WDA’s Top 2020 Highlights from our Marketing Pit Stop

wda marketing pitstop

If you’re subscribed to our podcast or follow us on social media then hopefully you’ve been enjoying our regular Pit Stop blog articles and podcast episodes. We cover all the recent and most important automotive marketing news. Below is a round up of WDA’s top highlights from last year’s Marketing Pit Stop’s…

New Facebook Tools for Car Dealers

Great news for car dealers as Facebook is adding three new tools that will help them connect with more buyers. These include:

  • Manage Inventory Tab: A new tab that enables dealers to create, manage and promote vehicle inventory all in one place with performance insights available in a couple of clicks.
  • Automotive Inventory Ads: These have been improved to allow dealers to promote inventory simpler and quicker. If a catalogue has been created then ads can now be set up using a pre-filled template.
  • Vehicles Tab: On dealership pages, new and used inventory can be showcased for free in the new vehicles tab.

LinkedIn ‘Products’ Tab Launched

LinkedIn has launched a ‘Products’ tab for Company Pages, providing an area for businesses to showcase their products and to highlight features. Here’s how LinkedIn explained it…

“With Product Pages you can spotlight product endorsements and testimonials by your users, gather ratings and reviews from current users, and generate leads with a custom call-to-action button, such as a demo request or contact sales form. In the new “Products” Tab, you can add new products you want to feature and include rich media like videos or product screenshots, descriptions and more.”

This new feature provides a great opportunity for automotive businesses on the platform to showcase their product offering.

Instagram Add Keyword Search Functionality

Before now, searching on Instagram could only be done via hashtags or using locations. However, Instagram has now added keyword search functionality. We don’t have much information on this just yet but we’re expecting this to improve content discoverability on the platform and additionally, SEO optimisation is likely going to be a factor for Instagram posts in the near future.

A spokesperson for the company has said that it uses machine learning and they consider a number of factors when determining content results – including the type of content, captions used, post date and more to deliver the most relevant results to the query.

While details are fairly sparse right now, we’d still recommend that automotive brands start creating more keyword-rich captions and monitor reach/impressions very closely.

Facebook’s Automotive Inventory Ads Enhanced

Automotive Inventory ads were introduced by Facebook last year, enabling car dealers to reach potential buyers through automated ads. The enhancements include additional mobile optimisation features to provide more ways to reach your desired audience. Here’s what Facebook had to say…

“Today we’re launching the ability to drive automotive inventory ads to a mobile-optimized shopping experience on the Facebook platform. When a shopper clicks on an auto dealer’s ad, they’ll land on a dynamic Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) on Facebook that’s created using information from the dealer’s auto catalog. From this VDP, shoppers can research vehicles, discover additional inventory and connect directly with dealers via Facebook Messenger, lead form, phone call or by visiting a dealership in person.”

Instagram Reels Now Available In Over 50 Countries

We recently covered Instagram Reels, the app’s new feature designed to challenge TikTok on short-form video content. The new feature is now available in over 50 countries including the UK and the U.S.

Instagram head of Product, Vishal Shah, had this to say about Reels and in particular its extensive music catalogue…

“We’re launching Reels now in countries where we have rights. We think that the catalogue is quite deep and it has some unique content that you can’t really find, at that depth, in other platforms.”

Whether Reels can steal away some of TikTok’s audience remains to be seen but the U.S. is sure to be a prime market, particularly if Trump’s TikTok ban goes ahead. If your automotive business hasn’t explored the world of TikTok then Reels could be a good alternative to creating informal content that shows off the fun side to your brand.

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