3 things Car Dealers are doing wrong on Facebook

Part of what we do at Petrol Digital is asses a dealers Facebook page. Here are three of the most common things dealers are doing wrong on Facebook.

1. Not replying to reviews

The Facebook 5 star review system is your public CSI score. It is the one every Facebook user will see when they go to your page.

Nothing is as much of a buzzkill as landing on a Facebook page that has a negative review that has not been publically handled. Worse still, when you view a page on Facebook\’s app, reviews are the first thing you see.

There is nothing wrong with a negative review on your Facebook. What we as potential customers want to see is that the dealer has handled the complaint.

Reply publically, thank them for the feedback, show compassion, offer avenue to take offline to be rectified.

Just as importantly is how you handle the positive reviews. At the very minimum, you should be thanking the customer for the feedback, positive or negative.

2. Waterboard the fans with promotions

Promotion after promotion after promotion after…

Your Facebook community is not a nameless collective, a few of which might just bite at the occasional ad. Your Facebook community are people who are already interested and have show the initiative and intent to connect with you.

So what do we, the users want? Value. We want value and to get to know you a bit better.

We want to know more about our cars without coming to ask you. We want to see how to connect our phones to the car or that you are now offering a new product, such as tyres. We want to know the go to person for servicing. We want to see your special promotions.

Yes. I have contradicted myself.

The point I am making though, is that promotions are still ok, as long as you mix it up a bit with valuable information and as long as there is a special offer.

The standard price of a car is not something special. A discounted price is.

Which leads to the next point:

3. No capture pages

We see this so often. Basic Facebook ads that lead to a page that is a novel of text. What would you like us to do now? Read it?

No. Ain\’t nobody got time for that.

Make it easy for us. You advertised your offer, the webpage full of text gives no avenue to keep me on the boil and to take it further. Do not assume that we will see or even want to call the phone number. We saw your ad at 8pm at night when you are closed. We won\’t remember to contact you the next day with all of the other things on our minds, after all we are the customer, you should be calling us wanting to talk. Make it easy for us.

Ensure the ad leads to a little bit of info about the offer and at the very least a small form of no more than three fields (Name, phone number, email) for you to contact us back on.

To make the online sales process as easy as possible remember:

1. Reduce the number of digital moves (3 or under is ideal – click fb ad, fill in online form, click submit)
2. Zero Manual non-digital moves (requiring user to make manual action of picking up the phone to call)

In the end, the Facebook basis are not particularly hard. It just requires putting yourselves in the customers shoes, a bit of thought and a bit of effort to ensure it is as effective as it can be.