Automotive Digital Marketing That Drives More Sales

It depends on your market, the number of rooftops or product lines, and the channels you need. Most dealers pair paid search for inventory and service with SEO as the long-term foundation; parts and accessory brands lean on Shopping and Meta.

We’ll right-size a plan to your goals and your competition, and show you exactly where each dollar goes.

Across the Google Ads accounts of the 75 automotive businesses we manage, the median cost per lead over the last 12 months was $40, with a median cost per click of $1.50 and a median conversion rate of 3%.

Your number depends on your market, services and how well the landing page and phones convert. We use these medians as a starting benchmark, then work to beat them.

Source: Google Ads accounts managed by SmartSites, Oct 2025 to Sep 2026; a lead is a tracked call or form conversion as set up in each account.

For the 77 automotive businesses whose Google Business Profiles we manage, the median profile got about 6,590 views, 261 calls and 294 direction requests a month over the last year.

Reviews, photos, accurate hours and categories move those numbers, which is why local SEO is part of every plan we build for an automotive business.

Source: Google Business Profile performance data for profiles managed by SmartSites, Oct 2025 to Sep 2026.

Yes. Our automotive clients include franchise and independent dealerships, dealer groups, performance and aftermarket parts brands, repair and detailing shops, towing and transport companies, and powersports dealers. The playbooks differ (lead forms and calls for a showroom, orders and ROAS for a parts store, booked appointments for a service shop), so we build each program around the outcome that pays your bills.

Yes. Franchise dealers often have to follow manufacturer guidelines on logos, pricing language, disclaimers and approved offers, and co-op reimbursement usually depends on meeting them. We build campaigns and landing pages with those rules in mind, keep documentation ready for co-op claims, and coordinate with your OEM-certified website provider where one is required.

Paid search usually produces leads and calls within the first month; SEO takes longer, and its gains stack up month after month. Our automotive case studies include leads up 4,100% for Manhattan Bentley and 1,438% for used car dealer Capital Auto Sales, with cost per lead improved 90% at Capital Auto Sales.

We clean up your product feed so parts match fitment and part-number searches, run Shopping and Performance Max campaigns split by margin, retarget visitors on Meta, and fix the product pages that lose buyers. For off-road brand Recon Recovery, ROAS rose 988%; for Aeromotive US, revenue rose 772%.

Dealers earn map-pack spots with strong Google Business Profiles, a steady flow of reviews and a website that is clearly relevant to the towns they sell in. We optimize separate profiles for sales, service and parts where allowed, build model and service pages for the towns you serve, keep listings consistent across directories, and set up review requests after every sale and service visit.

Yes. We optimize for generative engines (GEO) as well as traditional search, so your dealership or brand shows up in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and the AI assistants buyers use to research vehicles and parts. That means clear inventory data, strong reviews and helpful comparison content. We watch AI mentions and citations as closely as rankings.

We track the actions that turn into revenue: phone calls, lead forms, chats, credit applications, test-drive and service bookings, and online orders. Calls and forms are tied back to the campaign and keyword that produced them, so you can see cost per lead by channel and move budget to what sells cars, parts and service. A human strategist reviews every report with you.