Search Optics Alternative for Car Dealerships

Paid media earns the click. LeadLocate delivers exclusive local leads, works every one of them in a full CRM, and ties each sale back to the source that produced it.

Search Optics is a digital marketing company that serves car dealerships among other industries. Its public positioning centers on managed paid search, search engine optimization, social and display advertising, video and the reporting that sits on top of those campaigns, with dealer websites offered as part of the relationship for some stores. Dealers usually buy it as a managed service: the agency plans the media, runs the ad accounts, and brings the results to a monthly review.

That model appeals to a store that wants somebody else to own the advertising calendar. The agency watches the budget, adjusts bids and creative, and reports on impressions, clicks, calls and form fills. What happens after the form fill belongs to whatever CRM and phone setup the store already runs, which is where the next section picks up.

Services, packaging and pricing change over time. Confirm current scope, pricing and terms with Search Optics directly before you make a decision, and treat any comparison page, including this one, as a starting list of questions.

When a GM or internet director calls us about moving on from a marketing agency, the reason is usually specific, and naming it first saves time in every demo that follows.

The report ends at the click. The agency dashboard shows traffic and conversions, the sales board shows units, and nobody at the store can draw a straight line between the two. Stores want reporting that starts with a lead and ends with a sold vehicle on the same record.

Traffic is shared, and leads are what sell cars. Paid search sends shoppers to a site where they may or may not raise a hand. Dealers want a steady supply of people who asked to be contacted, delivered to their store and nobody else.

Four vendors, four invoices. An agency for media, a website company, a CRM, a phone tracking service. Every month somebody reconciles numbers that disagree, and the customer's history is split across systems.

Terms. Retainers and minimum commitments make it hard to test anything new. Month to month terms let a store prove a platform on its own numbers.

Leave your number and a lead specialist calls you back to answer your questions about pricing, coverage, and setup. Mon - Sat, 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific.

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

Exclusive local leads, built into the CRM. In Leads Manager your store draws its territory with the zone editor, reviews zip stats and a market scan, picks the campaign type, writes the prescreening questions and sets Custom Offers. See Samples previews the ads before anything runs. Our team builds and runs the campaigns from those selections on the webXintel Ads Network, which is included with every plan. Every lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture with the questions you choose, and backed by a replacement review, so a bad lead costs you nothing. Buyer leads are a mix of VIN specific shoppers and people describing what they want, and opt in seller leads come from local owners who asked for an offer on their vehicle.

A full CRM on the same record. Lead inbox with realtime autosave, distribution with rules and round robin assignment, custom statuses and tags, texting with MMS and delivery status on every bubble, RCS with automatic SMS fallback, email from your own authenticated domain, bulk texting and bulk email, voicemail drops and trackable short links with click stats.

A phone system that belongs to the CRM. Tracking numbers per source, a browser softphone with click to call, call recording with transcription, an IVR call flow builder and business hours routing.

Contact hygiene. The Phone Validator and Email Validator show a validity dot right on the lead, so reps stop dialing dead numbers.

Features, packaging and pricing change. Confirm anything that drives your decision with each vendor directly before you sign.

The argument about which channel deserves next month's budget usually happens because the numbers live in different places. The agency counts clicks, the phone service counts calls, the CRM counts leads, and the sales board counts cars. LeadLocate keeps all four on one record.

Every lead carries its source from the moment it arrives, whether it came from your zone campaigns, a website form, a tracking number assigned to a specific channel, or a lead feed you set up in the Lead Feeds Manager. Calls, texts, MMS, emails and voicemails land on one communications timeline, so a manager can open a sold deal and see the exact path the customer took.

Visitor analytics run inside the CRM as well: overview, realtime, sessions, sources, devices and top pages for the sites you run on the platform. Three reporting modules, activity, company and management, show the same activity at the salesperson, store and group level, and the Reports dashboard on the dock puts the numbers a desk manager checks every morning in one place.

Call Alerts add a layer most stores have never had. Transcribed calls are checked for the words your store chooses, such as trade in, payment or cancel, and a manager picks All Calls or Alert Calls Only. That turns a stack of recordings into a short list worth listening to before lunch.

Paid media is expensive, and most of the return on it is decided in the first five minutes after a shopper raises a hand. LeadLocate is built around that window.

Automated Templates answer each lead feed the moment a lead lands, with the right first text or email for that source. Texting Chatbots handle the first back and forth when a shopper replies at night. Follow Up Processes then run multi step drips per lead type, so day two, day four and day ten happen on schedule whether or not the assigned rep remembers. Scheduled sends let a rep write a text, email or voicemail drop now and time it for the morning.

Notifications reach the right person on every channel they choose: on screen toasts, sound, email and text, with per user preferences. Manager Lead Copies put a manager on a feed so they receive a copy of every lead beside the salesperson who owns it, which makes a slow response visible the same hour it happens.

On the phone side, business hours routing, a Forward Calls To ring list built from your own users, and missed call handling keep inbound calls from paid campaigns reaching a person. Caller ID name lookup shows who is calling before the rep picks up.

Jax, the bilingual AI assistant inside the CRM, drafts texts and emails in English or Spanish right inside the composer, so a rep answers a Spanish speaking shopper in their own language in seconds.

Moving off a marketing agency is mostly a list of things to repoint, and doing it in order means no lead lands in an inbox nobody watches.

1. Inventory your sources. Write down every place a lead or call enters today: website forms, chat, third party lead providers, tracking numbers and any ad accounts in the store's name. Confirm who owns each ad account and each domain.
2. Set up the zone. In Leads Manager your store draws its territory, picks the campaign type and writes the prescreening questions. The account is set up for you, usually the same day.
3. Connect your website forms. Every account has its own form intake link. Any website form that posts to it creates a lead in the CRM with the fields mapped, and the first text can fire automatically.
4. Move the phones. Assign tracking numbers per source, build the IVR call flow and set the ring list.
5. Run both for three to four weeks. Measure time to first response, touches per lead and appointments set on both sides. Those three numbers tell you more than any demo.

Our migration checklist walks through each step in detail, and contact import brings your existing customer list across on day one.

Take the same list into every meeting, including ours. Written answers separate vendors faster than a feature tour does.

What is the total monthly cost with everything we need switched on, and how much of it is media versus management? Who owns the ad accounts, the domain and the tracking numbers if we leave? What exactly can we export, and does the customer's communication history come with it? Are leads exclusive to our store, and how is the territory drawn? What happens when a lead is bad? How long is the contract and what is the notice period? Who answers the phone when we need help on a Saturday afternoon?

Our answers are published. Pricing lists every plan: Inbound buyer leads from $799, Marketplace Acquisitions seller leads from $999, the Buyers & Sellers Hybrid Plan from $1,599, CRM Only from $199 and Skip A Month from $199, all month to month. Every plan with leads includes the CRM, because the platform is what receives and delivers them. The recorded demo shows the product without a sales call.

We cannot guarantee lead counts, close rates or sales results, and no vendor can, because those depend on your market, your inventory and your team. What we deliver is the supply, the system and the speed that give your team every opportunity to close.

Is LeadLocate a direct replacement for Search Optics?

For most stores it replaces the part that matters most to the sales floor: a steady supply of exclusive local leads, plus the CRM, texting, calling and reporting that turn them into appointments. Your store makes its selections in Leads Manager and our team runs the campaigns on the webXintel Ads Network, included with every plan.

Are the leads exclusive to our store?

Yes. You draw your territory with the Leads Manager zone editor, and every lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture with the questions you choose, and backed by a replacement review.

Can our website forms send leads into LeadLocate?

Yes. Every account has its own form intake link. Any website form that posts to it creates a lead in the CRM with the fields mapped, and the first text can go out automatically.

Can we see which source produced a sale?

Yes. Every lead carries its source, tracking numbers can be assigned per channel, and calls, texts and emails sit on one timeline with the deal. The activity, company and management reports show it at every level.

Do we need a DMS connection or an inventory feed?

Neither is required to run the platform. If you have a feed, Inventory Link ingests it, and if you have no feed it imports inventory from your website.

What does it cost to try LeadLocate?

CRM Only starts at $199 a month. Plans with exclusive local leads start at $799, seller leads from $999 and both together from $1,599. Everything is month to month with no long term contract.

We will map a zone around your store, show the CRM working on real lead flow, and walk through the reporting from first click to sold unit. Month to month, so you decide every month.

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