Ford and FordDirect appoint SOCi as U.S. platform of record for select localized marketing initiatives

SOCi Inc. Ford Motor Company and their joint venture partner, FordDirect, announced that they have appointed SOCi as its platform of record for localized marketing, available to all of its Ford and Lincoln Dealerships in the U.S.

Since the Ford family of brands began using the SOCi platform in February 2022 to manage business listings and social profiles for its Dealerships, the automaker has experienced triple digit month-over-month increases in Facebook impressions (240%), post volume (288%), and engagements (414%).

“As we began to search for a new local marketing platform, we knew we needed a vendor that would offer superior customer support and a seamless experience to improve adoption rates. We found that in SOCi,” said Jenna Thompson, Ford’s Digital Retail Marketing Manager. “With SOCi, we can localize social content at scale. In just a few months together, there’s been an increase in our social presence and engagement that would not have been possible without the SOCi platform.”

Ford and FordDirect approached SOCi to help secure buy-in from local dealers with a seamless, white glove process for localized social media management, which would increase social engagements for its dealerships. According to SOCi platform data, localized content that takes local community sentiment into account receives on average a 67% lift in engagement over more generalized posts. Further, according to SOCi’s 2022 Localized Marketing Benchmark Report (LMBR), automotive dealers outperformed all other verticals in terms of localized marketing, indicating intense competition for Ford and a heightened need to rise above other automakers in its digital marketing efforts.

SOCi also provided a scalable, automated process for Ford and Lincoln to update dealer listings daily, helping ensure that consumers have the most up-to-date information about local dealer locations. In a Ford-specific LMBR audit based on 2022 LMBR data, Ford has claimed 99.5% of its dealer locations on Google (compared to the 81.62% Competitor Benchmark) and 63.1% of the listings appear in the Google 3-Pack (compared to the 51.92% Competitor Benchmark).

“Amid such a competitive digital marketing landscape, it is our role to deliver the most cutting edge technologies together with optimal strategies and support to maximize success,” said Afif Khoury, founder and CEO of SOCi. “We’ve already seen these efforts pay off in our partnership with the Ford team and their investment in a superior localized digital marketing strategy.”