Facebook and Meta continue to make changes that impact auto dealerships. Facebook has announced that beginning January 2023, dealerships can no longer list their vehicles on Facebook Marketplace.
How Dealers Should Prepare Now
Fear not. There are still ways to get your inventory in front of potential buyers on this critical platform, which we’ll cover below.
Facebook is committed to supporting the automotive industry and has also said that it’s looking at other ways to help both small and large dealerships post inventory.
Let’s look at why this latest change is being made, what dealers can learn from this news, and how you can keep leveraging Facebook to grow leads and sales.
Why The Change?
Facebook developed its Business Direct feature for small dealerships to manually post used vehicles on Marketplace individually via Facebook’s business Page.
It was never meant for (or scaled for) service providers or large dealerships. Some large dealerships experienced technical challenges with Business Direct, so Facebook is turning off the functionality.
Although it’s not in their talking points, it’s in Facebook’s financial interest to limit the ways a dealership can post inventory, because they’d prefer dealers run paid advertisements instead.
Facebook says it intends to continue “providing solutions for the auto industry, creating products and surfaces that help auto dealers reach more potential car buyers.” The truth is, it’s in Facebook’s best interest to give dealers a good return on ad investment to ensure you keep buying them!
What this Means for Dealerships
There are ways to ensure your inventory stays in front of Facebook’s estimated 239 million U.S. users.
First, dealers can encourage their employees to post inventory specials from their own personal Facebook pages. This is manual and labor intensive but is still a route you can go even after this new round of changes takes effect.
If you do go this route, it’s important to note there are a few risks involved:
- You won’t be able to see any of the communications between shoppers and employees like you can today. This is because you don’t have access to your employees’ personal Facebook accounts.
- You will have no control over any non-work content that your staff might post on their personal accounts. This may impact your dealership’s brand by associating it with language or topics you don’t want.
AutoSweet suggests only encouraging employees who have your dealership’s best interest in mind, and comply with your business’s brand guidelines.
The more effective route is Facebook advertising.
AutoSweet recommends running automotive inventory ads on Facebook that direct customers to your website inventory. Ads let you showcase the vehicles most appealing to your audience, and bring the most interested shoppers back to the VDP with VIN-specific retargeting.
Best of all, AutoSweet can also match back offline sales to show the effectiveness of these ads.
The Lesson
While you’re planning your strategy to adapt to Facebook’s changes, there are two key learnings from this news that every dealer should remember:
(1) Diversify Your Ad Platforms
When you advertise on “shared” platforms like Facebook and Google, you’re taking advantage of their platform and therefore, their built-in audience. That means you’re ultimately at their mercy.
A company like Facebook can take away your ability to use their platform at any time. So don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Be sure you’re diversifying where you’re placing ads.
(2) Diversify Your Campaigns
Besides running lead generation campaigns, it’s important for dealerships to run traffic campaigns, pushing customers to their website.
You own that traffic, and you can use Google Analytics with most ad platforms to retarget your website visitors.
If you can bring customers to your site, you can begin to build a relationship with them that will pay dividends over the long run.
Consider Facebook Advertising
If your dealership has been posting inventory to Marketplace, you have some time to adjust before the changes take effect. Consider Facebook advertising, which allows you to target the right customers with Facebook’s sophisticated algorithms to drive low-funnel leads.
It’s effective, relatively affordable, and best of all, AutoSweet makes it easy for dealers to see where their marketing spend is working… and where it’s not.
Want the digital marketing experts at AutoSweet to help you shape your Facebook advertising strategy? Contact us for a free 5-minute strategy session.
