RIP Facebook Marketplace for Car Dealers

[Ryan Everson]

HUGE NEWS - On September 13th, Facebook Marketplace will stop offering free organic vehicle listings for car dealers on Facebook Marketplace.

Vehicle and Home Listings from Partner Catalogs Will Be Discontinued on Facebook Marketplace



Note:
Dealers will still be able to manually post vehicles one by one on Marketplace for free.
-or-
Run (paid) automotive inventory ads with Marketplace as an ad placement.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

That sucks.

 

[Ryan Everson]

That sucks.

Yes, but we all knew this would happen eventually.

It's similar to what happened with Craiglist years ago when they switched to a pay-per-post model. Craiglist became clutter-free overnight with very few dealer listings, which gave great exposure and better results to the dealers who decided to pay to post their vehicles.

Dealers now have the same opportunity with Facebook Marketplace. Imagine a Marketplace feed where you're now one of a few dealers vs one of the hundreds.

Progressive dealers can capitalize on this by embracing the Marketplace feed placement of Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads. This should greatly increase the results of AIA ads within the Marketplace feed.

Digital marketing is ever-changing, it's all about how quickly you can adapt!

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Yes, but we all knew this would happen eventually.

It's similar to what happened with Craiglist years ago when they switched to a pay-per-post model. Craiglist became clutter-free overnight with very few dealer listings, which gave great exposure and better results to the dealers who decided to pay to post their vehicles.

Dealers now have the same opportunity with Facebook Marketplace. Imagine a Marketplace feed where you're now one of a few dealers vs one of the hundreds.

Progressive dealers can capitalize on this by embracing the Marketplace feed placement of Facebook Automotive Inventory Ads. This should greatly increase the results of AIA ads within the Marketplace feed.

Digital marketing is ever-changing, it's all about how quickly you can adapt!

Truthfully, my dealer got so few leads from Marketplace that it won’t be missed. Most likely due to our price point. I agree, without all the dealers automatically posting, it will clean up the customer experience, like it did with Craigslist.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Truthfully, my dealer got so few leads from Marketplace that it won’t be missed. Most likely due to our price point. I agree, without all the dealers automatically posting, it will clean up the customer experience, like it did with Craigslist.

Yeah, you get a lot of the accidental "Is this still available?" pre-filled messages on Marketplace that just ghost you and never reply.

 

[BillKVMotorCo]

Yeah, you get a lot of the accidental "Is this still available?" pre-filled messages on Marketplace that just ghost you and never reply.

We get several of those of course, but we have very good success with Marketplace. Especially since we have our chat connected to our FB page. I also thinks it helps that our salespeople handle all chats. In February and March Marketplace actually outperformed our 3rd Party Listing sites.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

 

[Greg Spencer]

Among the free listings options that AREN'T being discontinued: "You can showcase your full vehicle inventory in the Vehicles tab on your dealership Page."

This is a free option. But I'm assuming not an effective way to advertise inventory. Can anyone tell my why? Is it impossible for shoppers to find listings like this -- unless they're promoted?

 

[Tallcool1]

Among the free listings options that AREN'T being discontinued: "You can showcase your full vehicle inventory in the Vehicles tab on your dealership Page."

This is a free option. But I'm assuming not an effective way to advertise inventory. Can anyone tell my why? Is it impossible for shoppers to find listings like this -- unless they're promoted?

In my opinion, it is similar to how sites like Auto Trader work. Shoppers go to Auto Trader because there are multiple choices in one place. Those shoppers could simply go to the dealer's website (vehicles tab on the dealership page of Facebook), but it is much more difficult to do that.

Marketplace is no different than Auto Trader or the classified section of the newspaper 20 years ago. Shoppers like the fact that they can see so many offerings in one place.

I reached out to Dealers United this morning and have not heard back yet.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Among the free listings options that AREN'T being discontinued: "You can showcase your full vehicle inventory in the Vehicles tab on your dealership Page."

This is a free option. But I'm assuming not an effective way to advertise inventory. Can anyone tell my why? Is it impossible for shoppers to find listings like this -- unless they're promoted?

The number of people that visit a dealership's Facebook page and click the inventory tab is going to be extremely low. Ultimately that feature is only remaining because it pushes dealers to easily launch paid AIA campaigns.