In today’s digital age, social media has become an essential tool for businesses of all kinds, and the automotive industry is no exception. With millions of users active on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, car dealerships have an unprecedented opportunity to use automotive social media marketing to reach new customers and build their brand online. This powerful marketing strategy uses social media to promote car dealerships and their inventory to a broader audience.
Creating engaging content, targeting specific demographics, and leveraging paid advertising can help dealerships build a solid online presence and drive more website traffic. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the world of social media marketing for car dealerships and explore its benefits. We also discuss some strategies for creating effective social media campaigns and platforms that can help you succeed. Let’s get started.
What Is Automotive Social Media Marketing?
Automotive social media marketing is a digital marketing strategy that leverages the power of social media to showcase your vehicles and dealerships in a captivating way to a broader audience. This marketing technique involves creating engaging content, targeting specific demographics, and leveraging paid advertising to build a solid online presence and drive traffic to a dealership’s website. By utilizing platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, car dealerships can reach millions of potential customers and establish themselves as trusted brands in the competitive world of Automotive Aftersales.
90% of new-vehicle buyers who used social media in their decision process feel it influenced their decision. Social Media has become a place where car communities can be connected, entertained, and part of the conversation.
Why Is Automotive Social Media Marketing Important?
Gone are when consumers only used social media for fun and entertainment. In today’s digital era, Car Dealership Marketing is crucial. An effective strategy is necessary for dealerships to target and cater to the right segment, distribute high-quality content to potential customers, interact with them directly on various platforms, and amplify online visibility. Social media is now a go-to tool for product information. For Gen Z, a platform like TikTok has become their new search engine.
Such is the impact that 27% of people discover new brands on social platforms, 71% of buyers use social media to support their car-buying process, and another 21% say that social media has directly informed their transactions. Additionally, it has been noticed that 31% of customers check social media reviews before making a purchase.
Use Social Media channels to follow customers during their buying journey, drive engagement from lead to sale to post-purchase, promote your vehicles, and engage with existing customers. Consequently, this can be quickly done through Short—and long-form videos, stories, quizzes, images, carousels, and more.
12 Top Benefits of Automotive Social Media Marketing
Automotive Digital Marketing offers a dynamic platform for car dealerships, manufacturers, and service providers to engage with potential customers. Targeted campaigns and interactive content help build brand awareness, drive leads, and foster customer loyalty. Here are 12 key benefits of leveraging social media for Automotive Marketing:
1) Mobility
For dealerships, the mobility of social content means that potential customers can consume the content, irrespective of the place and time. This allows them to browse and finalize the car they want to buy and from where.
2) Access
As mentioned before, potential customers may not think of going to a dealership’s website alone, but they might see an ad on a YouTube video or their Twitter feed. Social media campaigns allow you to connect with people who might not have considered your dealership otherwise.
3) A Human Touch
Though dealership websites are essential, they can remind some visitors of salespeople, which can turn them off. People are more likely to engage with social media posts that feel personal and intimate rather than feeling like a faceless corporation is targeting them.
4) Increased Brand Recognition
Social media in the automotive industry allows businesses to increase brand recognition by engaging with their target audience on a regular basis. This helps to establish the brand as a trusted authority and keeps them on top of the minds of potential customers.
5) Increased Website Traffic
Social media is an effective way to drive traffic to your website. By including links to your online store in your posts, you can encourage your followers to visit your site and learn more about your products and services.
6) Improved Customer Engagement
In the automotive industry, social media marketing provides a direct line of communication between you and your customers. You can engage with your customers in real-time and respond to their questions and concerns in a timely manner.
7) Enhanced Customer Insights
Social media provides valuable customer insights. You can gain insights into your customers’ preferences, interests, and behavior patterns by monitoring your social media accounts. This can help you to tailor your products and services to meet their needs better.
8) Increased Customer Loyalty
Engaging with your customers on social media and providing them with valuable content and promotions can foster a sense of loyalty among your customer base.
9) Cost-Effective Marketing
Automotive social marketing is more cost-effective than traditional forms of marketing, such as print ads and television commercials. This is an excellent option for small businesses and startups with limited marketing budgets.
10) Increased sales & Competitive Advantage
Social media automotive marketing can increase sales and revenue by increasing brand recognition, driving traffic to your website, and engaging with customers. It can also give your dealership a competitive advantage over your competitors. Using social media to engage with customers will build your brand, differentiate you from your competitors, and establish you as an industry leader.
11) Improved Search Engine Rankings
Social media can improve your search engine rankings by providing quality backlinks to your website. This can improve your visibility and make it easier for potential customers to find you online.
12) Improved Customer Satisfaction
By providing excellent customer service on social media, you can help to improve your customers’ satisfaction with your brand. This can lead to positive word-of-mouth advertising and increased sales.
How Has Social Media Changed the Automobile Industry?
The car industry has used social media to promote its products for a while. However, as technology advances, the automotive industry is starting to use the best of what social media has to offer for automotive marketing.
The research shows that 50% of recent car buyers only visited one dealership before purchasing. This means that it’s more important than ever for dealerships to have an informative and easy-to-navigate online presence.
Social media users are not at their peak. With more people researching online, the social media landscape will only become more prominent. Therefore, there are many Benefits to Automotive Dealerships.
Impact on the industry
Social media has brought about significant changes to the automotive industry. Here are some ways in which social media has impacted the industry:
- Increased visibility: Social media platforms have made it easier for automotive companies to increase their visibility and reach a wider audience.
- Better customer engagement: Social media provides a direct line of communication between customers and companies, which has enabled better customer engagement and feedback.
- Improved marketing: It has enabled companies to use targeted dealership marketing auto strategies and reach specific demographics.
- Increased competition: It has made it easier for smaller companies to compete with larger ones, leading to a more competitive marketplace.
- Influencer marketing: Social media has given rise to influencer marketing, where social media influencers with large followings are paid to promote automotive products.
- Real-time updates: It provides real-time updates about the latest automotive news and trends, which has led to increased awareness and interest among consumers.
- Better brand awareness: It has enabled automotive companies to build better brand awareness and brand loyalty among customers.
- Data analytics: Social media platforms provide valuable data analytics tools that allow companies to understand customer behavior and preferences better.
- Online sales: It has made it possible for automotive companies to sell products directly to customers online, which has led to increased sales and revenue.
- Innovation: Social media has encouraged innovation and the development of new technologies in the automotive industry, such as electric cars and autonomous vehicles
How Do Car Dealerships Use Social Media as Their Core Strategy?
Social media platforms are the best opportunity for dealerships to connect with potential customers, especially millennial buyers, for automotive social media marketing. This is generally done through campaigning, broadly categorized into Organic and Paid.
Organic Campaigns: This strategy involves posting content on your social media channels, which organically appears in a customer’s feed as their algorithm promotes it. The focus here is on creating engaging content that relates to your audience and enhances your brand’s visibility and image.
Paid Social Media: This involves displaying ads on platforms like Meta, Twitter, and LinkedIn to target audiences based on their interests, demographics, and behaviors.
Auto dealers always look for new ways to reach customers and promote their businesses. One way they do this is by using car videos and sending out emails with information about discounts and special offers. This email content gets an even bigger audience when shared on social media, making it a great way to reach potential customers.
Best Social Media Strategies for Car Dealerships
Social media campaigns for car dealerships are generally classified as organic or paid. An organic campaign entails simply posting content to your channels that will be visible on a customer’s feed.
On the other hand, paid social media involves displaying ads on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to reach a target audience with specific interests. We have your back if you’re wondering how to grow your presence on different social media platforms!
These are some of the social media marketing ideas for car dealerships that might help bring in more potential customers.
1) Target consumers on Facebook
Facebook has the most extensive user base, with almost 3 billion users. So you must place your ads here to reach them. You can design your ad campaign to target audiences based on their geographic areas, interests, gender, vehicle type, etc., which can be done by optimizing your ads through Automotive Inventory Ads(AIA). Research by Unified states that there are nearly 2X CTRs on an automotive ad than a regular ad on Facebook. You can even connect with your audience or potential clients through Messenger in real-time, leading to quicker and more leads.
2) Use Twitter to drive sales
Twitter has been a popular choice for auto customers. An effective strategy for using Twitter is keyword targeting. This method can direct your advertisements and messages to consumers who are likely to purchase a vehicle. Research by Canvs shows that 327,000 auto-related tweets are sent out daily, and 75% of these are directly related to owning or shopping. This shows Twitter’s use cases in automotive marketing.
3) Market to millennials on Instagram
The users leaving Facebook are going to Instagram, which is primarily used on mobile devices. Globally, the two most enormous audience buckets on Instagram are 18-24 years (31%) and 25-34 years (30.3%). Images of your vehicles on the beach, near a lake, or a campsite can help consumers imagine themselves in that moment. This encourages them to make a purchase. Another way to keep your stories interesting is to use poll stickers, Q&A, quizzes, and other creative ways in order to grab the attention of your viewers and compel them to make a purchase.
4) Video Marketing with YouTube
Those looking to buy cars will compare models, prices, safety features, walkarounds, and connected devices. According to Force Marketing, 84% of car buyers tend to watch a video before they make a purchase. Your social media content must help them make a decision in your favor. Video can be embedded on your website or hosted on YouTube to increase organic visibility. Use Youtube to create and upload vidoes on product walkthroughs, new vehicle launches, auto events, partnerships or clarifying consumer queries..
5) Add Pinterest to your social strategy
Pinterest mostly has female users and should be included in your auto dealer social media marketing strategy. It is also good to build your Automotive SEO presence by sharing pictures of your inventory, blog posts, or landing pages.
6) Storytelling on social media
Today, it is not sufficient to post anything on social media. You need to create a hyper-personalized experience for the user to feel a connection with your brand. One powerful tool in this regard is storytelling. By sharing experiences and humanizing your brand, you will be able to develop relationships and loyalty with your audience.
7) Social reviews matter
Ask your customers to leave a review about the service they received online. Consumers also check past customer experience to determine whether they want to visit a dealership or not. It is essential to thank positive reviews and also address the negative reviews. It builds brand reputation and trust. DealerCenter and Dataium report that car shoppers are 90% more likely to visit your website and 5.3 more likely to visit your dealership if you have positive reviews.
8) Be 100% committed
Social media marketing for car dealerships requires you to be consistent. Once people start following you online, you must have regular interactions with them. If you don’t post for several days, you will begin losing your audience.
9) Post High-quality Pictures and Videos
The popularity of Instagram among millennials and Gen Z proves shoppers are no longer interested in simple photos. More than 70% of the users are between 13 and 34 years old. They also prefer interacting with quality and aesthetically rich photographs. Thus, high-quality photos can help capture the eyes of your prospects and later convert them into buyers.
In this regard, using Spyne’s AI-powered photoshoot and image editing platform to edit cars’ pictures could help.
10) Linkedin Marketing
LinkedIn is a more professional way to target the significant segment of the industry with the most prominent financial muscle. You can reach out to bigger businesses in the industry who are looking to make a big purchase. On the platform, 63% of users seek out personal luxury vehicles, which opens another segment for you. One can also run targeted ads through first-party data.
11) Drive Leads With Tiktok
As ridiculous as it may sound, a report from 2022 shows that more than three-quarters of users on TikTok are there to purchase a car through the platform-based on research, and 67% of them are successful in finding a new auto brand. Although an unconventional platform, TikTok presents opportunities to market with trending audio and sounds, making it creative and providing a breather to customers amongst intense competition between automotive brands.
12) Capture first-party data
Lead generation forms are the way to go when it comes to capturing first-party data. One can easily sync their details with CRM, storing all the info and preferences for future marketing campaigns. Similarly, it makes it easy to follow up with interested leads and set up further meetings. All major social media platforms offer lead generation forms. The forms can be attached to multiple formats, including organic and paid content.
Top Social Media Content Ideas to Engage Buyers
The beauty of social media content is that you can develop many ways and ideas to create something that attracts your user’s eyeballs. Be it from long-form content to short-form content, let’s have a look at multiple forms and ideas for social media marketing for dealerships:
1) Product Videos
Your product or vehicle is the protagonist of your videos. Showcase the vehicles you sell or have in your inventory. Have a walk through your inventory and use creative ways to post, like car of the week or deal of the month, which subconsciously compels your buyers to look forward to them.
2) Testimonials
Testimonials from your existing clients are a great way to establish transparency and trust with prospective buyers and connect with them. You can use these reviews as videos or image posts; they are proof of your dealership’s effectiveness.
3) Car Buying and Financing Tips
Educate your customers by posting resourceful and informational content on how to buy a car, tips to remember, and questions to ask during the sales process.
Additionally, tell them how to finance their car purchase, which can be done by educating them on how to get credit, what financial tools to use, how to set up a budget, etc.
4) Car Maintenance Tips
Customers need to be more informed about maintaining their vehicles, which causes them to last less. Therefore, create short, crisp tutorials where the vehicle owners at least learn how to make minor fixes for their vehicles at home.
5) Behind the Scenes
As it suggests, dealerships should post a sneak peek of their operations, including what factors a selling process involves, a tour of the dealership and the inventory lot, and much more. This helps them maintain a connection with their buyers by instilling authenticity.
6) Trivia and Myths
Upload trivia quizzes and Q&As to generate engagement. It is also observed that with the changing world and more movement towards tech, many myths have emerged. Take debunking the myths and informing the viewers about the truth.
7) Lifestyle Content and Interviews
Answer any frequently asked questions that arise throughout the car-buying process to create conversation and interaction with your followers. Share photos of your happy customers with their new vehicles. This creates a connection with your community. It also gives your followers a reason to follow you long after purchasing a car. You can also share snippets, full-length videos, carousels, stories, images, and links to articles featuring interviews with key figures in your organization.
8) Celebrate Occasions
Celebration posts are a great way to align with your customers and express your brand identity and work culture. Share updates on new launches, hold community events and meetups and launch special festive offers and deals that excite customers. You can even promote user-generated content by incentivizing them with offers and discounts when they post about how positively your dealership impacted you.
How Is Social Media Advertising Practised for the Automotive Industry
Twenty-eight percent of internet users discover new brands through social media and display ads. One can choose from different advertising formats, including Image Ads, Videos Ads, Carouse Ads, Stories Ads, Lead generation from ads, Message ads, product ads, and text Ads.
However, one might make basic errors, disrupting the entire campaign. Therefore, follow these best practices to yield optimal results through automotive social media marketing:
1) Marketing Goals: Before running each campaign, determine your marketing or advertising goals, target audience, audience segments, platforms, content purpose, budget, and metrics, and determine how your dealership is positioned in this space.
2) A/B Testing: Conduct A/B testing for each campaign and experiment with multiple elements—image copy, image visuals, ad copy, CTA, and more to get better insights.
3)Rotate Ads: Rotate ads within a campaign to avoid creating customer ad fatigue and customize ads for each social media platform and audience preference because the primary audience and the type of content they prefer to see are different on every platform.
4) High-Quality Visuals: Stick to high-quality visuals, exciting stories, educational videos, and engaging elements in the ad content and preserve them to modify accordingly for different platforms for future use.
5) CTAs: Use CTAs to Direct your social media audience to your website or custom landing page. These landing pages could showcase your intended or complete inventory of automobiles. This induces consideration.
6) Landing Pages: Create dedicated landing pages for each campaign so visitors don’t have to search for specific information about the website’s content. Use custom and lookalike audiences to refine your ideal customer profile (ICP).
7) Retargeting: Retarget interested prospects but maintain an optimum gap between subsequent retargeted ads.
8) Competitor Study: Study your competitors’ social media content and see what works for them. However, please refrain from copying their methods, which would compromise brand integrity. Instead, tweak and customize your branding based on insights gleaned from them. Find out what works for them and what doesn’t. Incorporate adjustments into your campaign wherever needed.
10 Metrics to Measure Social Media Strategy Success
Choosing the correct set of metrics and KPIs is essential in understanding how successful the marketing campaigns are. Let’s see the top metrics:
1) Engagement: It Includes comments, likes, shares, reactions, and number of followers.
2) Reach & impressions: Reach shows how many people viewed your social media posts, while impressions show how many times these people viewed your content.
3) Follower growth: Your campaigns are effective if more people follow your brand over a specific period.
4) Response time: This shows the average time to respond to messages and comments on your social accounts. Better response time helps build a better social community.
5) Referral traffic: Website traffic is generated from social media. Referrals are a parameter that shows whether your social media content is successfully nurturing leads to conversion.
6) Sales: Dealerships can track sales through leads from social media and resulting conversions. Use lead management software like Driftrock to help you track your buyers throughout their Car Buying Journey.
7) Return on investment (ROI): ROI signifies how much revenue you generate from social media compared to the costs incurred.
8) Net promoter score (NPS): NPS shows how likely existing customers are to recommend your business to others. This data can be collected from online feedback and survey forms.
9) Sentiment of Audience: It reflects how your customers perceive your dealership. It could be positive, neutral, or negative.
10) Share of voice (SOV): A SOV determines your brand’s ranking compared to competitors. You can use marketing analytics tools or platforms like Similarweb to resolve this.
How to Leverage CRM Data Collected From Social Media for Automotive Marketing
To excel in social media marketing, using social insights to develop future strategies is crucial. Syncing your Automotive CRM with social campaigns helps collect lead data automatically. This first-party data can be leveraged to refine targeting, messaging, and content, which can be used to retarget leads through personalized ads or emails.
This is done by.
1) Utilize social insights to build more robust future marketing strategies.
2) Sync CRM with social media campaigns for automatic lead data collection.
3) Use first-party data to refine content goals, targeting, and messaging.
4) Retarget leads through personalized emails, displays, or search ads.
5) Create content addressing specific pain points with case studies or review videos.6) Follow up with interested prospects to schedule test drives or consultations.
Best 4 Automotive Social Media Marketing Campaigns Globally
Companies and dealerships produce numerous campaigns. However, some have an everlasting impact on viewers’ minds. Let’s look at the top four such campaigns.
1) BMW: Born Electric
BMW’s ‘Born Electric’ campaign is over a decade old. The brand refreshed the campaign with its BMWi range by celebrating its ten mark in 2021 and released the electric range of the brand with it. BMW led into the campaign with videos on YouTube followed by multiple posts on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
Instead of focusing on selling, the brand engages consumers using content beyond cars. It aims to create an emotional connection for its products through consistent messaging. The car dealerships joined the brand as they promoted the range on their respective social media accounts. Plus, the brand used celebrity appeal to amplify its flagship models, including heavyweights like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Salma Hayek.
2) BMW: Capturing TikTok audience in Spain
BMW ran another successful social media campaign, specifically for Spain. The campaign focused on generating leads through TikTok because short-form videos on the platform are popular amongst all age groups today. The ad case study screenshots and eye-catching video were used, linking it to a lead generation form. The form seamlessly collected interested leads’ details using the pre-fill option. It quickly contacted these potential buyers by validating their email IDs and syncing their data with the CRM.
As a result, BMW improved its lead quality and received 47% lower Cost Per Lead than other ad formats on social media.
3) CarMax: Love Your Car
In the ‘Love Your Car’ campaign, CarMax extended its 7-day money-back guarantee to 30 days and introduced a ’24 hours’ test drive feature.
The dealership extensively amplified these guarantees through videos on YouTube, which were even endorsed by some celebrities. CarMax also made the most of social media through different posts, including buyers receiving car deliveries.
4) Mercedes Benz Chicken – When No Car Sells a Car
To launch ‘Magic Body Control,’ a new feature that promised increased stability in the new S-Class, Mercedes used chickens. The ad, which is just under a minute long, never once shows the car; instead, the chickens move around to the track of Diana Ross singing her hit single, “Upside Down.”
The use of the chicken here is clever, as a chicken’s head never moves if the body moves around. It was cleverly designed to demonstrate how you’d feel if you drove the S-Class, with the car taking on all the movement from the road. While this ad is almost a decade old, the visual of the chicken moving around has made this one of the most memorable car adverts. It doesn’t show a car out there but still carries its significance.
What Are the Objectives for Car Dealerships on Social Media?
1) Stories Based Content
Automotive Dealers must distinguish their brand from competitors to have an industry presence. Storytelling through social media content helps build strong customer relationships and offers insights into your brand’s values.
Here is how you can tell your dealership’s story on social media:
a) Marketing Core Messages: Your posts should reflect your dealership’s values and community involvement, going beyond just promoting vehicles.
b) Customer and Staff Stories: Personal stories about customers and staff add a human element, differentiating you from competitors who may seem more volatile when it comes to communication
c) Emotional Connections: Storytelling fosters an emotional bond between customers and dealers, potentially leading to lifelong relationships. Retaining existing customers is often more accessible—and cheaper—than acquiring new ones, and they are a walking testimony for the dealership.
2) Develop Relationships with Potential Customers
Building personal connections is a foundational goal in any industry, particularly in automotive social media marketing. Start offering a positive customer experience by:
a)Engaging Conversations: Regularly interacting with potential and current customers on social media helps form authentic relationships.
b)Swift Responses: Quick responses to inquiries and comments show attentiveness and care, fostering trust.
c)Online Visibility: An active social media presence increases your dealership’s trustworthiness and enhances search engine visibility due to increased online activity.
3) Leverage Consumer Interests to Understand Your Audience
Knowing your audience is vital for growing your customer base and maximizing profits. Get to know your audience better by:
a)Analyze Engagement: Pay attention to the types of content your target audience engages with most. This data is invaluable for tailoring your future posts.
b)Tailored Promotional Content: Use insights gained from audience interactions to develop content that resonates, ensuring each post maximizes engagement.
c)Fresh and Relevant Content: Continuously evolve your content strategy to keep it exciting and aligned with customer preferences.
Conclusion
Automotive social media marketing is essential for car dealerships looking to build their brand. Dealerships reach new customers online by creating engaging content and targeting specific demographics. By leveraging paid advertising, dealerships can establish themselves as trusted brands and drive more website traffic. At Spyne, we’re committed to helping Car Dealerships Merchandising succeed in the competitive world of automotive sales. Our AI-powered car image editing platform uses the latest in machine learning and computer vision technology to create high-quality car images that are both beautiful and accurate.
By harnessing the power of AI and automation, we help dealerships save time and resources while still providing exceptional quality and value to their customers. So, if you’re looking to take your car dealer’s social media marketing to the next level, consider partnering with Spyne and experiencing the power of AI for yourself.
