The 2020 Facebook Automotive Playbook for Generating Leads

Considering the popularity of Facebook and Instagram’s platforms, if your dealership isn’t utilizing Facebook as one of the tools for generating leads, you’re missing out. The majority of people shopping for a car use social media to look at reviews and recommendations from their friends, family, and followers, so it’s a great way to drive engagement with your dealership at every stage of the buying process. While digital advertising and specifically social media marketing are not as dominant in the automotive advertising industry, these methods and platforms are full of untapped opportunities for dealerships that have the know-how to use the tools that these platforms provide.

There are several types of automotive adverting available through Facebook, including some newer approaches that offer exciting ways to differentiate your dealership from your competitors and engage with customers in unique ways. We’re not talking about listing your inventory on Facebook Marketplace – although you can produce solid leads through that platform – we’re talking about methods that generate hundreds of leads directly from Facebook into your CRM.

Generating Leads with Facebook and Instagram

In 2019, Facebook expanded their retargeting capabilities for automotive inventory ads to allow dealers to target users who were actively searching for a car — in other words, people who had visited other auto-related Facebook apps and pages. This means that in 2020, automotive Facebook advertising is a big opportunity to drive sales for dealerships.

VIN Specific Advertising

Automotive inventory ads (or VIN-specific ads) help to show your inventory at the right time to the right people who are in-market looking for what you have on the lot. Using Facebook lead forms helps to cut out unnecessary clicks to websites by encouraging Facebook users to click on your ad, fill out a short form, that is then sent directly to your CRM where your BDC team can respond quickly scheduling test drives, sending links to pre-approval applications, or to answer any questions that the buyer may have.

Facebook Lead Forms

Lead Forms are also great for running incentive campaigns and service campaigns. These types of ads are created and then targeted by age, gender, geography (zip codes), interests, and behaviors and typically result in a large number of leads being processed through the BDC and service departments. InDigiMar ran a lead form incentive campaign for a client in Florida throughout the month of March and that campaign generated over 500 leads in a 30 day period at a cost of approximately $4 per lead.

Facebook Pixel

In addition to Lead Forms, using Facebook pixels lets you show inventory ads to people who have already visited your website. You can even customize the type of ad sent based on the actions the consumer took on your website, i.e. they looked at a specific car or they filled out a particular form. With this type of data, Facebook can make sure to list relevant ads to potential customers who are most likely to make a purchase. To create these types of ads and collect the data, you need to install a Facebook pixel (a small piece of code) on your website and then upload your inventory to your vehicle catalog and enable automotive inventory ads.

Market Your Dealership for a Fraction of Traditional Costs

Lead Forms and the Facebook pixel inventory ads are both popular ways to market your dealership at a fraction of the cost of newspapers, broadcast, and other traditional advertising methods. If you’re looking for results and want to sell more cars today, click on the link below and sign up for a free consultation on how to add Facebook marketing to your automotive marketing mix. You’ll be glad you did!