Insights — All

For years, the conversation around dealership advertising has focused on media buying. Which channels deserve more budget? Where should you target shoppers? How do you improve cost per lead? Those questions still matter. But they no longer represent the biggest challenge facing dealership marketing. Creative does. Not because dealerships have run out of good ideas […]

The automotive industry has long since embraced digital marketing. Many dealers invest heavily in paid search, social media, display advertising, Connected TV, and online video. These channels have transformed how we reach consumers, measure performance, and optimize campaigns. But there is one channel that continues to be overlooked despite its explosive growth and remarkable ability […]

For years, automotive advertising has been dominated by a handful of channels. Search. Social. Display. Video. Those channels remain important, but they have also become increasingly crowded, expensive, and dependent on the same audiences being targeted repeatedly. The challenge for dealers today is not simply generating more impressions. It is generating incremental reach among consumers […]

Most dealerships still think of TikTok as an awareness channel. It’s where you build impressions, generate views, and hope someone remembers your dealership six months later. That mindset is becoming increasingly outdated. Today’s automotive shopper isn’t just scrolling TikTok for entertainment. They’re researching vehicles, comparing models, watching ownership reviews, evaluating features, and validating purchase decisions […]

For years, dealership advertising has been built around a relatively simple premise: find consumers when they’re actively shopping and compete aggressively for their attention. Search campaigns target high-intent buyers. Inventory ads target consumers comparing vehicles. Retargeting campaigns follow website visitors who have already engaged with dealership content. Success is measured through clicks, leads, conversions, and […]

For years, dealership advertising was built around interruption. Buy television. Reach as many people as possible. Hope the message lands at the right time. Then digital changed everything. Search became the center of the strategy. Social exploded. Attribution dashboards took over the conversation. The industry shifted toward lower-funnel metrics because they were measurable, immediate, and […]

Most automotive advertising still operates in the rearview mirror. Dealers analyze what happened last month, shift budgets based on past performance, and react after demand has already changed. The problem is that today’s market moves too quickly for reactive marketing alone. That’s where predictive modeling comes in. At its core, predictive modeling is simply the […]

For years, dealerships have searched for the perfect budget split. 20% awareness. 30% consideration. 50% conversion – Or some variation of it. The problem is that shoppers do not move through the funnel in a clean, predictable line anymore. Their attention shifts constantly. Platforms evolve. Inventory changes. Incentives change. Market conditions change. Competitors change. And […]

For automotive retail leaders, the question is no longer whether omnichannel matters, it’s whether your organization is aligned to deliver it. Today’s car buyer does not move in a straight line. They move fluidly between search, social, OEM sites, third-party listings, and your showroom, often engaging with 15–20 touchpoints before making a decision. What they […]

Most dealerships still categorize Pinterest as a ‘social media’ platform. I would suggest that’s probably the wrong way to think about it. Pinterest is increasingly becoming a visual discovery engine. And that matters because the way consumers search for products, brands, and ideas is changing quickly. For years, dealership advertising strategies have revolved around traditional […]

Most dealership marketing doesn’t fail because of effort. It fails because of structure. There’s no shortage of spend, campaigns, or vendors. If anything, there’s more activity than ever. But activity isn’t the issue. Connection is. The Industry Built a Fragmented Model and Called It Strategy Search is doing one thing. Social is doing another. Streaming, […]

We’ve spent years trying to simplify the automotive buying journey into something clean. Awareness. Consideration. Intent. Urgency. It looks great on a slide. It tends to fall apart in the real world. The reality is the modern buyer doesn’t move in a straight line. They bounce. They pause. They disappear and come back. They consume […]

Most dealerships think digital marketing is about capturing demand. Someone searches. They click. They convert. That’s the playbook. And it works, to a point. But if that’s all you’re doing, you’re not growing market share. You’re competing for it. There’s a difference. Capturing Demand Is Not the Same as Creating It Capturing demand is reactive […]

As automotive retail leaders, we’ve traditionally measured success in units sold. Monthly reports, OEM targets, and incentive structures all reinforce one thing: sell more cars. But focusing solely on vehicle sales is an incomplete, and often misleading, view of performance. The more meaningful metric is market share. Market share reflects not just how many vehicles […]

The Problem with how Dealers are measuring marketing performance today. Most dealerships are still measuring marketing based on what’s easiest to track, not what actually drives growth. Number of leads. Cost per lead. Last-click attribution. Form fills. It looks clean. It gives you numbers to report. But it misses the point. These metrics tell you […]

Let’s have a little fun with this. It’s April Fools’ Day, which feels like the perfect time to ask a serious question: Where should dealers actually be spending their advertising budget right now? If your answer is some version of “what worked last month” or “I have no clue,” you’re not alone. You’re also not […]

Lead generation didn’t stop working. It just stopped working the way most dealerships think it does. And in a lot of cases, it has quietly become the ceiling on growth. For years, automotive marketing has been built around one question: how many leads did we get? That question has shaped strategy, budgets, and how success […]

Most of the AI currently being marketed to dealerships falls into one of two categories: Conversational AI or agentic AI. Chatbots, Lead response tools, Service scheduling assistants, Conversational sales agents. The industry is focused on AI answering questions from shoppers, very little attention has been paid to something far more impactful using AI to decide how advertising dollars should move.

Our CEO is a bit of a sneakerhead. Serious about it and loves his Air Jordans. Not because they are trendy. Not because of resale value. Not because of nostalgia. He likes them for the same reason they became iconic in the first place. They were built around performance, and the market validated it over […]

Do not mistake, shoppers are researching earlier, consuming more video, and forming preferences long before a lead form is filled out or a search query is typed. According to Google, more than 90 percent of automotive buyers say online video influences their purchase decision. That influence happens upstream, during research and consideration, not at the […]

As 2025 comes to a close, most dealerships are already looking ahead to budgets, plans, and priorities for 2026. That is the right instinct. But the bigger question is not what to spend next year. It is what to change. The automotive retail landscape did not shift overnight in 2025. It quietly exposed what is […]

Dealers do not have a visibility problem. They have an alignment, measurement, and risk control problem. This Game Changer Holiday Series livestream breaks down why being everywhere is not a strategy, what real omnichannel execution looks like, and how AI, predictive modeling, and better metrics help dealers reduce risk and spend with confidence.

Our CEO and co-founder, David Raminick, and our VP of Sales, Justin Friend, were recently featured on the Healey Brothers podcast with host Jay Healey. In the episode, they walked through how Proficy Digital approaches omni-channel marketing very differently from the typical “be-everywhere-and-hope” strategy. They explained that our platform was built with AI and machine […]

Dealers, do you want to reach every shopper, not just the ones willing to buy? In the first episode of Modern Automotive Marketing, we learn the importance of true omnichannel, full-funnel, modern automotive marketing in today’s modern landscape and why dealerships can no longer rely solely on Google and Facebook for sales. Host Jason Harris […]

For dealers looking to modernize their approach, hear this message: creative must be fast, relevant, and tailored to your audience, or you’re leaving opportunities on the table.In this episode of Modern Automotive Marketing, host Jason Harris reconnects with guest Justin Friend of Proficy Digital to discuss why speed and relevance in creative are essential for […]

Is your dealership’s marketing working together or working against you? In this episode of Modern Automotive Marketing, join host Jason Harris as he sits down with David and Justin Friend of Proficy Digital as they unpack the difference between fragmented marketing and a truly integrated omnichannel strategy. Learn from David how Proficy Digital was founded […]

I love to fish. What I love even more is to catch fish. What if AI could guide you to the exact spot where the fish are, tell you the best time to cast, and even recommend the right bait? You wouldn’t be fishing blindly, you’d be fishing with precision. Maybe a wild analogy, but […]

Most dealerships are losing sales every single month and don’t even know it. Not because their ad budget is too small. Not because they’re not running enough campaigns. But because their creative is stale. And stale creative is a silent killer of campaign performance. Static Creative = Static Results When your banners look the same, […]

Most auto marketers will tell you they’re running a modern digital strategy. They’re on Google. They’re on Facebook and Instagram. Some have added OTT or TikTok. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Being active across multiple channels is not the same as being integrated. Most of what’s happening out there isn’t omnichannel. It’s multi-channel at best. […]

A customer walks into a dealership down the street. They know what they want. They’ve read the reviews, watched videos, compared payments, and narrowed it to two options. You never had a chance. Now multiply that by dozens, maybe hundreds, of missed opportunities each month. The real issue? Most dealership marketing strategies are designed to […]