Automotive Marketing RFP Template for Dealerships

The questions to send every agency, the answers that separate them, and a scoring sheet so your managers choose on facts instead of the best pitch deck.

A request for proposal turns an agency search from a string of sales meetings into a side by side comparison. You write down what your store sells, where it wants to grow and what it expects from a marketing partner, then you send the same document to every agency on your list. Each one answers the same questions in the same order, and your managers score the answers on one sheet.

Stores usually reach for an automotive marketing RFP at one of four moments: an agency contract is coming up for renewal, lead volume or cost per sale has drifted for a few months in a row, the store is adding a rooftop or a franchise, or ownership wants a second opinion on where the advertising budget goes. The same document works for a franchise rooftop with a co-op program, an independent or used car store, a buy here pay here lot that lives on finance leads, and an RV or boat dealership with long, seasonal buying cycles. Only the store profile, the goals and the scoring weights change.

The template comes in two files. The printable automotive marketing RFP template (PDF) is the document you send. The Excel version holds the same questions with an answer column, plus a store profile, a weighted scoring sheet, a fee table and a response timeline your team fills in.

A good RFP is short enough that a strong agency answers it in a week and specific enough that a weak one shows itself. The template is built in nine parts, in this order:

Keep the store profile factual and brief. Agencies write better answers when they know your monthly unit count and your market, and you learn more from how they use that information than from anything they write about themselves.

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Most agency answers sound alike until you ask questions with a checkable answer. These are the ones in the template that do the most work, and what a strong answer looks like.

• Whose name is on the ad accounts? A strong answer: yours, with the agency added as a manager. When the accounts sit in the agency's name, your history and audiences leave when the agency does.
• Where does a lead go in its first sixty seconds? A strong answer names your CRM, the source label the lead carries and the person who gets the alert. Leads that wait in an agency portal or a shared mailbox lose their best minutes.
• Can you show one lead from the ad click to a sold deal in our CRM? An agency that measures itself on clicks and form fills will struggle here. One that measures appointments and sales will walk you through it.
• What share of our budget reaches media? Ask for media and fees on separate lines, every month.
• Who works on our account, and how many other stores do they handle? The person in the pitch is rarely the person in your account each week.
• Do you work for another dealer in our market? Ask how leads and budgets stay separate when two stores bid on the same shoppers.
• What do you need from us? Inventory access, offers, approvals and a contact who answers within a day. A clear list here is a good sign the onboarding is real.
• How do we leave? Notice period, account handover, creative and landing page ownership. Ask it now, while everyone is friendly.

Watch for answers that promise outcomes. An agency that guarantees a lead count, an appointment count or a number of sales is promising something nobody controls. Ask instead what it measured for stores like yours and how it reports when results slip.

Score after every agency has answered, not as each one arrives, so the last pitch does not win by being the freshest. The Excel file includes a scoring sheet with ten weighted criteria. Each scorer gives every agency a 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) on each row, the sheet multiplies the score by the weight, and the totals line up side by side.

Have three people score separately: the general manager, whoever owns marketing, and the person who works the leads every day, usually the internet sales manager or the BDC manager. The person closest to the leads catches what a pitch deck hides, such as leads that arrive without a phone number or a form that asks shoppers for too much.

Weight the criteria to fit your store. A store that depends on its own website weights website and search work higher. A buy here pay here store weights finance application volume and lead delivery speed. An RV dealer with a short peak season weights creative that changes with the season. Keep the weights adding up to 100 so the totals stay comparable.

Then check the top two agencies before you sign. Call two stores each agency names as references, ask to see a live monthly report with the store's name removed, and run the test lead described in the next section.

The most useful part of any agency evaluation takes ten minutes. Ask each finalist to point a live ad or landing page form at your CRM for one weekend, then send a test lead through it yourself.

It is 9:40 on a Saturday. Your internet manager fills in the form on her phone with her own name and number and asks about a used three row SUV. In a CRM set up the way a store should run, the lead lands in the Leads view within a minute with the agency's source label on the row, round robin hands it to the next salesperson on the floor, that salesperson's phone buzzes, and the first text goes out under the salesperson's name. By 9:45 she knows whether the agency's leads reach a person or a mailbox.

In LeadLocate CRM, each agency program gets its own lead source in Lead Source Settings, with an intake email and a form intake link, a Feed Label your team recognizes, a Lead Assignment rule and the alerts you choose. The source's Activity Log lists every delivery with its time and the lead it created, so if the test lead never shows up, you can see whether it was ever sent. The lead source integration page walks through the setup, and connecting website forms to the CRM covers the landing page side.

An agency report shows what happened inside the ad platforms. Your CRM shows what happened after: who answered, who set an appointment, who showed and who bought. Judge the agency on the second set of numbers.

• Give every source its own label. One lead source per agency program, named the same way every time, so leads, appointments and sales sort cleanly by where they came from.
• Give calls a source too. Tracking numbers per lead source put a number on each campaign, so phone shoppers carry the same source as form leads.
• Record why deals die. A lost reason on every dead lead tells you whether an agency sends shoppers from outside your market, shoppers with no intent to buy, or good shoppers your team let slip.
• Compare cost per sale, not cost per lead. A cheap lead that never answers costs more than an expensive one that buys.

LeadLocate reporting, with activity, company and management reports on the Reports button of the dock, reads from the source on every lead. The lead source dashboard and dealer marketing attribution pages show how stores read spend against appointments and sales month by month.

LeadLocate puts the CRM, the phone system and a local lead program behind one login, so the results of your marketing land in the same system your salespeople work. If LeadLocate is on your list, here is how the program maps to the template.

• Scope. Your store makes its selections in Leads Manager: the zone in the zone editor, the campaign type, prescreening questions and Custom Offers, with See Samples previews of sample ads. Our team builds and runs the campaigns from those selections on the managed webXintel Ads Network, and on request under the dealership's own ad accounts, set up for the store by our team.
• Exclusivity. Every lead in your zone goes to your store alone.
• Lead delivery. Leads arrive in LeadLocate CRM with LeadLocate as the source, and a store that keeps another CRM can have each lead routed there as well.
• Lead problems. Prescreening questions at capture, and a lead replacement review for a bad lead.
• Creative and inventory. Design Studio builds image ads from the store's live inventory and OEM offers with the store's own logo, and Inventory Link imports your vehicles from your website or your feed.
• Contract. Month to month, with no long term contract.

The car dealership advertising page covers the program in depth, and the agency alternative page compares the two models side by side.

Agency pricing comes in a few common shapes, and many agencies combine them: a management fee figured as a share of media spend, a flat monthly retainer, a price per lead or per appointment, setup or creative fees, and pass through charges for software, call tracking or landing pages. None of these is wrong. What matters is that you see each one on its own line.

The template asks every agency to fill in the same fee table: media spend, management fee, creative, setup, software and any per lead charges, plus the contract length and the notice period. Put the totals beside the appointments and sold units each agency projects in its own proposal, and you have a cost per sale estimate for each one that you can hold it to in month three.

LeadLocate's cost is built from a few parts: the plan subscription, users beyond the login each plan includes as an add-on, and usage credits for bulk texting, phone and email validation and voicemail deliveries. Plans and add-ons are listed on the pricing page.

What should an automotive marketing RFP include?

A short store profile, your goals with a measure for each, the channels in scope, who owns the ad accounts and data, how leads reach your CRM, what reporting looks like, how creative uses your inventory, who works on your account, and every fee with the contract terms. The template covers all nine parts in that order.

How many agencies should we send the RFP to?

Three to five. Fewer gives you little to compare, and more than five takes more scoring time than most managers have. Send it to the agency you use today as well, so the incumbent answers the same questions as everyone else.

How long should agencies get to respond?

Two weeks is common, with a set day for written questions in the first week and one answer document sent to every agency. The Excel file has a timeline tab that runs from sending the RFP to signing, in days rather than dates.

Should the dealership own its ad accounts?

Yes. Ask for every ad account in the store's name with the agency added as a manager. Your account history, audiences and results then stay with the store if the agency changes.

How do we compare agencies with different fee models?

Ask each one to fill in the same fee table with media and fees on separate lines, then divide the monthly total by the sold units its own proposal projects. That gives a cost per sale estimate for every agency on the same basis.

Does the template work for RV, boat and buy here pay here dealers?

Yes. The nine parts stay the same. Change the goals and the scoring weights: an RV or boat store weights seasonal creative and long follow-up, and a buy here pay here store weights finance applications and lead delivery speed.

Can LeadLocate be one of the companies we send it to?

Yes. Our team builds and runs campaigns from the selections your store makes in Leads Manager, every lead in your zone goes to your store alone, leads land in LeadLocate CRM with their source on them, and every plan is month to month.

Watch the demo of a lead arriving in LeadLocate CRM with its source, its salesperson and its first text, then compare plans on the pricing page.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.