3 forward-thinking digital marketing strategies car dealers are using to maximize conversions

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Welcome to The Breakdown, an analysis of auto retail’s top trends, moves, and insights—in under 5 minutes.

Not every dealer’s got the cash to hire a slick marketing agency, or the bandwidth to play content creator.

But after years and years of keyword wars, paid search ads, third-party listing sites (I could go on), the new edge in dealership digital marketing looks a lot more blended, and a hell of a lot more automated.

And after talking to several dealers, consultants, and analysts, I’ve distilled three trends that are signaling a creative reordering of how dealers attract, convert, and retain customers…

Hybrid BDCs are cutting ad waste and improving lead conversion.

Dealers spent $4.8 billion on advertising in the first half of 2025, roughly $722 per new unit sold, according to NADA.

Via NADA

The problem: 43.2% of sales leads are mishandled on average, including missed calls, leads that never made it to the CRM, and flaky follow-up, according to Foureyes. On top of that, among leads that returned to the dealer website after already submitting a form or chat, 65% didn't hear back within 24 hours.

Via Foureyes

So, dealers are spending insane amounts of money generating leads only to watch a moderate chunk of them die.

The reason: There aren't enough people to work these leads properly (or the people working them don't stick around long enough to get good at it).

What’s new am I right?

The potential fix: A hybrid in-house/outsourced BDC supported by AI.

In-house reps focus on high-value tasks, like building relationships, closing appointments, and working hot leads.
Outsourced teams cover the volume work that in-house staff can't get to, including after-hours calls, overflow during peak connection times (6-8 PM), and initial outreach on colder leads (a gap voice AI is still struggling to close).
Meanwhile, AI handles the repetitive grunt work. Think email sequences, text follow-ups, as well as lead scoring.

The results: Before outsourcing BDC tasks, GMC Mount Vernon had a 17% appointment set rate and 8 minute response time, according to the auto retail consults at Dealer Synergy. However, after launching the hybrid approach, the store’s appointment set rate jumped to 42% and response times averaged under 45 seconds.

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AI search is pulling customers away from Google, and dealers are adjusting quickly.

More consumers are researching vehicles on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot instead of traditional Google searches.

The problem: If a dealer's inventory isn't discoverable on generative AI platforms, they practically don't exist to those customers.

❝

Dustin Schuler from Volkswagen of Bellevue saw this firsthand. He told me recently, “There's a difference between what's on your page and what [AI crawlers] are able to see.

Dustin Schuler

“A lot of our third-party tools, scripts, images—you'll notice that some of those aren't being picked up by these AI crawlers, which might be the exact thing you want to show up.”

The reason: Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on keyword optimization for Google’s algorithms, AI search prioritizes conversational queries and real-time data, pulling from sources like dealer websites to give direct answers.

The potential fix: To adapt, dealers are uploading inventory feeds to Google Merchant Center and OpenAI's schema. They're also rewriting FAQ pages in full sentences that answer conversational queries. And they’re leveraging free Chrome extensions like View Rendered Source to audit what AI crawlers can actually see.

The results: “We're about 13% ahead of last month right now in terms of total volume,” said Schuler. “New and used cars, both are right about the same percentage, up month over month. We're really stoked on that.”

Video production is getting a whole lot easier for dealers to pull off.

Video marketing is booming. And many dealers already have short-form vehicle walkarounds, virtual showroom tours, and personalized service reminders on rotation.

The problem: Video production requires a specific skillset, and usually, an upfront investment.

So, like many other marketing channels in the dealership, dealers are turning to generative AI for hyper-personalized video messages.

Via Visla

The results: Longo Toyota of Prosper generates an additional 12-15 sales every month that are directly attributed to video AI.

But there's a catch. The "human avatars" that deliver these AI-generated videos are still a bit uncanny valley for my taste, and probably aren’t right for social media at this point.

You see, large language models struggle to understand emotional nuance. They can't anticipate how pacing builds tension, or how silence can land heavier than words.

The potential fix: As an alternative, dealers are using AI to generate meaningful b-roll footage, and letting a synthetic voice handle the narration. And I’ve heard several recommend Google’s Veo 3 to do exactly that.

But remember, none of this works without clean data.

And there are some dirty dealership records out there.

Rohrman Auto Group discovered 48% of their records were unusable, or had junky data like duplicate entries, outdated contact information, and incomplete records. But after a full cleanup with Experian, Rohrman said about 60% of the “bad half” was corrected, which resulted in a new, enriched dataset that now lives in Snowflake.

At the end of the day, dealership marketing is moving from fragmented, high-cost manual execution to integrated, automated systems that maximize every dollar. It’s time to either adapt or fade. There’s no third option.