Facebook was never designed for marketing businesses online but anywhere people are, marketers will follow. It’s become a platform where you can market your dealership. You have to be careful, however. If you push too hard, you’ll end up alienating your audience before they even hear your message.
You have likely started to see the shift in the media (advertising, news programs, etc.) as companies are starting to show off their Facebook page instead of their URL. Facebook has become an important part of conducting marketing efforts.
You may wonder if marketing your dealership in Facebook is worth the effort. While you’ll have to answer that for yourself, I can at least help you understand some elements of marketing on Facebook. After you understand a few concepts, try your hand at getting your Facebook presence online.
Profile Page Versus Fan Page
Facebook recently started rolling out the new timeline feature for business pages. While currently the new page style is optional, it’s reasonable to assume that it will be a required approach long term. Even with the new timeline feature, the concepts of profile page versus a fan page haven’t changed.
Your profile page is your personal presence on Facebook. This is the profile that you log into and is related to you, personally. It’s not your business page and never should be. In fact, one of the most common misuses of Facebook is the creation of a personal profile with business information. Your business doesn’t have a first and last name, it doesn’t have a birthday, nor does it have brothers and sisters. If you have to enter a gender, then you can pretty well be assured that you are completing a personal profile.
The fan page is the common designation for a page on Facebook that is not a personal profile. You create this page from your personal profile and manage it as an administrator of the page. You can invite others to administrate it as well so that you don’t have to manage it alone. Fortunately, you can enter very business centric comments as the company or you can switch to add more personal comments as an individual.
Customization
You have some wonderful opportunities for customizing your personal profile page as well as your business page. If you opt for the new timeline feature, you can create a large banner. Even if you choose not to upgrade to the timeline feature, you can still add custom tabs that provide more information for your visitors. In fact, you can even set those tabs up as the only thing visible until your fans actually become your fans.
Promotions
Your Facebook presence is a great location to offer new promotions to your client. As a dealership, you might need to get a little more creative in the types of promotions you offer. The best promotions tend to be things that your fans can participate in on a regular basis. If you provide one large promotion per year, you won’t garner as much benefit as a monthly or a weekly promotion with a much smaller cost. Dealerships have seen success giving away an iPad for new fans, but you might consider giving away small printers of which you can sell toner for or use as an opportunity to conduct an MPS survey.
Building Relationships
Above all, the largest benefit of Facebook is the opportunity for you to build relationships with your clientele. If you provide compelling content on a regular basis and engage with your fans, you’ll find that they will come back for more.
Building relationships is the hardest part. You may have to start by spending some time on inviting people to come to your page or even pay for Facebook ads to encourage traffic. After your fans are there, you have to keep them coming back with great content. Video, imagery, stories, tips and tricks are a few elements that you can include to help peak your clients’ interest.
In the End
When all is said and done, you have to decide if it makes sense for your dealership. Of course, my recommendation is that if you aren’t going to jump in with both feet and do it right, then you might as well not do it at all.
Facebook can be a very powerful tool to growing your dealership, but it’s up to you to get it done.
About the author: Corey Smith is the author of Do It Right: A CEO’s Guide to Web Strategy and is facilitating the ITEX Social Media Bootcamp. You can sign up at http://itexsocialmedia.eventbrite.com. You can also find Corey online at www.coreysmith.ws.
