Playbooks, not gated PDFs.
Written for dealer principals, GSMs and internet managers. Read it and go run it this week — there's no form in front of any of them.
The Google Business Profile checklist most dealers skip
Twelve fields, three habits, and the one category setting that quietly keeps you out of the local pack.
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Ask ChatGPT about your dealership — then read this
What assistants say about your store, where they get it, and the six fixes that change the answer.
Why your 5:40pm Friday lead never gets called back
Speed to lead is a staffing and process problem, not a CRM problem. Here is the shift schedule that fixes it.
How to raise a dealership review score without begging
A simple ask process for sales and service, plus response templates for the reviews that sting.
Equity mining your own database before you buy another lead
You already own the cheapest buyers in your market. Here is how to segment and message them.
A monthly social calendar your team will actually keep up with
Twelve post types, shot on your lot with a phone. No stock photos of cars you do not stock.
Inventory pages that rank instead of expiring
Model-line landing pages, internal linking and what to do when a unit sells.
Mystery shop your own store in fifteen minutes
Submit a lead, call the number, text the store. Score what happens next against this rubric.
Car dealership SEO in Atlantic Canada: what ranks in a small market
Halifax, Moncton and Charlottetown don’t behave like Toronto. Fewer searches, longer drive radius, and a local pack you can actually win.
Ranking for “used cars near me” without buying the keyword
The organic side of near-me search: proximity, prominence and the pages that make you the obvious answer within a 40-minute drive.
How many Google reviews does a dealership actually need?
Recency beats total count more than dealers think. Here is the volume and cadence that holds a local pack position.
Schema markup for dealership websites, explained without the code talk
What structured data does, which types a dealer needs, and how to check whether your provider actually implemented it.
Service-to-sales: turning the appointment list into trade leads
Every equity customer drives into your service lane twice a year. Here is the handoff most stores never build.
Email marketing is old. It still beats every lead you buy.
Why the oldest channel in the building outperforms the newest one, and the five sends every dealership should have running.
Stop sending one blast a month to ten thousand people
Segmenting a dealership database by equity, service history and last contact — with the queries to pull each list.
How to split a $5,000 dealership ad budget
Brand, conquest and retargeting each do a different job. Most stores overspend on the one that was going to happen anyway.
Retargeting without following people around for six months
The shopper who looked at one Tucson in March should not still be seeing it in July. Three settings fix it.
Your vehicle detail page is the real homepage
Search sends people to the car, not the store. Most VDPs are a template nobody has read since the site was built.
Your lead form is asking for too much
Name, one contact method, the vehicle. Everything past that is the store asking a stranger to do work first.
Getting your dealership named when someone asks an AI
Three or four businesses get mentioned. If yours is not one of them, nothing about that is random.
The dealership marketing report that fits on one page
Fourteen pages of impressions and engagement rate. Nobody reads past page two, and they are right not to.
Short video that actually sells cars
A ninety-second walkaround with wind in the mic gets four hundred views and no leads. Then the store decides video doesn't work.
What to do about a review you think is unfair
Getting it removed rarely works. The six weeks spent trying are six weeks it sits there unanswered.
What to actually post to your Google Business Profile
Most dealers either post nothing or post the same inventory feed every day. Both look identical to the algorithm.
Why texting a lead works better than calling it first
A call that goes to voicemail is a dead end. A text sits in an inbox until someone is ready to answer it.
Facebook and Instagram ads that don't feel like a car ad
A carousel of stock photos with a price overlay gets scrolled past in half a second. Native-feeling creative doesn't.
Your website is probably too slow, and it's costing you leads
A three-second load time loses a third of visitors before the page even finishes rendering. Most dealer sites are slower than that.
The best dealership content isn't made by the dealership
A real customer's delivery photo, shared with permission, outperforms almost anything a marketing team produces on purpose.
Your service drive sees more customers than your sales floor
Most dealers market to conquest prospects and ignore the owners walking through the service door every day.
Merchandising used inventory so it doesn't just sit there
Two identical trades, priced the same. One sells in a week. The other sits for two months. The difference is almost never the car.
Should you price match a competitor? The math most dealers skip
Matching a competitor's price feels like the safe move. It's rarely the profitable one, and the math is simple once you run it.