7 Ways RV Dealerships Hurt Their Sales on Facebook
Facebook Marketing for RV Dealerships is on fire. The dealerships that have taken this marketing channel serious over the past few years are CRUSHING it (early adopters)! If you aren’t sold that this is a powerful marketing channel for our industry, I would encourage you to read my RV Case Study.
I own one of the largest Social Media Companies in the RV Industry. It was started and run 100% from an RV. In fact, as I’m writing this I’m in my Toy Hauler. Throughout our journey, we’ve seen the good, bad and ugly that dealerships do with Facebook Marketing and wanted to share a few of the most common mistakes dealerships make so that you can adjust what you’re doing and avoid them.
Profile & Cover Photos
This is flexible and you can get creative but there are a few general guidelines you want to follow.
- Make sure it looks clean and not cluttered
- Put your RV Dealership’s name or logo as the main subject
- The goal is to brand your dealership and grab attention
- A few don’ts that I see often
- Don’t use a picture of your dealership
- Don’t use low-quality images
- Don’t put your logo that isn’t the correct image size. It’s way too common for profile pictures to not fit correctly.
Here’s an example of a recent client we took on before and after. You’ll even notice their cover photo is a picture of the grand canyon. The dealership is in Ohio and you want to make sure you portray the local area that you’re in.
Before
After
Stop Posting so Many RVs
This is something I see way too often. As a marketer, I understand why people do this. They want to make sales, but what they don’t realize that this is counter-productive to the result they’re looking to achieve on Facebook. People aren’t on Facebook to look at pictures of your incredible sale or the latest and greatest RV. They want to be entertained or educated. 80% of your content should be lifestyle related, focusing on the benefits of the RVing.
When you give people what they want to consume 80% of the time, they don’t mind being advertised to 20% of the time.
This is where you’ll run effective Ads of units, sales, shows, etc. It’s ok to post RVs, but do it sparingly and the majority of the time it should be done through a highly targeted Facebook Ad.
Don’t Post Happy Campers
When you take a picture of a happy camper and post it to your page it goes out to your network of followers. They already bought into your brand and are being marketed to.
To tap into word of mouth advertising 
ON STEROIDS is to take this same picture and have the customer post it to your page!!! That way you tap into THEIR network, resulting in their friends liking and commenting, which Facebook’s Algorithm LOVES and it’ll give you a huge boost of their friends seeing a positive experience with your brand.
I would recommend even taking the pic with their phone and asking them to post it onto your page right there. The odds are that if they don’t do it right away, life will happen, they will get busy and it won’t get done.
Quit Boosting Posts
Boosting posts is for amateurs and if you’re doing it, you’re throwing money away. Facebook allows you to do a little bit of targeting however it’s very minimal compared to when you do it through the Ads Manager. Additionally, when you boost it Facebook will send the content to a percentage of people who are connected to your targeted audience, but usually, don’t fit into the demo & psychographics; thus wasting your money.
Share Content from Others, But Not Often
Sharing content from other sources (like Go RVing) is a great way to leverage their resources and often high production value at no cost to you. However, I often see dealerships using this way too often. You want to use this, but it needs to be limited for a number of reasons:
- When you share other people’s content, you send that hard-earned Facebook traffic away from your brand which is not ideal.
- Facebook doesn’t like shares in their algorithm compared to content posted to your timeline and they will limit how many people see it.
You’re Doing It Yourself
If you’re not an expert at Social Media you probably shouldn’t be doing it. You won’t be able to compete against professionals like me who do it full time and who take courses constantly from the top experts in the world. There’s too much of a learning curve for you to figure out what works, what doesn’t and most likely you don’t have the time to put in. Besides, outsourcing to RVers is cheaper than doing it in house.
You Hired a Social Media Company
This is another challenge dealerships have. They hire a social media company but that company doesn’t RV. If you’ve never dumped a black tank, you probably shouldn’t be attempting to write a post about it… Being serious, if they don’t RV it’s very tough to connect with your audience.
Either way, if you’re doing it yourself or outsourcing to a social media company you’re going to miss one of the key elements to make your Facebook Strategy effective which is authentic content.
My Workspace
There are a lot more common ways dealerships are hurting themselves from making sales from Facebook Marketing but we can’t give away the farm, that’s for our clients… We work with some of the largest dealerships in the country all the way down to some tiny Mom & Pop dealerships. If you’re interested or curious about working with us shoot me an email, text or phone call. It’s worth a conversation; you’d be surprised at how reasonable our rates are and blown away at our results.
Phone: (763) 807-9537
Email: eric@shorelooksnice.com
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Great article! tons of really great information to think about. I had tried to explain that bosting about our RV sales on social media wasn’t a good way to get sales but I love that you actually say so too. I am going to book mark this for the next time that comes up!
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