Guides / Paid
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.
Most stores spending $5,000 a month on Google put the biggest share on their own name. It feels safe. The reports look great. And a big chunk of those leads were coming anyway.
This is how I'd split that budget, and why.
Three jobs, three budgets
Every dollar in a dealership ad account is doing one of three jobs. The trouble starts when they are lumped into one campaign and judged by one number.
- Brand — people searching your store name or "[brand] dealer [city]". They have already picked you, or nearly have.
- Conquest and model line — people searching a model, a competitor, or "used trucks near me". They have not picked anyone yet.
- Retargeting — people who already visited a vehicle page and left.
Brand search converts beautifully because the shopper was already heading your way. That is not the ad working — that is your reputation working, and the ad stepping in front of it to claim the credit.
A starting split for $5,000
Protect your name, but spend your real money where the shopper has not decided yet.
- Brand: about $1,000. Enough to own the top of your own results so a competitor or a third-party lead site cannot sit above you. Keep it tight: exact store name, store name plus city, brand plus city.
- Model line and conquest: about $2,750. Model names plus your city, "used [model] near me", competitor-adjacent terms. This is where new units come from.
- Retargeting: about $750. Short window, real inventory, frequency capped.
- Testing: about $500. One new idea a month — a new model line, a new radius, a different landing page.
If you want to play with your own numbers, the ad budget planner does this split for any budget and store type.
Where conquest money gets wasted
The most common leak is sending a "2026 Tucson Halifax" click to the homepage. The shopper asked about a Tucson. Show them Tucsons — your in-stock list, filtered, with prices. Every extra click between the search and the car is money you paid for and threw out.
The second leak is broad match without negatives. Add "jobs", "parts", "recall", "manual", "for sale by owner" and competitor service terms as negatives on day one, then read the search terms report every week for the first month.
How to know it is working
Stop judging the whole account on cost per lead. Judge each job on its own:
- Brand: are you at the top of your own name, every time? That is the whole job.
- Conquest: cost per appointment set, and how many of those leads were new to your CRM.
- Retargeting: did people come back and submit, or just come back?
Ask your agency for those three numbers separately. If they cannot split them, the account is not built to answer the question you are paying it to answer.