Is Facebook Advertising Worth It?

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There is no doubt that social media is popular - Facebook being the most popular platform with over two billion active users - but does it provide a cost-effective platform for advertising your dealership and reaching customers? Many businesses face this question, but the statistics can help curb your doubt. With 74% of Facebook users visiting the site daily and spending an average of 58 minutes per day on the platform plus Messenger & Instagram* (both owned by Facebook), there is major opportunity to reach your target audience. Not only are the majority of people using it, but users spend a huge amount of time on the platform as well – giving you plenty of chances to advertise to them.

The biggest reason to use Facebook advertising is because it gives you the ability to target people who are actually interested in what you sell. Audience targeting on Facebook is more advanced and allows you to get more specific than targeting methods on many other platforms. Facebook also provides access to more information about your target audience members – things they are interested in, how they interact with others, business pages they “like,” events they attend, and more. Custom audiences as well as lookalike audiences, which Facebook can identify to help expand your reach, contribute greatly to your business’ social strategy.

Another huge advantage that comes with using Facebook advertising is access to the different types of ad campaigns that you can run on the platform:

Traffic Ads encourage clicks to your website, ideally resulting in a decision to submit a lead or to purchase.
Engagement Ads prompt followers to “like” your dealership Facebook page, comment on your posts, and interact with your business in other ways on the platform.
Lead Generation Ads allow users to fill out a lead form right on their newsfeed, eliminating the extra step of visiting your site and navigating around to submit a lead.
Conversion Ads take audience members away from Facebook to your website. Using a pixel for tracking purposes, the call-to-action (CTA) that brings them to your site could vary widely. A “Learn More” CTA might link to a specific landing page with additional information, while a “Schedule Now” CTA might link to a form where users can schedule a test ride or demo.
Remarketing Ads let you show inventory units to Facebook users who previously viewed specific units on your site, reminding them of the purchase they were considering.
Reach Ads earn more impressions on your ads, increasing your audience size and the frequency that your ads are shown.
Brand Awareness Ads help you revisit those who have already viewed your ad, making those audience members more likely to remember it and increasing the chance for a later conversion.

As a local business, you have both physical proximity to your target audience members as well as a tight grasp on their wants and needs through Facebook advertising abilities. Smaller businesses with a local target audience have an advantage over larger businesses trying to reach a wide audience. Advertising on Facebook doesn’t need to cost a lot of money, and there is always the option to cancel or pause your campaign or adjust your budget and the settings of your campaign if you aren’t seeing the results you want.

With advanced targeting and the ability to get very specific with the types of ads you are running, advertising on Facebook is a highly cost-effective strategy. People spend so much time on social media and are invested in platforms like Facebook on a personal level. This gives you as an advertiser a vast amount of insight and opportunity to connect to customers in the market for your units.

*Statistics courtesy of HootSuite