Dealership Advertising Audit Checklist

Eight areas to check in order, so every ad can be traced from the click or the call to a customer record and a sold vehicle.

A dealership advertising audit is a scheduled look at every paid channel the store runs, from search and social ads to streaming, listing sites, direct mail and radio. It asks one question of each: can we follow the money from the ad to a customer record, and from that record to a sale? Wherever the answer is no, the audit has found the first thing to fix, and it is almost never the creative.

Whoever answers for the results runs it: the internet director or general manager at a franchise rooftop, the owner at an independent, used or buy here pay here store, the sales manager at an RV or boat dealership, or a broker who buys his own ads. Agencies take part, but the store owns the dealership advertising audit, because the store owns the outcome.

Run the full audit once a quarter and a short version every month: the tracking checks, one test lead per source and the outcome numbers. The full version takes an afternoon with the right logins in hand. Download the printable dealership advertising audit checklist (PDF) or the editable audit checklist with a monthly scorecard tab (XLSX), then work the eight areas below in order. Each one leans on the one before it. Judging an ad whose leads never reach the CRM tells you nothing about the ad.

Start with measurement, because every later check depends on it. Open each ad platform and list what it counts as a conversion. A form submission, a call from an ad and a tap on a phone number are three different events, and plenty of accounts count all three, some of them twice. Then pull the same month of leads from your CRM by source and put the two numbers side by side.

• Platform leads against CRM leads. If a platform reports far more leads than the CRM received from that source, either the conversion action counts page views and button taps, or leads are getting lost between the form and the CRM. Both are worth knowing.
• Tags on every ad link. Each destination URL carries campaign tags, so analytics can separate paid search, paid social and email. Check live ads, not the template.
• One tracking phone number per source. Print, radio, listing sites and each ad channel should ring a number of their own, so calls carry a source the way forms do. In LeadLocate CRM each source can have its own tracking number, and each call is logged and recorded on the customer's timeline. See tracking numbers per lead source.
• One conversion per lead. Submit a test form and confirm the platform records one conversion, not two.

Record the gap for every source. It is the first line of your audit report, and closing it makes every other number believable.

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This is the check stores skip and later regret. Every ad account, analytics property, business page, website domain and tracking number should belong to the dealership, with the dealership holding the top admin seat and the billing method. Agencies and vendors get access to the store's accounts. They should never be the only owner of them. A store that changes agencies and finds its search account, its review history or its domain registered to the agency starts again from nothing.

• List every account with its owner, its admin users and the card or invoice that pays it.
• Remove anyone who no longer works with the store: former employees, past agencies, a vendor from two campaigns ago. Do it the same day their CRM access is switched off.
• Turn on two step sign in for every person with admin rights on an ad account.
• Confirm the store can see spend, invoices and change history without asking anyone for a report.
• Check who holds the website domain. Domains bought through LeadLocate come with a self service DNS editor and can be transferred out whenever the store chooses.

The same rule applies to programs that run on your own accounts. When a LeadLocate store wants campaigns under its own ad accounts, our team sets them up on request, they appear on the Advertising Networks page in the CRM, and the accounts stay in the store's name. The connect your own ad accounts page explains how that works.

Targeting decides who sees the ad, so audit it against the map of where your buyers actually live. Pull last year's sold customers by ZIP code from your DMS and compare that map with the locations each campaign targets. A radius around the rooftop is rarely the real market, least of all for an RV or boat dealer that sells across a region.

• Location setting. On search platforms, check whether a campaign targets people in your area or people merely interested in it. The second option can spend a large share of the budget outside your market.
• Credit offers. Any ad that mentions financing falls under the platforms' rules for credit offers, which restrict targeting by age, gender and ZIP code. Confirm every finance message runs under that category.
• Pacing and language. Spend should follow the hours your store answers, and Spanish speaking buyers should see ads in Spanish.

For paid search, the automotive PPC audit checklist rows in the download add the search specific items: the search terms report, negative keywords, match types, brand terms against conquest terms, and whether the ad assets show your phone number and hours.

LeadLocate campaigns start from the selections your store makes in Lead Targeting: the zone in the zone editor, zip stats and the market scan, the campaign type and the prescreening questions. Our team builds and runs the campaigns from those selections on the managed webXintel Ads Network, and every lead in your zone goes to you alone. Review those selections at each quarterly audit, the same way you review your own campaigns.

Creative goes stale faster than any other part of a campaign. Open every live ad and check it against today's inventory and today's offers. An ad that shows a unit sold three weeks ago, or an incentive that expired at the end of last month, costs you the click and then costs you the customer's trust when they call.

• Every vehicle shown is in stock, and every offer carries its disclosures and an end date the store can honor.
• Co op ads follow the manufacturer's current guidelines, so the reimbursement is safe.
• Each campaign runs at least two versions, so the audit compares them on leads rather than opinions.

Fresh creative is easier when it is built from your inventory. Design Studio in LeadLocate makes Image Ads from the store's live inventory and OEM offers with the store's own logo, in social and print sizes, plus GIF ads and video reels. Inventory Link imports inventory from your website, so the vehicles in those ads are the vehicles on your lot. In Lead Targeting, See Samples previews sample ads and Custom Offers holds the offer cards you want in your campaigns, so the audit can check LeadLocate creative the same way it checks the rest.

Many stores pay well for a click and then send it to a home page. Audit each campaign's destination as a shopper would see it, on a phone, on a cellular connection.

• Message match. The page continues the ad. An ad about a lease offer lands on that offer, not on the new inventory search.
• Speed. The page loads fast on a phone. Slow pages lose shoppers before the form appears.
• A short form. Name, phone, email and one question beat a long form for most offers.
• Tap to call. Some shoppers never fill in a form. Give them a number that rings a tracking line.
• The thank you step. Tell the shopper who will contact them and how soon, then make sure it happens.

LeadLocate Lead Pages is a landing page builder with its own URL settings per page, and every page built in it sends submissions straight to your CRM from the day it goes live. Forms built anywhere else connect through your account's form intake link. The dealership landing page optimization guide goes deeper on layout and copy.

This is the most important hour of the whole dealership advertising audit. For every source, submit one real test lead from your own phone, the way a shopper would, and follow it all the way through. Note the time you sent it.

1. The lead appears in the CRM with the right source label on it.
2. It is assigned to a person, or to the rotation you expect, never left with nobody on it.
3. The assigned salesperson receives the alert on the phone they actually carry.
4. The first text or email goes out under that salesperson's name.
5. A manager copy reaches whoever is supposed to see every lead from that source.
6. Someone calls you back. Record how many minutes it took.

In LeadLocate CRM every source has its own intake email and form intake link, an assignment rule, alerts and a first message, and Lead Source Settings shows Total Leads Received and Last Lead Received for each one. The Activity Log lists every delivery with its result, so a provider that went quiet stands out before the slow week does. The lead source integration page covers each intake route, website forms included.

A test lead that never arrives, arrives with nobody on it, or waits an hour for a reply is a finding worth more than any creative change on the list.

Lead quality is the area stores argue about most and measure least, so the dealership advertising audit makes it a sample, not a feeling. Each month, pull 25 leads per source and sort each one into a single bucket: reached and in the market, reached and not ready yet, wrong number or bad email, outside your area, already a customer in your CRM, and never reached. Then read the sales activity on the same leads. A lead that got one call and no text was never worked, and it tells you about the follow up, not the source.

• Run the Phone Validator and Email Validator so the validity dots on each lead show which numbers and addresses are good before anyone judges the source.
• Merge duplicates, so a shopper who submitted on two sites counts once.
• Listen to a few recorded calls per source. Call Alerts with the Alert Keywords your store chooses, such as trade in or payment, flag the calls worth a manager's ear.

LeadLocate leads are prescreened at capture with the questions your store chooses, and every lead in your zone is delivered to you alone. If a delivered lead has bad contact details or falls outside your zone, report it from the lead and it goes to the lead replacement review. The guide to measuring auto lead quality covers the full method.

The last area is the one the invoice is really about. For each source, divide the month's spend by the vehicles sold to leads from that source. Cost per lead rewards cheap leads nobody buys from. Cost per sale rewards the sources that put customers in cars.

• Use a long enough window. Internet leads often buy weeks after the first contact, so count sales from leads that arrived over the last 90 days, not just this month.
• Count leads still being worked. A source with many live conversations at day 30 is not finished.
• Read the lost reasons. When reps record why a deal died, a pattern by source shows whether the problem is the lead, the inventory, the price or the follow up.
• Bring in gross from the DMS. LeadLocate works alongside your DMS, and the source on each lead record is what you match against.

The Monthly scorecard tab in the XLSX lines up spend, platform leads, CRM leads, contacted, appointments, shows, sold and cost per sale for each source. If the weak point is inside the store rather than in the ads, the auto lead ROI calculator and the lost reason tracking page help you find which step to fix.

An audit that ends in a binder changes nothing. Sort every finding into three lists. Fix now: anything that loses leads or money today, such as a form that never reaches the CRM, a campaign spending outside your market, or an admin seat held by a former agency. Fix this month: tracking gaps, stale creative and weak landing pages. Test next quarter: new channels, new audiences and new offers, judged on cost per sale.

Give each finding one owner and a date, and start every dealership advertising audit by reading the last one. After two or three quarters it gets shorter, because the store stops creating the same problems.

If you run LeadLocate, most of the evidence sits in one login: lead sources and the Activity Log, tracking numbers and call recordings, the lead source on every record, the Leads view sorted by source, and activity and management reports by user. The cost of running it has a few parts: the CRM subscription, which includes a login to start, extra users as an add-on, and usage credits for bulk texting, validation and voicemail deliveries. Plans and add-ons are on the pricing page, and the car dealership advertising guide covers how stores choose their channels in the first place.

How often should we run a dealership advertising audit?

Run the full audit once a quarter and a short version every month. The monthly version covers tracking, one test lead per source and the outcome numbers on the scorecard. Run a full audit any time you change agencies, launch a new channel or switch website vendors.

What belongs on an automotive PPC audit checklist?

The search terms report, negative keywords, match types, the location setting (people in your area against people interested in it), brand terms against conquest terms, ad assets with your phone number and hours, the landing page for each ad group, conversion actions counted once, and a tracking number on calls from ads.

Why do our ad platforms report more leads than our CRM received?

Usually because the platform counts more than form submissions, such as button taps, page views or the same lead twice, or because some leads never reached the CRM. Compare the two numbers by source, then send a test lead from each form to find where the gap opens.

What should we fix first after the audit?

Fix anything that loses leads today: forms that never reach the CRM, leads with nobody assigned, alerts that reach nobody, and spend outside your market. Then fix tracking so the numbers can be trusted, then targeting, then creative and landing pages.

How do LeadLocate leads fit into the audit?

Audit them with the same rows as every other source. Each lead arrives with its source on the record, the campaign follows the zone and prescreening questions your store selects, a bad lead goes to the replacement review, and cost per sale is measured the same way as any channel.

Watch the demo to see lead sources, tracking numbers, call recordings and sold deals in one CRM, then compare plans on the pricing page.

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