Insights
No-fluff guides on the channels, creative, and budget that actually move metal.
Free tool: work out your monthly ad budgetPhotos tell a shopper what the car is. Video tells them what is wrong with it. Why a stills-only used lot loses the shortlist before the phone rings.
An "Email for Price" listing asks a stranger for their contact details before telling them the one fact they came for. Most will not trade.
Tier 1 is the manufacturer, Tier 2 the regional association, Tier 3 your own store. What each can say, who pays for it, and the trap that wastes local budget.
A used lot's star rating is its real storefront. How independent dealers earn reviews, answer the bad ones, and stop the leak under the ad budget.
Connected TV lets you buy households by zip instead of by DMA. Here is how the targeting actually works, and where a small zip list quietly breaks.
No co-op, no factory brand campaign, no captive finance offers. Independent lots start from a different position, and most advice ignores it.
Missouri stores sit in two large DMAs and several small ones. That geography decides more about your ad plan than any platform choice does.
It is not the algorithm and it is not your targeting. A small trade area burns through creative faster than a national brand, and most plans ignore it.
Broadcast is sold by DMA, which is why TV priced out small stores for decades. Connected TV changed the geography, and with it the math.
The FTC's CARS Rule was vacated and withdrawn, but total-price enforcement did not go away. What changed, what did not, and what your ads still need.
The real benchmark per vehicle sold, why the industry average misleads a single-point store, and three ways to size a budget that survive a bad month.
A practical, no-fluff guide to the channels that actually move metal for a modern dealership, and how to spend across them.
Shoot days are slow and expensive. Here is why producing dealership ad creative in-house changes what is possible.
Co-op is the most commonly forfeited money in dealer marketing, and rarely because a store did not qualify. Why claims fail and how to build so they do not.
New to the vocabulary? The dealer advertising glossary defines the terms these posts assume.