Automotive marketing
Car leads:
which ones sell.
A car lead is worth what it turns into, so judge every source (comparison sites, your website, Google, Facebook, the phone) on cost per sale, not cost per lead. Speed matters: in a widely cited US study reported by SmartCompany, firms that replied within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as those that waited longer. And follow-up has rules: marketing texts and emails need consent, your details and a working unsubscribe, and telemarketing calls have set hours.
Written by Dan Picken, a marketer who checks the sources. Last checked 6 November 2026.Where car leads
come from.
Dealers get leads from more places than most businesses, and each behaves differently. The table is the typical mix. Your order will differ, which is the point of tracking it.
| Source | Typical lead | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Comparison and listing sites | An email or call about one car | Buyers often enquire on several cars at once. Speed and a straight price win. |
| Your website | Enquiry, test drive or trade-in form | The source gets lost if the form doesn't pass it on. Check it does. |
| Phone and Google Business Profile | A call, often from the map | Missed calls are invisible unless you track them. |
| Facebook, Instagram and Marketplace | A message, often after hours | Answer the next morning and they've messaged three others. |
| Workshop customers | A service customer asking about a newer car | The warmest lead most dealers have, and the least followed up. |
| Walk-ins | Someone on the yard | Ask how they found you, and write it down. |
One lead,
five inboxes.
The common failure isn't a lack of leads. It's leads landing in five places: the listing site's portal, a shared inbox, Messenger, a salesperson's mobile and the workshop's phone. Nobody sees all of them, and nobody can say which source sold the car.
Fix it first. Every lead goes into one CRM or DMS with its source, the car it was about and who took it. If your website form can't pass the source, fix the form. This is the boring work that makes every number below possible.
Which source
actually sells?
Put in last month's cost, leads and sales for each source, or the last three months if you have them. The starting numbers are made up.
Lead source scorecard
Cheap per lead,
dear per car?
For each source, put in last month's cost, leads and sales (or service bookings). Leave a row at zero if you don't use it. Website and phone cost nothing extra here, but you can add what you spend on the site or call tracking. The starting numbers are made up.
| Source | Cost ($) | Leads | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comparison and listing sites | |||
| Your website forms | |||
| Google Ads | |||
| Facebook, Instagram and Marketplace | |||
| Phone and Google profile calls |
Ranked by cost per sale
Free sources aren't free: someone answers the phone and the forms. And buyers often enquire through several sources before buying, so record the source that brought them first as well as the last one.
Reply in minutes,
not days.
The best-known study on lead speed is old and American, but the pattern holds. Researchers sent test web enquiries to 2,241 US companies: 37% replied within an hour, and the average reply took 42 hours among those that replied within a month. A separate study of 1.25 million leads found firms replying within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead.
Car buyers are a good fit for that finding. They shop several cars at once and change their minds: 34% paused or stopped altogether at some point in carsales' 2026 research. A reply on Saturday afternoon to a Saturday morning enquiry about a used Corolla in Charlestown catches them while they're still deciding. Monday's reply catches someone who bought elsewhere.
Set a rule the team can keep: every lead gets a real reply within the hour during opening hours, with the price, availability and one useful question. After hours, an honest automatic reply saying when you'll call beats silence.
Workshop leads
are bookings.
For a mechanic the lead is a call or a booking request, and the cheapest win is answering it. Track calls from ads as well: Google Ads can count calls longer than a minimum duration you set as conversions. Then compare calls with bookings. If the phone rings while everyone's under a car, a callback promise kept within the hour saves more jobs than another ad.
The follow-up
rules.
Texts and emails come under the Spam Act. ACMA's three rules: have consent, identify your business, and include a working unsubscribe that you action within 5 working days. Someone who asked about a car has given you a reason to reply about that car. Adding them to a monthly specials list needs consent you can prove, so put a separate, unticked box on the form.
Calls that count as telemarketing have set hours: ACMA says 9am to 8pm on weekdays and 9am to 5pm on Saturdays, with no calls on Sundays or national public holidays. And if you run Meta lead forms for stock, the catalogue needs a dealer privacy policy link, so make sure the page exists and says what you do with the details.
Send the sale
back to the ad.
Once leads and sales are matched, tell the platforms. Google's enhanced conversions for leads match hashed lead form details to the offline sales you import, so its bidding learns which clicks sold cars rather than which ones filled forms. Even without that, a monthly sheet of source, leads and sales will show you where to move money.
What I see most often
What I'd check first
in a car business's leads.
- 1
No source on the lead
CRM records with the source blank or set to 'website' for everything, so comparison site, Google and Facebook enquiries all look the same.
- 2
Weekend leads answered Monday
Saturday and Sunday web and Messenger enquiries sitting unanswered until the sales team is back, while buyers are at their most active.
- 3
Trade-in forms nobody calls
Valuation requests treated as low priority, when someone asking what their car is worth is often weeks away from buying the next one.
The honest bit. Better follow-up won't rescue a car priced above the market. Some leads are just people checking you're not the cheapest, and no reply time changes that. If one source sends lots of those, it's not a follow-up problem. It's a pricing or listing problem.
Questions
people ask.
What is the best lead source for a car dealer?
The one with the lowest cost per car sold, which is often not the one with the cheapest leads. Record the source on every lead, match sales to leads for a month or three, and compare.
How fast should a dealer reply to an online lead?
Within the hour during opening hours. A widely cited US study reported by SmartCompany found firms replying within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead. Car buyers compare several cars at once, so speed matters more, not less.
Can I text car buyers who enquired?
You can reply about what they asked. For ongoing marketing, the Spam Act needs consent, your business details and a working unsubscribe, actioned within 5 working days. Use a separate, unticked consent box on your forms.
What hours can a dealership make sales calls?
For telemarketing calls, ACMA says 9am to 8pm on weekdays and 9am to 5pm on Saturdays, with no calls on Sundays or national public holidays. Returning a call someone asked for is a different situation, but those hours are a sensible default.
How do I know which leads turned into sales?
Give every lead a source in one CRM or DMS and link each sale to its lead. Then send sales back to Google Ads with enhanced conversions for leads, so the campaign learns from sales, not form fills.
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