Why Run Facebook Ads for Your Dealership? More Importantly: HOW

[SteveeAnders79]

I've worked with some pretty low budgets before, investing into link building campaigns for SEO. And let me tell you, nothing has worked better than Facebook, or more instantaneously.

Compared to Google Ads, Facebook seems to be the cheaper alternative.

If your budget is less than $100.00, I don't recommend advertising, because you have bigger fish to fry. However, anything above $500.00 is enough to get some traction and begin optimizing for results.

Most of my clients and I are spending anywhere from $1,000/m on the low end to roughly $15,000/m on the high end in ad budget. Every situation is unique, and some automotive groups have the money and time to invest in themselves.

completly agree.
p.s. 100$ budget lol

 

[Alexander Lau]

Meanwhile...

From the guy who lead the research created one of the early prototypes with Zuckerberg, while at Harvard.

PlainSite Facebook Reality Check (PDF)

"What seems too good to be true often is. The zeitgeist has changed markedly since 2007, when the company was the obsession of virtually every Silicon Valley investor, having built its Platform to make the world “more open and connected.” Yet as bad as things have been of late for Facebook, with endless privacy breaches and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election hanging over Menlo Park like a spectre, we believe that the situation is far worse than investors realize. Facebook has been lying to the public about the scale of its problem with fake accounts, which likely exceed 50% of its network. Its official metrics—many of which it has stopped reporting quarterly—are self-contradictory and even farcical. The company has lost control of its own product."

 

[Marc Lavoie]

Yeah, that's bad. But we'd be crazy to think Facebook is not working. I'm still amazed by how paid campaigns can yield good results. We're currently running a credit application campaign for a client that's yielding an $11 CPL. These leads include :

• Name, Phone, Email
• Revenue
• Employment status and history
• A vehicle of interest (SUV, Car, etc...)
• Living Expenses
• Budget
• Trade-In Vehicle
• If they rent or own

Targeting is your friend when it comes to Facebook Coupled with a solid landing page, our client is making a ton of money...

 

[John.H]

Although I cannot confirm whether it's true they have 50% fake accounts on the platform or not, I can confirm that even if they did, this would not affect advertising. I'm certain the botted accounts are NOT actively scrolling the news feed, even less likely they'd do so in English speaking countries, while being active for that matter. And for the low quantity of impressions you receive from botted traffic, it's nothing out of the ordinary.

If your site is ranked in Google (SEO), or if you're promoting content via Google Ads, you're likely receiving a large sum of botted traffic from crawlers and web scrapers too.

Beyond that, we've gotten awesome results this month using the Facebook Ad platform. For one of our best performing clients, we've netted nearly 500 leads for less than $500, and over 300+ confirmed appointments from these leads. At a Cost Per Lead of $0.90 a piece:

 

[Alexander Lau]

Fake accounts affect Facebook at its core in numerous ways:

• Its customers purchase advertising on Facebook based on the fact that it can supposedly target advertisements at more than 2 billion real human beings. To the extent that users aren’t real, companies are throwing their money down the drain.
• Fake accounts click on advertising at random, or “like” pages, to throw off anti-fraud algorithms. Fake accounts look real if they do not follow a clear pattern. This kind of activity defrauds advertisers, but rewards Facebook with revenue.
• Fake accounts often defraud other users on Facebook, through scams, fake news, extortion, and other forms of deception. Often, they can involve governments.

 

[John.H]

Fake accounts affect Facebook at its core in numerous ways:

• Its customers purchase advertising on Facebook based on the fact that it can supposedly target advertisements at more than 2 billion real human beings. To the extent that users aren’t real, companies are throwing their money down the drain.
• Fake accounts click on advertising at random, or “like” pages, to throw off anti-fraud algorithms. Fake accounts look real if they do not follow a clear pattern. This kind of activity defrauds advertisers, but rewards Facebook with revenue.
• Fake accounts often defraud other users on Facebook, through scams, fake news, extortion, and other forms of deception. Often, they can involve governments.

I believe this is a universal struggle when using any advertising platform. No matter where you go, it's likely you'll receive some dupe traffic. The proof is truly in the pudding, and results really do speak for themselves.

As the platform evolves, and AI finds more initiative ways of catching these bots, I'm sure that number will decrease. But as of right now, I believe this affects nearly everybody in ALL forms of advertising.... unfortunately.

 

[Alexander Lau]

I believe this is a universal struggle when using any advertising platform. No matter where you go, it's likely you'll receive some dupe traffic. The proof is truly in the pudding, and results really do speak for themselves.

As the platform evolves, and AI finds more initiative ways of catching these bots, I'm sure that number will decrease. But as of right now, I believe this affects nearly everybody in ALL forms of advertising.... unfortunately.

While this is true, it's affecting Facebook specifically and although groups like yours show a good cost per, there are groups out there that aren't doing a good job (in automotive) and dealerships should beware. I've not checked in a while, but the last time I did check, non-anthropogenic / bot traffic on Google Ads wasn't at 50%. Is there a mechanism out there for social advertising, much like there is for Google Ads (such as https://www.clickcease.com) or will FB, etc. disallow 3rd party tools from determining and reporting the truth? Additionally, asking for wasted spend back.