Car Dealer vs. Manufacturer. Which Marketing Activities Deliver Results?

Key Takeaways:

• The manufacturer focuses on building brand awareness and demand, while the dealer is responsible for direct car sales.
• The manufacturer’s budget prioritizes brand image and broad reach, while the dealer invests primarily in performance marketing.
• Manufacturers use mass-market channels, whereas dealers focus on local campaigns and Google Business Profiles.
• The best sales results come from consistent collaboration between both parties, based on the efficient exchange of information within CRM systems.

A manufacturer’s main goal is getting its brand and model onto the customer’s list of options under consideration. Its job is building interest in the design, the technology, the safety and the experience of using the car.

A dealer takes over the customer when they are already much closer to buying. It presents a specific model, its price, its availability and the value of the car being traded in. Its responsibilities also include test drives, contact with an advisor and finalizing the transaction.

Despite these differences, the best results come when manufacturers and dealers do not run two independent strategies but work together and complement each other.

The Polish new passenger car market is still growing, which means not only greater demand but also growing competition between manufacturers and dealers for the customer’s attention. To stand out, you have to plan your marketing strategy properly, which is why the business model has to be matched correctly first.

If you do not want part of your budget going into activities that will not deliver the results you expect, take care to split your funds properly between brand and performance. The right balance is what matters here.

A manufacturer should put the larger part of its budget into building the brand, creating interest in its models and generating future demand.

For a car manufacturer the recommended share is:

• Brand, reach and demand building: 55 to 70%
• Performance and lead generation: 30 to 45%

This split follows from the need to create future demand. The launch of a new model requires educating the market, and here brand opens the door for sales campaigns.

A dealer works with specific stock, a local area and monthly sales targets.

For a car dealer the recommended share is:

• Brand and local reach: 25 to 40%
• Performance and generating sales: 60 to 75%

What counts here is mainly reaching people in the active research phase with a specific, aggressive offer, which generates current cash flow.

How the advertising budget is split depends directly on the product lifecycle and the stock situation.

A manufacturer needs mass reach and brand, while a dealer is looking for a precise way to reach the customer and convert quickly. These differences determine which channel will turn out most effective for a given strategy.

A manufacturer should set its budget so as to feed the top of the sales funnel. It has to generate interest that will only turn into a showroom visit weeks, or even months, later.

A dealer’s media mix concentrates mainly on the lower part of the sales funnel, because what matters most is activity that produces immediate results.

The changes in how people search, the shift from traditional Google to LLMs and AI Overviews, force both manufacturers and car dealers into a new approach to content optimization.

• SEO: building basic organic visibility in search engines.
  • Manufacturer (national SEO): builds visibility for general, informational and educational queries, for example around technology, safety, range or running costs.
  • Dealer (local SEO): optimizes pages around specific cars available now, local leasing offers and used car trade ins. It also takes care of the Google Business Profile, gathering customer reviews.
• GEO: optimization for AI layers in Google.
  • Manufacturer: creates content answering questions about models and technologies, for example: which car works well for long journeys?
  • Dealer: its content should answer local questions, for example: where can I buy a car in Krakow available now?
• AISO: visibility in the recommendations of AI agents.
  • Manufacturer: should build how recommendable its brand, models, technologies and experts are.
  • Dealer: focuses on how recommendable the showroom, the offer, the service, the workshop and local availability are.

Year on year, electric and hybrid cars are chosen more and more often by consumers. Given that the market depends heavily on subsidies and still requires intensive education, this significantly changes the marketing brief.

• The manufacturer in the EV era: has to educate the market about real range, charging curves, battery degradation and the differences between BEV and PHEV.
• The dealer in the EV era: takes on the role of technical and financial advisor. It answers questions about home charging and subsidy programs, and organizes multiday test drives.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) require separate measures for the macro and micro scale, because manufacturers and dealers measure success at completely different points in the sales funnel.

• Manufacturer: brand awareness, video reach, configurations, number of leads passed to the dealer network (CPL), overall market share.
• Dealer: time to first contact with a lead, number of appointments booked, test drives, cost per sale (CPS), margin on the vehicle and on F&I services, reasons leads were lost.

Cooperation between manufacturer and dealer rests on the quality of data exchange in CRM and marketing automation systems.

The best marketing results require data exchange between the manufacturer and the dealer network. The manufacturer should know which campaigns and models generate valuable inquiries, while the dealer’s job is to pass on data about contacts, test drives, financing and the reasons leads were lost. That makes it possible to assess how the manufacturer’s brand activity translates into actual commercial results.

At Delante we know exactly how to design a comprehensive marketing strategy and select the activities that will genuinely increase your profits. Join the brands that trust us.