Automotive Social Media Marketing

What Car Dealers Don’t Understand About Social

When you personally use Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media site, the focus is typically on you. What you’re up to, what you like, your friends, etc. But with a business, especially a local business like a car dealer, no one wants to see pictures of customers when they open up their Facebook feed. They want to see updates from friends, and they want to be informed and entertained by the pages they follow.

I know this is harsh, but you have to face the reality that you’re not going to make friends and win business by posting pictures of salespeople shaking hands with customers in front of their new car. It’s not original and it doesn’t inform or entertain them, so how does it benefit them?

It doesn’t benefit them, which is why your page is receiving little to no engagement currently.

Now, don’t take this the wrong way. This is not an attack on your business. It’s Wikimotive’s desperate plea to let us help you not suck.

Our executive team includes auto retail veterans who are passionate about the industry, and we hate seeing dealers miss out on the opportunities automotive social media marketing has to offer.

If you want to know the secret formula that has led to success for all car dealers on Wikimotive’s automotive social media strategy, read on!

Dominating Your Market Through Social:
The Wikimotive Game Plan

Up to this point, we’ve been pretty blunt about the problems with car dealers on social media. But it’s time to give you the game plan that will change the way your business utilizes the various social media platforms.

To start, we only post original content to Facebook. Other sites, such as Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest receive syndication (which we’ll cover). The reason for this is, Facebook is the largest and most valuable social media site for car dealers. ROI from other sites has been minimal at best, so we don’t directly manage original content on those platforms.

Some companies will tell you otherwise, as they want to charge you more to manage more assets. But we’re not in the business of doing work that doesn’t get results. Wikimotive is focused on making sure that we bring you the most bang for your buck.

What to Post

“What the heck do we post?”

This is the biggest question on most car dealers’ minds, and really it’s the most important one you could have. What you post directly impacts your success, as only the best content will be liked, shared, and otherwise interacted with by Facebook and other social media users.

Remember, this is about the audience. And for car dealerships, we’re targeting automotive enthusiasts and local users. Just like traditional advertising, we want to reach the most people in order to get the attention of those currently in the market for a vehicle.

At Wikimotive, we’ve discovered Facebook can be tamed and conquered using three to four types of posts:

• Automotive
• Local
• Blog
• Inventory

Each one of these posts serves a specific purpose, working to attract local users, especially local car buyers, to your page. Think about ways you can tie in each of these types of content, execute consistently, and you’ll start seeing results.

Content is King, Even on Facebook

There’s one thing, and one thing only, that dictates success on Facebook: content. It doesn’t matter how much money throw at ads; without great content, you won’t see great results. In thinking about the types of content we mentioned above, it probably sounds easy to just find some great images and post them. And if that were true, it probably would be easy.

But it’s not that easy. Because while users are drawn in by the images, it’s the attached commentary that brings engagement with the content. This means you need to think long and hard about the written content that goes along with each image in order to see the best results.

There’s no doubt you could hand these duties over to someone at your dealership, but by hiring Wikimotive you’re not just getting one person. You’re getting a whole team dedicated to your success. Our knowledge and experience and success with automotive social media marketing allows us to instantly go to work to create ROI for your dealership.

Here are few examples of great car dealer Facebook posts from Wikimotive clients:

Selling Cars via Social: It’s Not Impossible

Since social media began to pervade our daily lives, marketers have looked for ways to capitalize on the audiences from sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Selling has never been easy on these sites, but there’s a key component most business owners fail to understand. You heard and once, but here it is again: Marketing on social media is about the user, not the business.

Once you start thinking about what’s good for the user instead of what’s good for your dealership, you’ll see social media success go through the roof. This means you have to limit the number of inventory posts you make each month to only a handful. Sounds crazy, but Wikimotive clients actually see more clicks and more engagement on those handful of inventory posts than you probably would if you posted 100 times or more each month.

There’s no secret to our success with selling cars via social media, though. All we do is time our content properly, pick great pieces of inventory to feature, and craft stories around each vehicle. That last part is extremely important, and here’s why:

A car is not just a car to most people. Sports car drivers want incredible handling and speed, hybrid owners want to save money and reduce emissions, and Jeep owners want the option to conquer trails in their spare time. After all, if a car was just a car we wouldn’t have a market for luxury vehicles. People who’ve worked hard want a car with sophistication, status, and comfort unlike any other.

Through social content, you can build a connect between the vehicle and the consumer. As long as you can build that connection, you can build sales.