Say What? That’s Right. Stop Posting to Facebook!

Organic (non-paid) posts should not be the core of your strategy and should only be used as a supplement to your efforts on social media. If that is all you’re doing on Facebook, you are squandering online opportunities and poorly investing your dealer’s time and resources.

Back in 2014, we did much work for a print publication, which also had an online presence. When we first started our work with this publication, our primary goal was to increase the likes on their Facebook page. Likes mattered back then. That isn’t so much the case today. When we first started working together, they had 14,000 likes. We brought that up to nearly 200,000 in about a year and a half. The strategy behind this was to share links from their website to their Facebook page. Their nearly 200,000 fans would be served the content and subsequently click over to their site. As a result, their website would inevitably see thousands of clicks from one post.

Things don’t work like that anymore. In May of 2012, when Facebook had its initial public offering, they started answering to investors. About four years in, Facebook was feeling the pressure from investors to milk their platform for more significant profits. Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, has always been adamant about Facebook remaining free for personal use. His passionate stance left only two ways to boost revenue; new advertising products and charging businesses for features they were currently getting for free. Facebook took both routes.

Facebook Wants to Milk You

Or at least your dealer’s business Facebook page. How? How do they make more money off of you now – or at least try? Have you ever made a post that’s performing well? You’ll see a little flame next to a compliment from Facebook telling you your post is performing above average. Right next to that feel-good statement, Facebook suggests that you boost your post to reach more people.

That’s Facebook’s way of letting you know that they slammed the brakes on your fantastic post. Facebook is throttling your content. Your posts are not going to reach even a fraction of your page likes – no matter how awesome of posts you muster – because Facebook doesn’t want it to unless you pay. If you’re only making organic posts, you’re spinning your wheels. Facebook posts get an average organic reach of only 5.5%.

Giving in to The Dairy Farm

Over $80 billion are currently being shifted from traditional marketing platforms into social media marketing instead, and 87.1% of U.S. marketers will use Facebook advertising in 2020. As a dealership, you want to engage your ideal prospects where they hang out. You will have to pay to reach and engage with your dream prospects. Pay to play; that’s Facebook’s model when it comes to business Facebook pages.

So, if you decided to go with the flow and give Facebook what they want, what now? Start by determining how much you’re comfortable investing in Digital Marketing, with emphasis on Facebook right after Google.

Then, determine what you want most out of Facebook users. Yes, all dealerships want more leads. Yet, it’s critical to prioritize your objectives on the Facebook platform to successfully meet goals. Here’s a list of your options:

1. Awareness; brand awareness and reach

2. Conversions; store traffic and online sales

3. Consideration; traffic, engagement, lead generation, and messages

Whole, 2%, 1%, or Skim Milk?

After you have an idea of your advertising objectives, it’s time to determine which types of ads you will run. The safest and most efficient combination of ad types is a well-rounded one.

The degree to which Facebook rents its users’ data is a benefit to your dealership. Leverage the data and their ample advertising variety by running ad types that:

1. Create general dealership awareness

2. Generate leads directly on Facebook

3. Promote your dealership events

4. Re-target your website visitors

5. Promote financing specials and other offers

6. Collect credit applications on Facebook

7. Dynamically promote your inventory

The Facebook Milkshake

Keep an eye out for dynamic ads; the sweetest ad type Facebook offers. These ads automatically promote your dealer’s inventory to people who have expressed interest on your website or around the web. With dynamic ads, you don’t have to create an ad for every unit on your inventory. Instead, you create a template that automatically uses images and text from the stock on your dealer’s site.

You can retarget people who have viewed specific units on your website. Your ads then show relevant units from your inventory to people when they visit Facebook. You can also use broad audience targeting to reach people who may not have visited your site before.

To summarize, if you’re only posting organically, stop. Take a look at your strategy and make adjustments. Whatever your fancy for ad products may be, don’t wait any longer to promote your content on Facebook.