Being Malaysia’s first automotive website that enables the fastest, smartest and easiest way to sell a car, Carsome is your go-to for hassle-free transaction and dealership.

Their business model is simple – make an appointment with them, have them inspect your car, accept the price of your car or opt to list your car for bidding among 600 plus car dealers.

Honestly, the business model is a solid business proposition. It eliminates the fuss and time over paperwork, and they guarantee that you can get the highest offer from all the Carsome Certified Used Car Dealers around Malaysia.

They came to mind when one of their Facebook ads popped up on our News Feed, and being a fan of growth and improvement; we figured that there are a few things they can do just as awesome as their business model.

Their Facebook Ad

Firstly, if we are someone who intends to sell a car, their ad has done a pretty good job. Utilising customer “reviews” (or posers, we never know really, but assuming they are real) is also a smart move, knowing that most people would read the reviews of a particular product first before trying them out.

Their ad features all the benefits about Carsome, so at a glance, we would understand what Carsome is. The benefits highlighted in the copy are also spot-on, targetting at the pain-points of car-sellers and offering super effective solutions. Besides, they also emphasize on the “free-of-charge-why-not-try-us-out” marketing scheme to lure potential customers.

Nonetheless, we still think that Carsome can fix it up a little.

How can we improve the ad?
Firstly, Carsome can utilise the carousel ad to tell a story or the process of selling a car with them. The whole process can solely focus on one seller, and him/her going through Carsome to sell his/her car. A quick search on the Internet and we found a few Carsome infographics on the steps to sell your car. Carsome can infuse that from the perspective of a seller.

This would entice us as car sellers, even more, breaking down the process and showing us how easy it is to use Carsome.

Next, we can have a comparison ad that shows the audiences the costs of taking public transport versus the cost of maintenance from a car. This ad can be targeted towards the areas that have public transport stations (like the LRT, MRT, bus stops, etc.), but the CPC (cost per click) would be higher as we are persuading the crowd who stays near public transport areas to use Carsome.

What kind of audiences can we target?

1. Interest Targeting
Since we can’t target car owners directly like in the US, the closest likelihood we can get is by targeting the audiences as below. We can expect that the acquisition cost would be high since our targeting as compared to our ad specifics is a bit broad. However, A/B testing is encouraged when trying out these audiences to see which one responds best.
a. Frequent Travelers narrowed to liking Carlist, Mudah, Motor Trader, lelong (690,000 potential audience)
b. Grab/Uber, public transport narrowed to liking Carlist, Mudah, Motor Trader, lelong (1 mil potential audience)
c. People who like cars

• People who are interested Mudah Cars, Carlist etc. (Narrow down to people who like Groupon etc.)
• People who are interested in Car Brands (E.g. Mercedes etc.)
• People who are interested in car clubs (E.g. Perodua car club etc.)

2. Retargeting
Here we can retarget people who have clicked or visited Carsome’s website. This can be done through an installation of a pixel. By having a list of information from the people who have visited the website, the list can be reuploaded onto Facebook to retarget them. The success is likely since these people are in the same rank as those who left their shopping items in the cart. Showing them about using Carsome perhaps will invoke a response from them to try Carsome finally.

The list can also be used to create lookalikes. Lookalikes are audiences that share similar traits with the list of information you uploaded onto Facebook. This can be equivalent to targeting your target audience but those who haven’t heard of Carsome yet.

Suggestions for Different Ad Creatives
With the different target audiences that we suggested, there have to be different ad creatives as well. Carsome, you are welcome to use these in your future ads.

1. To Target The General Audience

Carsome’s awesome benefits or USP (unique selling points) can be broken down and made into an ad. Take the mock-up above for example. The first thing that pops out is the caption “Sell Your Car For The Highest Price”, this would certainly grab the attention of potential car sellers or people who wants to sell their car because logical you would want to sell your car for the highest price possible.

Supplementary copies can be about other USPs like the “Sell Your Car Within 24 Hours” copy. This would further pull-in potential customers.

2. Comparison Ad To Convince Audience

This ad is specifically targeting people who stay near public transport areas. By giving them a comparison of the prices of maintaining a car and using public transport, we can convince people to utilise public transport and sell their car to Carsome. Visual wise we play on colour contrast because then it would stand out as a comparison ad.

3. Retargeting Ad Creative To Show Basic Benefits

This ad is explicitly created in mind to retarget people who visited or clicked on Carsome’s website. By showing them customers’ reviews, this will remind them of why they decide to go to the website and perhaps pick back up on their interest to “finish the deal” from where they left off.

4. Retargeting Ad Creative To Show Comparison Of Carsome & Other Platform

This is a variation of the retargeting ad. This ad takes into account competitor businesses and businesses of similar nature as compared to Carsome. Here again, we focus on Carsome’s USPs and compare it to the features of other brands or competitors.

In conclusion, our aim by doing this teardown is so that we can all grow together as a social media agency. The analysis is based on our research and opinions on what works best and should be taken as a guideline. This is just a tip of what we came out just from one Carsome ad. Know that we may be wrong, and we openly accept any explanation on why we are so. After all, it is a learning curve for all of us.

To let us have a look at your Facebook Page for free, do drop us an email at [email protected].