A multi-location dealer group stopped paying twice for the same shopper
Eight franchised stores, one Vehicle Ads budget, and an SEO program that had never been in the same room. We aligned them around the VDP and the service scheduler.
This is an anonymized composite of engagements of this type with franchised dealer groups, and the figures are typical of the work rather than one client's ledger. The group runs eight dealership locations across two metros: Toyota, Honda, Ford, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Kia, and two used-only stores. Each dealership location sat on the OEM-mandated platform, and the group's Vehicle Ads and paid search ran through a separate vendor with its own feed. Non-brand organic traffic to VDPs had been flat for two years while the paid budget grew to cover it. Over twelve months we cleaned the inventory feed that fed both channels, rebuilt SRP and VDP pages for the non-brand queries the ads were buying, moved paid spend off the queries organic could win, and reworked the service scheduling path. Non-brand organic VDP views rose 58 percent, service leads rose 44 percent, and the paid budget shifted toward conquest and used inventory where organic could not reach.
Two vendors, two feeds, one shopper.
The group's paid vendor ran Vehicle Ads from one inventory feed and the website platform rendered VDPs from another. The two disagreed on roughly one unit in seven: price, trim, or availability. A shopper who clicked a Vehicle Ad for a certified used RAV4 at one price landed on a VDP showing a different price, or a sold notice, or the wrong dealership location. The dealer paid for the click, and the platform's SRP took the shopper to a generic inventory grid instead of the trim they searched for. Meanwhile the paid account bid on hundreds of non-brand queries like used trucks for sale and honda dealer near me that the group's own pages could have ranked for if they existed.
On the organic side, every dealership location's SRP was a single filterable grid with one title tag. There was no crawlable page for used trucks under 30,000, for certified Honda Accords, or for lease specials by model. Google Business Profiles for the eight stores had inconsistent categories, and three used the group's headquarters address. Service was worse: the online scheduler lived on a subdomain with a five-step form, no pricing, and no page for the services people search for. Oil change, brake service, and tire rotation queries in both metros went to the quick-lube chains. The group had a fixed ops department that made most of its gross and a website that barely mentioned it.
One feed, one page per query, one budget that knows what organic already wins
A dealer group cannot switch platforms mid-OEM-cycle, so we worked inside what the vendor allowed. The plan had three lanes that had to move together: reconcile the inventory feeds so the ad and the VDP agreed, build the SRP and VDP layer that captured non-brand demand organically, and re-plan the paid account monthly against what organic had started to rank for. The fourth lane, service, ran on its own track because fixed ops had its own scheduler, its own landing pages, and its own budget line.
The work, month by month
The same plan, laid out on the calendar it actually ran on.
Feed audit and reconciliation
Compared the DMS export, the site feed, and the Vehicle Ads feed unit by unit. Consolidated to one export with shared pricing rules. Feed mismatch dropped below one in fifty.
SRP layer and landing alignment
Launched crawlable SRP pages for the top non-brand inventory queries at every dealership location and pointed each Vehicle Ad and search campaign at the page that matched.
Service rebuild
Shipped per-dealership location and per-service pages with the two-step scheduler embedded. Service landing pages replaced the subdomain in every paid campaign.
Monthly budget rebalance
Moved paid spend off queries organic now ranked for, expanded conquest and second-metro used inventory campaigns, and tracked VDP views, leads, and ROs by dealership location.
From non-brand search to a VDP that matches the ad
Typical monthly flow across the eight dealership locations once feeds, pages, and campaigns pointed at the same unit.
Stage rates are typical of this engagement type across franchised dealership locations and vary by brand, metro, and season.
Sales and fixed ops on one screen, by dealership location
The monthly view the group used to move budget between organic, paid, and service.
Reported by dealership location in the client dashboard, tied to CRM leads and repair orders from the DMS.
Organic took the queries, paid took the conquest, service took the calls
Twelve months in, non-brand organic VDP views were up 58 percent year over year, driven by the SRP pages that now ranked for used trucks, certified pre-owned by model, and lease specials in both metros. Service leads rose 44 percent as the per-service pages moved into the map pack and the two-step scheduler stopped losing people on step three. The paid account spent the same total budget but 61 percent less on queries organic had won, and the difference went to conquest and second-metro used inventory. Shoppers who clicked an ad landed on the unit they clicked, at the price they saw.
More client results
All case studies →Your category is being defined right now
Find out who AI engines cite when buyers ask about your space. We check before the call.