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Maximizing ROI in 2025: Social Media as the Top Digital Marketing Channel

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Maximizing ROI in 2025: Social Media as the Top Digital Marketing Channel

In 2025, social media isn’t just for brand awareness. It’s the highest ROI marketing channel for businesses, including automotive dealerships. With more car buyers researching and purchasing online, dealerships that leverage social media effectively can see direct sales impact, higher engagement, and measurable results.

Published: September 24, 2025

Automotive Internet Media | Digital Marketing Agency

Social Media

The Power of Social Influence

Social media has a profound effect on consumer purchasing decisions. According to Sprout Social’s 2025 data, 81% of consumers are swayed by social media to make spontaneous purchases multiple times a year. In the automotive world, this means car buyers are increasingly influenced by dealership posts, vehicle videos, and customer testimonials shared online.

In-app purchasing and lead generation tools are also on the rise. Currently, 13% of consumers make in-app purchases, jumping to 50% for Gen Z. For dealerships, this translates into easier ways to track interest, capture leads, and guide potential buyers directly from social platforms to your showroom or online inventory.

Connecting Buyers and Vehicles Through Social Media

Social media has become a key channel for product discovery, especially among younger buyers. According to HubSpot’s 2024 Consumer Trends Survey, 64% of Gen Z and 59% of Millennials discovered products on social media within the past three months. For dealerships, maintaining a strong social media presence can be the deciding factor between capturing a lead or losing them to a competitor. Some effective strategies dealers can follow include showcasing a vehicle’s interior, technology features, or pricing details. Whether through a carousel of images on Facebook or Instagram, or a short, engaging video on TikTok or YouTube Shorts using popular sounds and trends.

Which Platforms Drive Automotive Purchases?

Not all social networks are equal when it comes to driving purchases. Overall, Facebook is the first platform for 39% of consumers ready to buy, followed by TikTok at 36% and Instagram at 29%. For Gen Z buyers, TikTok takes the lead, reflecting their preference for short-form, engaging content that drives discovery and spontaneous interest in new vehicles.

Source: Sprout Social, 2025 Social Media Marketing ROI Statistics

Understanding these platform preferences helps dealerships focus their social media efforts where it counts, creating content that resonates with the right audience and drives measurable ROI.

Maximizing ROI for Dealerships

To fully capitalize on social media in 2025, dealerships should:

  • Create high-quality, engaging content – Showcase your vehicles, highlight customer stories, and promote special offers. Make your content visually appealing and informative, whether it’s a carousel of photos, short-form videos, or live walkarounds.
  • Leverage platform-specific tools – Use in-app lead forms, shoppable posts, or test drive booking features to make it easy for buyers to engage and convert directly from social media.
  • Track conversions and revenue – Monitor leads, conversions, and sales to understand which posts and campaigns are driving real results, so you can optimize your strategy.
  • Stay agile with trends and updates – Social platforms change rapidly. Keep an eye on trending content formats, new features, and emerging audience behaviors to stay ahead of competitors.
  • Structure content around searchable queries – Think like your buyers. Optimize posts for terms your customers might search, such as “affordable starter SUVs,” “top family SUVs,” “starter sedans,” or “trucks for road trips.” For example, someone searching for “SUVs with red interior” could discover your dealership if your content aligns with that query.

 

Get Started with Automotive Internet Media

Want to supercharge your dealership’s social media presence and drive real results in 2025? Automotive Internet Media offers full-service marketing solutions designed specifically for car dealers. From crafting compelling posts to running high-ROI ad campaigns and tracking conversions, we help dealerships juice up their social media and connect with buyers where it matters most. Contact Automotive Internet Media today to get started.

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AIM One-Stop Shop

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A Look Under the Hood
We are better than your average digital marketing company.  We know how to market your dealership with some of the best, fresh digital content and social presence while keeping your overall goals in mind: more traffic, engaged users and increased sales.
The Best Mix of Marketing Services
Full Service:  Let us take the driver’s seat and drive more traffic to your dealership.  Our full service option lets us help you achieve your over-arching goals using some of the best digital marketing practices including, original website content, social media, SEO, display and retargeting ads, pay per click advertising and more!
Conquest Email Marketing:  You might want to make a U-turn if your dealership isn’t currently utilizing email marketing.  But AIM’s email marketing is not something you’ll find using standard email marketing services.  Our Supercharged email marketing services offer data to dominate your market and increase sales.
Email Newsletters: Living in a digital age, it is important to make sure you are in your customer’s eyes consistently.  AIM’s email marketing allows you to send all your specials and information without having to do the work—we take care of it all!  You’ll expect to have a quick turnaround, a flexible design and high ROI.
Pay Per Click (PPC): Paid search advertising is a great way to drive more traffic to your dealership.  This service allows customers to find your inventory and dealership.  Market your dealership and inventory with AIM’s PPC services.
Retargeting: Leverage your traffic coming to your website and capture those visitors who have expressed an interest in your inventory but didn’t make it to check out.  The consumer will then receive online ads for your dealership with our placement of code.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is an investment and it’s an investment a dealership should highly consider.  It will increase your customer base, your sales, your dealership’s reviews and your visibility on the web.
Social Media: Today it is important and a necessity to have a social presence.  Join the conversation with your customers!  We’re ready to do the work for you by managing your social presence while you sell and service cars.
Video Production:  Expand your brand today with video.  Use video to promote your vehicles, sales and services with YouTube pre-roll.  Let us turn your vision into a reality while we represent you and your dealership.
Web Design: Let us set your business apart from others in the automotive market with a customized, responsive website.  To top it off, we offer a one-stop dealership website experience with a dual language site.  With the click of one button your English site can switch to Spanish.

Why Increasing Your Social Media Activity Matters

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Social Media is no longer just a suggested trend in the world of Automotive – it’s expected! From deciding where to get their vehicles serviced to shopping around for a new car, customers are turning to social now more than ever to make a highly researched and informed decision. So to help you out, AIM put together some of the best social tips and tricks that we used here in 2015.
1. Facebook Services
First, we’ll let you in on a HUGE secret. It’s no mystery that Facebook holds significant clout when it comes to Social Media. With 1.1 billion ACTIVE users alone, it’s a great tool to not only advertise to your customers, but to keep in touch and join the conversation. However, starting just last month, Facebook quietly began testing a site to rival Yelp, facebook.com/services. It takes the highest rated local businesses with Facebook reviews and ratings, and compiles them into one easy to use interface. But how do we know that it’s going to be big? Just look at the numbers. Yelp stock has already dropped 9% since the quiet Facebook Services release. It’s now more important than ever to make sure your Facebook business page is updated, relevant, and monitored daily to respond to requests, tend to negative reviews, and to continue to build your audience and customer base.
2. The more unique the better
You don’t want your profiles to seem like they’re ran by robots, and be sure to avoid all spam and automated services! Instead, get photos, videos, and customer involvement whenever possible. Staff member have a birthday? Be sure to share it! Somebody bring a pet into the office? Share that too! Will you be part of or sponsoring any local events? Be sure everybody knows! We’ve also seen dealers take great photos of customers with their new vehicles, and have great success encouraging them share the photo with their family and friends, and tag themselves. It’s quick and easy free promotion for your business – what more could you ask for?
3. Everybody loves contests and coupons
Your customers love saving money, and participating in competitions! Use your social media channels to offer special coupons on parts and services, or use a coupon as a prize in a contest surrounding auto trivia, dealership trivia, photo contests on Instagram, or any other contest you can think of!
Like these tips but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you don’t have time in your day to keep up or even think about starting? That’s where we come in. Let AIM take care of it all for you. We’ll do the work, you take the credit and get all the sales. Join our list of happy full-service clients, and contact us today!

How to Take Control of Your Online Presence

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When you search for your company or brand online, what pops up? Chances are, your social accounts and reviews show up first. What are people saying about you and how can you change this? Well, here’s the bad news: it’s harder and more time consuming than just a click of a mouse, but the good news is that there are steps you can take over time to improve your digital presence. Here are some tips.
1. Have a plan
Before you take a step to better your digital presence, it’s important to first have an action plan. What is the message you are trying to convey? What is your company’s mission? How are you different from your competition? What makes you better? These are all good questions to ask yourself before you begin any advertising or content creation. Otherwise, your brand could be confusing to customers and will eventually get lost in a sea of competitors.
2. Content creation
There are many different forms of content that should be used online, such as blog articles packed with links and keywords, social media posts that engage your followers, online advertising that leads the right kind of customers to your inventory or brand, and website content that ranks organically.
Blog articles should have completely original content so your site is not penalized for plagiarism or duplicate content. The articles should also include relevant keywords in order to rank organically in Google for those keywords. If images are included, make sure they have alt text associated with them so bots can scan the image and know what it is (since they cannot read images).
Social media posts should be personal, timely, and engaging. Be sure to respond to all customer comments, even negative, as this presents you in a personable light instead of as a large company with no face. Facebook advertising is also beneficial if you would like to target a specific audience with your advertisement for a very reasonable CPC.
If your online advertisements are not eye-catching and unique, they’ll be lost in the clutter. If they are search ads, they should have the proper text for a small space that will effectively attract a customer. If they are display or retargeting ads, they should stand out from the webpage and entice the customer to click the link. Focus on being creative but not going too over-the-top graphically. Oh, and don’t forget to triple check the text for spelling mistakes!
The content on your website is just as important, if more important than everything we discussed above. Your website needs to convey to Google what you do and where you do it clearly so your site will rank organically. Outdated content with mistakes and a disorganized order will harm you in the long run.
3. Packaging your message
Communicating the right message is essential across all channels so your customers know what to expect, what your mission is, and are able to decide if they would like to do business with you. With a plethora of options for customers to go to, you need to make sure you are definitely different from your peers, whether that be through pricing, customer service, or the overall customer experience at your store. In addition, be sure this message is consistent across all of your marketing channels and that your staff is educated and able to deliver this message to customers.

All of this may seem like it would take a couple of full-time employees to handle. No need to worry, though. AIM has you covered. Give us a call today to see how we can help you improve your digital presence better than you thought possible – you won’t have to worry about a thing.