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Will Car Dealers Leverage Social Media Advertising for Competitive Advantage in 2013?
Will Car Dealers Leverage Social Media Advertising for Competitive Advantage in 2013?
Car Dealers: Social Media Matters When Seeking Your Competitive Advantage in Local Markets
In 2012, more than 1.4 billion people around the world used social networks, up 19% from 2011. But although the worldwide social network audience is enormous, it is by no means unified. Within the North American automotive marketing landscape social media based advertising continues to mature and develop capabilities that are simply unavailable in other media channels. As social networking giants such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and others grow and develop increased business engagement models, their ability to attract marketing and advertising investments from the automotive industry grows.
The chart shown below shows five years of social media based advertising spend with fairly steady growth. I predict a faster rate of growth going into 2014 as the targeting, messaging and creative engagement models provided by social networks continue rapid development and increased effectiveness in achieving automotive marketing objectives.
US Online Social Network Advertising Spend from 2008 to 2013*:
- $1.175 billion (2008)
- $1.295 billion (2009)
- $1.335 billion (2010)
- $1.420 billion (2011)
- $1.515 billion (2012)
- $1.640 billion (2013)
Social Network Advertising Spend increases from another perspective*:
*Data source: eMarketer
ADM Professional Community members have access to all the data and insights we publish about social media. You can learn more about social network usage around the world below, but you can learn a lot more by visiting the ADM Professional Community daily. Complete the “Sign Up” form on the upper right of every ADM page to submit a membership application and start the conversation with experienced automotive marketers and people selling more cars using strategies and their tactics within the social media universe.
Usage patterns are highly developed and predictable in some regions, and unstable and changing rapidly in others. And while many people use Facebook, not all social network users do. Facebook has shown many users how to get their most satisfying results from time spent online, this has driven an increased familiarity with online social media in general, and a cottage industry of social networks specializing in specific subject matters. Homegrown social networks, especially those seeking consumers, enthusiasts and influencers in automotive niches will play a larger role over time in most major markets in both the USA and Canada.
Countries such as India and Indonesia are rapidly becoming major usage centers for social networking, particularly via mobile phones, and will each see their user bases grow more than 50% in 2012. This phenomenon, combined with Facebook’s staggering growth in the region, mean that in 2012, the Asia-Pacific region will, for the first time, be home to more Facebook users than North America is. As North American automotive consumers have become more accustomed and skilled at using social networks via their introduction through Facebook, many of them have ventured outside of the social media behemoth to participate in User Generated Content (UGC) sites, specialized blogs and forums, as well as other networks.
In more mature markets like the USA and Canada, automotive marketers are looking to use the social media presences they have already established to deliver relevant content to fans. Social networks are making it easier for businesses, especially car dealers to broadcast changing incentives and promotional offers that create the deals which drive both sales and service recommendations across a wider network of users in real time with improved location and mobile targeting.
With Facebook’s New Ads Manager and the growing maturation of the platform comes an increasing effectiveness for their paid advertising models.
This in turn enables car dealers to leverage user profile based targeting that delivers the right message to the right automotive consumer at the exact right time. More and more North American car dealers are using the growing platform maturity and advertiser responsiveness at Facebook for a competitive advantage over their neighboring dealership competition which has ignored Facebook’s emerging capabilities.
Data Sources: eMarketer, Facebook and MarketingCharts.com
via Automotive Digital Marketing Professional Community
facebook (Photo credit: sitmonkeysupreme)
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Twitter Video Cards
When marketers think of social media as a promotional channel, Facebook continues to be the network of choice. Of course, this trend may be the result of people sticking to a platform that feels safe. After all, Facebook remains the largest and most influential social platform on the web today, so much so that it claimed the most-searched term award for the fourth year in a row.
- Twitter Users
But other social networks shouldn’t be ignored, especially with sites like Twitter implementing new features regularly. According to eMarketer’s “US Digital Media Usage: A Snapshot of 2013,” Twitter user-ship grew significantly in 2012, but only 15 percent of the U.S. online population will engage on Twitter next year. Therefore, brands that want to drive traffic from a variety of social channels must learn how to engage users on whatever network they prefer. For many people, Twitter remains the most influential social hub, and brands may discover that video content thrives on this platform.
According to the source, Twitter’s user base increased by 14.2 percent in 2012 to reach 36.3 million monthly active members. To reach those prospective and current customers, brands must develop social media marketing campaigns that make branded content enjoyable and simple. With Twitter Cards, video marketing may be the easy solution.
- Online Video Viewers
According to eMarketer, online view viewers reached 178.7 million people in 2012 to make up 56 percent of the nation’s population, and 73 percent of American internet users. As for mobile video viewers, 73.3 million people watched video content via their mobile devices in 2012, reaching 22.9 percent of the country’s population and 29.6 percent of mobile phone users. Thirty-one percent of the U.S. population and 40.4 percent of U.S. internet users viewed visual media from their tablet devices this year, making video content marketing a necessary practice for many brands.
With Americans using Twitter more often this year and video media becoming a prominent marketing material, businesses that want to build brand exposure and grab consumers’ attention must produce consistent visual content, and publish output on the microblogging site. Together, video marketing and social media marketing may drive higher conversions in the new year, and help marketers reach new audience segments online.
via Automotive Digital Marketing Professional Community
Twitter Compliment Card (Photo credit: 13stock)
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Content Marketing Comprehensive Guidelines and Tactics for Car Dealers – Automotive Marketing
Recently, I was conducting research on the various rules around content marketing and the sharing of blog posts, videos, images and other online information resources across various media channels. While doing so, I came across two fascinatingly detailed and comprehensive articles that clearly lay out what car dealers must do to have effective content marketing strategies.
One of those two articles is: “How Content Marketing Will Enhance Your Social Media and SEO Strategy“ published on the Teir10Lab blog site, and the other article is a treasure trove of details with links to complete articles describing exactly how to execute each item in the action list. This comprehensive guide is titled the “Content Marketing Codex” from Demian Farnworth at CopyBlogger.
For many ADM members, this may be a little too much information and detail, but for those of you who are realizing how effective content marketing can be when it comes to attracting the very best customers a dealership can hope for, this is a high value guide to what needs to get done in order to optimize how well your dealership’s automotive content marketing strategy will work.
Each of the colorful and eye catching infographics/charts I’ve included in this ADM forum post can be clicked to view in full resolution. The very first infographic at the top of this post is from Tier10 Marketing. I want to highly encourage you to read the Tier10 Marketing article on Content Marketing for Car Dealers written by Elizabeth Frey at http://tier10lab.com/2012/05/30/how-content-marketing-enhances-soci…
Just like the author says at the end; what (if anything) is missing from the Tier10 Marketing article referenced and this exhaustive and already detailed, linked and resourced guide re-posted on ADM?
–Ralph Paglia
