What did your
marketing actually
cost per sale?
Not cost per lead. Not cost per click. Cost per sold unit, by channel, with the full funnel mapped between spend and sale. That number exists. Most dealers just don't have it yet.
Cost per lead is the wrong number.
Every vendor reports cost per lead because it's the number that makes them look good. Your Google Ads agency shows you $45 CPL and calls it a win. Your aggregator shows you 200 leads and calls it volume. Nobody shows you how many of those leads actually turned into sold units, or what each one cost you to get there.
Cost per sale is the number that runs your business. It's total marketing spend divided by the cars you actually sold from that channel. When you see it broken out by channel, real Google Ads cost per sale vs. real aggregator cost per sale vs. real social cost per sale, the budget decisions make themselves.
The audit is built around getting that number right.
We map every step between spend and sold unit
Most marketing reports show you the top and bottom of the funnel and skip everything in between. We track every stage, because that's where the money disappears.
Ad Spend
What are you actually paying, by channel?Total spend, fees, platform markup: the real number, not the reported one.
Impressions & Clicks
Who is seeing your ads and who is clicking?Are you paying for the right searches? Are your audiences in-market or just broad? Click quality matters as much as click volume.
Website Visits
What happens when they land on your site?Page speed, VDP engagement, bounce rate by source. A buyer who clicks and leaves in 4 seconds never had a chance to become a lead.
Leads
How many form fills, calls, and chats, and from which channels?This is what most reports stop at. We're just getting started.
Contact Rate
How many leads does your BDC actually reach?Low contact rates are sometimes a BDC process issue. Sometimes they're a lead quality issue. Sometimes they're a spam-flagged phone number issue. We find out which.
Appointments & Show Rate
How many appointments set, and how many actually show up?Show rate varies dramatically by channel. A $20 CPL that shows at 20% is worth less than a $60 CPL that shows at 60%.
Test Drives
What percentage of showroom visits convert to test drives?This is usually a floor team variable, but sometimes it's an inventory or price mismatch that started in the ad.
Sold Units
How many cars sold, and what did each one cost by channel?The only number that belongs on the sales board. We work backwards from here through every stage above.
AI-first analysis, not spreadsheet-first
We built AI-assisted workflows specifically for dealership marketing analysis. That means we can cross-reference your GA4 data with CRM exports, match attribution windows across platforms, and surface patterns in your funnel that would take weeks of manual work, in days.
Faster data processing
AI handles the heavy lifting on data reconciliation. We spend our time on interpretation and decisions, not on building pivot tables.
Cross-platform attribution
We connect Google Ads, Meta, CRM, and DMS data in ways most agencies don't attempt. The funnel picture is only useful if it's accurate.
AI-generated reporting
Custom dashboards that show the numbers you care about in plain language, not vendor-specific metric names designed to confuse.
Pattern detection
We use AI to find budget leaks, anomalies, and optimization opportunities across large ad accounts faster than any manual review.
Every channel that touches your marketing budget
Google Ads
Where most dealership budgets are largest and most mismanaged. We go beyond campaign-level reporting into search term analysis, audience targeting, quality scores, and attribution. You'll see your actual cost per sale from paid search, not the ROAS number your agency is proud of.
Lead Aggregators
Cars.com, CarGurus, AutoTrader, TrueCar. We calculate cost per sale for each, not cost per lead, because lead volume without close rate is meaningless. Most dealerships are overpaying on at least one aggregator and could shift that budget somewhere that's actually closing.
SEO & Organic
What traffic are you earning without paying for clicks? Are your VDPs indexing? Are you ranking locally? We look at the revenue you're leaving on the table from organic search and what it would actually take to capture it.
Social & Video (Meta, TikTok, YouTube)
These work as direct-response channels when built correctly, and as expensive brand awareness plays when they're not. We audit cost per sale by campaign, find what creative is actually converting, and identify whether your audience architecture is built to close or just to reach.
Local Presence
Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Yelp, map pack ranking, review velocity. Local search buyers are the highest intent in your entire funnel. We check whether you're showing up where they're looking.
AI Search & GEO
When a buyer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity "what's the best Honda dealer near me," does your dealership come up? This is early-stage but it's moving fast. We assess your current AI search visibility and what would need to change to be cited.
Three months. One contact person. Clear output at every stage.
The audit isn't a one-time deliverable you get on a slide deck and never hear from again. It's a structured three-month engagement with defined outputs at each stage.
Exploration & Discovery
We get into everything: ad accounts, GA4, CRM exports, vendor contracts, aggregator portals. We map your current funnel with whatever data is available and identify the gaps. If the data to calculate cost per sale doesn't exist yet, we document exactly what tracking needs to be set up to fix that.
We need one person on your end who can get us access to systems and answer questions without a two-week approval chain. One contact. That's it.
For dealers who want to go deeper, we can spend one or two days at the dealership during month one. Sitting with your sales team, BDC, and managers in person changes what we find. We see how leads are actually handled, where the process breaks down, and what no report will ever show us. It's not required, but it's available.
Deep Analysis & Quick Wins
We go deep on the five areas flagged in month one. Full cost-per-sale calculation by channel. Funnel breakdown stage by stage. Budget leak identification with specific dollar amounts attached, not vague percentages.
We also fix what can be fixed without waiting for a full strategic overhaul. Wasted spend on irrelevant search terms. A Google Ads campaign targeting the wrong geography. An aggregator tier that doesn't match your actual lead quality. Bad tracking that's been under-reporting conversions for months. These fixes often pay for the engagement on their own.
Strategic Recommendations & Execution Plan
The full picture. Which channels to grow, which to scale back, and which to cut. Vendor contracts worth renegotiating or walking away from. The tracking infrastructure that needs to be in place. Content and creative gaps. Local presence gaps.
The execution plan is specific enough to hand to your team, or to hand back to us to run as a Fractional CMO engagement. Either works.
What you have at the end
Your real cost per sale by channel
Calculated the same way across every channel. No vendor math, no platform-native attribution games.
A full funnel breakdown
Where leads come from, where they drop off, and what each stage of the funnel is actually costing you.
Quick wins already implemented
Budget leaks fixed, tracking corrected, obvious waste eliminated. Month 2 is not just analysis.
A 90-day execution plan
Specific enough to run. Prioritized by estimated impact. No fluff.
Ready to see what your marketing is actually returning?
Start with a free 30-minute call. No pitch. Just a clear-eyed look at where you are and what the numbers say.