Nobody at my store chose our Tier 2 agency. The association chose them, the OEM approved them, and now a portion of every unit sold goes to fund campaigns I have no input on and limited visibility into. The reporting we get back is impressions and reach, which tells me nothing about whether a customer actually walked into my showroom because of the campaign or despite it. I have asked our agency rep three times for click-to-dealer tracking on the last two flights. Still waiting. The dealers who are winning right now are the ones who figured out how to supplement their Tier 2 spend with aggressive Tier 3 where they actually control the message and can see the result.
Dealership - Sales
May 10, 2026 - 10:37
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Three years asking the same…
Three years asking the same question and the answer is always some version of brand building and market awareness. That is what you say when you cannot show a number. I finally pulled our Tier 2 spend for the year, compared it against the months where we ran aggressive Tier 3 ourselves, and the correlation between our own spend and traffic was measurably cleaner. Nobody wants to hear that because it threatens a relationship the association has with an agency that has been entrenched for years. The whole structure is set up to make accountability optional and participation mandatory.
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