Facebook is no longer just a social networking channel; it has become an e-commerce platform for car dealerships. It provides a great opportunity for dealerships to reach a wider audience, not just for selling cars but also for discovering pre-owned ones. Facebook Marketplace is a great place to find used cars. It’s easy to navigate and provides a safe and trusted platform for buyers and dealerships to connect. It’s become one of the most popular classified sites for used cars in the US, with one in three Americans using it regularly.

Before you start browsing, it’s worth noting that you can’t directly purchase a car on Marketplace from your business’s Facebook page. Instead, your dealership must make contact and negotiate with the seller privately. This goes for all communication with private sellers. Dealers can still contact sellers privately outside of Facebook on behalf of the dealership, but Messenger-related communication through the dealer business profile is prohibited.

This is why it is a good idea to encourage your sales team to switch to their personal account to communicate with a seller on Marketplace on behalf of the dealership. While you may not be able to communicate with sellers or buyers on your dealership page, it is still essential that your dealership has a viable Facebook business page to effectively grow your dealership and brand.

Make sure your dealership page attracts new customers by making sure that your dealership’s page is up-to-date and engaging with correct contact information and clear and relevant profile images. It’s also beneficial to consistently post engaging content.

Shop Smartly

If you’re planning to utilize Marketplace, it’s important to shop wisely. Although it’s considered to be one of the most reliable online advertising platforms, take the smart and cautious approach by:

Check the seller’s profile. Do not communicate with a seller if the profile picture appears to be fake with the image of a celebrity or cartoon image or if there is no profile picture at all. A seller’s profile should raise some flags if there are very few to no friends. Another sign to not communicate with a potential seller is if their posts are all links.

Check out the vehicle. As equally important as checking out the seller is inspecting the vehicle for sale itself. Ask the seller for the VIN so you can search the history of the vehicle. You will also want to see the car in person before you pay for it. When you go to inspect the vehicle, take a co-worker with you for added security.

To use Facebook Marketplace, click the storefront-shaped icon, select the ‘vehicle’ category, and start browsing. To narrow down your search, check the ‘used vehicle’ box under the ‘condition’ dropdown. You can also search for a specific vehicle or filter by location, price, and other details. Keep up with vehicle trends and use the ‘notify me’ feature to get updates on relevant listings. Ideally, you also want to center your attention on the local market.

It’s time your dealership started using Marketplace

We all know that for dealerships, Facebook Marketplace is an extremely powerful tool. You can now expand your posts to include new vehicles along with used vehicles with the ad placement feature. Facebook has set in place protocols that do not allow dealers to list vehicles under their business page profile on Marketplace. This can only be done on their business profile by running ads. While this may seem like a strict regulation for dealerships, it does offer some great opportunities.

You can now showcase a wider range of inventory, which will increase your chances of finding potential buyers which will lead to a rise in sales and expand your business. While the ad placement feature has typically been used to put inventory carousel ads on Marketplace, you can optimize engagement with potential buyers by adding video to your vehicle listings using Video for Service.

Use Video In Your Outreach To Increase Responses & Sales

Buying cars from sellers on Facebook faces many challenges, but two of them are easily overcome by using video. Specifically, the first challenge is just getting people to respond. Sending a seller a personalized video can increase your response rate by 3-4x.

When the seller sees the message is from a real person and knows your interest is legitimate, that addresses a second big challenge: trust. By seeing your smiling face, they’ll be more likely to respond and to trust you and your dealership.

Created by automotive professionals, with automotive professionals in mind, the Video for Sales app by TradePending (formerly known as Snapcell) allows your staff to easily create high-quality personalized videos at the push of a button, with no video editing skills required.

Interested to learn more? Schedule a Video for Sales demo today.