| Your Dealership Needs to Be on Facebook |
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| Written by Ed Steenman |
| Friday, 16 October 2009 00:00 |
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Your dealership may not have any plans to create a Facebook campaign, but, the fact is, your competitors are already making their plans right now to take advantage of what Facebook has to offer. Consider that right now you can order a pizza on Pizza Hut’s Facebook page; Volkswagen will tell you which car is most suited to your personality based on your personal profile on Facebook; and Coca Cola and Starbucks each have almost four million fans waiting to see their next wall post.
By developing special applications and offering expanded services, these successful brands have realized the full functionality of Facebook brand pages and created unique experiences for their customers. They’ve also leveraged their traditional outreach to bolster their Facebook awareness.
Ultimately, the goal is to drive inventory inquiries, transactions, and build relationships with current and potential customers. Unlike email blasts, SPAM, and direct mail that is easily passed over and ignored, Facebook wall posts are not. Speak to these “fans” in their language and they’ll be more likely to stay with you for years. Facebook is their language.
So where do you start? You could set up a personal profile (like one you may have yourself) for your business, but since that technically violates the terms of the agreement with Facebook, you run the risk they will arbitrarily delete this profile. The proper way for a dealership to set up a page is to use a Facebook “Brand Page” which is different from personal profiles in many ways. This also benefits you because Facebook has added all kinds of cool features to brand pages that you can’t have on a personal profile.
A brand page will allow you to embed a fully functioning version of your dealership’s website directly into your Facebook brand page. That means users (i.e. potential customers) can do everything they can do on your website including search your inventory, see specials, get directions etc., but they can also become a fan, which essentially opts them into receiving messages and updates from you on their Facebook wall just like they would from any of their other Facebook friends.
While establishing a brand page isn’t much different from setting up a personal profile, it’s fairly complex to make it dynamically functional and this will require a professional. A properly executed dynamic Facebook page should be able to:
1. Reach your customer base with wall post messages in real time.
2. Perpetuate your current traditional messaging.
3. Allow customers to search your inventory.
4. Keep track of customer feedback.
5. Reply to feedback.
6. Allow customers to interact with your brand using user produced content like pictures and videos.
7. Allow customers to share your brand’s posted content.
8. Utilize the full functionality of your existing website within the Facebook space.
The creation of business “brand pages” is a relatively new development from Facebook, but given the amazing growth of this social media platform, it’s an area that simply can’t be ignored. In reviewing the tracking analytics of one of the larger dealerships we work with, we’ve been amazed to see the referrals from their new Facebook brand pages already begin to rival, and in some cases surpassing, the click- throughs of the now more traditional online advertising vehicles we’ve been using. Especially notable since the creation of a dynamic Facebook “brand page” is largely a onetime investment and that we haven’t begun to fully tap their user base.
Ed Steenman is a traditional, new media & broadcast specialist, digital strategist, and avid blogger. His firm, Steenman Associates a full service advertising agency and digital services firm specializing in working with local automotive dealerships. He can be reached at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or 425-427-9692.
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