Believe it or not, the world of advertising is changing. NADA reports that during the last decade, there has been a 30% decrease in newspaper advertising and a 30% increase in internet advertising.* Do you find some of the same trends in your advertising spend? If not, it may be time to reevaluate your advertising approach. The average American doesn’t consume media like they did before; they aren’t looking for mass-marketing advertisement, but rather a direct one-to-one approach.
Like any advertising, you want your efforts to return the highest ROI and spend as little as possible for as much brand exposure as possible. Since Americans are spending more and more time on their social media networks, this could be the shift in internet advertising spend you’re missing out on.
With social advertising, you’re able to reach more people than traditional radio or print, stay in front of your target audience through ad criteria, spend as little or as much as you deem appropriate – even as little as a $1 a day, and social ads are the lowest cost per impression of any other advertising in history. Here are five easy steps for getting your social advertising going to start building your social brand recognition and growing your online community.
Identify Your Advertising Goals
Before you set up your first social ad, be sure to determine what your specific goals are. Obviously you want to sell and service more vehicles, but what are your specific goals in regards to your social channels? Do you want to grow your audience, increase website conversions, promote your new social app, draw attention for your next event, or increase page engagement? Each of these goals will result in a different outcome and ads should be tailored to assist in accomplishing the desired results.
Determine Your Advertising Platform
The world of social media is forever growing so it makes it hard to know where you should be and what platform you best fit into. If your dealership currently has social media channels, check out which ones you are receiving the most engagement on and start there. Once you start to gain some traction, then branch out to other social platforms. Each time you start advertising on a new platform, be sure to review your goals and change or customize the ads for that specific audience.
Create an Eye-Catching Ad
For the most part, social ads have two components: text and imagery. When constructing your first social ad, you’ll want to spend some time on the text, writing and re-writing it to make it stand out. Use trigger words to create a sense of urgency and capitalize on the recipient’s pain points. Next, work on your ad’s imagery. You may want to use your company logo or trademark symbol; both will work fine if they are eye-catching. If not, think about using an image to capture the recipient’s attention, something that will get noticed.
Select Your Audience
No one knows your customers better than you, so use the filters on each social channel to sort through for your ideal vehicle buyer. You’ll want to start by narrowing your audience down by location from your dealership, then select things like language, gender, relationship status, age, and education level. Lastly, narrow your search by the audience’s interest. This filter is definitely more selective, but helps you hone in on the specific audience who is most likely to buy from you. You can also create custom audiences where in you use your dealership’s database to target current customers and prospects to influence them to join your social networks.
Define Your Budget
Like any advertising budget, it depends on the size of your dealership, how long you’ve been in business, what your overhead is, and how much monthly revenue you bring in. Our advice is to carve out a portion of your marketing budget designated for internet marketing for social advertisement. A good place to start is allocating about 25% of your internet marketing budget to social ads, but this may not work for all dealerships. Once you get your social ad budget set, be sure to monitor your performance to confirm you are receiving the desired results based on your goals and tweak accordingly.
If you haven’t ventured into the world of social advertising, now is the time! You will see an increase in brand recognition, growth in your online community, additional website traffic, and most importantly a competitive advantage.
*http://www.nada.org/Publications/NADADATA/