Complete Guide to Growing Your Car Dealership's Facebook Page in 2023

In this guide, we’ll be taking a deep dive into the best ways to grow your car dealership’s Facebook page by offering quality and well-planned content, exploring paid options, using interactive digital PR tactics, and more.

Is it worth trying to grow your Facebook page and following?

Absolutely. If you're spending the time to run a Facebook page for your car dealership (which you should be), you need to make sure that your attempts are worthwhile. This means taking the steps to ensure that you’re doing enough with your activity and profile to grow your page and its following. Having a Facebook page that you don’t update or use to its full potential can not only put customers off, but also defeats the point of having a page in the first place.

Why can an inactive Facebook page put potential customers off? Consider how the modern consumer decides which businesses to support and spend their money with. They of course want to make sure that they’re spending their hard-earned money with a reliable and trustworthy business, so they carry out research, and car dealerships are not an exception. This research includes asking for referrals, speaking to the dealership, and checking their website and social media profiles. When a website or social media page is inactive or out of date, this can make the dealership look careless or even make it appear as if they are no longer in business.

Who has “Your Guide to Growing Your Car Dealership’s Facebook Page” been written for?

This guide has been written with individuals in mind who are responsible for enhancing any secondhand car dealership’s social media presence. This could be a marketing specialist, administrator, or an owner, depending on the operations of the dealership in question.

The guide will give you steps, advice, and tactics for growing your page’s presence and following through organic (free) approaches, as well as paid ads to boost your Facebook footprint.

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Who wrote “Your Guide to Growing Your Car Dealership’s Facebook Page?”

My name is Gary Lewis Cheetham, and I wrote this article after building first-hand experience in running digital activity within the automotive industry. Working as part of my family’s automotive business for years, I have a firm understanding of how to help car dealerships succeed digitally.

This automotive knowledge, combined with my marketing expertise and comprehensive proficiency when it comes to using Facebook within this industry, has allowed me to build proven strategies for dealerships. My goal is always to help you reach and engage with potential customers, increase sales and dominate your local area in the online world.

How to ensure your Facebook profile is optimised

Before we look at the steps and approaches for growing your Facebook presence, you need to make sure that your Facebook profile is properly optimised. You can find out more about setting up and completing your Facebook profile in our recent article, Ultimate Guide to Creating and Using a Facebook Page for Car Dealers in 2023.

How to plan your Facebook social content

You must post regular content to grow your Facebook page. This content can consist of a variety of post types, including:

• Imagery

• Promotions

• Stock updates

• Entertainment

• Quizzes

• Links to relevant news

• Contests

The important thing to remember is that you shouldn’t treat your Facebook page like an advert stream. When it comes to running a successful social profile, on any platform, for any business, it’s vital that you understand and follow the 80/20 rule. This states that 80% of your content should be entertainment and education based, while the remaining 20% should be promotional. The vast majority of your posts should be aimed at engaging with, entertaining, and educating your followers. The rest can be more promotional posts, but remember that nobody wants to be sold to all the time.

The most consistent way to run your Facebook page content is to plan ahead. Busy day-to-day operations make it nearly impossible for a dealership to post to their social media accounts on an ad-hoc basis, despite the best of intentions.

In an ideal world, you’d plan out your posts a month at a time, a month in advance. This isn’t always possible, so even planning all of your posts for a week is a great start. Something simple, like using an Excel spreadsheet or an Outlook calendar with your plans, is perfectly adequate. To make things even easier, you can use posting software, like SproutSocial or Buffer to automate the posting of your content.

The thing to remember is that you can’t grow your following if there’s nothing for followers to interact with and nothing to entice people to follow you in the first place. Your car dealership’s Facebook page should be a central hub for your customers, giving them helpful and engaging information, exciting videos about new stock, sharing news about the makes and models you sell, tips for maintaining their car, upcoming events through your business, and more.

How to increase your Facebook following with Page Likes Campaigns

Once you’re in a good habit of consistently posting content to your Facebook page and have built a backlog of posts, you can explore paid options for growing your Facebook following.

Facebook ad campaigns are helpful because there are already several styles designed, each with a different objective in mind. One of these existing objectives is to encourage people to follow your page.

This is one of the more straightforward Facebook campaign styles, making it not only easy to set up and run, but also to analyse how successful the campaign is. The beauty of this style of campaign is that it can be quite effective, even when working with a small budget. Even dedicating £50-100 a month to your Page Likes campaign can make a difference.

You’ll need to decide on ad text, imagery or video, and something to encourage Facebook users to follow your page. The ads will then prompt people to click “Follow” on the ad, which will automatically make them a follower of your dealership’s Facebook page.

For step-by-step instructions on how to set up a Page Likes campaign, click here.

How to incorporate digital PR tactics for growing your Facebook following

Contests, events, social media takeovers, and YouTube video series are all examples of PR campaigns with a digital presence that can be used to build your Facebook following. This might sound more complex than it really is, and your attempts certainly don’t have to entail anything outlandish.

Examples of digital PR approaches you can use for growing your dealership’s Facebook following

1. Contests and giveaways: Use your social media page to run a contest or giveaway for new or existing (or both) customers. This could entail requiring entrants to like and share a Facebook post you share, or answering a question, or even submitting pictures of their dream cars. The prize is up to you - offer discounts, car accessories, or even a free car if it’s possible to do so. Posting regular updates on the contest through your Facebook page, and requiring entrants to follow your page to participate, will all help boost your number of followers.

2. Start a podcast or video series: People who love cars really love cars. By creating some sort of series that people can enjoy and talking about it on social media, your Facebook page will, over time, see a natural increase in followers. Invite industry experts, mechanics, race car drivers, or anyone relevant to appear on your series and promote it through both organic and paid approaches.

3. Partnerships: Developing partnerships in your industry and/or community can go a long way in raising your dealership’s profile. Whether it’s working with a local charity, sponsoring industry awards, or supporting youth clubs, partnerships and sponsorships can get you noticed not only through your own Facebook posts but through other brands’ as well.

How to get active in Facebook groups with your business page

Regularly sharing content through posts isn’t the only way to keep your Facebook page profile active. By using your page to interact with people and groups, you can draw attention to the page, which will over time lead to more growth.

In addition to individual profiles and business pages, Facebook is also home to thousands of groups with varied interests, including automotive. Some of these groups are public while others are private, but usually, it’s not an issue to be granted access to a group as long as it’s relevant to your business’ Facebook page.

Once you’re in a group, you can get started with interacting to build relationships and grow your following. Find out how to use Facebook groups to boost your sales.

Conclusion

Naturally growing your followers takes time, so it’s important to not get discouraged or impatient while working through the process. By consistently sharing content, being active on your page, finding creative ways to promote your brand, and exploring paid options, over time you will find that your following will grow steadily. To discuss Facebook in more detail, feel free to contact me.

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• Foolproof prompts to copy and paste

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