Car dealerships face tough competition, so having a strong advertising strategy is the only way. In this article, we’ll talk about the top five car dealership advertising ideas that can help you attract more customers. In a way, these strategies also allow you to learn how to advertise your car dealership on Meta platforms.
In addition, we’ll discuss why these strategies are important and how you can implement them effectively using the right tools and integrations, such as:
Why car dealership advertising matters
A functional advertising strategy can be the only difference between you and your competitors who may have to shut their businesses down. It lets you reach potential buyers, showcase your inventory, and build your brand.
With the right strategies, you can attract new customers and retain existing ones. Advertising also helps you stay competitive in the market, especially since 88% of buyers use the Internet to buy a car.
When people start looking for a car, 6 out of 10 don’t know exactly what they want. They think about different makes and models and whether to buy new or used. You need the right advertising strategy to help them overcome this decision-making fatigue.
Creating the best advertising for car dealerships
When people are looking at different options, dealerships that use mobile and digital channels can really influence their choice of car and dealership.
Knowing what shoppers want during their online search, for instance, is important. It allows you to use the right strategies to send the right messages at each step of your buying journey.
Sounds easy enough?
Well, there’s more to it.
The challenge for most dealers is to focus more on the customer by offering the seamless buying experiences that consumers want. At the same time, they need to maximize long-term value for their businesses by tapping into new and existing revenue sources.
Here are our top five car dealership advertising ideas that embrace all these aspects:
1. Facebook advertising for car dealerships
Facebook is a powerful platform for car dealership advertising for many reasons. It allows you to target specific audiences based on their interests, behaviors, and demographics. And with over 3 billion active users, you have a vast audience to reach.
Facebook advertising for car dealerships works because of the great many industry-specific tools. These features range from building Augmented Reality experiences for your dealership, to sending out promotional content.
These are the must-have features in your automotive dealership advertising toolkit
Lead ads
Lead ads across Meta solutions make it easy for users to submit their information directly without leaving the platform. This can help you generate high-quality leads quickly.
- Help customers find nearby auto dealers easily.
- Engage potential customers with full-screen, visually appealing ads.
- Customize ads to increase form submissions, showing the right car model and color.
- Enable quick calls or messages to dealers after form submission.
- Let your customers select preferred times for appointments and test drives.
- Customize the thank-you page to improve your customer acquisition rates.
- Use lead ad forms to quickly collect essential customer information.
Integrating lead ads with your automotive CRM, autoresponder app, or other lead management platforms allows you to nurture and potentially convert these leads.
Targeted ads
Targeting options help advertisers reach people interested in cars or those who have recently searched for car-related content.
This includes:
- New customers who can be targeted based on specific interests or location, using categories like where they live, their interests, and their behaviors.
- Custom audiences lets you target users who have visited your website, used your app, are on your customer list, or engaged with your profiles and content.
- Lookalike audiences by using custom audiences. You can also target new people similar to your existing customers with Advantage lookalike.
However, you’ll need to automatically connect your CRM to custom audiences in order to provide the platform with enough information.
When creating a lead ad, set your performance goal. Choose either leads optimization or conversion leads optimization based on your business goals.
For setting up Conversion leads performance goal, share data from your CRM to target higher quality leads. Even if your CRM already receives lead info, you need to connect it to send data back to Meta so it can help you increase your campaign’s targeting precision.
Retargeting
Conversion tracking features allow you access information about your leads’ journey. You can set up Conversions API for CRM in combination with Facebook Pixel to retarget users who have visited your website but didn’t make a purchase. Then, show them ads featuring the cars they viewed to encourage them to return and buy.
Connecting your CRM with Meta, either directly or through a third-party tool. This lets your CRM send the lead data you collected from your car dealership advertising campaigns to Meta. This helps you optimize your lead ads for better quality leads rather than just a high number of leads.
2. Hosting events and promotions
Using events and promotions is a classic dealership advertising idea. It helps create excitement and draw attention to your dealership. They also provide an opportunity to showcase your inventory and engage with potential customers in person.
Here’s an example:
Let’s review some of the popular ways to host successful events for your car dealership:
- Organize car shows to display your latest models and allow customers to test drive vehicles.
- Offer special deals during holidays or at the end of the year to attract buyers looking for a good deal.
- Host events to thank your current customers, offering them exclusive deals and sneak peeks at new arrivals.
Looking for Inspiration? Here are 20 ever-green car dealership event ideas you can use anytime.
3. Email marketing campaigns
Email marketing is a robust yet cost-effective way to reach potential buyers and keep your current automotive customers engaged. With the right configuration, this strategy allows you to send personalized messages and promotions directly to your audience.
Set up your email marketing by using:
- Newsletters to send regular newsletters with updates on new inventory, promotions, and events.
- Personalized offers by segmenting your email list and sending personalized offers based on the recipient’s preferences and past interactions with your dealership.
- Follow-up emails with automated follow-up emails to nurture leads who have shown interest but haven’t yet made a purchase.
Learn more about effective email marketing strategies here.
4. Used car dealership advertising ideas
Marketing a used car dealership depends mostly on how good your understanding of your local market is. That, in addition to a well-placed automotive marketing strategy and the right ad campaign.
To begin with, let’s take a look at some of the top used car dealership advertising ideas to help you target audience for a preloved vehicle:
Keep your local market at the focal point
Targeting your local community is one of the best ways to attract customers. Tailor your promotions to fit the needs of your area, offer special deals for locals, sponsor community events, or team up with nearby businesses for cross-promotions. Building a strong local presence can turn your dealership into a go-to choice for people in your area.
Work on your online visibility
With nearly half of car buyers starting their search online, it’s important that your dealership is easy to find in local search results. Start by improving your website’s SEO with local keywords. Also, make sure your business information is consistent across online directories.
Encouraging happy customers to leave reviews is another robust way to add to your business’s credibility. Positive reviews and good SEO practices can greatly improve your online presence and get more attention to the used car you are advertising.
Employ omnichannel advertising
Reaching interested users across multiple platforms increases your chances of being noticed. Start with a single, consistent message in your ads and then adapt its tone, length, and creatives for different channels like Meta ads or email. Appearing in multiple places lets you stay top-of-mind for customers who are looking for a used car.
5. Implementing automation
Automation streamlines your car dealership advertising efforts, so you’ll get the most out of each marketing dollar you are spending. It also helps you manage your automotive leads, follow up with potential customers, and keep your advertising campaigns running smoothly.
LeadsBridge helps connect your dealership’s ads across Meta solutions to your CRM system and other marketing apps. This integration automates data transfer between Meta and your marketing platforms, making your automotive lead management seamless.
What does that mean? Let’s go through the particulars of using automated integrations:
Automated lead data syncing
When new leads from your advertising platform such as ads across Meta solutions, lead ad integrations automatically sync them to your dealership’s CRM. This is done in real-time, which makes leads immediately available to your team for follow-up and increasing conversion chances.
Eliminating manual data entry
Automating data transfer between Meta and your CRM saves time and reduces errors associated with manual entry.
Better lead segmentation and management
Automatically synced lead data can be segmented by interest level, demographics, and interaction history. This allows for establishing a much more effective management and targeted marketing.
More Precise targeting strategy
The more data about car sales leads you have, the more accurate your audience targeting can become. For instance, integrations with custom audiences on Meta platforms allow for refined targeting. Then, you can create more personalized follow-up actions and marketing campaigns.
Better lead nurturing
Seamless data flow between your advertising platforms, such as Facebook & Instagram from Meta, and your CRM enables detailed insights for crafting tailored communications. This also means streamlining SMS, email, and autoresponder systems.
Enabling cookieless tracking
Integrations with conversion tracking tools let you track ad performance, understand customer behavior, and refine strategies based on solid data. If you act on these insights, you can also optimize your Facebook ad spend.
Final takeaways
Facebook is a great, mobile-friendly way to reach customers looking to buy a car. It has special features that help you show your dealership listings to people who are interested in buying.
To make the most of these car dealership advertising strategies, you’ll need to build an automated data ecosystem. LeadsBridge’s integrations can help you streamline your marketing efforts, sync data across platforms, and track your campaign performance effectively.
By implementing these car dealership advertising ideas, you can enhance your marketing strategy and attract more customers.
