Blog - SocialTap

UGC – The New GOAT of FB Ads!! 🐐

In this video, we talk about the new GOAT of Facebook Advertising – User Generated Content (UGC).

We explain different types of UGC, how to create UGC, and much more.

UGC is one of the main things that will rebuild your consumer’s trust to buy a car from you.

If you want to know more about UGC or want some help in running awesome UGC campaigns and scale your business using paid social media then click the link below to speak with one of the team.

FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I’m Jon Wilson from SocialTap. We help car dealers and finance brokers generate more leads and sell more cars on Facebook. And today, I’m going to talk to you about UGC, or user-generated content.

Now, UGC is the process of getting customers to create content that you then use for posts, ads, or any sort of marketing campaigns.

Typically, it’s about the customer explaining the process of using your service or the experience they’ve had or actually using your product. In particular, with businesses in the auto industry, it will ultimately mean the process of engaging with you and ultimately buying a car.

Typically, this content comes in the form of images and videos.

Videos are obviously great because you can hear the experience first-hand from the customer.

So it’s important these videos aren’t polished.

We don’t want your sort of TV-style production videos. We want to be shot with a smartphone in a sort of selfie-style, and that customer not to be prompted in any way whatsoever, for them really to just explain the experience of working with you and how you’ve helped them out.

The reason why this is important is because it gives potential buyers confidence.

And there are very few people that want to be pioneers, you know, the first people to do things. They want to see that other people have done it, and then they’ll follow.

And user-generated content allows you to create that perception, or that reality.

This is even more important at the moment, with where we’re currently at, still in the sort of middle of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The process of buying cars is changing, and whether we like it or not, we are moving more towards that sort of distance buying model. You know, even if you are buying from a company that’s 20 miles down the road from you, people will like the convenience of being able to buy a car over the phone or via a website and get the car delivered.

It’s not to say that car dealerships are going to disappear altogether, but at the moment, that process is accelerating. It’s becoming more and more common.

Now, it’s something that maybe a lot of people aren’t particularly familiar with, and maybe feel a little bit uncomfortable about, so user-generated content really allows you to de-risk your customers.

People want to negate the risk, and they don’t want to be the first people, like we mentioned earlier on. So if you’re showing that there are other people doing this right now and that the process has been great and there’s been no problems with it and they’ve had a great customer service, and actually, it can even be better than having to go through dealer to dealer, kicking the tyres of different cars, and they can actually purchase a car from the couch, well you’re actually showing that it could be a better way of doing things.

But that is better coming from a customer, rather than you telling it to people.

So you’re able to de-risk your customers by showing them that there are other people doing this right now. And your UGC video could look something like this.

“Just want to say a big thank you to Swiss Toni Finance, sorting out my car. Applied about a week ago, didn’t really know what car I wanted. Filled out a short application form, and within an hour or so, they got back to me, saying I was approved, even though I have had some credit problems in the past. So I was really thankful for that. And then a few days later, some free delivery, got a car right to my doorstep, and I can’t thank them enough.”

So when you’re asking clients to create these videos for you, also think about who you want to do these videos.

You know, obviously you want someone that is going to give you a glowing reference and say what a great experience they’ve had, but also, think about the different demographics and how that’s going to resonate with new potential clients.

Now, from my point of view, I want to see that you have helped my exact set of circumstances.

If you’ve helped someone that is in my circumstances looking for a similar car, that completely de-risks the situation because I will think, well you’ve helped him, so you can help me.

Now, you need to think about all the different demographics that you want to target. And ideally, you want to try and get videos from people that fit those demographics.

So you might want to get one from a young female.

You might want to get one from a family.

You might want to get someone who’s got bad credit.

You might want to get someone who needed a car really quickly.

All these different scenarios. If you can get videos from as many of those as possible, when you’re targeting people with ads using those videos, you can get very specific, and then the person who is being served the advert will go, well yeah, they’ve helped that person in the same circumstances as me, so there’s no reason why they can’t help me out to get a new car, as well.

So again, this is a big thing for marketing, in general.

They work fantastic for ads. We’re running a lot of campaigns for our clients at the moment, and the numbers are great. The quality is exceptional, as well, because already, you’re breaking down those trust barriers.

Again, it’s not like they’ve just seen some generic advert out there advertising a car.

They’re being shown the experience that someone has received from a real customer, not some actor, or not being told from somebody who works within the business.

So if you need any help with how to create some user-generated content, and the type of things that you should include, feel free to get in contact with us.

If you also want some help in how you can then turn this content into fantastic-performing ads, then again, send us a message.

We’d be happy to help.

Meet your new best friend, Retargeting

alex Uncategorised

Today, we explain everything you need to know about Retargeting, and why everyone should be doing it, especially car dealers and finance brokers.

Retargeting is the key method that will take your conversion rates, and inevitably shoot them up!

If you’d like our help to take advantage of the opportunity there is right now to get cheaper leads and attention and scale your business using paid social media then click the link below to speak with one of the team.

FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Today I’m going to talk to you about retargeting, in particular, why retargeting is going to be your best friend for the next couple of months.

Now, just to give this video some context, we’re five weeks into lockdown in the UK, and whether you’ve been running any paid marketing over the last five or six weeks or not, I can guarantee that your website has still been generating visitors, and people have still been visiting your Facebook pages, Instagram profiles, viewing your content.

So you’ve been generating interest.

You might have even still been generating inquiries for people purchasing cars and finance applications. It’s really important now to switch that retargeting tap on, and I’ll tell you for why.

Now, people have been looking into cars for the last five or six weeks, you know, people have been sat at home and they’ve been bored, they’ve needed stuff to look forward to, and people will have been visiting your website.

If you don’t now start to retarget that traffic, you might have done the hard work of, you know, generating interest, and, ABC down the road comes along and swoops it up.

Now there’s a number of ways in which we can retarget people.

Number 1… Retarget

The first one is we can retarget people that have visited your website using the Facebook Pixel. And we can retarget them dependent on what pages they’ve visited, how long they spent on your site, what actions they’ve taken. So you can even separate that website traffic out into different audiences, and make sure that you’re really targeting the people that have shown significant interest. You know, that might be people that have submitted an application form, or an inquiry form.

Number 2…Engage with your own adverts

The second way we can retarget people is based on them engaging with your Facebook page or your Instagram profile or even just any piece of content or advert that you have served from either of those profiles.

And we can also retarget people based on videos they may have watched from your Facebook or Instagram accounts. And we can do that based on the length of time that they’ve watched that video for. So, we might want to concentrate on people that have watched over 75% of a video, for example.

Number 3…custom audiences

The third way, and one of the most important ways, we can retarget people, is using custom audiences. So, again, whether or not you’ve been running any paid traffic or paid marketing or not, if you’ve still been generating inquiries, and, again, in particular with what we do, it’s finance applications, I imagine that like a lot of people out there, one of the common objections at the moment has been that somebody has applied and they want to be able to go and see the car before they purchase it, and delivery isn’t really an option for them, or, they’ve just changed their mind because of the uncertainty of everything that’s going on.

But these people have shown interest and they’ve filled in, in most cases, quite a lengthy application form in order to express their interest. It’s daft to sort of throw those away now for somebody else to come along and potentially swoop them up. My suggestion is to get that data into Facebook as custom audiences and start to retarget and start to re-engage with those people because that’s the really low-hanging fruit at the moment, it’s people that have maybe applied or inquired recently, but wanted to come down and see a car or, wanted to wait until certain restrictions were lifted, or they knew that their jobs were going to be safe.

Number 4…dynamic retargeting

And then, finally, one of the more technical or advanced ways in which we can retarget people is if you’ve got a stock feed from your website into a catalogue in Facebook, we can run dynamic retargeting ads where we, you know, if somebody views one particular car, we can retarget them with an ad about that car but also similar vehicles that are in different vehicle sets.

And one last thing I wanted to mention was in regards to messaging, particularly for retargeting, but this also applies for just your general adverts or content in general, people have had enough of the C-word now, it’s being crammed down they’re throat all day, every day, and I feel like the advertisers that are going to sort of go against that now, are really going to be the ones that win.

So, keep your messaging really positive. People want that light at the end of the tunnel, they want to be excited about getting their freedom back. You know, it’s no surprise that I’ve seen a lot of people now starting to book holidays for next year and so on and so forth.

So that’s the type of messaging that you really want to tap into, the positivity, the fact that people will soon be able to get outdoors in some way shape or form.

So if you’ve not set up any retargeting campaigns yet or you don’t know how to do this, let us know, we’d be more than happy to give you some advice and help you out. Again, with regards to your messaging, keep things really positive and look to the future.

And again, if you want any help with Facebook campaigns for your business, or understanding what that looks like for you in the current climate, we’d be more than happy to give you some advice so just send us a message.

Why you Should be Running Snapchat Ads

alex Uncategorised

In this video, I walk through exactly why advertising on Snapchat is a no brainer for many of our car dealers and finance brokers.

Snapchat offers access to a unique audience and prices way below more traditional platforms like Facebook.

And it’s not all teenagers either

Snapchat ads

Snapchat marketing

How to market on snapchat

How to run Snapchat ads

Snapchat advertising

Marketing for car dealers

FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Today, we’re talking all about Snapchat ads, and why you should be advertising on them.

That’s a good enough introduction, nice and straightforward, so let’s get started.

Now, the first reason is, it’s because nobody else is.

I know that might sound a little bit strange, but if you think about brands that did exceptionally well with things like PPC, SEO, Facebook, and social media, it was the early adopters. It was the people that got in there first when it was easier to get positions on Google when traffic on Facebook was cheap when it was easy to build big organic audiences, and Snapchat’s in that same place right now, especially from a paid marketing point of view. We’ll go onto some of those reasons a little bit later.

The second reason is that the highest-growing age bracket in terms of users on Snapchat right now is 25- to 34-year-olds, which is a real core market for car dealers and finance brokers.

In fact, there are 5.1 million active users in this bracket right now, and also, there’s the ability to target car shoppers or automotive shoppers specifically on Snapchat, and at the moment, there are 1.6 million people that fall into that category. Again, a great benefit of using Snapchat ads is the ability to target those individuals which we don’t necessarily have on Facebook, and we have to be clever about how we find those people.

The third thing is, traffic and impressions are ridiculously cheap.

If you compare it to Facebook and Instagram, some people say it’s sometimes as low as a fifth of the cost, so you can reach five times as many people for the same amount of money. At the moment, we’re seeing anything between it being 50% cheaper up to around about 60, 70% cheaper to do that.

The fourth thing is, you’ve got similar capabilities on Snapchat to Facebook.

So first of all, you have a pixel which can track traffic and track what people are doing. One of the recommendations I give you is, get that on your website as soon as possible so you can start tracking those people hitting your site. We also have the ability to run campaigns into custom audiences, and create lookalike audiences, and also, the story ads that you would create on Snapchat are the same placement sizes as they would be on Facebook and Instagram too, so it’s really easy to port your story ad placements over to Snapchat. The one little warning I give with that is, on Snapchat, you don’t have the benefit of having ad copy like you would on Facebook, so you’ve got to make sure that your videos really do explain what your

product or service is, and tell people what you want them to do next, so you might need to change some of your creative around on that.

So we’re really seeing some great results for our clients right now on Snapchat, but as always, it should form part of a larger strategy, you know. I wouldn’t necessarily say go and put all your efforts into Snapchat right now. We feel like the perfect marketing mix, really, is where people see your brand in multiple places, and again, one of the great benefits that we’ve got, because we have pixels on Facebook and on Snapchat, we can retarget traffic from either source on the alternative channel too.

So again, think about how you can incorporate Snapchat into your existing strategy, and get the most out of it. You might just use it for a retargeting platform because it’s a lot cheaper to retarget people on Snapchat than it is on Facebook, or you may use it as your acquisition source and retarget on Facebook, or you can do both, but if you have any more questions about Snapchat marketing, and you want to pick our brains, feel free to send us a message.

We’d be happy to help.

5 Marketing Tips For Car Dealers During Lockdown

alex Uncategorised

Car dealers and finance brokers!

Here are some tips about how to manage marketing during lockdown.

Right now attention and traffic is cheap because everyone else has stopped marketing out of fear.

By doing that they’re doing more harm than good.

We’ve been taking our clients through these steps to make sure they don’t just survive what’s going on right now but continue to generate leads and sales and have a full pipeline ready to come out the other end of lockdown and thrive.

This video covers:

5 marketing tips for car dealers

5 marketing tips for finance brokers

Sales for car dealers

Sales for finance brokers

https://social-tap.co.uk/facebook-ads-for-automotive-industry/

Full Video Transcript

Hi, I’m Jon Wilson from SocialTap.

We help car dealers and finance brokers sell more cars using Facebook Ads. And today, I just wanted to give a little bit of advice to businesses about how they can manage their marketing during the coronavirus pandemic.

The main thing that I want to try and do is help businesses fill up their pipeline during this period so that when things go back to normal when we’re through the other side of it, business can go back to normal as quickly as possible.

Now, for starters, I just wanted to say that we’re seeing great results for clients at the moment who are still trading and still looking to run direct response campaigns, driving finance applications and car purchases and what have you.

The cost per lead and the cost per acquisition has dropped dramatically for a number of reasons which we’ll go on later in this video to explain.

So if you are still trading, then now is a good time to start Facebook campaigns and if you need any help with this, then send us a message and we’d be happy to discuss that with you.

For those that aren’t then again, hopefully, the tips that we’re going to give now are going to help you get things in order so that you come out the backside of this and you’re coming back into a full pipeline and again, hopefully, get back to business as quickly as possible.

Tip 1️⃣:

First of all, tip number one is about auditing your existing marketing. So simple things like we’re seeing car dealers at the moment that are still running ads about getting people into the showroom or handover pictures. It’s not really relevant right now. So take those down.

Tip 2️⃣:

The second thing is it’s a great opportunity to work on areas of your marketing strategy that have been neglected. Things like your website and how that looks and the content on it. SEO. Email automations. Frankly, building an email list, which is really important, especially now with everything that’s going on right now. If you’re spending time to try and build up a substantial email list, that will become very, very valuable. These things may take a little bit of time to pay off but now is the perfect time to start on them.

Tip 3️⃣:

The third thing is on your website, and any collateral, make expectations very clear about delivery times and what have you. Just because if you’re a car dealership, if you’ve been forced to close, doesn’t mean that you need to stop marketing. It doesn’t mean that you have to shut completely. You should be busy now thinking about the future and what you can do to make sure things are going to be as busy as possible for you out the other end of it.

Tip 4️⃣:

The fourth thing is brand awareness. Now, as you can imagine, a lot of your competitors have gone into hiding. A lot of marketers have pulled their ad budgets back, which means that the cost of traffic, of impressions, has dropped dramatically on Facebook right now. So it’s a perfect time to fill the top of your funnel with traffic at a lower cost than it would have been a couple of months ago.

I’d imagine that traffic and impressions are probably at their lowest cost for a number of years right now. So it’s beneficial to take advantage of that.

Be the company that in two, three months’ time, when somebody wants to buy a car, you’re the first business that they think of because during this period of time, rather than turn your ads off completely or rather than turn off all your marketing, you’ve been the business that has been brave and has decided to be the company that people remember in a couple of months’ time when they need to get a new car.

Tip 5️⃣:

And the fifth thing is to be patient. Sort of interlinked with the last tip that we gave, not everybody is going to want to buy a car right now but they will do eventually. And if you’re the company that’s been front and centre over the last few months, while people are spending more time on their phones, on social media, then you’ve got a far better chance of being the company that they remember in a few months’ time.

And if you couple it with all the other things that we’ve mentioned, building an email list, making sure your website’s up to scratch, spending time on SEO, and even just regularly posting content from your Facebook and Instagram channels, it will pay off in the long run because again, a lot of your competitors are probably sat there maybe feeling sorry for themselves because they’ve had to shut their doors and counting down the days ’til they can reopen again.

Again, if you put all these tips into practice, We guarantee things will be better for you. You will walk in, on whatever day it will be, with a better chance of having a full pipeline and again, as I mentioned to you before, we’re still seeing great results from a number of our clients’ campaigns.

The cost per lead is dropping dramatically. Contact rates are through the roof. So if you are still wanting to run traffic or generate leads for your business at this moment in time, then give us a call or send us a message and we’d be happy to have a chat with you about it.

Cheers.

Facebook Ads Metrics For The Motor Trade

sukh Uncategorised

In this video SocialTap Director Jon explains the key metrics you need to ignore and the ones you need to pay attention to when you’re running Facebook ads for your car dealership or as a finance broker

Facebook is becoming the most important channel for dealers and brokers for generating new leads

When used properly it can lead to the lowest cost per leads and cost per sales than any other channel

If you have an agency running your Facebook campaigns for you make sure they’re reporting on the right metrics so you know for certain how profitable your campaigns are

If you are running your campaigns yourself then understanding these numbers becomes even more important If you’d like our help to generate more leads, get more finance applications and approvals and ultimately make more sales and generate more profits for your dealership or finance brokerage then go here for a free consultation https://social-tap.co.uk/facebook-ads-for-automotive-industry/

Full Video Transcript

Hi, my name is Jon Wilson from SocialTap.

We help car dealers and finance brokers generate more leads and close more sales using paid social.

And today I’m going to talk to you about the metrics that matter on Facebook and the metrics that don’t.

So first of all, I’m going to go through what we call vanity metrics. Now these are things like how many engagements you post or your ads getting, like smiley faces, comments, and so on.

It’s also things like reach and CPM. Now in the grand scheme of things, the these metrics aren’t going to help you generate more leads.

And if you’re fixated on those metrics, are you getting excited about them? You’re probably wasting your money.

Likewise, if your marketing agency is making a big thing about them, you probably need to sack them right now. Now on the flip side of that, the numbers are important to you and and in order of importance are in the first instance its cost per lead. It’s how much is it costing you to acquire that person’s details.

Now, that number on its own isn’t overly important, and I’ll explain why it’s pretty easy to manipulate, it’s pretty easy to get you a tonne of low quality leads in through the door. So paying 50 P or a pound for an inquiry or an application, you know, so, you know, if you’re not closing any of them, it’s pretty much pointless exercise.

However, it still gives us a bit of a benchmark on how well your campaigns are performing. The next most important metric is actually how much is it costing.

If you’re in car finance, we know that actually getting that applicant to pass a finance check is hugely important because otherwise it’s a lost cause.

So how much is it costing to acquire and approval or you know, an opinion applicant, and that’s a number that is very, very important.

And you should be working to figure out what that number is. And your marketing agency should be, you know, very closely fixated on, you know, what percentage of inquiries he getting through are resulting in approvals.

And then finally, the most important number which you should know because this is the be all and end all is how much is it costing you to get a sale. So we go from customer lead cost to approval, and then cost per sale.

And obviously, the reason why that is so important because that’s the number that’s going to tell you if you campaigns are profitable or not.

And that that’s the whole point of this exercise really is the whole point of view running Facebook campaigns is to make a profit.

So again, if you don’t know these numbers, and find them out very quickly, and if you need some help doing this

So we’d be happy to help you marketing agency isn’t giving you those numbers, you need to have a probably a strong chat with them because they’re not not giving you the right information.

So if this video has been useful, let us know in the comments below.

If you would like us to take a look at your campaigns and offer some free advice, we’d be happy to do that as well. And finally, if you’d like to generate more leads and make more sales, and you’d like social self to help you do that, then send us a message and we’d be happy to have a chat.

4 Easy Steps to Get Rid of Negative Facebook Reviews👎🏼❌

alex Facebook

In an ideal world you you’re going to get 500+ 5* Facebook reviews. But in reality, we all know that it’s extremely difficult to maintain ridiculously high levels of service 100% of the time. Or you might just get that annoying little shit of a customer that just loves to cause carnage. Either way, lots of businesses will have a bad review somewhere. So, for this blog we will openly tell you how to deal with them.

Before we get into the gritty stuff, one thing you should know is, completely getting rid of bad Facebook is a bit like Mission Impossible, just without the lasers and guns.

admin Facebook

You see, the like count on an Instagram post is just a marker, in a way like people queuing outside a shop or seeing a busy restaurant as you’re walking by.

It feeds the little sheep 🐑 inside of us and we think “I want to be part of that club!”

And we take notice of ads and posts more that have tons and tons of likes and naively think, “wow, this must be important, the world and its mother loves this.”