“Dealers were overwhelmingly asking about best practices for Facebook, and trying to get a grasp on whether they can handle the workload themselves or work with a technology partner. Seemed to me that most dealers wanted to capitalize early on Facebook in order to gain a competitive advantage in their markets.”   – LotLinx CEO, Denise Chudy, on her experience at Digital Dealer Northeast Workshops 2016

Last week we joined hundreds of attendees at the Digital Dealer Northeast 2016 Workshops convention, where the best marketers in the automotive industry got together to talk about what’s important for dealers to know this year. Of all the topics covered at the conference, the hottest by far seemed to be Facebook.

Most dealers are already somewhat familiar with the Facebook network’s advertising platform, having tried paid campaigns with custom audiences. It’s easy enough to launch these campaigns and reach quite a number of people for a relatively low cost, but are these ads really converting any customers? Dealers have found that the real challenge is trying to get any return on their Facebook investment.

For a while, Facebook advertising was taking a back seat to other more established and better understood paid search options such as Google AdWords. Now that Google has changed up its standards, however, AdWords costs have been driven high enough to make dealers reconsider their options.

Who could blame them? CPCs for automotive already posted the 2nd highest inflation between 2012 and 2014  (Legal was #1) and now with the removal of the right-rail ads, it appears that dealers will have to pay higher bids if they wish to maintain the same position as before.

We can all agree that dealers are not the type to just sit around and wait for things to get better. They take action. They get together and discuss solutions and best practices. They find out a way to get what they want, and we think we know just what that is.

So why are dealers talking about Facebook? They know that it is one of the most visited sites on the internet. In fact, it has been reported that internet users dedicate more than 900 minutes every month specifically to Facebook. This trumps any other social network’s engagement levels by a landslide! This means that the majority of online car shoppers are likely to also be Facebook users. Dealers want to use Facebook to reach those shoppers.

With LotLinx Deeplinking™ for Facebook, we have advanced targeting capabilities that allow for three different data sets to be used together, forming a custom audience of car shoppers unachievable by anybody else in the industry. So, not only can dealers get an extremely targeted audience, they can also take back control of their paid advertising with customized campaigns.

Instead of busting budgets with forever rising prices due to competition, we simply pass Facebook costs straight through to the dealer, with no markup. Our technology is all that dealers have to pay for – and it’s one set fee.

Keep the conversation about Facebook going! To learn more about how Deeplinking™ for Facebook can help improve your dealership’s marketing strategy, contact us directly or post a comment below.