DealerAuthority Jeff & Alex's ongoing case study of Facebook Management

Alex Snyder

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We partnered with some old friends, @Christine Plunkett and @Tyson Madliger, to have Dealer Authority manage DealerRefresh's Facebook presence. This decision was not a light one as RefreshFriday is broadcast live on Facebook every Friday. We need our Facebook Page to be on point! The problem was Monday through Thursday as Jeff nor I had the time to be consistent with Facebook those days.

Christine and I got into Facebook, together, during our years at Checkered Flag. Firing our working relationship back up was easier than jumping in the Delorean. It just made sense. She made things very easy for the rest of the DealerRefresh team.

Now you know the why, so let's jump into this thread. In the interest of automotive-biz science we're going to talk about how successful this whole thing is over time.

Start date: June 1st, 2018
Communication method: Slack
Dealer Authority team: Brian West and Christine Plunkett
DealerRefresh team: Jessica Shafer, Jeff Kershner, and Alex Snyder
Daily Facebook spend: $5

60 Day Check-in

Goals are changing. We started with the simple goal of providing daily content while we drove to figure out how we wanted to move the needle later. Things are evolving to let Brian be a bit "looser" with the tone of the posts and getting more organized around RefreshFriday.

We are going to transition into a growth goal-set soon. The strategy is about 90% figured-out.

The only working problem we have experienced is in who would respond to direct messages. Dealer Authority cut our response time 200%, but Jeff and I were not following through with things afterward. I'm going to point the finger at the Facebook platform on the whole here. It seems one either has to set notifications more liberally or be logged into the business manager portal all the time. Facebook does not make it simple and I can only guess that is due to different developers working on different things without a cohesive vision for how the whole package fits together. Facebook is far from a Steve-Jobs Apple ecosystem.

At the end of the day I think we have a good system worked out between us now, and I will report back on this another time.

This is just the first post in a thread that I hope to be updating for a long time…. that's another way of saying we are happy with Dealer Authority :thumbup:
 
Time to check in!! Dealer Authority has enjoyed collaborating with Dealer Refresh on their social media presence. We recently took a look at the past 9 months and pulled some impressive numbers from their Facebook Page and engagement.

Check-in date: May 1st, 2019
Communication method: Slack
Dealer Authority team: Tabitha Flythe & Brian West
DealerRefresh team: Jessica Shafer, Jeff Kershner, and Alex Snyder
Daily Facebook spend: $5

Needless to say, the male force is strong with the Dealer Refresh audience. 1,549 more men than women clicked on the Dealer Refresh Facebook posts. Forum posts that include topics like the recent Dealer.com email, "Trump, Trade, and U.S. China Automotive Tariffs", and "2019 Automotive Predictions" had the highest levels of engagement.

Refresh Fridays provide excellent engagement and new traffic for the page further pushing home the point that "going live" is beneficial for any business or social profile.

We ended up pivoting from our original target audience that was created when this collaboration began and the results were definitely positive.
  • Clicks increased by 36%
  • CTR increased by 86%
  • CPC decreased by 55%
Utilizing an audience that retargets from the DealerRefresh website and those that engage with the Refresh Fridays helped to generate these positive changes.

DealerRefresh_Infographic.png

We will be ready to check in again for a full 12 months of data in July!
 
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I've been meaning to add to this thread since @erika_simms posted the latest update. First off, big thanks to Tyson, Tabitha, and Brian for their continued efforts on DealerRefresh :thumbup:

This is an experiment for the community to learn from. That's why we are being so transparent with our numbers. If anyone has anything to add or experiment on please let us know in this thread.

Our goal continues to be moving people off of Facebook to these forums as the bulk of DealerRefresh's content is here. Facebook is not an archive of knowledge. It will be interesting to see how FB's new move to make Groups central will play out for non-Facebook communities.

As an aside, our relationship with Dealer Authortiy has paved the way for a technology new relationship with Podium. They now power our chat in these forums and Facebook Messenger. That wouldn't have been possible without Dealer Authority's help in establishing a way to work together :cool:
 
2019 is halfway over, and we have hit the 12-month mark for our partnership with DealerRefresh! Below is our 12-month recap of engagement and growth to DealerRefresh's Facebook page:

DealerRefresh_Infographic_12mon.png

Check-in date: July 11th, 2019
Communication method: Slack
Dealer Authority team: Tabitha Flythe & Brian West
DealerRefresh team: Jessica Shafer, Jeff Kershner, and Alex Snyder
Daily Facebook spend: $5

From a social media marketing standpoint - the main takeaway from the past 12 months is that it is crucial to assess the audiences that are being utilized on Facebook and tweak it as you see changes in engagement and clicks. Engagement is great - but if 100's of 'likes' aren't leading to improving CTR's month-over-month, it's time to take a look at the audience you are targeting. Over the past 12 months, we have pivoted DR's audience twice, and each time, this has led to a continued improvement in CTR and decreased CPC.
  • CTR increased by 278% *from second audience update in June 2019
  • CPC decreased by 73%
We will plan for another check-in at the close of 2019. Stay tuned!
 
We partnered with some old friends, @Christine Plunkett and @Tyson Madliger, to have Dealer Authority manage DealerRefresh's Facebook presence. This decision was not a light one as RefreshFriday is broadcast live on Facebook every Friday. We need our Facebook Page to be on point! The problem was Monday through Thursday as Jeff nor I had the time to be consistent with Facebook those days.

Christine and I got into Facebook, together, during our years at Checkered Flag. Firing our working relationship back up was easier than jumping in the Delorean. It just made sense. She made things very easy for the rest of the DealerRefresh team.

Now you know the why, so let's jump into this thread. In the interest of automotive-biz science we're going to talk about how successful this whole thing is over time.

Start date: June 1st, 2018
Communication method: Slack
Dealer Authority team: Brian West and Christine Plunkett
DealerRefresh team: Jessica Shafer, Jeff Kershner, and Alex Snyder
Daily Facebook spend: $5

60 Day Check-in

Goals are changing. We started with the simple goal of providing daily content while we drove to figure out how we wanted to move the needle later. Things are evolving to let Brian be a bit "looser" with the tone of the posts and getting more organized around RefreshFriday.

We are going to transition into a growth goal-set soon. The strategy is about 90% figured-out.

The only working problem we have experienced is in who would respond to direct messages. Dealer Authority cut our response time 200%, but Jeff and I were not following through with things afterward. I'm going to point the finger at the Facebook platform on the whole here. It seems one either has to set notifications more liberally or be logged into the business manager portal all the time. Facebook does not make it simple and I can only guess that is due to different developers working on different things without a cohesive vision for how the whole package fits together. Facebook is far from a Steve-Jobs Apple ecosystem.

At the end of the day I think we have a good system worked out between us now, and I will report back on this another time.

This is just the first post in a thread that I hope to be updating for a long time…. that's another way of saying we are happy with Dealer Authority :thumbup:

Hey Alex - I use the app "Facebook Page Manager" on my Iphone to manage our dealerships comments (and business manager if I'm on desktop). It gets poor reviews, but it works just fine for me.