Proving return on investment (ROI) of your dealership’s Meta (Facebook) ads is kind of like going on a weight loss journey. 

If you want to lose weight, you’ll most likely need to have a balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and protein while also incorporating physical activity in your day-to-day life.

To track your progress and know that your hard work is paying off, you’ll want to evaluate things like your weight, body fat percentage, muscle mass, and energy levels over the course of your journey.

While these factors alone don’t make a person healthy, they are a good indication that the changes you’ve made are having an impact. 

So where do Facebook ads fit into all of this? 

If your dealership is putting in the work to run automotive Facebook ads, you want a way to know that those ads are attributing to leads and purchases at your physical store.

Facebook Offline Events can give you this insight. 

How Do Facebook Offline Events Work?

Facebook Offline Events is an offline conversion tool that allows advertisers to see how many contacts in your customer relationship management (CRM) became leads or sales after seeing one of your automotive Facebook ads. Essentially, Offline Events help prove your Facebook ROI.

How does Facebook match Offline Events? Simply upload a file from your CRM software, and Facebook will match as many of those contacts as possible to Facebook users who were shown your ad. 

The more customer and event details you can include, the more accurate your Offline Events numbers will be. This emphasizes the need for good data management at your dealership. 

While the idea behind Offline Events is fairly straightforward, the process itself is a little tricky. Making sure your data matches Facebook can be tedious and time consuming — if you don’t have a tool like Hydra to help you out. This awesome tool can help you save time and avoid those complex data formatting issues.

For a complete guide on what to upload to Facebook Offline Events and how to do it, download our step-by-step guide.

Step-by-Step Guide to Facebook Offline Events

Once you’ve finished uploading your Offline Events to Facebook, you can see the results (the “number on the scale,” if you will) reflected in Ads Manager. 

How to Evaluate Facebook ROI and Offline Event Success

Despite changes to Facebook ad attribution as a result of iOS 14, you can still use Offline Events as a way to measure your digital marketing success.

While evaluating the ROI of your Facebook ads using Offline Events isn’t a perfect science, it’s much more reliable (and easy) than trying to prove ROI of traditional marketing efforts, such as television or radio. 

In Ads Manager, you can see the number of offline leads and purchases attributed to a particular Facebook campaign, as well as the average cost per lead and cost per purchase for that campaign — all just minutes after uploading your lists!  

Just as the number on the scale doesn’t always tell the whole story of your journey to a healthier lifestyle, Offline Event results don’t always showcase the full success of your Facebook ad strategy.  

For example, someone who purchased a vehicle at your dealership could give you their preferred email address used for communication, but they might have a different email associated with their Facebook account. In that case, even if they did see one of your Facebook ads and later purchased a vehicle from your dealership, that purchase will not be reflected in your Offline Events. 

This is why it’s important to keep in mind that Offline Events is a conservative number — meaning your automotive Facebook ads are most likely delivering even better results than you realize!

Increase Your Offline Leads and Purchases with Retargeting Ads for Auto

It’s no secret that the car-buying process is becoming more and more digital. Your auto website probably isn’t the only one car shoppers are searching, especially among millennials and Generation Z. 

That’s why dynamic retargeting ads are so important. They help keep your dealership (and vehicles) top of mind. 

Incorporating dynamic retargeting ads for auto helps you engage people who are actually in the market for a vehicle, showing your vehicles to the people who have viewed them on your website. 

To make the retargeting process easier, 9 Clouds created Cumulus: a software that connects your automotive inventory feed with your Facebook catalog. Because Cumulus ads are dynamic, your ads update automatically — meaning you never need to edit the price, image, or other vehicle details!

If you’re confident in your team’s current Facebook advertising strategy, we can get your dealership set up with Cumulus to run those dynamic retargeting ads yourself. Or if you’re looking for a little help building Facebook ads that convert, see how we can help.

Meta Advertising Service

Whoever is running your automotive Facebook ads, you should make sure they’re running dynamic retargeting ads as part of their strategy.

Since dynamic retargeting ads are targeted to the most qualified buyers, incorporating them in your dealership’s Facebook ad strategy is almost guaranteed to give your number of Facebook offline purchases a boost. 

Check Your Automotive Facebook Ad Health with 9 Clouds

Knowing where to begin on a weight loss journey is sometimes more difficult than losing the weight itself. The same can be true for transforming your automotive Facebook ads.

At 9 Clouds, we work with a variety of dealerships and other businesses to improve their Facebook ads at every stage of the funnel.

Think your ad strategy needs a checkup? Schedule your online marketing assessment with 9 Clouds!

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