Blame the jockey not the horse in Facebook Ad conversions
Facebook is a powerful horse when it comes to generating a huge number of impressions and relevant clicks. In fact, the latest video data just released is staggering where more than 1 billion video views happen every 24 hours on Facebook. So it’s hard to imagine that a B2C company would not succeed with Facebook advertising. Suppose the targeting and creativity are developed properly. Well, we would all be wrong to make such a rash assumption.
In fact, I have heard from plenty of jockeys at California Automotive Dealers – one of Facebook’s own Industry Verticals – who claim they have tried marketing on Facebook and are convinced that it does not work! Yes, Facebook marketing works for everyone except these early adopters who prefer to blame the horse not the Jockey.
But upon closer examination, it’s clear that these jockeys are making fatal mistakes that would kill any lead generation campaign let alone one from Facebook. Here are some of the major mistakes automotive dealers are making when it comes to Facebook lead conversion:
Landing Page Disasters
I also spotted horrible Landing pages that these automotive dealers were using to convert Facebook and other social media leads. An effective landing page should not require more than 2 or 3 fields for the users to enter.
Millennial buyers would not tolerate any more than 3 fields. After all their expectation for online shopping is not defined by Amazon’s One-Click shopping. Granted that Amazon has all of your shipping and billing info, but if you shop there long enough, you keep assuming that one click is all it takes to shop.
We identified one Detroit Automaker requiring a potential car buyer to sign a Legal Document on the Landing Page while attempting to book a test drive! This is indeed a cardinal since when it comes to online Conversion and is illegal in most states. Needless to say, this marketing program designed for Facebook became a disastrous failure even though it had generated a lot of Impressions and Clicks. Another major Automotive Dealer was insisting on integrating Facebook leads into their existing DealerCRM which required a HOME address! All these marketers are failing to recognize that the more information they request, the harder it becomes to convert these leads.
What contributes to this problem is that Automotive Dealers are not in control of the design and function of these landing pages and they are at the mercy of the brand. And these landing pages were designed in the late 90s to collect as much information about the car buyer to make it simpler to interact with them. But this kind of landing page is now a hazard since there is no need to collect this information. With the buyers already on Facebook, there are tons of demographics including age, location, interest, and shopping behavior are already available to dealers.
Response Time
Some automotive dealers who are using Facebook Page Promotion and Ads, take as much as 3-6 hours to respond to a Facebook engagement. Facebook engagement is defined as an action that Ad viewers take such as Like, Share, Comment or a Question when they spot the ad in their News Feed.
The problem with this kind of slow response is that these potential buyers are online and if they don’t get an answer quickly; they will surf to the next listed dealer online in search of that answer.
Lead Nurturing
Just because these leads are generated from Facebook, it does NOT mean that they don’t require a CRM and a lead management strategy. Some of the dealers are treating Facebook Leads as an oddity and just using the Facebook page to respond to them. These leads have to be entered into a CRM and nurtured like any other leads. In fact, smaller dealers without a CRM and culture of Led Management are performing much worse due to the volume of Facebook engagement they have to manage manually.
Too Much Sharing
When a lead is requesting price and millage information, some of these dealers are posting the price right on the Facebook message thread. This has legal implications for most dealers and prices should be shared privately with these interested. In fact, some States have ad guidelines on the format of the ads which need to include the price and all relevant information.
In short, these Automotive Dealers have concluded that it’s easier to blame the horse than fix all the challenges that come with online conversion.
What do you think about Facebook Lead conversion?
Not Engough Time
Most of the Automotive Dealers I met had tried Facebook ads for less than 60 days before deciding to pull the plug. This is yet another mistake since these Dealers assume that the person who sees a Facebook ad for the 1st time will act on it right away. That’s not the case and the buyers have to see the Facebook ads more than once before they take action.
Re-targeting
Most of these dealers were not using Re-targeting features available on Facebook ads which increases the ROI of ad spend and serves the ads to the folks who have previously engaged with that ad.
Subscribe to our Awesome Newsletter.
