This webinar, originally presented by C-4 Analytics on the Digital Dealer platform, dives into a critical issue: why dealers give up their competitive advantage to conflicted digital marketing agencies.
In the past, dealers would never have hired the same agency as their rival. Today, many agencies serve multiple competitors—a practice that is costing you sales, wasting your money, and helping the competition. As C-4 Analytics’ Rob Stoesser explains, you must fully understand the impact of a conflicted relationship to take back control of your sales.
A conflicted agency is a digital marketing company that serves directly competing on-brand dealers in your market. For you to increase your sales, your rival would have to lose sales. Since the agency works for both of you, they cannot achieve this goal for either, resulting in a stalemate that only benefits the vendor.
These symptoms collectively reveal if your agency's goals are misaligned with yours:
Goals Focus on Vanity Metrics: When asked for their goals, they prioritize VDP views, leads, and traffic, rather than Sales, Share, and Cost—the only metrics that matter to your bottom line. They soften the metrics because they cannot guarantee sales growth for competing clients.
They Won't Share Data Sources: They claim their data is "proprietary" because they have not invested in the certified, nuanced data needed to solve complex market problems.
Low Quality Score: High client-to-rep ratios (50-150 accounts) mean they lack the time and training to manage campaigns effectively, resulting in poor Quality Scores and wasted ad spend.
Lack of Certification: Conflicted vendors often do not invest in fully Google-certified personnel because their business model doesn't require the infrastructure to execute complex, winning campaigns.
They Don't Use OEM Reports: They are unwilling to use your Pump-in/Pump-out and Sales by ZIP reports because solving your pump-in problem (a loss for you) would create a pump-out problem for their other client (a loss for them).
The financial evidence is clear: you are losing sales you should be winning.
The Pump-in Problem: If a rival dealer consistently pumps sales into your territory, it indicates you are losing the lowest-hanging fruit—customers who want your brand but are buying from the wrong place.
Wasted Ad Spend: By not connecting Google Analytics to Google Ads, or by not demanding transparent cost reporting, you are potentially overpaying for campaigns that are not being optimized for your benefit.
To take back your sales, you must stop the pump-ins and start the pump-outs by deploying a targeted strategy that your conflicted agency cannot replicate.
For a deeper dive into these topics and to hear directly from Rob Stoesser, Vice President of Sales, watch the full webinar below.