Your Dealership’s Facebook Ads Suck

You would not believe how many of the dealerships we talk to tell us that they have completely sworn off Facebook ads claiming they are ineffective. What they don’t realize is that the platform itself is not the issue but rather the way the ads they ran were set up. Here are the most common things we usually see wrong with dealership’s Facebook ads.

We believe choosing an Audience is the single most important aspect to a Facebook campaign. Choose the right one and you’ll have an almost infinite source of traffic or leads (depending on your objective); but choose wrong and you’ll be burning through your budget with no results.

First and foremost, make sure you select a geographic region correctly. While some dealerships may sell nationwide, most have a target region. It could be a city, county, or entire state. It could be two states, or even half the country, but you need to have a good idea of where your sales typically come from and then target that region.

Once you have decided on a region the next step is to look at how you will identify customers to narrow down the audience of everyone in your region. For many RV/Marine dealers this could be as simple as choosing an audience with an interest in “RVs” or “boats”. For auto dealers this can get a little trickier.

One way to really dial in your audience strategy is by connecting your CRM/DMS to Facebook. Once you do that successfully you are able to target current shoppers on your website, people that “look like” your previous customers, and more.

When it comes to Facebook ad types there are a lot to choose from.

Some dealers might intuitively think conversions are the way to go, others might say local awareness. The truth is there are no “Good” and “bad” ad types, just ad types that are better than others at specific things and the most important factor in Facebook Ads success is to identify which ad type serves you best for the kind of ad you are running.

If you want to reach as many people in your target audience as possible, the traffic option is the best place to start. We call these “Top of the funnel” campaigns here at Dealer Rising and they are a cost-effective way to reach people who, while in your target market, might be unfamiliar with your dealership. People that click on these ads should be sent to inventory pages where they can self select a vehicle of interest.

For your “middle of the funnel” campaigns, if you have an idea of what a customer might be looking for (maybe people that have clicked on a certain page for example) then we suggest you use the conversion or catalog sales campaign types (contact us if you need help getting your catalog set up). Picking a strong and valuable conversion type and pairing it with your vehicle catalog is a surefire recipe for success, especially when you retarget the audience that clicked on your top of funnel ads.

For our “Bottom of Funnel” campaigns we like to use the lead generation campaign option. These campaigns allow us to create ads that are linked to a simple form that allows interested shoppers to fill in a quick form right on Facebook. We can then target this ad only to people who have previously visited the dealerships website AND landed on a piece of inventory; all the customer has to is submit the form and BAM a lead pops into your CRM. This is the biggest difference between our Facebook campaigns and the ones we have seen dealers and other agencies run. No one has time to respond to hundreds of low quality leads clogging up their CRMS.

Numerous studies have shown that stock photos do not perform nearly as well as actual photos of vehicles in ads. Don’t make the mistake of paying for ads just to show stock images. While you may receive some response, you are certainly leaving a lot on the table this way.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last decade, then you have noticed the steady transition to video on every major social network. This is true in your ads; they need to have motion to grab the attention of customers who might otherwise scroll by without noticing your static ad.

We get it! As a Dealership Owner or General Manager you are constantly being pulled in ten directions at once. Instead of stressing over the everchanging Facebooks ads landscape, simply hire us to set up your dealership’s Facebook ad campaigns! 

We would love to talk! Contact us to schedule a completely free, no pressure phone call where we can review what you have done in the past and come up with a strategy to beat the competition. Many dealers don’t have the time or ability to set up Facebooks ads to be as effective as possible so there is a lot of opportunity for those that do!