Gaining Facebook Friends

[tima]

Hello all:
Has anyone used best practices that work in gaining Facebook page friends? We recently combined our two store's Facebook pages and in doing so changed the name of the page(s). As friends of both pages did not come along because of the name change (Facebook policy) we are faced with the challenge of bringing back as well as gaining new friends. You may invite the "old"friends to your new page (as we have done) but we still do not have as many friends as before. As always, thanks for the input.

 

[tijerin]

Personally, I would allow your marketing efforts to grow your Facebook "friends" organically and naturally. You can have 10,000 friends who would never buy a car or bring money into your dealership or you can have 100 people that are actual customers that will buy cars, service with you and refer people to you.

If I were doing the marketing, I would rather my efforts go towards people that are actually customers (or potential customers) than focusing on getting as many friends as I could.

Integrate your social media presence into your dealership marketing in all ways.. website, showroom, service, parts, etc.. in any way you can. Encourage your customers to like your Facebook page. Use social media to converse with your customers and give them incentives to look at your page (oil change specials, contests, etc) and your fans will grow organically and, most importantly, you will end up with a healthy Facebook page filled with people who will do business with you instead of random people that you friended or friended you.

Also, Ive used these terms in this post interchangeably but they are not. You should not be worried about "friends" per say, but "fans". Your dealership(s) should have fan pages, not personal profiles. Fan pages are indexed by search engines and are viewable to anyone who wants to see them. Profiles are not. IF your dealerships are set up as profiles, you should change that ASAP.

 

[tima]

That's great information. Thank you.

 

[Alex Snyder]

There is a threshold of fans for some people. Especially when it comes to businesses they wouldn't normally choose to associate with in social media. Like a car dealership.

When you only have a handful of likes/fans/followers it is a bit of a struggle to gain 1 new fan, but when you have a group of fans (that are real fans) adding new fans is very simple. People love to follow a crowd.

I agree with Arnold in that I would prefer to have fans who are customers so I can use social media as a retention/PR tool versus getting what I call "spam fans". Facebook, themselves, have told us that fans do business with companies they like almost 80% of the time. That number was dropped in a conversation at the JD Power Conference and I don't have it in writing but I can believe it.

If your dealership has 100 fans/likes on facebook (make sure you have a fan/business page!) and the least expensive regular commodity you have is a $15 oil change, then 80% of 100 = 80 fans/likes who will spend $15 with you and that equates to a minimum of a $1,200 revenue value to your facebook page. I'm going to guess that a facebook page has a Fixed Operations Value that rings the cash register once a year. I estimate it has a Variable Operations value that rings the cash register once every 3 years. So, for sales, let's say your PVR is $1,000 and you still have 100 fans/likes, then 80 purchases = $80,000. Divide $80,000 over the course of 3 years and you have an annual facebook Variable Operations value of roughly $26,600 in profit.

I am the first to admit that this is probably CRAP. But I would be willing to say that if you have 100 organic (non-automotive industry fans/likes) then the value of your facebook page is somewhere between $1,200 in revenue to $26,000 in profit yearly.

 

[ryan.leslie]

If I were doing the marketing, I would rather my efforts go towards people that are actually customers (or potential customers) than focusing on getting as many friends as I could.

Integrate your social media presence into your dealership marketing in all ways.. website, showroom, service, parts, etc.. in any way you can. Encourage your customers to like your Facebook page.

Totally agree with Arnold... Think Quality over Quantity. Most of the dealers that I talk to that are converting from a profile to a fan page have inherited a bunch of "friends" from the person that set up the profile. 900 "friends" that have you blocked from their newsfeed isn't really success, and that might just be the reason they aren't following you to your new fan page in the first place.

In my opinion, Spaghetti Theory is the right one when it comes to social media. Think of creative ways to intertwine your FB presence into your current marketing. Here is an example of a creative way to use an ad space on DealerRater that targets existing relationships and unsold prospects to promote a contest. These guys beat their goal by 40% already.

Atamian Volkswagen - Volkswagen - Dealership Ratings

Last thought, check out what the motorcycle dealers are doing. These guys have rabid fans! Smaller numbers but very active, and what are they promoting 90% of the time? Parts and Service! If Fixed Ops wakes up and discovers "The Interweb" isn't a fad, they'll never drop another piece of mail.

 

[ryan.leslie]

but t y p e r e a l l y s l o w l y .....


Can I import my own emotiicon? I really need one that says "I agree with most of what Alex is typing right now."

 

[Ryan Thompson]

Not sure if dealers are awar of this but you can easily "suggest to friends" you entire list with some simple Java Script. By looking at Marlboro Nissan's Fan page I'm pretty certain they have used this old trick.

I had posted it on my blog here : http://automotivemarketing.ca/social-media/how-to-gain-facebook-fans-for-car-dealers/#more-543

 

[tijerin]

Not sure if dealers are awar of this but you can easily "suggest to friends" you entire list with some simple Java Script.[/URL]

...but why would you want to? I go back to my thoughts. Do you want to be marketing to random people or customers that will do business with you. In my opinion, marketing to non-customers is wasting your time.

 

[tima]

Thanks again all.

 

[Ryan Thompson]

...but why would you want to? I go back to my thoughts. Do you want to be marketing to random people or customers that will do business with you. In my opinion, marketing to non-customers is wasting your time.

If the person who is "suggesting to friends" is in the dealerships town/city I think it is worth a shot. You do not have to join a fan page or group if you do not want to.