Dealership paid search has three characteristics that separate it from ordinary local advertising. The product list changes daily and each item is unique, so the account runs off an inventory feed. A meaningful part of the budget is manufacturer co-operative money with rules attached. And the sale completes in a showroom, which means the conversion everyone cares about is invisible to the advertising platform by default.
Feed health is the account's main dependency
Vehicle campaigns are assembled from a structured feed: make, model, trim, mileage, price, images, location, availability. A stale feed advertises cars that sold last week, which wastes budget and costs trust with a shopper who drove to see one. Ask who owns feed quality, how often it updates, and what monitoring exists, because feeds break quietly.
Separate the intents and report them apart
Model and trim searches are close to buying; body-type and research searches are not; dealership name searches are already yours; and service and parts demand is a separate, often more profitable business. Split those into separate campaigns and report them separately, or a blended cost per lead will hide which of them is actually paying.
Co-op rules constrain creative and vendor choice
Manufacturer funding usually carries requirements about imagery, disclaimers, offer language and sometimes which vendors may be used. Establish which spend is claimable and what compliance requires before the creative is made, because rebuilding non-compliant campaigns wastes the media and the claim. Handling this administration well is what distinguishes a specialist here.
Get showroom outcomes back into the reporting
Form fills and calls are steps toward a test drive and a signature. Reconcile sold units against lead source weekly, even manually, and feed what you can back into the platform. Dealers who never do this end up with accounts efficiently producing enquiries from people who were never going to visit.
Questions people ask about automotive ppc agency
Should service have its own campaigns?
Yes. Service demand is local, repeatable and often higher margin, and it loses budget battles when mixed with vehicle campaigns. Separating it also protects the service spend during a sales push that consumes the rest of the budget.
How should a dealership set its budget?
From stock turn, margin per unit and the share of sales you want from digital, not from an industry benchmark. Ask any agency to derive the number from your inventory and market; a proposal quoting a sector average has not looked at either.
What about advertised prices and offers?
Advertised prices and finance offers carry disclosure requirements, and the detail belongs on the landing page in a readable form. Keep a record of what was advertised and when, since expired offers on stale landing pages are the most common compliance problem here.
Do we need a dealership specialist?
The feed handling, co-op administration and platform relationships are specific enough that experience matters. Ask for named dealer clients, how they monitor feed health, and how they have handled a co-op claim dispute, which is a more revealing question than anything about bidding.