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During the Gold Rush of the early 1900’s people crossed the country because they heard there was a way to find gold and become rich. Some were successful because they had the right investment in tools and had the right location. They also had the courage to take a chance. Others failed because they were not educated and prepared.
Today, Facebook Ads are being looked at in the same way. I feel that right now, this is one of the most cost effective ways to market service.
There are two types of Facebook Ads, either in the sidebar or in the newsfeed stream. PCG prefers to have them in the news feed because as people scroll through their feed, their first instinct is to think it is a regular post. We have seen more clicks using this strategy versus the sidebar.
It is easy enough for a business to do it themselves but in many cases you should find a competent agency partner to help you. Without getting too technical, I think reviewing what we did for a client in simple terms will help frame the conversation.
Client’s Facebook Ads Results
An automotive dealership client came to us because their Facebook page had little engagement and was not driving traffic to their site. We created a click to call awareness campaign. This was designed to let FB users in their area know about the service center, their hours and location. Pretty simple.
The Facebook ad would show to desktop users as well as mobile. One difference we set for the mobile user was having a click to call button in the ad. Remember that a very high % of Facebook traffic is mobile so having the click to call button was important and easy for the user to connect with the dealer.
As I mentioned, this form of marketing can be very targeted and also very cost effective. Because this was an awareness campaign, we set the radius of 20 miles around the dealership. It goes off of impressions to a local audience. Anyone who is logged into Facebook within a 20 mile radius will see this ad. This ad was shown to 11,838 people 37,849 times and the dollar spend has only been $85.25. See how cost effective this is?
I know your next question was, what did this mean in terms of calls or clicks to the website. There were 53 clicks on the call now button. The link clicks were 28. The photo on this ad is attached to the dealerships service page, so when it is clicked, the customer is brought right to service specials.
In a separate ad we offered a discount for any service the chose. In other campaigns we focused on a tire special or tune-ups and were targeted specifically to their customers who matched using a customer audience for FB.
Custom audiences in Facebook ads are created by uploading your customer emails from your CRM. Facebook will match profiles based on those emails. It is not 100% match but think of the targeted marketing you can do based on you customer’s service history.
Do you see the possibilities?
There are many auto dealers who finally understand that social media can sell products and services. I think Fixed Operations is a gold mine for them to take advantage of.
Facebook is only going to continue to grow in popularity. More and more businesses are going to wake up and hear, ”There is Gold in Facebook Ads!” I would take advantage of this type of marketing before your competition does and while it is very cost effective. Remember to get the proper education so you can create these ads or find the right agency partner to help maximize your marketing efforts.
If I can be of service or if you need help seeing this in action please reach out to me @glennpasch.