CARY, N.C. -

“Facebook can’t be used for sales.”  

“SEM and SEO are just black holes for advertising dollars.”

“Social advertising isn’t profitable.”

These are just a few of the arguments dealers are faced with as they try to enter the worlds of social media and search engines to advertise their vehicles.

However, many experts and consultants are telling dealers that the opportunities to build sales through these outlets are there — you just have to know how to make the most of them.

That said, customers are using social media whether you’re there or not, said Normand Théberge, vice president strategy and dealer solutions at Canada-based TRADER Corp.

In fact, according to TRADER, 38 percent of people use Facebook to seek out opinions from their friends and family about a dealership, and 53 percent will visit a dealership’s Facebook page.

But many dealers balk at the idea of getting involved in a digital marketing area that doesn’t lead to sales.

So, what’s the truth?

Search engines and social media can, in fact, be used to build sales opportunities.

Using Social Media for Sales

Many will advise against using social media for sales, but Paul Potratz, founder and chief operating officer of Potratz Partners Advertising, says “it just all depends on how you do it.”

Figuring out the best way to approach potential customers through social media depends on defining the differences between social media networking and social media advertising.

First, social media networking is a dealer’s time to connect with customers on a personal level.

“Social media networking is the same thing as a local rotary club or chamber mixer in your town, except it takes place online.  If you were a member of your town’s local rotary club that has 300 members meeting every week, how would you interact?” Potratz asks. “In other words would you go to the meeting and try to sell your services?  I think not … but you would in fact build some great friendships and relationships.”

These social media “connections” then have the potential to result in sales, and “word of mouth” sales, as well, with friends telling friends about your store on outlets such as Facebook.

Though social media networking may have limited opportunities for presenting inventory, social media advertising, however, is completely different.

“It’s the act of placing ads and paying for exposure to a specific geographic area or specifically targeting individuals based on categories, such as expecting parents, auto intenders, new-to-area and several dozen more,” Potratz said.

Potratz even went on to explain that this type of advertising is “one of the most powerful and highest return-on-investment approaches available today.”

One example of how social media ad strategies can work to benefit your store is through Facebook partner categories, “which combines a person’s offline behaviors with online behaviors and serves them with specific ads.  It can even be based on vehicle registration data,” Potratz explained.

Théberge looked at the issue from a slightly different angle.

He explained that “sales is largely about managing relationships with your clients, and social media helps facilitate this in a big way.”

Théberge contends the use of social media spans the entire “consumer journey,” from consideration and evaluation, to purchase and post-sales interaction.

“The best way to build sales opportunities without pushing sales is to use social media to interact with your customers in a positive way in the pre-sales consideration phase through to the post-sales interaction phase,” Théberge said.

Though it may be challenging to attribute sales directly to social media initiatives, Théberge explained that as dealers get more “sophisticated” with their campaigns, ROI will become more evident.

SEO and SEM: Why They Matter

When it comes to digital marketing tools such as search engine optimization and search engine marketing, the content and strategy becomes a little more complicated.

Should dealers even bother?

“It's definitely something dealers need to adopt to stay competitive. Dealers can't ignore the fact that life is happening online. The website is their dealership represented online, and SEO and SEM play a huge part in bringing customers through the ‘digital doors,’” Théberge said.

He went on to relate SEO and SEM use to real estate:  “Figuratively speaking, it's the difference between having your dealership in a large city versus having your dealership in an abandoned town.” 

Potratz said, “without SEM, a business is missing out on the majority of lead and sales opportunities.”

In response to many business owners who explain they have tried SEM and didn’t see a return, Potratz says, “The reason for this is simple: SEM is very complex today, and requires continuous training. There are some top-level certifications available from Google and other firms, which you can look for when researching a firm to help.”

SEM is ultimately just an extension of a dealership’s advertising campaign that allows the store to target consumers who are searching for keywords associated with their business.

“It is hard for me to understand how a dealership can justify spending $5,000 for a radio campaign, $8,000 for a TV campaign, $10,000 for a direct mail, $7,000 for billboards, when 97 percent of that audience does not want or care about the dealership message,” Potratz said.

“That same dealership will hesitate to spend a fraction of that amount on SEM to reach people who are actually physically typing in a keyword string, looking for what the dealership is offering.  These business owners have not built a proper strategy or don’t understand the marketing opportunity,” he added.

SEO, on the other hand, is a little easier to do in-house; that is, if you are looking to foster an organic SEO strategy.

Many dealers’ complaints with SEO  is the pay-to-play mentality; in other words, the notion that you pay to have a consultant try and push your business up a few spots on Google, someone gets ahead of you, and the cycle continues.

Explaining how dealers can really measure ROI for this marketing avenue, Théberge said, “SEO performance should always be evaluated by analyzing net increases. High-performing SEO campaigns will have larger net increases of both relevance of terms as well as search volume. You also have to take seasonality into account, as it affects search volume and therefore traffic.”

Potratz says the creation of content within the dealership is actually one of the best SEO strategies, and a dealer can do that in-house, with his or her own employees.

“Organic SEO is basically the creation of content within the dealership.  The best content is salesperson vehicle demos or walk-a-rounds done on video, customer testimonials and helpful how-to videos,” Potratz said.

Efficiency in SEM

Though it is up to the dealers to decide whether SEO and SEM are worth their time, Théberge offered a few tips on SEM campaigns, which he says are “all about efficiency.”

“It really should be looked at as an arms race, especially since Google rewards you exponentially based on your quality by increasing your bidding power, and not many people realize this,” Théberge stressed.

According to Théberge, a few ways to increase SEM efficiency include “deep-linking” SEM ads to the pages that are most relevant to what as they clicked on — not just a landing page or the index page.

Next, cleaning up campaigns by implementing negative keywords and removing poor-performing keywords might show more ROI on SEM efforts.

Lastly, Théberge explained that dealerships should compete for positions No. 2 and No. 3, noting that the No. 1 position is a little overrated for two reasons:

First, he said: “There are trigger-happy clickers who don't completely read the copy and click on the first ad. They tend to click out right away and produce a slightly higher bounce rate.”

The second reason: “Considering these clickers and the cost of a No. 1 position, position No. 2 and even No. 3 can lend a better cost per lead.”

Digital Marketing: The First Step

When planning a digital marketing strategy, Potratz said the first step is to get an understanding of how consumers really shop.

Gone are the days that most car shoppers checked the classifieds and local car sales publications to peruse inventory.

The truth is, most of dealerships’ customers most likely used a digital avenue to search for their next ride.

“A lot has changed since the radio, TV and print days, and every marketing budget today should be at least a 40 percent digital spend, 35 percent traditional spend and 25 percent for education and training.  There are a lot of opportunities today, but if you don’t know what you don’t know, you’ll be left at a disadvantage to your competitors,” Potratz concluded.

Editor's Note: For more digital marketing tips and tools, see the latest Auto Remarketing Canade Digital Magazine here.