Here’s a stark truth that may make some of our competitors, employees at Facebook, and even some of my own employees a little upset: car dealers don’t need social media marketing to be successful. Search, proper website maintenance, display ads, reputation management, and mobile marketing may all have a claim of being more important that social media when it comes to driving leads and foot traffic to a dealership.
There may be nothing more important in Facebook marketing than establishing the right goals. Most car dealers are not having as much success on Facebook as they could because they aren’t strategically defining what they want to accomplish. You might have a general goal in mind of branding, driving traffic, or simply having a social media presence, but if you set the right goals up front, allow these goals to drive your strategy, and then execute on the strategies, your chances of success go up tremendously.
There was a promise silently made by social media a few years back. It was so prevalent at the 2009 round of conferences from NADA to Digital Dealer that many might have thought that social media would eventually encompass the entire internet marketing required by a dealership to be successful. The promise was this: “Everyone’s going to be on social media in the next couple of years and you’ll be able to reach them.”
