Most dealers hire a marketing agency the same way they hire a salesperson: they pick someone who interviewed well and seemed knowledgeable. Then six months later they're staring at a report full of metrics they don't understand and wondering why the phone isn't ringing more.
The interview stage is where bad hires get made — or prevented. These seven questions will tell you more about an agency than any pitch deck they'll ever show you.
1. Who Will Own the Ad Accounts?
Ask this first. Before the pitch even starts.
Your Facebook Business Manager and Google Ads account should be owned by your dealership, not the agency. When you leave an agency (and eventually you will), those accounts come with you: your conversion history, your audience lists, your lookalike seeds, your performance data. Rebuilding that from scratch with a new agency can cost you 3–6 months of suboptimal performance.
What a good answer sounds like: "We set up accounts under your Business Manager. You'll have admin access from day one, and when our contract ends, the accounts stay with you."
Red flag: Any version of "our accounts are structured around our agency platform for efficiency." That's them telling you the data is theirs.
This is one of the most important things we flag in agency audits — see 5 Signs Your Dealership Marketing Agency is Wasting Your Budget for the full rundown of account ownership red flags.
2. What's Your Definition of a Lead, and How Do You Report CPL?
This sounds basic. It's not. Agencies define "lead" very differently from each other — and from how your sales team defines it.
Some agencies count any form fill (including spam), phone calls over 30 seconds, website chat conversations, or social media DMs. Others only count verified form submissions with name, phone, and email.
The difference can make a good CPL look terrible or a terrible CPL look acceptable, depending on which definition inflates the count.
What a good answer sounds like: "A lead is a form submission or inbound call with contact information, generated by our campaigns. We report CPL every month: how many leads, what each cost, and what changed month-over-month."
Red flag: "We track engagements, website visits, and brand awareness lift in addition to direct leads." If it's the leading answer when you asked specifically about CPL, they're deflecting.
Use VELO's CPL Calculator to calculate what a realistic CPL target should be for your market and budget. Walk into the agency conversation knowing your number.
3. What's Your Specific Automotive Experience?
Generic digital marketing agencies can do a lot of things. Dealership advertising is not generic.
Automotive ad accounts have specific compliance requirements (fair housing, credit discrimination rules), unique creative considerations (inventory-specific ads, trade-in offers, financing promotions), and different conversion funnels than most B2C businesses. An agency that mostly works with restaurants and e-commerce brands will take months to learn what an automotive-specialist already knows.
Ask specifically:
- How many dealership clients do you currently manage?
- What's the largest monthly media budget you've run for a single dealer?
- Have you worked with dealerships in BC or competitive Canadian markets?
What a good answer sounds like: Numbers and specifics. "We currently manage 8 dealership accounts. Our largest client spends $22,000/month in media. We've worked with 3 Metro Vancouver dealerships."
Red flag: "We've worked with automotive clients" with no specifics. Every agency has run a used car ad once. That's not automotive experience.
4. How Often Do You Refresh Creative, and Can You Show Me Examples?
Ad creative is the single biggest lever on Facebook and YouTube performance. Agencies that let campaigns run for months on the same creative are costing their clients real money in ad fatigue — rising CPMs, declining CTRs, ballooning CPL.
High-performing automotive agencies refresh creative every 4–6 weeks. They test systematically: one variable at a time, with clear hypotheses and documented results.
What a good answer sounds like: "We typically run 3–5 creative variants per campaign and refresh monthly. We can show you our testing framework and recent test results from dealership accounts."
Ask for examples of their actual creative from current or past dealership clients. The quality of their creative work will tell you more than anything they say about their process.
5. What Does Your Contract Look Like?
You want to know:
- Length — How long are you locked in?
- Exit terms — What happens if you leave early?
- Performance clauses — Is there any accountability built in for results?
Reasonable contract structure: 3-month initial term (fair — campaigns need time to optimize), then month-to-month with 30 days' notice. Performance benchmarks in writing, even if informal.
What a good answer sounds like: "We do a 3-month initial term, then month-to-month. We'd rather keep clients because results are good than because they're locked in."
Red flag: 12-month contracts with no exit clause and no performance benchmarks. If their confidence in their own work requires a 12-month commitment from you, that confidence isn't backed by results.
Also ask: what happens to your ad accounts if you leave mid-contract? See Question 1. This is where agencies with bad account ownership practices get very specific about the consequences of leaving.
6. Can I Speak With a Current Dealership Client?
Any agency worth hiring should be able to provide at least two reference contacts at dealerships they currently manage. Not former clients. Not best-case clients from three years ago. Current.
This conversation will tell you things no pitch deck will:
- Are they responsive when something isn't working?
- Do the numbers they present match what the dealer actually sees?
- Has the agency stuck around when results were soft, or did they disappear into reporting jargon?
What a good answer sounds like: "Absolutely. Here are two dealers I'd recommend you call. I'll let them know you may reach out."
Red flag: "We can't share client names due to confidentiality." A blanket refusal to provide any reference means one of two things: they don't have happy current clients, or their "clients" are too few or too new to ask.
7. What Does Month One Look Like?
This question reveals how organized they are and whether they have a real onboarding process or if you're about to become their setup-as-you-go client.
A good agency should walk you through:
- Account access and audit (Week 1)
- Audience building and campaign structure (Weeks 1–2)
- Creative briefing and production (Weeks 1–2)
- Campaign launch (End of Week 2 or start of Week 3)
- First performance check-in (End of Week 4)
What a good answer sounds like: A specific timeline with milestones. "Here's our dealership onboarding checklist — it takes 10–14 days to get campaigns live from contract signing."
Red flag: "It depends on a lot of factors." Some flexibility is expected. But an agency that's onboarded dozens of dealers should have a repeatable process they can describe clearly. Vagueness here often means slow starts and wasted budget in the first 30 days.
The Red Flag Checklist
Before you sign anything, check for these warning signs:
- Agency owns the ad accounts (not you)
- No clear CPL definition or reporting commitment
- No specific automotive/dealership clients they can name
- Creative hasn't been refreshed in more than 6 weeks
- 12-month contract with no performance clause
- Can't provide current dealership references
- Vague or inconsistent onboarding process
If more than two of these apply to an agency you're considering: keep looking.
One More Thing: Get an Independent Audit First
Before you hire anyone new, know what's actually happening in your current or legacy ad accounts. You can't evaluate a new agency's promises without a baseline of where you stand.
An independent audit — one with no stake in whether you hire them — will tell you your current CPL, where your budget is being wasted, and what "good" actually looks like for your market and inventory.