Tracking the Right KPIs: The Automotive Industry

Introduction

Measuring social media metrics is important for understanding the performance of your respective Pages no matter what industry you are in. With advanced measurement reporting of social Pages, companies in markets throughout the world can identify business problems and resolve these problems from the valuable insights gained from analytical tools. However, the problems that companies face are vastly different from industry to industry. This report will focus on how proper social media measurement can help resolve business problems for automotive companies.

When it comes to marketing the brand name for car models, automotive companies have a challenging task. The average consumer’s decision to purchase a car relies heavily on the brand name and reputation. To complicate matters, the majority of car sales occur onsite at dealership locations and it is often difficult to track the marketing return of investment on a macro scale. However, by properly using social media measurement tools, automotive companies can increase brand awareness, receive product feedback, bolster dealership traffic, and more!

Important Social Media KPIs for Automotive Companies

• Fan Growth: The increase in Fans during a select time range.
• Engagement Rate: The amount of user interactions (Likes, comments and shares) that occur with your Page.
• Response Rate: The percentage of user posts or questions that the admin responded to.
• User Activity: Identifying the times of days and the days of week in which your users are most engaging most frequently with your Page.
• Shareability: The amount of shares a Page receives per day.
• Interactions: The number of interactions that a Page or post receives and the types of interactions (Likes, comments and shares).
• Paid Advertisement Engagement: The number of likes, comments and shares received on a Newsfeed advertisement.
• Paid Advertisement Reach: The number of Facebook newsfeeds that a Facebook advertisement will reach.

Social Media Measurement: Business Solutions

• Brand Awareness/Loyalty
• Social Customer Service
• Soft ROI for Increased Dealership Traffic
• Product Feedback
• Event Promotions

Linking Business Solutions to Social Media Measurement KPIs

Brand Awareness/Loyalty

In 2013, the car brand with the highest level of brand loyalty was Kia. In a recent study, they boasted that 48% of their buyers this year were returning customers. This statistic is just an example of how important it is to maintain a positive and memorable brand image for automotive manufacturers. With effective social media measurement, automotive brands can effectively raise brand awareness and foster brand loyalty, which ultimately results in increased sales.

The Importance of Brand Awareness and Customer Loyalty

For automotive brands, social media is an incredibly powerful communication channel for increasing brand awareness. Considering the fact that the customer adoption ladder (point in which they are made aware of a product until the final sale) can take years, it is critical that consumers recognize the brand as soon as possible.

Additionally, improving the brand reputation of an automotive company has a direct correlation for raising the price of a car. This is especially relevant for luxury cars. For instance, in 2012 the automotive brand with the strongest brand name was Ferrari. During this year they made record profits, while selling 7,318 cars. At the same time, they had more than 10 million Fans. Considering the price of a Ferrari and the strength of the brand name, it is apparent that brand awareness affects the overall demand, which in turn raises the equilibrium price (optimal price for maximizing profits based on supply and demand – see below image).

How to Increase Brand Awareness and Customer Loyalty

The steps and strategies for increasing brand awareness and customer loyalty on social media mainly should focus on increasing Fan growth rates, engagement rates, and responding to Fan inquiries.

In order to increase fan growth rates and engagement rates, automotive brands should do the following things:

1. Publish content when the social community is most active.
2. See the country in which the majority of your Fans are from. Analyze this and automotive sales by country to determine optimal times to post, which countries to target posts to and whether it is worth creating a separate country page.
3. Consistently publish content relating to the themes that their social community finds most engaging.
4. Publish the types of content that receive the most interactions (I.e. photos, links, videos).
5. Occasionally encourage users to share popular content with Calls to Action like “share this.” This will result in increased fan growth because the higher the reach ratio, the more frequently content will reach the newsfeeds of non-Fans.
6. Identify key influencers and post content they find engaging since they are the most likely to share content. If it seems appropriate for your social strategy, then offer them the position of brand ambassador.
7. Follow all Facebook rules. Breaking these rules will have a negative affect on your EdgeRank. If you would like to learn more about this then check out our EdgeRank whitepaper.
8. Make sure to respond to all Fan questions as quickly as possible.

Most Important KPIs: Brand Awareness/Loyalty

• Page/Post Engagement Rates
• Fan Growth Rates
• User Activity
• Interactions by Post Type
• Share Ratio

Soft ROI for Dealership Traffic

Even as digital sales increase across industries, nearly all sales of cars still occur onsite at a dealership. The reason is simple. With a high-cost product that can differ drastically in performance, consumers want to test and hear about the product at a greater length. Therefore, one of the main goals of brand marketing for automotive companies is to increase dealership traffic on either a micro or macro scale.

How to Increase Dealership Traffic

There are two main methods of increasing dealership traffic via social media. The first is driving dealership traffic by organic methods (no payment involved) and the second is via paid social advertising.

Here are some options for increasing dealership traffic by organic means:

1. Target posts to specific cities about dealership promotions or events. Please note that targeting by city is not available in all countries.
2. Create engaging content for the release of new cars to spark interest.
3. Reply to engaged users about the release of products if they are expressing interest.

Here are some options for increasing dealership traffic with paid advertisements:

1. Macro level promotion of new models with Facebook advertisements in the right hand column and in user’s newsfeeds.
2. Promoted posts for macro level marketing campaigns for new model releases.
3. Micro level promotion for events and specific dealerships by targeting right hand Facebook advertisements and user’s newsfeeds to specific locations and demographics.
4. Promoted posts for micro level marketing campaigns, new model arrivals at local dealership and dealership promotions.

Most Important KPIs: Soft ROI for Dealership Traffic

• Page/Post Engagement Rates
• Fan Growth Rates
• Paid Advertisement Reach
• Advertisement Engagement Rates

Case Study Examples

Check out this interesting case study on how featured car brands on Facebook performed during the 2012 Mondial De L’Automobile!