Recently, we’ve been blogging about Facebook Ads, and specifically about how dealership owners can start using the platform effectively—even with little or no previous experience. These posts have been based on material from our new book, The Ultimate Dealer Guide to Facebook Advertising; if you really want to go in-depth with these topics, we recommend picking up a copy!
For today, we just want to recap everything we’ve said in these posts, and to provide you with something of a road map—a bird’s eye view of the Facebook Ads journey. Here, in brief, are the basic steps, as laid out in our book and in our blog series.
Facebook Ads: The Journey for Your Dealership
Getting Started
Your Facebook Ads journey has to start somewhere—and of course, the first step is making sure your dealership has an official Facebook Business page. Make sure you optimize it with the right images and complete contact information!
Creating a Buyer Persona
Before you can begin to create ads, you’ll first need to have some sense of who you are creating them for. A buyer persona summarizes this information for you, and can be an invaluable guide.
Building an Ad
From there, you can build your first ad—including attention-grabbing copy, an engaging headline, and a crisp, high-quality image.
Choosing Images
Of course, it is imperative to select images that conform to Facebook’s stated guidelines—ensuring that your images never look blurry or warped.
Audience Targeting
Target your audience according to the demographic guidelines laid out in your buyer personas—and make sure you dig deep into Facebook’s data-driven targeting options to ensure real precision in your ad displays.
Custom Audiences
Use Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature to target users who are already in your contact list or even users who have already visited your dealership website!
The important thing to remember here is that your bid represents not the actual amount you will pay, but rather the maximum that you are willing to pay for clicks and impressions. Lowballing your bid may mean you get shut out by higher bidders, which in turn means your ad simply does not get displayed.
Different Ad Types
Facebook provides you with various ways to optimize your ads, some of which are more relevant to your dealership’s marketing objectives than others. One that we recommend is click per action or CPA. What this means is that you essentially pay only for ads that check off one of your marketing goals—basically eliminating risk.
Make sure you install Facebook Pixel so that you can follow up with buyers who visit your dealership website and then leave.
Content Marketing
Finally, remember to augment your ads with organic Facebook content. Blog posts, images, videos, and even live streams can help you to nurture the lead that you win through your ads, and also to establish the reputation of your auto dealership.
Get Our Book
We go into all of these subjects and more in our book—so we recommend picking up a copy if you want to become a Facebook Ads boss! Start earning real money for your dealership by using this amazing online platform! We’ll show you how, right there in the book.