Compared with a product category like snack foods—which can see sales dramatically increase just by placing an ad around lunch hours—automobiles are not an impulsive purchase. A vehicle is the second largest (for many, largest) purchase that someone will ever make. The buyer journey takes between 5 to 8 weeks on average, and a shopper will visit multiple forms of media and online platforms to be sure that they're making a smart buying decision, for both the choice of vehicle and dealer (and its Service Center).
This means that "right placement, right time" is a function of weeks, not hours. As such, while inventory retargeting ads can find someone based on digital platforms' excellent data and algorithms, that information is built around an individual's vehicle preferences and buying power. It does not advertise a dealer's culture and services—the only things that actually differentiate them from any other automotive retailer.
Relying heavily on retargeting and third-party sites, like most dealers do, means they were leaving the entire top half of the marketing funnel up to forces out of their control.
Using a cost-effective awareness & engagement strategy, our content acted as the "air support" for the retargeting ads by collecting the impressions typically required for a user to remember a business online, while also communicating the messages that could differentiate Bosak Auto from its competitors. At the same time, we also produced custom creative and ad executions designed for down-funnel optimization when third-party retargeting ads were deemed inadequate.
We were solely responsible, therefore, for a broad range of omnipresent communications constantly expressing that Bosak Auto understands automotive sales & service, guest services, and the local community better than other retailers, putting them in a position to hit multiple KPIs for qualitative and quantitative goals.
The success of this strategy gave Bosak Auto Group a new source of competitive advantage. They were able to communicate faster and more effectively—raising review scores by resolving problems, handling PR, and navigating difficult social crises like Covid-19 in a way that other dealers simply were not equipped to handle.
The automotive industry uses a dedicated sales force and lead generation management system in a retail setting; that is, it uses B2B sales techniques in a B2C structure. What's more, about half of people report visiting a dealer's social media pages before deciding if they should visit, and showroom visits have simultaneously decreased nowadays to less than 1.5 as an industry average.
Therefore, our ultimate metric for awareness & engagement content was to see web traffic, leads, and showroom visits broadly increase. Facebook's Credit category (required for most automotive messaging) for advertising extremely limits interest-based targeting and lookalike audience usage, meaning proprietary data, careful creative & campaign planning, and excellent use of best-practices would be the overarching focus. Even with those limitations, our Facebook content consistently ranked as a top five traffic source and evidence suggests increases of up to 40% of web traffic.
Getting people to visit two+ showrooms instead of one would mean salespeople have a chance to do what they're trained to do best. Cutting through the noise of dozens of exogenous variables and low-correlation statistics by focusing on the fundamentals, our objective was to simply give salespeople the tools they needed to move the needle.
We helped Bosak Auto's social presence triple its following; create retargeting engagement audiences of over 125K local accounts; add YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok; generate a content library used for e-blasts, text blasts, TV & streaming, billboards, magazine ads, Google MyBusiness, etc; dramatically increase Reputation Scores; put out fires online; and amplify their role in various local communities.
Our contributions to Bosak Auto's marketing fundamentally transformed the way they communicated—even changing how they participated in their local communities. This portfolio is an example of how marketing can take a leadership role and change businesses to better suit the markets they serve.
Producing high-quality, thoughtful content promoted with the appropriate campaign optimizations & placements is an immediate signal to potential customers & stakeholders that Bosak Auto Group runs counter to the industry’s poor reputation, characterized by the archetypal used car salesman's lack of professionalism.
Accompanying this insight was another equally simple realization: presence. Being present on social media opens a business up to criticism—literally quantifiable in the form of reviews, but also in comments, tagged posts, and messages. However, it also means engagement, with people giving feedback about a business who are often seeking solutions. Engaging with that content can turn negative reviews into positive ones and angry customers into advocates. Being actively present on social media—especially for companies in industries with challenging reputations—is a signal that an organization is confident enough in its mission to engage with feedback and criticism.
Combining professional standards for community management and high-quality visual content created a new filter for Bosak Auto’s communications flowing in and out, which built the foundation for a tool used across divisions to achieve various business goals.
Content pillars were spread across two anchoring axes: Sales & Service and differentiating Bosak Auto Group. From here, we could expand Sales & Service into buckets like: vehicle news, product features, OEM initiatives, new vehicles, and inventory highlights. For Bosak Auto’s own messaging: employee highlights, customer stories, exclusive services, philanthropy, events, etc.
We discovered early in the process that a certain kind of content performed the best. When shot to extremely professional standards, people assumed the content was stock photography from the OEM; however, if it was shot with cell phones, it didn’t demand the attention or respect that higher quality content would. Therefore, we developed an aesthetic that moved away from the typical corporate perfectionism and toward an established genre that fits this description well: documentary.
Injecting high-grade retouching, video elements, music, etc. into this content found a perfect balance between professional content while preserving opportunities for user-generated content, fun content for local audiences, etc. With this aesthetic, everything could be viewed as a new opportunity to say something interesting; whether literally news, or as novel perspectives.
The Pareto Principle, known colloquially as the 80/20 Rule, is often oversimplified as 80% of a business’s sales comes from 20% of its customers. As a rule of thumb, it’s a valuable insight: Don’t forget about your brand advocates when chasing after new customers. On social media, this is poignantly true—especially nowadays—when trying to “break containment” and reaching the maximum amount of eyeballs is standard practice.
Giving back to the communities that a business serves is the ideal way to foster real connections with people. Social media enables the amplification of those connections in order to create opportunities in developing new ones. [Learn more about how we used social media to show a real impact here >>>]
Whether it’s sponsoring local events, supporting causes, or creating space for enthusiasts, social media enables you to scale your impact by sharing it with the world. [Learn more about how we shared our role in automotive culture here >>>]
Having such a large percentage of content being professionally produced provided Bosak Auto the space to maintain professionalism while allowing the best user-generated content to shine through. Given the professional content and strategy as an anchor, UGC could encourage employees and customers alike to share their stories to deliver authentic engagement to the pages.
The best kind of community engagement is when the communication flows both ways. By creating a space where people felt comfortable participating, we fostered a welcoming space reflecting the human touch that made Bosak Auto such a well-respected organization.
creativity with
a legacy.
