It’s been a rough few months for Facebook. Not only has the company faced renewed Congressional scrutiny and a declining public image, all stemming from its privacy- and data-harvesting scandals, but Facebook’s newsfeed algorithms no longer emphasize organic reach the way they once did. In other words, if you want to effectively advertise your business on Facebook, you have to pony up for more paid ad content—a reality that’s prompted many business owners to wonder if Facebook is worth it at all.
We have a couple of responses to this trend. First, there’s just no way around it: You do need to pay for some Facebook ads, especially if your business is a used car dealership. This is hardly wasted money, however, because it gains you access to Facebook’s highly sophisticated targeting features. And, if you select your audiences carefully, you can ensure that none of your ad dollars are wasted.
Second, it is possible to gain traction through organic reach—but it might require you to tweak your strategy. Here’s what we mean.
Reclaiming Your Dealership’s Organic Reach
To improve your organic reach, it’s first important to understand why Facebook has changed its internal algorithms. Basically, Facebook is working to ensure that its users all have a positive experience—which means that the algorithms now prioritize organic content that people actually care about and want to engage with. Bland content or overly promotional posts won’t get you results, but here’s what will:
- Focus on quality over quantity. You don’t have to post 50 dealership posts every day. In fact, you don’t even need to post one post every day. What you need to do is share content that your user base will engage with—value-adding blog posts, videos, infographics, and images, all designed to offer something substantive and interesting to the end user.
- Pay attention to the posts that win you the most engagement, and use that to influence the kind of content you post in the future.
- Use Facebook’s Preferred Audience tool, which will display your posts only for the people most likely to engage with them.
- Ask questions and solicit feedback! Provide your users with a chance to get involved.
- If you have a post that gets a lot of engagement, consider putting a few dollars into “boosting” that post—really getting as much mileage out of it as possible!
- Don’t forget that organic reach and paid ads are meant to work in tandem. Make sure your Facebook marketing strategy has room for both.
With these tips in mind, your dealership can get real results through its Facebook activity. For help designing or implementing a Facebook strategy, we encourage you to reach out. Contact Get My Auto today and learn more about the automotive marketing tools that are available to help your dealership grow!