Facebook is about as crowded as any marketing venue on the internet. There might be hundreds of sites vying for keywords that pertain to you on search (and no, having millions of results does not mean that they're all going for that keyword) and dozens of dealers selling cars in your local area on the classified sites, but there are thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of people to contend with in the Facebook news feed within your community. It's hard.

A prospect of ours was really trying at social media. They were posting great content on Facebook and the other sites, following a good chunk of the best practices out there, and even boosting a post every now and then. However, their reach, traffic sent to their website, and overall presence on social media was above average at best. They needed ads. They needed well-managed, properly positioned ads.

They needed the bullhorn in order to break through the noise that is omnipresent of Facebook.

We've seen the opposite situation in the automotive industry as well. Unlike most other forms of advertising, the message plays a huge role in the effectiveness of the advertising. Throwing money at poor posts or advertising good posts the wrong way can be less effective than not advertising at all and can actually have a negative effect on your presence. Once you have the bullhorn, you have to use it the right way or Facebook will slowly, methodically take it away. Your posts that were getting thousand of views from $10 in advertising will soon be getting hundreds. Eventually, you can kill your page's "love from the algorithm" to the point that the dollars spent are only helping you reach dozens of people. Quality matters in Facebook advertising.

Facebook is "pay-to-play". The other networks are heading in the same direction. Maximizing your effectiveness and using social media to sell more cars can only be accomplished by combining the two components: quality and volume. The right message spoken without volume won't reach the right people. The wrong message blasted out through the advertising bullhorn can do even more damage. The two go hand-in-hand.