Frequently Asked Questions

Our program focuses on helping “Community Dealers” who don’t have a dedicated marketing director or a large advertising budget. Current advertising or marketing initiatives might be limited to direct mail, social media ads, and traditional channels like newspapers, radio, or television.

On our program, your dealership is assigned a “Marketing Director” and along with their team will develop strategic plans to build the dealer brand and presence in the market.  The end goal is to increase sales volume while connecting with prospects in the area. The most recent NADA Data says there are over 4,500 new vehicle dealers who fall into this category. These are the dealers that can benefit the most from our cost-effective marketing solutions. As the network grows so does the level of the programs available to our community dealers.

Our services are based on a monthly retainer, so dealers pay a monthly fee for their choice of marketing programs and initiatives that best meet their needs. Plans are customized to meet the budgets and marketing requirements for each client. For individual marketing engagement initiatives, we provide a detailed strategy and implementation document providing step by step instructions for your dealership to implement the program locally.

Dealers always have the ability to boost projects and promotions at their discretion and our team will provide additional information as required. If time or resources are limited at the dealership, our team can provide the people, point-of-sale materials, and other elements required for the program and all this would be for one additional project fee. Because of the time to plan and implement initiatives we offer these documents every other month or at pre-determined intervals based on the dealership market and budget.

Our program is designed for dealerships with one, two, or three locations who don’t have the resources for a full-time Marketing Director.  We provide a dedicated Marketing Director for your location(s) who will work closely with management to create awesome programs to increase sales and gross revenues.

Our Summit Program tier is offered on an exclusive basis. It’s available to a limited number of dealers in non-competing markets. During our initial discussions with prospects, we ask about primary competitors, market area, and current advertising and marketing initiatives.  Once we understand those components we determine the “exclusivity area” and incorporate that into our agreement.  A marketing territory that is available today could be unavailable next week after another local dealer signs up for our program. We encourage auto dealers with an interest in this program to act in a timely fashion to begin building their marketing presence. We also offer our Ultimate program with some limits on exclusive territories.

Consumers love videos and with high-quality smartphones and low-cost digital video cameras, just about anyone can shoot videos at the dealership.  Our team creates a proprietary dealer branded video channel that can serve up videos for the dealership. Dealers can post video testimonials, vehicle walkarounds, employee introductions, service tips, and even feature community leaders and charitable organization executives speaking about important community programs.   This video channel is one of the options available in our standard program.  Learn more.

Video production and editing costs are not included in the program.

Nothing great happens overnight so we ask dealers for an initial multi-month commitment to our program. This allows us to better know the dealer culture, the local market, and create programs that optimize engagement and allow time for marketing promotions to engage prospects.

After this initial period, either party has the option to end the agreement. Any proprietary programs, marketing, and/or branding that DMN initiated or implemented during the initial period are owned by Dealers Marketing Network and remain their property; and the dealer client is no longer able to utilize any of our proprietary branding, trade names, or associated materials.

Dealer clients are responsible for media advertising purchases, point-of-sale, or promotional items, ad specialties, and other costs not included in our program or services.

Dealer clients are responsible for costs associated with third-party advertising or promotion entities. This means the client pays for digital or traditional advertising for radio, television, billboards, community programs, sponsorships, expenditures for social media, keyword purchases, search engine marketing, or other items that are not included in our monthly fees.

Dealerships do benefit from our work product in producing blog content, the creation of dealership artwork, or point-of-sale graphics, but the production costs of those materials are the dealership’s responsibility.

If your company hired a Marketing Director as part of your management team, you would not expect that employee to pay for your company advertising out of his or her salary. When a dealership engages our services we become the “Marketing Director” for the company and our dealer clients have final say over what projects and initiatives we implement on their behalf.  We can also negotiate advertising and related costs on behalf of the dealer client.

If needed we can provide additional resources and personnel before, during, and after any promotions, we engage in with the dealership.  Any additional costs for these services is quoted when project details are identified and the plan is approved by dealership management.

Yes, we can help dealers maintain their website and blogs, in addition to creating or curating content for either website.  We can also host a blog on a separate site to provide a more robust feel for the dealership.  Credits and/or hours from the monthly fee can be used for these services.

Yes, we can help dealers make sure they are spending marketing dollars in the right place. We review digital and traditional costs of marketing initiatives and assist in tracking the ROI for these services. We can also provide assistance in vendor selection and helping our clients get the best value for their marketing dollars.  Read about our Top Choice Vendors Program

Yes.  Our program is customized for the dealers, so if an OEM suggested vendor is providing a service for the dealer we can assist the dealer to get maximum value, or we can focus on other areas. 

OEMs like to leverage economies of scale and have large companies provide a standard set of services to their franchised dealers. Often these efforts focus on digital marketing or social media. Many of our programs focus on local engagement promotions and would complement the work of these digital programs.  Call us to get more information on how we add value to those programs and drive more local traffic to your showroom.