Facebook is without a doubt the hottest marketing outlet in the automotive space right now. However, many dealers aren’t maximizing the value of Facebook.
Here are 3 simple ways you can drive real results for your dealership from Facebook, and it won’t cost anything more than your time.
1. Utilize Facebook Reviews
It is no surprise that shoppers are turning to online reviews before buying. However, many dealers aren’t realizing the full potential of reviews on Facebook. The two biggest issues we see are dealers that don’t have reviews enabled on their Facebook business page, and dealers that don’t have Facebook reviews linked to their Google business page.
Enable Reviews on Facebook Business Page
Follow Facebook’s guide to enable reviews on your page. Once you’ve enabled the reviews on your Facebook page, be sure to add that page to your existing review generation process.
Link Facebook Reviews to Google Business Page:
Unfortunately, many dealers we work with have spent a great amount of effort driving reviews to their third-party sites, but none of those review sites show on their Google business page.
The reason this happens is because profile information on the third-party sites doesn’t match what is on their Google business page.
If you make sure the following information is the same across your review sites and your Google business page, you should see those sites automatically added to the “Reviews from the web” section of your page:
- Company name
- Physical address
- Web site domain
If done correctly, the result will look something like this:
2. Reward Followers with Follower Only Deals
Give followers a reason to keep coming back to your page (and hopefully your dealership). Here are some follower only specials our dealers have run in the past:
- Receive extra money towards a trade in.
- Receive a percentage off oil changes, maintenance packages.
- Contests open only to Facebook followers (free car washes for life, free oil changes for life, free electronics)
Try to find deals that are valuable to your customer base, but don’t necessarily have a hard cost associated with them.
3. Share Customer Success Stories
Share customer success stories with your followers. A common tactic is to take a picture with the customer after the purchase of their car. We’ve also seen success stories unique to the specialty of a dealership.
If a dealership specializes in financing, they might share a success story about a customer that was turned away from competitors. A dealership that prides itself in a fast turnaround in their service bay can share the story of a customer that got their car back in what would seem like an impossible time frame.
Whatever your niche, if you’ve truly provided an excellent experience for the customer, most of them won’t have an issue with you sharing their stories. Be sure to tag the customer in the photo as well, so their story will be shared with everyone in their network as well.
