Auto dealer PPC with every lead followed up

Auto dealer PPC is pay-per-click advertising for car dealerships: ads on Google and other platforms where you pay each time a shopper clicks. In LocaliQ’s automotive benchmarks, new car dealers paid a median $2.48 a click and $35.87 a lead. At Growigami your CRO builds the campaigns, we run them every week, and each process starts at $1,999 a month.

What is auto dealer PPC?

A dealer PPC campaign bids on the searches shoppers make, such as a model and trim near your city. It shows an ad when someone types one. You pay when the ad is clicked. A PPC service runs the account for you: the keywords, ads, landing pages, bids and reports.

The six first-page results we read agree on the basics. Dealers United recommends structuring campaigns by make and model, then by trim. Dealer Authority says a Toyota dealer does not want to show up for Honda searches. It also says each ad should land on a page showing only the vehicles it promises. DealerOn’s page tracks each lead to the sale, but none of the six sets out who answers a lead once it arrives. Only ppc.io posts a management fee.

What Growigami runs for a car dealership

Each week, AI agents draft new ads and a reply to each internet lead, and the account’s spend moves toward the campaigns booking calls. Your CRO, a senior lead who has run sales and marketing teams, builds each process with your sales manager and proves it works first. Your salespeople still take the calls and sell the cars. You read what each process produced in your CRM.

Pull resultsLinkedIn · Last 7 days

Write two variantsAgent · From the winning line

Done

Cut the losersCheck · Above $550 per lead

Passed

LaunchLinkedIn and Meta

You can start with any one of these, each priced on its own:

• Paid ads (Paid and creative): Google and Meta campaigns on up to $25,000 a month in ad spend, with up to two new landing pages a month. AI agents draft the ads, and new versions go live before the old ones tire. Each week we move spend to the campaigns that book calls. The larger size covers up to $50,000 on Google, Meta, YouTube and LinkedIn.
• Inbound lead follow-up: each internet lead, up to 300 a month, is researched and sent to the right salesperson with a reply drafted, at any hour. A lead nobody has touched goes back to the desk before it goes cold. The larger size covers up to 600 leads a month.
• Search (Search): pages built to rank on Google and get cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity, such as model comparisons and buying guides for your market. The base size publishes 200 pages a month.
• Deal follow-up: before each sales appointment, the salesperson gets a one-page brief. After it, a recap is drafted to send. Deals that went quiet or were lost get a new reason to talk. The base size covers up to 60 sales calls a month.
• Outbound (Pipeline): for fleet sales, 500 local businesses researched a month, with a message written for each fleet buyer.

How do car dealerships get more leads?

They show up for the vehicles they have and the questions shoppers ask before choosing a dealer. Then they answer every lead that arrives. NADA’s 2026 midyear report puts franchised dealers’ advertising spend at $5.04 billion for the first half of 2026, up from $4.80 billion a year earlier. LocaliQ reads rising dealer ad spend as more money chasing the same clicks.

How to keep dealer PPC tied to your inventory

Spend on the vehicles you need to sell. LocaliQ’s guide calls paying for clicks on vehicles you can’t sell one of the best ways to lose money on search ads. Dealer Authority makes the same point: the inventory on your website has to match the vehicles on the lot. Your CRO builds the campaigns around the models your sales manager wants to move, and the weekly spend shifts follow what books calls.

How to reach shoppers before they choose a dealer

LocaliQ’s automotive guide says shoppers increasingly use AI to research vehicles and compare models before they pick a dealer. It recommends targeting comparison searches such as one model against another, “Best car for” searches and affordability terms. Our Search process writes those pages for your market, built to rank on Google and get cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity.

How to follow up on internet leads

LocaliQ’s data puts used car dealers’ conversion rate at 3.53%, the lowest of any automotive category. That is about one lead for every 28 paid clicks. Our Inbound lead follow-up process sends each lead to the right salesperson with the shopper’s details and a reply drafted, at any hour. A lead nobody has touched goes back to the desk.

How to market an auto repair shop

Repair shops have a different search pattern. Ahrefs puts “auto repair near me” at about 142,000 US searches a month. In LocaliQ’s data, auto service and repair had the lowest click-through rate of the automotive categories at 4.41%, then converted 15.39% of clicks. Our Search process writes a page for each repair you want more of, and our Paid process sends each campaign to its matching page.

What does auto dealer PPC cost?

LocaliQ’s automotive benchmarks, updated September 29, 2026, cover 1,983 US search ad campaigns run from April 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. LocaliQ reports medians.

Search ads, median	New car dealers	Used car dealers	Auto service and repair	All automotive
Cost per lead	$35.87	$59.74	$42.10	$33.12
Cost per click	$2.48	$1.73	$6.42	$3.49
Conversion rate	6.73%	3.53%	15.39%	9.21%
Click-through rate	8.23%	8.33%	4.41%	6.60%

Across automotive, cost per click rose 12.58% and cost per lead rose 4.09% from the year before. Used car dealers paid the second lowest median click of any automotive category but converted the fewest clicks, so their leads cost more than new car dealers’ leads.

Dealer PPC management prices

The clicks are one cost, and running the account is another. ppc.io posts “$2,000 a month for Google Ads, never a percentage of spend.” The other five first-page results post no fee. DealerOn’s guide suggests putting 10% of your total marketing budget into PPC.

Growigami’s Paid process stays at $1,999 a month up to $25,000 in ad spend, on two channels. A process costs $500 more in its first month while we build it, and your first build is on us this month. Paid ads plus Inbound lead follow-up comes to $3,998 a month after the first. Ad spend is paid at cost, and the full list is on our price list.

CabFare’s video ads beat static by 3.2x

CabFare turns a driver’s phone into a card terminal for taxis and limousines. Facebook ads run in house had burned $3K for fewer than 20 installs. Our team tested video against static ads, and video won by 3.2x on cost per install. With outbound and a new first-run flow, CabFare went from zero to $20K in monthly recurring revenue in four months (CabFare story). CabFare sells software to drivers. It is not a dealership.

When another dealer marketing option fits better

Growigami is one of several ways to run dealer ads:

• Hire ppc.io or a similar flat-fee shop if you want Google Ads only, with a free audit first. Its posted fee is $2,000 a month.
• Keep it in house if you have a marketer who checks the account several times a week and a BDC that calls every lead back fast.
• Buy from your website platform if you want ads and the dealer website from one vendor. DealerOn, for one, says it provides websites, SEO and digital advertising across vehicle brands.
• Buy Growigami when you want Google and Meta ads run for you every week at a flat fee, with every lead followed up.

Our pages for HVAC companies, electricians and general contractors cover the same model for local service businesses.

Talk to sales. Give us read access to your CRM, and within a week we show you the first process we would build and what it would produce.