Facebook plans could create an opportunity to combine advertising with interactive messaging 

I RECENTLY heard Aidan White, Facebook’s client solutions manager of automotive, speak on the power of messaging to gain customer engagement and help customers find the right car. 

White handed out a few hints and tricks for using Facebook (FB) and FB Messenger to engage new customers and re-engage existing ones.

His most powerful vision was the idea of using FB Messenger to take a young car buyer from a declared interest in a brand to the point of specifying and configuring his ideal car and getting the sale agreed – all via FB Messenger.

At the other end of the market, I heard about a successful second-hand parts business which makes all their sales via WhatsApp. Times are definitely changing.

FB has more data on the buying behaviour and preferences of digitally-engaged consumers than any other social network.

This wealth of data is about to become richer: FB now owns three of the largest messaging networks in the world – WhatsApp, Instagram and FB Messenger – amassing 2.6bn users worldwide. The UK alone has 33m regular Messenger users. 

Interestingly, FB has declared that it intends to merge these three messaging services, which will of course make messaging a far more manageable (and arguably more cost effective) marketing platform for dealers.

A new combined FB-led messaging platform should reach marketers by summer 2020.

Some key points emerged from the talk and my further reading into Zuckerberg’s grand messaging plan:

• To quote Zuckerberg directly from his post back in March: “I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms, I expect future versions of Messenger and WhatsApp to become the main ways people communicate on the Facebook network.” 

This is a major shift for FB because right now its core social network is not centred around private messaging, nor is Instagram’s. FB’s entire business is built on user profiles that include lasting information which supports FB’s highly targeted advertising business. Now Zuckerberg plans to move away from that.

• “People are more cautious of having a permanent record of what they’ve shared,” Zuckerberg explains. “I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever. This is the future I hope we will help bring about.”
• The idea behind this initiative must also be to maintain users, finding even more out about our interests and preferences based on our browsing and buying behaviour – data which can be put to work by car dealers to target customers even more accurately and potentially cost-effectively from next year. 
• Changes to social media messaging are clearly happening but how can you optimise messaging services for your dealership today? Try these 5 top tips:

1. Utilise the demographic information that these social media channels present to put highly targeted ads in front of potential customers
2. Use messaging facilities to distribute a visual inventory of cars that you are currently offering to prospects that are spending time on these channels and are in your target customer-base
3. Embrace the power of combining FB’s ability to target the right type of customers (i.e. owner occupiers living within 20 miles of your dealership) with your own CRM data. This combined data could enable you to target those living within 20 miles of your dealership which bought a Land Rover Discovery from you two years ago and might now be interested in moving to a new car sometime during this summer (possibly even based on current browsing behaviour)
4. A highly targeted message showing a video/images of the latest model set to reach your PDI centre in the next few weeks might lead to an engagement leading to a sale
5. Could these customers be even offered a test drive via their messaging service of choice? 

Whatever the truth of what’s possible today with all three messaging services and how much more powerful the combined messaging platform will be from next year – at the very least it’s worth a closer look in discussion with your marketing team.