Free Marketing Meeting Checklist Here

Quick Hits: Focus your spend on shoppers who are ready right now, validate it with simple, human-readable metrics (time on site, pages viewed, funnel progression), and tie every campaign to calls and conversations - not vanity conversions. Meet your agency twice a month: first to set the plan, second to pivot against competitors. Guard your data, mystery-shop your own site, and pay for real content, not monthly metadata tinkering.

1) Aim first at "ready-to-buy" shoppers (then brand later)

There are two audiences:

• Now buyers (high intent): people searching "new Silverado," "Camry," "F-150," etc.
• Sometime buyers (awareness): people who may buy in months.

Put your first dollars where purchase intent is strongest - core model terms on Google. Then layer awareness.

Quick test: On a clean browser (or using Google Ads' Ad Preview tool), search your top models - e.g., "new Silverado."

• Are you visible in Search and Shopping?
• Is the Shopping placement yours - or is a third-party (AutoTrader, Cars.com) outranking you for your own inventory?

If you're invisible on your money terms, fix that before anything else.

2) Don't let "store visits" hide bad spend

When agencies optimize only for "get people into the dealership," algorithms often find the cheapest path - service traffic. That yields a packed service lane and a quiet showroom.

Make sure your campaigns, goals, and bidding strategies are aligned to sales intent (model terms, SRP → VDP engagement, phone calls, forms), not generic "store visits."

3) GA4: keep it simple and watch what matters

Yes, GA4 is complex. Start with two low-noise signals:

• Average time on site (are visitors staying long enough to shop?)
• Pages per session (are they exploring inventory?)

Adam's tip: Send paid traffic to SRPs, not directly to VDPs.

• It's harder to fake "SRP → VDP" clicks than it is to spoof a single VDP visit.
• That SRP→VDP ratio exposes pricing issues (e.g., if people bounce from SRPs without opening any vehicles).

When you can, export GA4 to BigQuery (or your BI tool) and build a simple funnel:

Users → Stayed 30+ seconds → SRP → VDP → Lead/Call

Where the drop widens, investigate there first (pricing, "call for price," out-of-stock trims, in-transit inventory, page speed, pop-ups, etc.).

4) Track phone calls the right way (dynamic numbers)

Most modern call-tracking platforms use dynamic number insertion (DNI) so each visitor sees a unique number. That allows you to map the call back to:

• the source/keyword/ad, and
• the pages they viewed before dialing.

Use it to:

• Separate sales vs. service impact (you'll learn "dealership near me" skews heavily to service).
• Capture missed calls (and route to a backup line if phones go down).
• Validate platform claims ("Did Facebook actually drive inbound calls last week?").

Pro tip: Keep the website simple with one visible number and let routing logic do the rest.

5) Mystery-shop yourself (and your rivals)

Spend five minutes a week doing exactly what customers do:

• Search "new \[top model\]" in your market (use Ad Preview for neutral results).
• Click your ad and your competitor's ad.
• Count the pop-ups. Do widgets interrupt the purchase path?
• Try to submit a lead. How many steps/fields? Any dead ends on mobile?

You'll quickly see friction you stopped noticing - and tricks some third parties use (e.g., their search bars sitting on top of your SRP to drive _their_ leads, not your sales).

6) Guard your data from third-party widgets

Any widget you embed (badges, chats, trade-tools) can see a lot of your traffic. That has competitive implications: You might be telegraphing your active shoppers to vendors who also serve nearby stores. Be selective and configure tools to minimize data leakage.

7) SEO you should pay for (and what you shouldn't)

• Pay for tangible pages every month - model pages, local content, comparisons, financing FAQs, service explainer pages.
• Don't pay monthly for endless metadata tweaks. On a modern site, title/description clean-up is a periodic task, not a retainer.
• Avoid one - click, AI-generated articles. Duplicate/low-quality content tends to underperform. Have a human edit for substance and local specificity.
• Spot-check originality: paste your opening sentences into Google; if 20 sites show the same copy, rewrite.

8) Run a twice-monthly marketing cadence (strategy, then counter-moves)

Meeting 1 (week 1): Plan

• What we're pushing (e.g., leases on specific trims).
• Budgets, geos, and creative.

Meeting 2 (week 3): Pivot

• Review performance and Auction Insights (Google Ads) to see who's ramping spend in your backyard.
• If a rival boosts F-150 aggressively, decide: match, shift budget, or move to a different profit pocket.

Agencies lose accounts not because the initial plan was bad - but because they didn't pivot when the market countered.

9) Build a simple "where did this lead come from?" habit

If lead sources are a mystery, assume cannibalization. Example Adam shared: a vendor "proved" value by calling the store's existing CRM leads earlier than the BDC, then claiming those sales as theirs. Your process should make double-counting impossible.

10) Validate with the sales floor

If you're spending seriously on a platform (e.g., Facebook), you should occasionally hear customers mention it in-store. If your team never hears it, investigate the landing pages, targeting, and creative.

11) Master Google + Facebook before chasing shiny objects

Geofencing, display, OTT, and YouTube are amplifiers, not foundations. Nail intent (Search & Shopping) and high-quality paid social first. Avoid auto-generated ads with stock photos-weak signals in competitive markets.

12) Sometimes the month just stinks (don't panic-spend)

Not every slump is a media problem. If the campaigns are correctly configured and the market is soft, resist the urge to "spend your way out." Optimize price/merchandising and stay disciplined.

A 10-minute weekly checklist

01. Model search visibility: Are we present on "\[top model\]" in Search & Shopping?

02. Auction Insights: Who's invading our zip codes this week?

03. Funnel health: Users → 30s+ → SRP → VDP → Lead/Call. Where's the biggest drop?

04. Time on site & pages/session: Trending up, flat, or down by source?

05. Call tracking review: Sales vs. service calls; missed calls; keyword/source matchback.

06. Mystery shop: Your ad → your SRP → your VDP → your lead form (on mobile).

07. Widget audit: Any third-party interruptions or leaks?

08. Content cadence: Which pages went live this month? What's scheduled next?

09. Sales floor signal: Did anyone mention seeing our Facebook/YouTube ad?

10. Budget sanity: Any channel growing spend without corresponding engagement gains?

What to ask your agency - every meeting

• _Show me where we rank/appear for our top model searches right now._
• _What changed in Auction Insights since last meeting?_
• _SRP→VDP rate by channel last week?_
• _Calls by source and missed calls?_
• _New content URLs published this month?_
• _What will we stop doing next month - and why?_