#The six kinds of car dealer marketing company
Dealer marketing is sold in pieces. That is why comparing companies is hard: two vendors on the same list may not do the same job at all. Sort them first, then compare inside the group.
The table sets out the six types, what each does well and where each tends to fall short. Most stores already buy from three or four of them. The question is whether they work together.
TABLE
Six types of car dealer marketing company
Match the type to the problem. Most stores need two or three types, plus someone who watches the whole.
| Type | Does well | Falls short | Buy it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website and platform | Runs the site, inventory feed and hosting | Often limits what you can change for search | Your site is slow, dated or hard to edit |
| Paid advertising | Buys traffic fast on search and social | Traffic stops when the spend stops | You need shoppers this month |
| SEO | Builds visibility that keeps working | Slower to start and hard to prove | Shoppers cannot find you, or find rivals first |
| Social and reputation | Reviews, listings and local trust | Hard to link to a sale | Your reviews or listings hurt you |
| Lead and CRM tools | Capture and follow up leads | Cannot fix lead quality upstream | Leads arrive and go cold |
| Full service or consulting | Plans across every channel | Quality depends on the people | Vendors overlap and nobody owns the result |
Editorial framework for dealership marketing vendor types. It describes categories instead of measured performance of any company.
#Match the vendor to where you lose money
Start with the funnel. A car purchase has four steps: finding the store, trusting it, contacting it and buying. Every vendor lives at one step. Your problem lives at one step too.
If your phone is quiet, look at finding and trusting. That points to search, reviews and listings. If the phone rings and nobody books, look at contacting. That points to your site, your forms and your response time. If people book and do not buy, look inside the store instead of at marketing.
Write down which step is weakest before you talk to any company. It is the fastest way to stop being sold a package you do not need.
#The gap between vendors is where money leaks
Here is the usual pattern. The SEO vendor reports rankings. The ad agency reports clicks. The website provider reports visits. Every report is green. Nobody can say what the total spend produced.
The leaks sit between the vendors. Ads bid on searches you already win for free. Two vendors claim the same lead. A chat widget catches people who were about to book service. No single company sees these, because each looks only at its own box.
That is the case for one plan across all the vendors. You can keep every vendor you have. What you add is one person whose job is the total and who checks each vendor against booked appointments.
#What to ask every marketing company
Ask what you will be able to measure in ninety days. Ask what happens to the work if you stop paying. Ask who owns the accounts, the data and the content.
Ask what they will not do. Good companies say no to bad ideas. Ask how they work with your other vendors. A company that sees your other vendors as rivals is a risk to the whole.
Ask to see a dealer they worked with and what changed. Numbers beat logos.
#Where Carbide fits
Carbide Digital is the full-service and SEO type. We plan across search, advertising, the website and follow-up, and we hold each piece to booked appointments and real leads. Use the six types above to check whether that is the kind of help your store needs.
The car dealer marketing page explains the approach. The free marketing analysis shows where your store is losing money before you commit to anything.
The way we connect these channels into one plan is described on thecar dealer marketingpage, including how each vendor is held to the same appointment and sales numbers.