As Group Head of Automotive for Facebook, Brad Little liaises with some of their biggest advertising accounts.

In his role and from previous experience he believes there are 3 significant online trends to be aware of:

 

Shift from desktop to mobile – it’s already happened

• 60% of internet usage is now on mobile
• 80% of a user’s time is spent on their top 3 apps
• The average phone has 27 apps installed on it

 

Move from visual to textual content

Our brains can process images 60,000 times faster than text. Images and video online provide much higher rates of engagement and communicate messages far faster.

 

Discovery is replacing search online

There’s now far more content available – but people’s browsing time remains constant.

People are no longer going online knowing what they are looking for. Instead, top content is selected for them.

 

 

What does this mean for Car Dealers?

Facebook has a fantastic reach. It hosts 30 million people a day. Those people spend 42 minutes a day on average on the platform.

They visit the site 14 times a day, and this frequency rate is increasing. Facebook also owns Instagram which has 14 million users.

Advertisers can target their audience by utilising existing functionality. It enables car dealers to identify browsers that are likely to convert into sales.

Optimised ads can be made to appear before people that are likely to either request a test drive or book an appointment at their showroom.

On Instagram the tools for usability, targeting, measurement and analysis are all the same as on Facebook. They can be used to extend the reach of a campaign by simultaneously working across both platforms.

 

Car Dealers can use dynamic product adverts

Entire stock lists can be marketed to specifically target users. This works for both Amazon and Ebay.

Not sure where to start? There are many step-by-step guides that can help you understand and set up your own Facebook Ads – here is one we’ve found for you:

 

Dealers shouldn’t be looking for R.O.I. not engagement

Research shows that metrics such as likes and clicks have an inverse impact on your return on investment percentage.

Car dealers should be looking more at driving true business value which is represented by showroom traffic, take up of after market services and vehicle sales.

 

Avoid incentivisation

Dealers should ask their marketing teams to look at the quality of their leads rather than the volume. Incentivisation (such as competitions) can dilute the quality of conversions. Use Facebook ads to test, adapt and learn in order to generate high quality, valuable conversions.

 

Facebook is focused on people based marketing

One of the strengths of marketing on Facebook is that you don’t need to worry about using cookies to track people across various browsers and difference devices. As users access Facebook via one unique login their user experience and their exposure to your campaigns on the platform is entirely consistent. On the eve of a holiday the target audience is generally offered to purchase a Happy Thanksgiving banner or order a gift.

 

What developments will Facebook be focused on in the future?

Innovations in tracking are being developed that will show when a user who found your dealership whilst browsing on Facebook via their phone crossed the threshold of your premises whilst carrying that phone.

Visualisation will be an interesting area. It will offer car dealers the possibility of presenting customers their specific virtual vehicle to view in 3D as per their customised order.

ZeroLight are one company working in visualisation and 3D solutions.

 

Messenger services such as Whatsapp will eventually replace email marketing as it is more user friendly.

Curing World Poverty It might sound overly ambitious but Facebook is aiming to bring about fundamental world change. Currently two thirds of the world do not have access to the internet.

Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zukerberg wants to help make the world more connected. Not only will this increase Facebook’s reach but it will simultaneously mean that the issue of world poverty is being addressed.

 

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