Automotive is one of the industries with the most success from marketing on Facebook. This is a space where the rise of social media has been particularly impactful for dealerships and car manufacturers. Why? Because Facebook offers the perfect combination. How do you use Facebook ads to sell cars? The answer is simple. You have to make the right strategy that can help you Generate more leads and sales with the help of Facebook advertising. If you want to sell 100 cars or 1000 cars, there are tons of strategies out there that can help you achieve your goals.
Use Carousel Ads with Multiple Images of Your Vehicle
Here’s where I’m going to go above and beyond for you.
The first thing you need to do with your Facebook ad strategy is draw in the attention of your potential customer. The best way to do that, as a car dealership, is by using Carousel Ads with multiple images of your vehicle.
Carousel Ads are ads that contain multiple images within the same ad. You can create up to ten different images and add links to each one. These are great for drawing in the attention of your potential customer because they can see multiple images of your vehicle with one ad click.
Try creating a Carousel Ad with the following steps:
Use high-quality images that reflect your brand’s tone and style
If you’re advertising a specific vehicle, include multiple angles (front, back, interior) along with any additional information about it (like price or mileage)
To get the most out of your Facebook advertising budget, you need to make sure you're reaching the right people.
The more narrowly you can target your ads, the more likely they are to resonate with your ideal audience, and the less money you waste on getting your ads in front of people who have no interest in your business.
You can use interest targeting to narrow down by car make and model, age group, gender and so on. The best car dealership Facebook ads let you get extremely specific about who sees them.
For example, you can show ads for an upcoming model to people who own similar vehicles or like pages related to them. You can also target by factors like income level or relationship status — showing different ads to college students than married couples with kids, for example.
When it comes to ad formats that appeal specifically to car shoppers, there are a few options that stand out as better than the rest:
Carousel Ads with multiple images of your vehicle
Video Ads featuring a walkthrough or test drive of a vehicle
Dynamic Ads that show personalized pricing information based on a viewer's browsing history.
Use Eye-Catching Bright Pictures
When using Facebook ads, you need to make sure that your image will attract attention and will stand out from the rest of other Facebook posts in a user’s newsfeed. If user don’t see anything interesting at first glance, they will scroll past your ad and you will have lost them forever. It’s crucial to use eye-catching images that will make people stop in their tracks and notice your ad. You should also use high resolution images (1200 x 628 pixels) with little or no text as text in images reduces the distribution of your ads. Also, while you can add text overlays on top of images, we recommend not using this option because it can make your ad look messy and unappealing.
Most Facebook ads are text-driven, but most people on Facebook consume content visually. Using photos that grab attention will make your ad stand out from the crowd and get users to stop and look at it.
Build in Urgency
People tend to respond more quickly to offers that have a time limit attached. Whether it's a special deal that's only good for the next 24 hours or an invitation to an event that will take place within the week, telling people they have limited time makes them act fast — before it's too late!
Use Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are additional pieces of information you can add to your ad, such as links to pages on your website or a phone number users can click to call your business directly. These additions can increase customer engagement with your ad, which is likely to increase conversions. You may even find a higher proportion of users are calling instead of clicking through to your site. This can be beneficial if you do business over
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Offer Discounts And Special Offers In Your Ads
The best Facebook ad strategy for car dealerships is one that aligns with the 3 types of people who buy cars:
Intrinsic Shoppers. These shoppers want to find a car that feels good and matches their personal standards.
Emotional Shoppers. These shoppers want to buy the car of their dreams, even if it doesn't make financial sense.
Practical Shoppers. These shoppers want to find a reliable car at a fair price.
To appeal to all 3 types of shoppers in your Facebook ads, you want to use different targeting options and offer discounts and special offers in your ads.
There are three main types of Facebook ads that work well for car dealerships:
Click-to-Website Ads. You can use these to drive traffic from your Facebook page to your website
Engagement Ads. You can use these to get more likes on your Facebook page, more people talking about your business, or more people engaging with your posts.
App Install Ads. You can use these to get people who visit the Facebook app on their mobile devices to download the app for your dealership.
Use Facebook’s Custom Audiences To Retarget Your Past Customers
As you know, Facebook is the largest social media platform today. Having more than 2 billion users, it’s becoming a must-have for any business to have a presence and it is essential to understand how to use it in order to reach your target audience.
Facebook provides an excellent opportunity for car dealerships to generate high-quality leads and sell cars online. Therefore, we are going to give you some tips on how to make the best out of your dealership Facebook ads.
1. Use Facebook's custom audiences to retarget your past customers.
Facebook’s custom audiences allow you to retarget based on different criteria such as people who have visited your website, past customers, and those who have submitted a form.
Facebook’s pixel or conversion tracking pixel is a piece of code that you add to your website, which helps you track your website visitors and lets you target people who have already visited your page. This allows you to tailor messages that are more relevant to the user. You can also use this feature to retarget users who did not take action after they visited your site.
2. Make sure you're targeting the right people with the right ad - use lookalike audiences or create a new audience from scratch based on certain criteria like location, interest, and age.
3. Start with a small budget and scale accordingly as you learn what works best for you.
4. Optimize your ads by testing different images, videos, and headlines (you can create multiple versions of each ad).
5. Measure the results of your campaign by tracking conversions (phone calls or form fills).
6. Include testimonials or customer reviews in your ads if possible - this will boost consumer trust in your dealership and brand name.
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Remarketing Facebook Ads
When a potential customer clicks on your Facebook Ad, they're taken to your website. If they leave without taking action, you can use Facebook's Pixel to retarget them with another ad. This is known as Facebook Remarketing.
Even if you are spending a ton of money and running ads to the same audience, they won’t get bored or annoyed. The reason is because people forget. That’s why you need to consistently remind your target audience about your business by running frequent ads that target the same people.
And it doesn’t just have to be the exact same ad over and over again. You can test different images, headlines, and body copy to see which performs best for your target audience or for specific deals or promotions you’re currently running.
Create Lookalike Audiences Of Your Past High-value Customers
The best way to use Facebook Ads is to create lookalike audiences of your past high-value customers. These are people who are likely to be good candidates for buying cars from your dealership, so they’ll be more responsive to your ads.
Creating lookalike audiences of your past high-value customers is a great way to reach new potential customers. If you're not sure how to do this, check out a guide on creating Facebook Lookalike Audiences.
You can also create lookalikes based on people who have visited your website or engaged with your Facebook page if you don't have enough customer data for a lookalike audience.
Once you've located high-value customers who have interacted with your business in the past, you can then find other people like them and target them with advertisements. This is the basis of Facebook's ad targeting, and it's why they are so powerful!
Include an offer that is available only to people who see the ad, such as a discount or a freebie.
Test different offers — discounts, rebates, freebies, etc.
Use professional photos and videos of your cars as well as videos of yourself and your staff.
Make sure you’re targeting prospects relevant to your dealership (e.g., SUVs if you sell SUVs).
Make Sure You Add A Call-to-action Button In Your Ads
Every business is different and needs to develop a Facebook strategy that works for them. To do this, you'll need to know who your ideal customers are and how to target them on social media.
If you're new to Facebook ads, it's best to start small and experiment with a few different campaigns. Once you find something that works, you can scale your budget up over time.
One of the most effective ways to reach new customers is by creating videos specifically for your Facebook ads. We've seen time and time again how successful video can be at driving brand awareness and conversions for businesses. The first step is making sure your video stands out from the competition.
Make sure your video is short and straight-to-the-point, especially if it's an ad for a special offer or discount. You don't have long to grab someone's attention before they scroll past, so make sure any important information appears on screen as early in the video as possible.
To ensure your video stands out from other businesses in your industry, try using a video template specific to your
Geotarget Individual Locations, Car Dealerships And Low-income Areas
Facebook is a great tool for car dealerships. It’s got something to offer every type of dealership, from used-car lots that need a fresh customer base to luxury dealerships who want to engage with existing customers.
But that’s exactly why it’s hard to figure out what Facebook ads strategy your dealership needs when you’re just starting out.
Let me take the guesswork out of it for you by giving you the same tips we give all our automotive clients:
Geo Target individual locations for maximum impact
Facebook is especially useful for targeting people in particular geographic areas, so if you have multiple locations, use them! By geo targeting individual locations, you can run campaigns specific to each one, rather than lumping all your locations into one campaign that relies on broad geo-targeting.
Go after the car dealerships in the area
Car dealerships are like any other business, and they need to market themselves too — especially if they’re competing with other car dealerships in the area. So when you choose an area to target with your ads, be sure to include local competitors as well as all the ZIP codes within a certain radius.
Conclusion
While Facebook is the largest social media platform to date, it's not the optimal platform for your dealership. Rather, focus on your website and develop a strong SEO campaign for it, so that you can re-target customers through Google ads. This way, you'll gain a consistent flow of traffic and increase your brand awareness.
In the end, Facebook ads could prove to be a valuable addition to your dealership's marketing toolbox. Facebook can provide dealers with access to vast amounts of data and allow them to target potential customers right where they are—on their newsfeeds. However, like any other marketing campaign, success is going to depend on how well your dealership adapts Facebook ads to fit their specific needs and environment.
