The future is here. You can now endlessly clone your Sales and Marketing staff without the added costs typically associated with employing a sales force. This concept may sound like science fiction, but it’s more SCIENCE than fiction. Today’s information technology, particularly marketing automation, makes it possible for dealers to exponentially multiply the qualities they love most about their highest performing employees.

So, What is Marketing Automation?

In simple terms, it’s the use of software and strategies to nurture leads with personalized and relevant content that makes converting prospects to customers a breeze. But let’s not complicate it. Marketing automation combines behavior data points, from what people do or don’t do online, with technology that models and interprets them. It allows dealers to make smarter business decisions. Powerful stuff when you consider the revenue implications.Imagine if your dealership were to successfully create workflows to automate repetitive tasks, such as follow-up campaigns via email and text messages, social media posts, and online ads. Meaning, a prospect looked at a unit on your website but didn’t take any action. The same listing then appears on their social media feeds, or industry-related sites as they surf the web. This is one of many possibilities to remind your prospects of the fun and adventure they’ll experience when they buy a unit from your dealer.

Contrast that to the analog, slow, and inefficient way tons of dealers do it today. The old way ends up costing lots of money in the form of mismanaged time, resulting in missed opportunities that can equate to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

1.  Setting obvious goals

2.  Following the fundamentals of marketing success

3.  Your message and optimization of your website

4.  Using automation to optimize your lead conversions

5.  Developing a plan based on all Internet Marketing pillars

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. Retarget 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.