By Gregory Arroyo, Senior Manager of Strategic Content, DealerSocket

Partly spurred by heightened concerns regarding consumer privacy, Facebook is seeking a closer connection to dealership CRMs in a bid to become the go-to platform for dealership advertising.

Being able to communicate with customers at the right time with the right message is a promise that dealers typically hear from CRM providers. It’s now Facebook’s go-to-market strategy, one that is partly fueled by heightened concerns regarding data privacy.

As detailed by Facebook’s Brent Parres during a recent webinar, the social media giant believes its platform can serve as a powerful tool in helping dealerships turn car buyers into customers for life. It’s a strategy that calls for a closer connection to the industry’s leading CRM providers.

“The No. 1 performing strategy we have is customer for life,” he said during the Feb. 6 webinar. “It’s the most profitable strategy we have.”

Feeling the Pain

It’s also a strategy partly born out of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Exposed in March 2018 — just months before the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation took effect — the British political consulting firm had harvested the personal data from millions of people’s Facebook profiles without their consent, and used it for political advertising.

Under intense scrutiny, Facebook Founder & CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, responded a year later with a blog post that outlined his vision for a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform, one that would allow users to communicate across networks easily and securely.

“We want Facebook to be a trusted place for everyone who uses the platform,” Parres said. “So, when using your marketing budgets on the platform, you know your money is well spent because people using our services are trusting the platform.”

Parres said the advantage of a unified platform is marketers can use the same budget to target car buyers across Facebook’s family of apps. “Facebook is working hard to make all platforms work together,” Parres said, noting that WhatsApp and Messenger are on a rocket-ship trajectory in terms of user engagement. Instagram and Messenger, he added, represent the greatest opportunity for dealers in the short and long term.

Facebook’s Plan

The big change spurred by the Cambridge Analytica scandal is Facebook no longer allows marketers to use natively integrated data from third-party firms like Nielsen Data or Polk for custom audience targeting. Dealers can still take advantage of third-party data outside of Facebook, but the social network wants dealers to rely on their data (whether scrubbed by a third party or not) when operating on its platform.

“It’s not all bad. Think of the data you have internally,” Parres said, noting that 87% of U.S. auto buyers used social media during active auto searches, he added. “It’s the power of the CRM, the power of the audience and customers, and continuing that discussion on social.”

That’s why Facebook is actively working with the industry’s leading technology providers on several key integrations. One such connection involves an inventory export that would automatically upload a dealer’s entire catalog of vehicles to Facebook to populate the social network’s Automotive Inventory Ads. Facebook then serves up these ads to users based on availability, pricing, and intent. So consumers in the market a Volkswagen are shown models with the body styles that mean the most to them.

“It’s our best-performing product when trying to drive leads or sales on a specific piece of inventory, so this [integration would put] you at a unique advantage,” Parres said. “And you don’t have to constantly switch out the creative because the creative is the inventory out on the lot.”

Facebook is also seeking new automation for its Lead Ads, which take advantage of Facebook’s audience selection and optimization products. They also allow dealers to customize lead forms that auto-populate based on a Facebook user’s profile data. Through integration, Parres said lead ads could automatically post into a dealer’s CRM so sales teams can take immediate action.

“We know the longer a lead sits, the worst the potential outcome will be,” he said. “So, this would be a huge convenience for [dealers].”

Parres perked up when talking about Facebook audience integration with dealership CRMs, noting that Facebook just completed a pilot with one of the major CRM providers. The connection would allow Facebook campaigns to sync with customer lists inside the CRM, allowing for limitless audience segmentation.

“Those systems will match data back and forth and update back and forth, so you don’t have to constantly update your audience lists,” he said. “This is something that’s seriously lacking in the market.”

To put it in perspective, Parres told the audience to consider that, on average, a person sees 2,000 pieces of marketing materials a day. “How often do you see or hear an ad during your day-to-day?” he asked. “So how do you stand out? The easiest way is through reach and touching all the people in your area that you know and understand.”