The Driving Sales, Three Day Executive Retreat in Q4 designed to study retail innovation with world-leading experts, to help you write your business plan for next year. Save $100 by using code Kelley 100

For: Executive Teams, Owners, GMs, Marketing, GSMs, Fixed Ops

When: Oct. 8-10, 2022

Where: The Bellagio, Las Vegas

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Yes, sticker price size matters. Yes, financing matters. Yes, credit availability matters. But what gets a person interested in a particular vehicle, and moving through the funnel, is what excites their eyes.

It’s the same reason why millions of people spend so much time on Instagram, or why they spend so much time making sure they have just the right set of photos for their Tinder profile.

Selling cars in an Instagram society

Just consider for a moment that there are over 1 billion active Instagrammers, and more than half of those users (500 million) are active every day. What’s more, 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram every day, and over 40 billion photos and videos have been shared on the Instagram platform since its conception¹.

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but it’s a good photo that gets their attention, and to buy a car.

So, other than the obvious (higher sales), why should dealers care so much about better photos? Because without them they’re literally flushing money down the drain. Borrell Associates expects auto dealers will spend roughly $9.4 billion this year on advertising and marketing² — up 8.8% compared with 2021.

Online technology makes the photo process different

That’s a lot of money for a segment of the industry notoriously careful about advertising expenditure. However, the problem dealers run into isn’t the decision on whether to spend on advertising, but rather “how” they go about that spending. Especially when it comes to vehicle photos, online technology has become extremely advanced, and you can’t pull out a polaroid, snap a few quick pics and expect to grab someone’s attention anymore. In fact, without understanding all of today’s technical nuances of photography, your photos may not even make it to Google.

Across the hundreds of dealership advertising campaigns, we observe and consult on each month across the U.S., we typically see about half of dealership vehicle inventory photos disabled and rejected by search engines after initially posted due to poor image quality, overlays, dumb text, etc. Educating dealers on the finer intricacies of acceptable photography today, and how that translates over to their marketing technology needs remains mission number one.

Good vehicle photos aren’t just point-and-shoot

Dealers today have two primary areas of need when it comes to building the right vehicle image inventory – the right resources to take the photos, and the right training on understanding how to take good photos. Like many other areas of digital business today, there are plenty of apps and software available where dealers can upload their photos. But if they don’t have the right equipment and training, all of that software is like a shirtless guy on Tinder holding a fish – it’s useless, and it won’t get you paid. And training is important because dealership turnover remains a significant issue. Your best in-house vehicle photographer might be here today and gone tomorrow, so finding a partner with unlimited employee training is critical.

Once the photos are taken and uploaded, there’s one more key element that today’s apps and software won’t help with – professional editing. Vehicle images must offer the right angles, light balance, straightness and color corrections. These minor details can mean the difference between someone falling in love with their next BMW or moving on to see a Lexus.

The last thing to point out with photos today is quality control. Whether it’s used or new inventory, when it shows up on the lot the photos must be taken, and taken right. This is especially important today, where used and pre-owned inventory is just as critical as new. When vehicles come out of reconditioning, professional editors must catch every little detail, such as a photo of a vehicle with no bumper – it happens more than you think.

Understanding each of these photography best practice areas will be critical to not only meeting and surpassing monthly sales goals, but they will help ensure car shoppers remember the superior online shopping experience they had in your digital storefront. The right vehicle photography will keep them coming back, improve sales, and ensure that you’re not wasting digital marketing dollars each month on search engines. 

About The Author: Peter Duffy is the Founder/CEO of Dealer Image Pro, a professional photo, video & 360 software company based in California. Dealer Image Pro helps hundreds of dealers take their merchandising in-house by offering the equipment, unlimited training, and professional editing, and quality control for all of the dealers they work with. They are experts in-house merchandising and studio design for auto dealers. For more information visit https://www.dealerimagepro.com/.

Appendix:

1: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/04/20/instagram-statistics

2: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/370082/automotive-dealerships-poised-to-spend-94-billio.html

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Facebook is a critical marketing channel for car dealerships. With nearly 2 billion active users worldwide, it’s easy to understand why social media is so impactful. Facebook offers dealers a unique opportunity to reach both current and potential customers quickly and affordably. 

Facebook ads are unique in that they target actual people. The cookie-based advertising of many other ad platforms means you’re limited to showing an ad in a specific browser on a particular device, but Facebook gives you the power to track and reach your audience no matter where they might be. 

For most of us, Facebook is a part of our daily routine, and we’re logged in on multiple devices. Do you spend more time browsing Facebook on your phone, desktop, laptop, or tablet? No matter where or how we access our Facebook account, all activity is tied to our individual profile. This means we see your ads across different devices, so you can always deliver the right message at exactly the right time.

Why it’s valuable for dealers and automotive groups- 

Facebook also gives dealers the ability to expand beyond your core audience and reach other potential customers who share similar interests. Through profile information (like demographic data and content that someone has liked or shared), activity on connected websites or apps, and information shared with Facebook by other advertisers and marketing partners, Facebook can identify people who are likely to have an interest in your ad.

This allows for more granular targeting and more effective, relevant ads, and a higher ROI. 

By connecting your inventory feed to your Facebook page and Facebook Business Manager, you can target and re-market specific vehicles based on the persons’ behavior. If someone clicks on an SRP or VDP for a truck, you should always retarget them by displaying the same VIN specific truck or by (people also viewed) similar body styles in their news feed. It’s all about reach and frequency, right? 

Why use Facebook Ads? Doesn’t Facebook have enough money? Shouldn’t we get all our reach for free? I know it’s frustrating that Facebook has changed the visibility of Pages but there are still some very compelling reasons to use Facebook Ads. Here are 5 of my favorite reasons.

5 reasons why you should use Facebook Ads-

#1 Inexpensive

Facebook Advertising is one of the cheapest forms of advertising out there. There are a LOT of choices these days on where you can advertise – magazines, banner ads, Google Adwords, Twitter, LinkedIn, direct mail, radio, TV, local events and more. LinkedIn can range from $2-15 per click and some of the other options are not as easily trackable.

#2 Highly Targeted Traffic

Facebook can target some pretty amazing keywords but there’s much more to the targeting! Here are a few things you can target by:

Demographics – age ranges, college education, home owners

Local area – either zip codes or a radius (10-mile radius minimum)

Job titles – this has recently been

Fans of another page – this is only available for certain pages but you can show your ads to the fans of other pages.

Income level – if you know your perfect customer is in a higher income bracket, you can narrow your audience down and use your advertising budget to reach your best audience.

Behavior – people who shop for organic food for example, or people who own a certain type of car, or shop online. This is HUGE!

#3 Easily trackable marketing – track leads and sales

One of the best things about Facebook Ads is that you can track exactly how much it costs you to get a lead or a sale. To do that, you must use the Facebook Pixel on your website. Better yet, when you test 2 different ads, you can see which one leads to better cost per conversion. Now you are saving money on your advertising!

#4 Promote your best content where people are hanging out

There are over 2 Billion people logging into Facebook every month and on average people are spending 20 minutes on Facebook every time they log in. You work hard on your content. Why not make sure people see it? So, you first post your content on the Facebook Page, wait a couple of hours at least to let it get some organic engagement, then give the post a boost. I have a full Facebook Boosted Post strategy that I use and I don’t spend too much money on boosting posts but get great cost per link click to get more traffic to my website. Typically, I’m boosting my posts to my website visitors (also known as retargeting) because I get cheaper cost per clicks that way. But you can also choose keywords to become more visible with people who are interested in that type of content.

#5 Stay top of mind with a warm audience

It’s easier for your business to get repeat customers rather than brand new customers. So why not spend a little of your marketing budget on getting in front of your current audience? The good news is when you are re-targeting your ads, your audience is much smaller and it’s very inexpensive to reach them. Even if you are emailing your customers or posting organically, people miss your content. How good is your email open rate? Even if it’s 20%, you could be missing 80% of your customers when you just send one email! You can combine your Custom Audiences to make the audience size larger.

There is no secret formula to building a successful business or a successful digital marketing strategy. Both take planning, hard work, dedication, and execution. By implementing an effective marketing strategy, you can give yourself a distinct advantage in your marketplace. Your business name will be seen more, you will earn more clicks from potential customers, and that adds up to more revenue.

If you want your business to start growing quickly, you need to ensure your social media and digital marketing is on point. Contact us today and ask for our case studies! We do this all the time and would love to show you exactly how! Give us a call at 314-879-4049 or click here to send us a note. Thank you for all that you do! You are appreciated! 

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1. Use Social Media to Increase Your Traffic – Use social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and the like to promote your website and business and raise your company’s profile. These networks allow you to communicate with consumers, create campaigns that can be broadcast over various platforms and can give you content that consumers can further promote by liking or sharing. Social media is a massive platform and just the kind of megaphone your business could use to help push more traffic to your site.

2. Tag People On Social Media – If you’re going to be involved in social media tagging people is a great way to increase your business profile. Tagging helps expand the reach of a post, alert people to a deal or campaign, and alerts customers to your post immediately. A tag is hard for someone to ignore and a general savvy of social networks is an easy, cheap, and effective way to expand your profile. 

3. Adapt As Many Quality SEO Practices As You Can – Search engine optimization (SEO) is the best way to be a priority search on Google and top of mind for customers. There are ways to optimize your SEO practices and ensure that you are making the most out of it. Focusing on keywords in your titles, meta titles, descriptions, and the like is an excellent way to utilize this tool. Ensuring your website is indexable and optimized for Google bots is another key to success

4. Fill In The Gaps – Outdoing the competition is of massive importance to most businesses including yours. The best way to do that is to see what is missing on the competition’s websites and see how you can exploit those gaps. If a competitor is missing information about a model or warranty information regarding a particular make, you have an opening to include that info in your campaign and on your website. That will give you an edge business-wise and show the public you are on the ball when it comes to selling cars.

5. Insert Internal Links and Encourage External Links – Providing internal links to your content is a straightforward way to boost traffic organically. Anchor text is valuable in internal link building and SEO. Look also to embed a small widget like a social media sharing link or button. That can help increase backlinks, and backlinks improve both SEO and organic traffic.

6. Identify and Eliminate Bad Links – Backlinks are crucial for a higher search engine ranking bad backlinks, however, are a considerable threat. Check your website frequently so that you can find and get rid of bad links. Software like Monitor Backlinks SEO Tool can be used to analyze, remove, and rid yourself of bad backlinks. You will have to tag the bad links, send a request to your webmaster(s), receive the removed alerts, and submit a report to Google Disavow Tool for non-removable links. Once that is all completed you will be clear of bad links and eliminate a significant issue for further website traffic growth.

7. Transparency Is Huge – Car dealerships rely on goodwill and building and maintaining relationships with customers. Transparency has always mattered, but it is incredibly important in today’s day and age of information at your fingertips. One slip up with that transparency or even appearing to be less than frank with your campaign is a great way to alienate and scare off customers. Be truthful and make sure your campaigns have clarity in both message and execution. 

8. Always Be Easy to Reach – Being approachable and accessible to your customer base is a big thing. Customer support is crucial, and your website should make it easy for the consumer to reach out if they need anything. Failing to do so could give your company and website a bad reputation, one that will be hard to shake. It never hurt to be there for customers when they need you, lots of companies fail to do that your business does not have to.

9. Embrace Long-Tail Keywords – Widely used keywords known as head terms, are great overall because they describe what your business is and are guaranteed to get clicks. The problem is that they are widely used, and because of that you will not be as likely to be high up on a Google search. However, long-tail keywords that are more specific and niche are a great way to get clicks and visits; for example, if you sell cars then having “new and used cars” as your search keyword is going to run up against a lot of competition. However, if you sell a large quantity and variety of used Chevrolet trucks use that as your keyword. Having a search term that reflects that such as “highest volume of used Chevy trucks” is a much better way to generate clicks and website traffic. 

10. Take Advantage of the Metrics – Google Analytics is a great tool to measure the success of your marketing and website. Use the tools you have. It is essential to rely on your gut and instinct, but that can only get you so far, do not underestimate or under-utilize the metrics. Those numbers will give you a lot of information that you will need to be able to expand your website and yield excellent results. 

11. Keep Up With the Latest Trends – People catch on to new trends quicker than ever, and trends die out nowadays faster than ever. That means you need to be quick to those trends as well. You may be selling cars, but you are also selling to a culture that demands you to be more than just a business. Make sure you at least know what is going on in Internet culture so that you can not only be in the know but so that you can exploit and use those touchstones for your gain. 

Increasing website traffic organically seems like a tough task, but it is not and should not be. These eleven tips will help you accomplish that goal as efficiently and manage-ably as possible.

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I talk to so many GM’s and GSM’s who say, “We have videos on YouTube, what are you talking about Benny?!” You are correct, you do have videos on YouTube, however the pre-packaged, robot voice videos the manufacture gives you, does nothing to separate your dealership from the competition. Let’s do a side by side comparison, and you decide which type of video would be more beneficial for your dealership’s brand and more influential to shoppers currently in the market for a vehicle.

-Chevrolet Quick Tips

–Local Dealership’s Safety Features 

YouTube’s reach is unparalleled and reaches more auto shoppers than streaming, cable TV, social media, and broadcast television. It’s all about reach and frequency, right? YouTube is uniquely positioned to help both brands and consumers with their experience, enabling them to connect in smarter, more meaningful ways.

Video marketing is no longer a trend, it’s mainstream. Internet users spend an average of 15 hours each week watching digital video, and Cisco predicted that video will make up 82% of all internet traffic in 2021. If you haven’t started investing in video marketing, you’re already behind the top companies in your industry. Not only are internet users consuming more online video than ever, they’re changing the rules about creating video and content. If you’re still not sold on creating a video strategy for your dealership, keep reading. 

YouTube is the ultimate video shopping tool for auto shoppers. Over 75% of auto shoppers say online video has influenced their shopping habits or purchases. 97% of auto shoppers performed an action after watching a video, and 40% searched a dealership’s inventory! I’m sure you’re not going to be upset if you get a 40% lift in VDP views, would you? 43% of shoppers reported visiting a dealership after watching a video of a vehicle they were considering. These are powerful numbers! 

The videos consumers are watching are created by brands just like yours. Life is about learning and experiences. People want to learn and experience your brand. Advertising and the car business have been a match made in heaven for many, many years. They go hand in hand, like cereal and milk! For years, dealerships and automotive groups have adapted their marketing mix to meet changing consumer behavior patterns.It’s time to put your car videos on YouTube and make that transition again! 

Automotive searches and sales are highly correlated. Are you showing up on Google every time someone is searching for priority models in your area? If you’re not sure, do a quick search on Google. Like I said earlier, YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google and is owned by Google. What are the other benefits of having a successful video strategy? It allows you to increase your exposure and viewability across desktop, mobile, tablet and connected TV.  

The media world and platforms are ever changing, but one thing never changes, audiences. Identify your audience and own them! Yes, digital marketing is a complex eco-system, but you know your audience! It’s time to successfully capitalize on these opportunities and close more deals in an ever changing marketplace. Target your audience behaviorally and geographically by city, state, county, even down to the zip code. 

in 2018, several digital marketing trends, strategies, and platforms are still going through evolution and reaching customer engagement levels not possible before. Digital marketing is customer focused. There are only a few digital marketing agencies, knowledgeable and experienced enough to enhance your brand, generate a consistent flow of leads and help you achieve your goals in 2019. 

In closing, I’ve been able to create a winning digital marketing formula that helps your brand stand out, stay relevant, and move more units, among growing competition in automotive online advertising. Take your time, look around, research, ask a lot of questions, and learn all there is to know about new trends in digital marketing. 

I hope you found this piece informative and are able to take away some actionable tactics to drive more sales at your rooftops. Please let me know how I can be a resource for you in any way. I do this all the time and would love to show you exactly how! 

The post Car Dealerships and Automotive YouTube Marketing Strategy appeared first on DealershipNews.com.

Once you start sharing your social listening data, you can do these tactical things right away.

• Find your own most frequently asked questions.
  And create a FAQ document or even chatbot to help answer questions in scale.
• Discover your customers’ most common issues.
  And figure out how to solve these issues or create talk tracks to respond quickly.
• Figure out what  your customers love regarding you.
  And influence that information to build campaigns or even content you know will resonate.
• Identify your important social media customers.
  And figure out how you can utilize their traits to focus on new social audiences.
• Get a sense of whether followers are positively or negatively mentioning your brand.
  If it turns out they skew a lot more negative, figure out if those are issues with your social media presence or something you can surface to other areas of your organization, like your product or activities teams.

You may also zoom out and look at your customers’ general sentiment.

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• Social media monitoring = Caring for your customers simply by monitoring social media for messages straight related to your brand and addressing those messages appropriately.
• Social media listening = Understanding your audience plus improving campaign strategy by being able to access the full spectrum of conversation about your industry, brand, and any kind of topics relevant to your brand.

In essence, monitoring lets you know what , hearing tells you why .

Monitoring tackles the symptoms, and listening reveals the main cause.

Social media monitoring definition

Social media could be the #1 channel for brands who would like to connect with their audience.

Social monitoring is the first stage towards powering these connections, assisting brands in finding conversations they can become a part of.

That’s why social media monitoring is so essential.

On social, you are able to monitor…

• Your brand name and common misspellings.
• Your product names and common misspellings.
• Mentions of your main competitor.
• People searching products in the area your serve.

Example:

Let’s say your brand is Best Yoga Pants on the Planet Inc. You want to know what people are saying about your brand, not just if they tag you on social, but when they mention you in any capacity

Social media monitoring tracks the key terms and phrases important to your company and surfaces them for you to respond to.

This can also include that brand new Cool Yoga Tank that your brand name released.

And it can range from an upcoming event you’re likely to attend, running or just attending. Like the Greatest Yoga Conference in the World.

By failing to monitor social media mentions — equivalent to ignoring the phone line— many brands leave behind important business intelligence that could inform more strategic decision-making.

Monitoring therefore is important to your brand’s communications pipeline. Your social media managers and customer service agents should own most of this interaction, essentially playing air traffic control to what’s being released across your social networks.

To ensure your social team is on the road to success, consider a two-pronged approach. First, centralize your social profiles into one platform that enables message monitoring with scale. Then create alerts to help keep your agents apprised of situations where your brand is being discussed (either directly or indirectly). The brand’s handle and broader mentions. Also, account for common misspellings, nicknames, flagship products, and industry-adjacent terms.

By getting these alerts, your social media department will be better able to block and tackle on your brand’ s behalf, answering FAQs while routing various other critical messages to different departments in your organization, from HR to product sales.

To get even more advanced, your community managers can also determine potential entry points to guide purchasing decisions. But be careful: This tactic is really as much an art as it is a technology.

Social media listening description

Description:

Social media listening refers to analyzing the discussions and trends happening not just about your brand, but around your industry as a whole, and using that information to make better marketing decisions.

Social media listening helps you discover why, where and how these conversations are happening, and what people think— not only when they’re tagging or mentioning your brand.

This helps you form future promotions, improve content strategy and messaging, outpace your competition, construct an effective changer program and even build more impactful brand partnerships.

Monitoring is the entry point. Listening is the graduate degree. While brand names can certainly hunt and peck to interact in the most basic monitoring on nativ platforms, a comprehensive social listening technique absolutely requires a third-party tool to assess large volumes of data. Said another way: While you can look at trees and shrubs one by one at the ground level, you need a helicopter to scan the whole forest.

Executing a social hearing strategy may seem more difficult than daily monitoring, but it doesn’t need to be. Start with turn-key solutions, then move on to more intricate techniques. Effective, automated listening tools that require minimum setup can deliver just as significant actionable data as customizable types.

For example , analyzing your brand’s @mentions on Twitter within a given timeframe and appearing frequently mentioned hashtags, keywords, plus associated terms can help you gauge sentiment and understand what people say regarding your brand, products, and strategies. All this is possible without fine-tuning complicated search queries or relying on algorithmic sentiment triggers. Just simply hearing what is being said alongside your own brand mentions is enough.

On the more advanced side, listening options that not only return aggregate quantity but also aid pattern recognition, reveal trends, and calculate share associated with voice among groups of keywords or even queries can provide tremendous value.

However you approach it, the goal is to reach clearly defined final results within your brand’s larger interpersonal strategy. If monitoring tactics lead to enhanced engagement and listening attempts to inform more strategic decision-making, you’re well on your way to achieving unquestionable success.

This article was initially published on SproutSocial.com. Go and check out their Listening Solutions as well as Social Management, Social Marketing, Customer Care, Employee Advocacy, and Data and Intelligence

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When you pair both monitoring plus listening tools, you find trends which you might not have noticed before. Each system is different, though, so your listening technique should be customized per network.

What is Facebook Listening?

Facebook listening is basically the process of digesting all of the information you’re given on Facebook, likes, remarks, recommendations and private messages, and identifying trends in the activity.  It’s an active analysis of your passively gathered data. Listening gives you a clearer viewpoint of how customers feel about you (brand perception), to help shape your next or existing advertising campaign.

You rule out anomalies, which may be absurd comments, trolls, and near-do-well diatribes, and find the underlying message in the greater balance of the overall engagement that you can work with.

Facebook monitoring compared to listening

Facebook monitoring is similar to typical social monitoring but with less flexibility. Due to privacy issues and API limitations, Facebook limits the types of data it provides to third-party apps. On Twitter, you can conduct and save search criteria. But on Facebook, it’s more difficult. A myriad of private and closed groups, private messages and billions of posts a day makes it impossible to compile all of the search results.

So what should you monitor? As a brand, you should review your own Messenger activity, public posts, comments and interactions in related industry Groups. If there are regular or periodic press releases, you can check on how well they perform with a service like Buzzsumo and it’s Content Analyzer.

Understanding your goals and how they play into your Facebook monitoring is essential. If Facebook is used as a default customer service platform then you should focus your monitoring activities around customer comments, service issues and complaints.  If your customer base isn’t aware that Facebook isn’t their customer service portal, make sure to monitor other assets online to cover your base.

An example of using another asset is using Facebook’s recommendations feature to collect reviews. After you release a new product that for the sake of our conversation is a “reliable”, reviews are sure to follow. Monitoring would be reading the reviews and possibly responding to each review and thanking them. Listening would be noticing complimentary language using the description “reliable,” and then taking action to incorporate the products reliability into the marketing assets.

While Facebook monitoring is a more reactive process, Facebook listening is proactive whereby the intel gleaned is inserted into the marketing.

Implementing a Facebook listening strategy

Starting a Facebook listening strategy includes the same first steps as any network. You begin with setting up your tools and understanding your goals. Why are you using a listening strategy and what do you hope to learn? If you’re brand new to this, we recommend setting up monitoring as a first step and then seeing what kind of information you gather.

SproutSocial.com has a listening solution that definitely needs some looking at.

Native search in Facebook offers you the top posts for your terms and should be one of several listening posts (so-to-speak) in your listening arsenal. For example, searching for your brand, industry related terms and competitors is a good use of the search function. You can narrow these results down to those that you follow, any Group, any location and any date.

Finally, to set up a monitoring strategy on Facebook to track your competitors, navigate to Insights, Overview and then to Pages to Watch. Here, you track Pages in your industry or of your competition to see how their weekly posts are performing. Watching these trends could help you think of new ways to reach your own customers.

After you set up your monitoring, schedule time in your calendar to review all of the data. It can be done at your monthly or quarterly reports review. Unless you’re analyzing a short campaign, a daily or even weekly review may not provide enough information to analyze.

Examples of Facebook social listening

Let’s take a look at how other companies are using social listening for Facebook. With the below examples, you’ll hopefully take away some actionable ideas for your own company. Each brand uses social listening differently. Some may use it to inform a product feature while others might also use it for customer sentiment. Social listening isn’t an either/or scenario.

Samsung

In the retail sector, Samsung looks at their competitors to see what their most common complaints are. In its launch of the new Galaxy S9, the company posted a series of videos highlighting the differences between the Galaxy and the Apple iPhone X. The videos are sarcastic and funny, with each one focusing on one feature that Apple customers often complain about. The style is much like a comedy skit and short for maximum impact. In this example, Samsung used listening on their competitors to inform their campaign strategy by tracking down commonly voiced complaints about the competitor product.

Burt’s Bees

Noticing trends in your own industry and developing products to go with them is a natural part of a company’s growth model. Burt’s Bees saw face masks on the rise and developed their own version that fits their brand. Product research was conducted through social listening of competitors and internal analyses of what customers wanted out of them. The result was a set of new face masks responding to the problem areas that customers most wanted to fix.

Kraft

Cool Whip and Jell-O are both owned by Kraft. But they serve slightly different audiences. While campaigns for both are targeted to adults or those with buying power, Jell-O is more fun for kids. Kraft used social listening to understand what each of these brand’s customers want and target their products accordingly. Even the content for each is different. In the first example, Jell-O’s all about playing with the food and giving parents play ideas. In the second example, Cool Whip is oriented to those who host parties and need an easy recipe to execute.

Conclusion

Using Facebook listening as part of your social listening strategy gives you a leg up against competitors. Not only does it improve your own marketing strategy but it also helps develop your other departments. On Facebook, customers aren’t afraid to tell you what they like or don’t like about your products. And when a competitor is failing in one area, social listening will help you step in and fill the gap faster.

Remember, Facebook is just one piece of the puzzle for social listening. While the network does have the most widespread audience, your other social channels need to also be incorporated. One customer may be more vocal on Twitter than on Facebook. Ignoring the other channels will only limit your view of the data that you need.

This article was initially published on SproutSocial.com. Go and check out their Listening Solutions as well as Social Management, Social Marketing, Customer Care, Employee Advocacy, and Data and Intelligence

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