How to advertise your car dealership on Facebook

Want to know how to sell more cars online? Facebook’s Marketplace might be the solution.
Consider this: 78% of car shoppers in the US who plan to purchase a vehicle within three months usually have yet to decide whom to buy from. This gap in advertising can be addressed by implying the right Marketplace strategy for dealerships.

In this article, you’ll learn how to advertise your car dealership on Facebook effectively, and use automation to grow your business by creating well-optimized dynamic ads. 

We’ll also discuss Facebook’s advanced machine learning and the right integrations that help you manage and capture prospective shoppers.

What Facebook Marketplace offers for car dealerships

Facebook is a specialized, mobile-friendly way to reach customers who want to research and purchase a car. With a unique set of features, it helps you get your dealership listings in front of interested buyers. 

As a customer, it’s reassuring to know if a dealership is reliable or if the salesperson giving you advice is really an expert. In response to this demand, Marketplace is designed to help users who want to research, reach and connect with auto buyers.

As a car dealership, all these features help reduce friction in the car purchase process, target your audience more accurately, and finalize more car sales.

Car dealerships on Facebook Marketplace: How to increase sales 

Is ​​Facebook Marketplace any good for car dealerships? The short answer is a big YES! 

We are looking at a dynamic platform that offers many advantages. It helps you:

• Kickstart your car dealership journey;
• Use specialized tools to run ads and optimize audience targeting;
• And above all, access to a popular platform. 

Before discussing how to create a Facebook Marketplace listing, let’s talk a little more about its specialized features for car dealerships.

What is Facebook dealership?

Marketplace’s objective is to connect buyers and sellers. Facebook Dealerships is a subsection under Marketplace, where car dealers can create vehicle listings directly from their Page. 

The list will show up within the Vehicles tab of your dealership Page. Once set up, your dealership listings are displayed together with individual sellers’ listings on Marketplace. 

The platform’s user-centered design lets buyers filter between dealerships or individual listings during their search. For example, they can search based on the car model they are searching for, or the dealership in their area. By default, Marketplace displays listings within 40 miles of the user’s location.

Marketplace best practices for car dealerships

What do you need to focus on when advertising on Marketplace? There are several key aspects to focus on to ensure successful outcomes. Let’s review some of them.

• Focus on the local market

Marketplace’s algorithm displays listings that are geographically accessible to people who are searching for a service or product, including car dealership services. 

It also makes sense since most people prefer to see a car in person before actually paying for it. That’s why it’s best to target your audience locally if you want the highest ad returns.

• Offer an authentic experience 

Receiving an authentic experience makes users prefer your services over car supermarkets. 

You can display your dealership’s authenticity in several ways: themed content during the holidays, posting success stories of your past clients and testimonials, or creating posts that show the faces of your employees. 

This is not a direct sales strategy but can make your business both more relatable and reliable. 

• Include high-quality images

Using low-quality and unappealing images does nothing but repel a purchase-ready customer_ even if you are offering compelling deals. 

Today’s audiences have an eye for genuine marketing ideas and great content. Make sure all of your images have high resolution and are correctly formatted. 

• Curate your copy

Do not underestimate your ad’s text. A good copy catches the attention of likely customers. It should also include informative descriptions that can answer all your buyer’s questions and potentially close a deal. Test out different copies to see what works best for your ads.

• Add attractive finance-related offers

A discount or an offer helps your audience overcome decision fatigue. Leaving room for negotiation also encourages people with genuine interest to get in touch with you. 

You may consider adding the price for the new vehicle, the second-hand vehicle trade-in fees, and financing options (such as monthly payments, loans, etc.), if applicable. For someone in need of a new car and a tight budget, this might be the clincher.

How to import your vehicle listings on Facebook

The import data for each vehicle should include the vehicle make, model, year, mileage, price, and some photos. You can do this either manually or automatically. 

Manually

We run imports from your dealership’s internal system using Google Sheets. If you do this manually, you’ll need to download this data in CSV format and upload it to your Facebook ad account.

However, the process is somewhat complex and calls for developer-level skills to import your vehicle catalogue into Facebook. 

Automatically

Alternatively, you can streamline your imports using automation. Building seamless data bridges between Facebook and automotive CRM (and other marketing tools) offers many advantages. 

Connecting the entire marketing stack lets you create an accurate profile of your target audience, optimize your ad campaigns, reach more qualified leads, and keep your listings updated automatically. 

Learn more about how automation makes a difference for the automotive industry.

How to sell a car on Facebook Marketplace: Top strategies

With these strategies, you’ll know how to sell more cars on Facebook Marketplace and bring in the results you are looking for.

Create relevant content

Relatable content creates a strong connection with potential customers and also helps generate leads.

First, design a content strategy that reflects your company’s values and is aligned with your marketing objectives. Then, publish your posts consistently to keep your target audience engaged. 

When creating a content strategy, always make sure to:

• Create original content
• Target your local market
• Use videos
• Leverage community/seasonal-oriented content  
• Remain consistent and relatable to your audience

Setting up a Marketplace catalogue

Facebook offers single-image and catalogue (multi-image) formats. While the single-image format is still a go-to for many marketers, the catalogue version is more suitable for the dealership. 

These ads are made up of multiple images that can display an in-depth view of the car you are offering. What’s more, it lets you use a longer description compared to single-image ads.

Set up a budget

On average, car dealerships can expect to pay around $25-$50 per lead through their Facebook ads. 

However, the marketing budget is always determined by your business’s objectives and limits. For instance, you should adjust your budget depending on the size of your business and the number of leads generated. 

When it comes to the actual ad costs, there are also other factors. Handle them well, and you’ll get the most out of every dollar you spend. An optimized landing page, targeting the right audience, and creating great content_ all can help you get high-quality leads at a lower cost.

Leverage Facebook’s algorithm

In addition to costs, Facebook’s algorithm is another reason that you should target your audience more accurately. This helps the platform’s machine learning to find out which audience segments respond best to your ads and expand your reach. 

Avoid adding too many interests to the targeting, and keep your custom audience lists updated. Likewise, adjust your content according to your audiences’ wants and needs. 

Set up two campaigns simultaneously

Use the same ad content to set up two campaigns simultaneously: one for targeting the immediate geographic location of your dealership (within 15-20 miles) and the other for targeting the broader locations (across your state or region).

Run remarketing campaigns

Remarketing shows ads to users based on their past interactions/displays of interest in your brand or previous marketing campaigns. This could be a request for a test drive or a quotation.

Your remarketing campaigns should focus on offering people ads for automobiles that are most relevant to them. These include:

• Dynamic Remarketing (based on the SRPs and VDPs that a person visited).
• In-Store Remarketing (based on physical visits to your dealership).
• Post-Purchase Remarketing (focusing on converting one-off customers into lifetime customers).

Facebook Inventory Ads

Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads are exceptionally high-performing for car dealerships. This feature makes selling both new and used car inventory much more efficient. 

Target a broad audience

In addition to other campaigns, you can also run ads with no interests or a single interest, such as “car” or “used cars”. This helps both Facebook’s algorithm and users with better searchability. 

Run A/B tests

A/B tests could be performed for testing a variety of elements: your copy, images, target audience lists, and so on. Test to find out what works and what doesn’t, and use these results to optimize your future campaigns. 

Use automation 

Whether you want to focus on Facebook’s machine learning or connect with users with genuine interest, automation integrations allow you to boost your audience targeting. 

As an official Meta partner, LeadsBridge helps you to build high-performing ads by targeting your ideal custom audience.

To learn more, here is all you need to know about creating more effective ads by targeting your ideal custom audience through automation.

How to set up your Marketplace catalogue 

Step 1: Forming your vehicle listing 

To get started with listing vehicles, you’ll need to set up the stage first. 

a) Create Listings

Facebook lets you create listings directly from car dealerships’ Facebook pages. Under the Vehicles tab on the dealership Page, you can find and edit your listings. 

Once displayed, the content of your posts encourages buyers to click on them, at which point they’ll be redirected to your Page and DM you for more info.

You can choose to create your listings by: 

• Manually typing in the details of each vehicle
• Use automated data bridges to sync your information to Marketplace seamlessly
• Set up a catalogue for your inventory ads using Sincro or Naked Lime.

Please remember that using a Facebook inventory partner to import the existing catalogues is no longer an option. More on that in just a few paragraphs.

b) Add high-quality images & descriptions

You can upload up to 10 best high-quality images that show different angles of the vehicle. Get the help of a professional photographer to create elegant and descriptive images.

Include all the necessary details in your ad’s copy, such as brand, model, color, etc. Then, use the right tags and keywords to improve your ad’s SERP rankings as well as alternative searches.

c) Manage your inventory

Facebook Marketplace also allows advertisers to create, list, manage, and advertise their inventory. To get the most out of this feature, consider adding filters to your listing and get more results by changing your ad’s CTA to the ‘View inventory’ option.

Step 2: Improve the reach of your vehicle listing

After creating your listing, you’ll need to improve its visibility in order to reach more potential customers. You can:

a) Consider using the ‘boost the listing’ feature

Select the ‘boost the listing’ feature in your dashboard (on the Facebook marketplace cars and trucks page) to increase the impressions of your listing.

Here, you can customize the display duration, define target audiences, and add a budget. Facebook then uses this info to filter through the audience list and bring you in touch with more potential buyers. 

b) Inventory ads

Facebook ads need no introduction when it comes to lead generation and getting better visibility. Once your ad campaign is active, Facebook enables you to reach new people and retarget customers who have already bought cars or trucks from you. 

Step 3: Conversions & transaction 

Like any other form of advertising, the final stage is the bottom of the sales funnel. Here, you are dealing with high-quality leads who are likely to be sales-ready.

To close a deal, you’ll need to keep a few things in mind:

• Make sure to leverage speed-to-lead by getting in touch with interested users/potential buyers.
• Stay transparent. During your communication with them, mention any applicable registration or shipping costs involved distinctly. 
• Before finalizing the deal, ensure the authenticity of the buyers by checking their credentials and Facebook profiles.

New changes announced by Meta for vehicle listings

Facebook’s automotive advertising policy in 2021

On September 13, 2021, Facebook announced new changes to automotive advertising with the aim of supporting auto dealers. These features helped reduce reliance on other third-party dealers to eventually improve the end-user experience by removing any middleman.

What did this mean for businesses? Third-party partners could no longer import vehicle lists to stop them from creating parallel Marketplace listings, which often led to duplicate inventory across the Marketplace. 

These duplicate lists only made the vehicle available at higher prices, nonplused buyers, and made attribution difficult.

Mata’s automotive advertising policy in 2023

Meta did not stop at partner listings, however. It has now decided to take down free business listings in order to clean up the Facebook Marketplace advertising space of fake or misleading ads. 

According to the 2023 announcement, business pages will not be able to create free listings for vehicles and real estate. Starting from January 30, 2023, all the existing listings created by business pages will be permanently deleted.

Please note that non-business users can continue to sell their vehicle or property on Facebook Marketplace by accessing it through their personal profile.

Facebook Lead Ads for car dealership lead generation 

Generate leads from customers who want to sell their vehicles. These are users who have:

• Expressed an interest in selling their car
• Been considering a trade-in
• Shown signs of likelihood to buy or sell a car soon.

Then, all you have to do is manage your leads and run the right Facebook Lead Ads follow-up campaign.
Here are some more tips you can use to generate leads for your automotive business. 

Lead generation tips on Facebook ads for car salesmen

How to sell more cars on Facebook? Don’t overlook the potential of Facebook Lead Ads.

Follow these simple tips: 

Create an optimized landing page

• Well designed, SEO optimized, and easy to navigate. 
• Include a form where potential customers can provide their contact information.
• Mobile friendly and includes a Meta pixel.

Consider video content

There are many reasons why you should use video content. Mostly because they:

• Are more engaging than text-based content;
• Make the advertising more trustable by showing the dealership or salesperson;
• Help reach a larger audience with its ads;
• Could become viral if you use catchy and creative ideas;
• And have higher content engagement.

Push a variety of ad content on Facebook

We recommend testing different variants of your content to target a broad audience. Use different ad objectives to target both Lead Generation and Lead Conversion.

Then, use automation integration to streamline your lead data management.

Run Events

Facebook ads for car salesmen are perfect because they also facilitate event promotion to attract customers. A well-planned event helps you show off the dealership’s inventory and generate leads. This, in turn, helps Facebook’s algorithm to highlight your services for those interested in your dealership. 

Types of events that dealerships can run:

• Car show
• Car swap meet
• Car auction
• Cookouts

Need more inspiration? Here are 15 car dealership event ideas you can use all year long.

Automate automotive campaigns with LeadsBridge integrations

LeadsBridge integrations enable you to leverage the full potential of Facebook Marketplace ads.

These data bridges help create highly-targeted custom audiences. How? By automatically syncing your CRM segments, email marketing contacts, or customer lists with Facebook in order to retarget or exclude leads at every stage of your advertising funnel.

Benefits of using LeadsBridge for your car dealership

Using automation, you are able to:

• Communicate with your potential customers at the right time
• Build real-time data syncing between Facebook and your favorite automotive marketing tools
• Cut out CSV files and manual exports and imports
• Generate and reach better-qualified leads
• Send automatic welcome emails and SMS
• Define more accurate target audiences
• Get easy and fast-tracked access to the Meta products thanks to our official partner assistance
• Choose from self-service integrations and managed services based on your company’s needs
• Handle data securely and remain GRDP-compliant

LeadsBridge solutions for dealerships on Marketplace 

Higher conversions and better lead nurturing

To maximize Facebook Marketplace ads for your business, you’ll need to optimize them for the best performance. Using automated data bridges, we help you streamline your data transfer between Facebook Marketplace and your favorite CRM, autoresponders, or automotive app. 

This way, you can funnel your leads from Facebook directly to your marketing apps and provide a timely response to your potential buyers.

Accurate audience targeting 

You can also integrate your data stack with Facebook Custom Audience and Lookalike Audience for more accurate targeting.

First, create a Facebook Custom Audience from your customers’ list on your CRM or autoresponder through LeadsBridge. Then, you can enhance your audience targeting and retargeting on Facebook Marketplace and maximize your ROI. 

Moreover, you can create a variety of high-performing campaigns through Lookalike Audiences.

Successful examples of Facebook ads for car dealerships

So far, we’ve looked at all the aspects of great Facebook ads for car dealerships. From targeting the best custom audiences based on your CRM, customer lists, or pre-determined “in-market” audiences, tracking parameters, and the ad’s structure itself. 

Now the question is; what do the best Facebook ads for car dealerships look like? 

Let’s review some real-life examples of ads you can use to run successful campaigns.

Patterson Nissan’s Dynamic Carousel ad

This car dealership’s Facebook ad displays a longer copy that features a transparent financial offer, local highlights, and all the details that a car shopper might be interested in. 

After publication, Space Automotive reported a significant boost in clicks and engagement for this ad.

The ad’s call-to-action sets the expectation of a “Facebook form,”. Once a user clicks on it, they are redirected to a simple form that collects customer contact info. 

The advertiser then processes this data and sends it formatted correctly to the dealership CRM in seconds. This workflow could also be automated to increase the campaign’s efficiency. 

For instance, LeadsBridge offers integrations that facilitate real-time data sync between the advertising platform and the marketing tool you use every day, such as a CRM. Here are some popular car dealership integrations: 

Ads such as this offer effective lead-generation opportunities while decreasing the costs to a fraction of third-party or Google PPC ads.

Madera Ford’s Collection ad

Facebook ads for car dealerships are effective means to accelerate sales of both new and used vehicles. Take Madera Ford, for example. 

This ad expertly showcases their available used cars in the vicinity of their stores.

This Facebook auto ad is thoughtfully crafted to align with the customers’ budgets, spotlighting the car’s price and payment options, along with other features.

Choosing Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads offers a laser-focused approach to users with automotive interests, setting your dealership apart in the online marketplace.

Wonderland Auto’s single-image ad

Here’s a good example of a straightforward image ad that seamlessly directs viewers to a high-impact website. While Carousel ads are considered to be the best Facebook ads for car dealerships, image ads can aim at various objectives for both targeting and retargeting your customers. 

This ad shows an ideal canvas to project Wonderland Auto‘s brand authority or time-bound promotions. The ad effectively showcases the model and features while encouraging customers to take action with a straightforward copy.

Final takeaways

By creating a vehicle inventory listing on the Facebook Marketplace cars and trucks, you are ready to target your audience. 

Once you have figured out how to advertise your car dealership on Facebook, the next step is to improve your campaign by using the best automotive strategy and best practices, such as uploading high-quality visuals and optimized audience lists. 

Using LeadsBridge, however, you can build a seamless connection between Facebook and automotive CRM. This connection allows you to better optimize your ad campaigns efficiently, and increase the quality of the leads you generate, and get in touch with them as they come in. 

We are an official Meta partner that offers integrations with the top automotive tools available on the market, such as ADF/XML, VinSolutions, DealerSocket, lead, Velocify, ProMax, etc.

Discover over 380 integrations with the leading automotive apps by LeadsBridge.