of it the right way, the rules changed to a pay-to-play model.
This is the best thing that happened for automotive social media. The spam once kept great posts from being seen has all but vanished. Now, those who invest a little money into exposing their message are rewarded with views. The only casualty - good engagement for high-quality organic posts. Everything comes at a cost.
All of this is fine, but the real value that dealers can get from their social media presence is actually something that very, very few are doing. In fact, we're finding that very few even know it exists. The power of unpublished posts on Facebook that utilize buyer data (as well as other forms of targeting) is where the true ROI of social media can be maximized.
By putting the right ads in front of the right people at the right time, you'll be able to drive real buyers to your website. It's the ultimate way to sell cars on social media and so few are taking advantage of it. Here's an example:
The fact that we're taking potential used vehicle buyers within driving distance of the dealership and sending them to the search results page of the dealer's website should be enough to convince you that this is the way to go. These are people who have indicated that they intend to buy a used vehicle in the near future.
Think of it as highly-targeted pay-per-click, except much cheaper than anything you can get from Google, Bing, or Yahoo. In this case, 173 used car buyers in the local area were driven to the website at $0.51 a pop. It's a no-brainer. Unfortunately, most are still focused on getting more likes to their Facebook page.
Of course, perhaps that's not unfortunate at all. Maybe it's a great thing that so few are doing it. I know that we're ecstatic that there's pretty much no competition out there for this type of action.
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