Automotive

Marketing for Dealerships and Auto Groups Where the Lot Changes Daily.

New and used dealerships, service centers, and multi-rooftop groups. A campaign pointing at a unit that sold last Tuesday is not underperforming, it is actively spending your budget on a promise you cannot keep.

Sync Campaigns to Your Inventory

We Get It

Your Inventory Moved. Your Ads Did Not.

Stock turns over daily. Campaigns, landing pages, and feeds usually turn over monthly, if anyone remembers. In between sits a stretch of spend pointing shoppers at trims and units that already left the lot, and every one of those clicks costs you money and a little trust at the same time.

Budget keeps running against models and trims that already sold, and the first person to notice is a shopper who drove out to see one.
Three dealerships within twenty minutes bid on the same terms in the same city, so local competition sets your cost per click before you touch a setting.
Sales and service get pushed through one funnel, though one is a rare high-consideration purchase and the other is a relationship measured in visits per year.
Model-year changeover, quarter-end pushes, and manufacturer incentives swing demand hard, and a flat monthly budget ignores every one of them.
The service bays are the steadier margin, and they are usually the last thing anyone builds a real campaign for.

How We Run Automotive Campaigns Across Sales and Service

Four phases, run in order. The point is a program that follows the lot and the bay schedule instead of a media plan written a month ago.

Wire Campaigns to the Inventory Feed
Ad groups, landing pages, and vehicle listing assets get built off your live inventory feed, so a unit that sells drops out of rotation and a fresh arrival enters it without anyone filing a request. Spend follows what you can actually sell today, which removes the single largest source of wasted dealership budget.
Split Sales and Service Into Separate Programs
Sales is a rare, high-consideration purchase driven by model, price, and financing. Service is a recurring relationship driven by proximity, convenience, and timing. Each gets its own budget, messaging, landing path, and target, because one funnel judged on one number always favors whichever side is louder.
Target by Model and Radius, Not by City
Campaigns get segmented by model line and by realistic drive-time radius rather than a whole metro. Someone comparing a specific trim fifteen minutes from your lot is a different buyer to someone browsing the category two counties away, and paying the same for both is how local competition wins.
Plan Around Changeover and Season
Budget weighting follows model-year changeover, manufacturer incentive periods, quarter-end targets, and the service peaks that come with weather and travel. Flat monthly spend across a business this cyclical leaves money on the table in the strong weeks and burns it in the quiet ones.

What We Run

Services Built for a Lot That Turns Over and Bays That Need Filling

Local SEO

Rooftop-level visibility for the searches happening within driving distance, across maps, listings, and the model and service terms that pull people in.

Google Ads Management

Inventory-aware paid search and vehicle ads that update as stock moves, segmented by model line and by radius instead of one metro-wide budget.

Email Marketing

Service and maintenance reminders, recall and seasonal prompts, and lease-end timing sequences that bring existing customers back into the bays.

Conversion Rate Optimization

Vehicle detail pages, trade-in tools, and booking flows tested so more of the traffic you already pay for turns into a test drive or a booked appointment.

Proof, Not Promises

We Report on Units Sold and Bays Filled.

A traffic chart pointing upward is easy to produce and tells a general manager nothing useful. Here is what usually gets presented to a dealership, next to what we actually track on an account we run.

What Gets Shown Off

Website sessions
Ad impressions
Vehicle detail page views
Cost per click

What Actually Gets Tracked

Qualified test drive and service appointments actually booked
Cost per sold unit, broken out by model line
Service bay utilization measured against available capacity
Spend landing on inventory that had already sold, tracked toward zero

The Standard

If a number cannot be matched against a delivered unit or a closed repair order, it does not lead the report. Vehicle detail page views have never once filled a Tuesday morning bay.

Who This Is For

Built for Dealerships Measured in Units and Repair Orders

This works best for single-rooftop dealerships, multi-store groups, and independent service operations that have real stock to move, bays that would rather not sit idle, and someone who can tell us what a delivered unit and a repair order are worth. It is not built for a store that only needs a lead count to show the manufacturer at month end.

Your inventory changes fast enough that a monthly campaign refresh is already too slow.
Sales and service are genuinely different businesses under your roof, and you want them measured that way.
You know roughly what a delivered unit and an average repair order are worth, or you are willing to work it out with us.

Walk Us Through Your Lot

The Basics

What Does Automotive Marketing Actually Involve?

Automotive marketing is the work of matching advertising to inventory that moves daily, in a market where your nearest competitor is a few minutes down the road. In practice that means campaigns wired to a live inventory feed, separate programs for vehicle sales and for service, targeting set by model and drive-time radius rather than by city, and budget weighted around changeover, incentives, and seasonal service demand.

What makes it unusual is that a dealership is really two businesses sharing a building. One sells a considered purchase a customer makes every several years. The other sells routine work the same customer needs several times a year. Running both through one funnel, on one budget, judged by one cost-per-lead figure, reliably starves the side with the steadier margin.

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Why Does Inventory-Aware Advertising Matter So Much?

Because getting it wrong is not neutral, it is negative. Stock turns daily, so a campaign built last month keeps sending shoppers to units that already sold. That spend buys a click, a disappointed visitor, and sometimes a wasted trip to the lot. Feeding campaigns and landing pages from live inventory means a sold unit drops out automatically and a new arrival enters, without anyone remembering to file a change request.

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Should Sales and Service Run on the Same Campaigns?

No, and combining them is one of the most common mistakes in dealership marketing. A vehicle purchase is a rare, high-consideration decision driven by model, price, and financing. Service is a recurring relationship driven by proximity, convenience, and timing. The audiences, messages, landing pages, and success measures all differ, and pooling them into one budget usually means the louder side quietly absorbs spend the other one earned.

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How Much Does Seasonality Really Affect a Dealership?

Enough that a flat monthly budget is a strategic choice, and usually a poor one. Model-year changeover shifts what needs clearing and what needs promoting. Manufacturer incentive windows change the offer mid-quarter. Service demand rises and falls with weather, holiday travel, and inspection cycles. Weighting spend toward the weeks when intent is genuinely higher costs nothing extra and consistently beats spreading it evenly.

Our Take

Most dealership marketing is judged on lead count, because lead count is the number the manufacturer asks for. The version worth paying for is judged on units delivered, bays filled, and how little of the budget went to vehicles that had already sold. All three are measurable, and most stores have never been shown them together.

FAQ

Common Questions

Our stock changes every day. How do campaigns keep up?

By reading your inventory feed rather than a spreadsheet someone updates when there is time. Ad groups, vehicle listing assets, and landing pages get generated from live stock, so a unit that sells stops receiving spend within hours and a new arrival starts receiving it without a request being filed. Most dealerships have a meaningful share of monthly budget pointing at vehicles that are already gone, and closing that gap is usually the fastest saving available.

Should we advertise service, or focus everything on selling cars?

Both, on separate programs. Service is usually the steadier margin and the more predictable demand, and it is very often the side with no dedicated marketing at all. It also feeds the sales side, because a customer who keeps servicing with you is far easier to reach when they are ready to replace the vehicle. Running them separately lets each be measured properly instead of letting the more visible one absorb the budget.

There are three dealerships within fifteen minutes of us. How do we compete on cost?

Not by outbidding them across a whole metro, which is how most stores end up paying more for the same shoppers. Tightening targeting to a realistic drive-time radius, segmenting by model line so you are not bidding broadly on categories you are weak in, and doing the local listing and review work properly all lower effective cost. Local visibility you have not purchased is the most durable advantage a rooftop has, and it is usually the least worked on.

Do you work within our manufacturer co-op program?

Yes, and it needs planning around rather than ignoring. Co-op rules restrict creative, claims, and sometimes channels, so the compliant portion of the program gets built to qualify while a separate portion carries the messaging co-op will not fund. The mistake is letting co-op requirements dictate the entire strategy, because the funded assets are rarely the ones that perform best in a competitive local market.

How do you measure a sale that started online and closed on the lot?

By connecting the dealership management system back to the ad platforms so a delivered unit reports against the campaign that sourced it. Without that, everything gets credited to the last click, which in automotive is almost always a branded search made after the shopper already decided. It takes setup and cooperation from whoever administers your systems, but it is the difference between reporting cost per lead and reporting cost per sold unit.

What kind of budget does a dealership program need?

It scales with your market, your inventory volume, and how many rooftops you are covering, far more than with any published benchmark. The number worth starting from is gross per delivered unit and average repair order value, because that sets what a sale is worth paying for. We would rather run one rooftop and one side of the business properly, prove the cost-per-unit figure, then expand, than thin a budget across every store and every model line at once.

Tell Us What a Delivered Unit Is Worth.

From there we can tell you how much of your current spend is pointing at sold inventory, whether the service side is being underfunded, and what is worth fixing in the first month.

Send Us Your Inventory Feed