Digital Dealer - November 2019 - 26

M A R K E T ING & ADVERT ISING: So cia l Medi a

By Bob Lanham
Head of Automotive Retail,
Facebook

Remove Friction
in Your Media
Mix to Drive
Profitability
With advertising and
marketing being one of
a dealership's top expenditures, what a dealer buys
and how they buy plays a
role in their dealership's
profitability. One of the
biggest struggles for dealers
today is understanding how
their entire media mix
impacts their bottom line.
Anything that is standing in
the way of a dealer fully
understanding the impact of
their entire media spend/mix
on their bottom line is friction
within the advertising and
marketing process.
To dig into this more and
better understand how to
remove that friction, dealers
should ask themselves:
1) Do you know everything you are buying across
both your digital and traditional efforts? The first step
in understanding the impact
that your media spend/mix
has on your bottom line is
to gain visibility into everything your dealership is
buying. This can be search,
TV, direct mail, social, and
even the software platforms
used to execute your media.
When a dealer gains transparency around their entire
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NOVEMBER 2019

media spend/mix and the
reasons why they invest in
certain channels, the dealer
is in a better position to be
able to evaluate whether
their media spend/mix is an
expense, or an investment.
2) Do you know if the
return of each platform
you buy is worth the cost?
Calculating the cost of what
you are paying for each
channel you buy against
the return you think you are
getting from that channel
will help you identify waste
across any high-cost/low-return mediums. Spending
dollars on channels that
do not deliver respective
ROI against their cost is
another form of friction that
can negatively impact your
bottom line. Understanding
how each channel, and its
true cost to its return, fits in
with the rest of what you are
buying will help to ensure
your media spend/mix is
driving business growth.
We have been told by many
dealers that after doing this
exercise, they have been
able to cut media that was
not delivering the respective
ROI, without seeing a dip in
sales.

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

3) How are you measuring everything you buy back
to profitability? Media plans
do not perform in a silo. A
great example of this is the
relationship between Facebook and search. In a study
(https://www.facebook.com/
business/news/insights/
how-facebook-ads-driveonline-search) from July
of '18, we found that when
Facebook ads were run for
a specific product or service,
these ads were responsible
for driving 19 percent more
organic search clicks and
10 percent more for paid
search clicks for those specific products and services
versus when people didn't
see those Facebook ads.*
This is why it is important to understand how
everything you buy works
together, what the cost of
everything you bought was,
and how many vehicles
you ultimately sold with that
spend/mix. Friction in the
advertising and marketing
process is present when you
have media expenses that
are not driving towards your
most critical business goals.
Removing that friction and
measuring your entire media

spend/mix against actual
vehicle sales will certify that
your media efforts are aligned
to what is most important.
Solutions across Facebook
and Facebook's Family of
Apps and Services (Instagram, Messenger &
WhatsApp) have helped dealers leverage paid digital and
mobile ads as an investment
opportunity for the future
growth of their business. Visit
our "Facebook Strategies
for Dealers" website (https://
www.facebook.com/business/m/dealerhub/) where
you can download our new
"Facebook Automotive Playbook for Dealers," to learn
the core dealer strategies
most critical to your business,
check out online courses and
training videos customized to
the automotive marketer, and
sign-up for the auto monthly
newsletter to stay connected.
Sources:
*How Facebook Ads Drive Online Search,
Facebook IQ: Digital Research and Insights
(July 26, 2018)

BOB LANHAM joined Facebook
in 2015 as an Automotive Retail
Lead and has since become
Facebook's Head of Automotive
Retail. Bob manages a small
team that is responsible for the
top 10 Dealer Groups in the US,
working with Independent Dealers
through the Manufacturers and
Partnerships with the key DMS,
CRM and Equity Mining Platforms.
Previously, Bob was a Sales
Director at Hulu where he opened
the Detroit territory back in 2009
when Hulu was just getting off
the ground. Prior to Hulu, Bob
spent four years at Yahoo! and
three years at Microsoft. Bob
started his automotive career
at Toyota of Sarasota selling
cars as a commission only sales
representative before becoming
the Internet Sales Manager and
F&I Manager. He's a graduate of
Elon University.
https://www.facebook.com/business/m/dealerhub/ https://www.facebook.com/business/m/dealerhub/ https://www.facebook.com/business/m/dealerhub/ https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/how-facebook-ads-drive-online-search https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/how-facebook-ads-drive-online-search http://www.DIGITALDEALER.COM
Digital Dealer - November 2019

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