DEALERSHIPS
A car buyer spends weeks deciding, alone, on a phone, at night, watching video. Right now they are watching an American YouTuber and a manufacturer brand film. Nothing with your dealership’s name on it. That gap is the cheapest ground a dealership can take, and I have been filming it for an Adelaide Ford dealership since 2020.
01
01 — THE PROBLEM
EVERY BAD DEALERSHIP POST HAS THE SAME FLAW. IT’S ABOUT THE DEALERSHIP.
The delivery photo with the ribbon is about your win, not the buyer’s question. The reposted manufacturer ad is the OEM’s message, run for free by a dealer who paid for the privilege. The trending audio clip is the staff having a laugh. None of it answers a single question a buyer actually has.
And buyers have nothing but questions. What are the five wheel options on this ute. What is the difference between the two screen setups. How do I pair my phone. What separates the two hybrid variants. How do I turn the lane assist off, because it is driving me mad.
DEALERSHIPS POST ABOUT THEMSELVES. BUYERS SEARCH FOR ANSWERS ABOUT THE CAR.
Every one of those questions is being answered right now by someone with no connection to your dealership. If the video that answers it carried your name, you are in the consideration set before the first enquiry. Not through advertising. Through being useful first. Fill that gap and you own the weeks before they walk in.
02
02 — WHAT ACTUALLY WORKS
THREE TIERS OF CONTENT. THE BEST ONE IS THE ONE NOBODY BUILDS.
TIER 1
THE MODEL LIBRARY
Handover and how-to videos, one set per model in your range. How to use every vehicle on your floor, filmed once on demo stock. No customer required, no sold car required.
Lives for three to five years. This is the backbone, and almost nobody has built it.
TIER 2
RECURRING FORMATS
Top five questions buyers ask about a model. Variant versus variant, plainly explained. Wheel options, screen setups, what actually comes in the accessory pack. What a scheduled service includes and why it costs what it costs.
Batch filmed. One person for ninety minutes produces two months of these.
TIER 3
STOCK AND OFFERS
Yard walkarounds of what is on the lot now. Runout, plate clearance, demo clearance, new arrivals.
The only tier most dealerships attempt, and the least valuable, because it stops earning the day the car sells.
The play is simple. Lead with Tier 1, because no competitor in your brand has it. Tier 2 is the engine room. Tier 3 fills the calendar in between.
03
03 — THE BUSINESS CASE
NOT A MARKETING SPEND. AN OPERATIONS FIX THAT HAPPENS TO MARKET.
A handover and how-to library pays three departments at once.
SALES
A salesperson gets a link to send after every test drive. It shortens the demo, keeps the conversation alive through the weeks of deciding, and makes yours look like the dealership that has its act together.
SERVICE
It cuts the how-do-I phone calls and drop-ins that eat unpaid workshop time. Every dealership has someone fielding those calls. Nobody has ever costed it.
MARKETING
An evergreen, searchable library that compounds. A video answering a real model-specific question keeps getting found for years after it was filmed.
Which is why this is not a conversation about the marketing budget, which is contested and small. It is a conversation about a problem three of your managers already have.
04
04 — WHY IT DOESN’T HAPPEN
CONTENT IS NOBODY’S ACTUAL JOB. SO IT FALLS OFF THE LIST.
I know what your week looks like. Staff, rosters, targets, the service department, the group above you and the OEM above that. Pay rates have slid, the job is less lucrative than it used to be, churn is constant, nobody wants Saturdays, and someone is always off sick.
Content is the first thing to fall off that list, every single month, and it will keep falling off forever, because it is nobody’s actual job.
I am not going to tell you to care more. I am going to remove the reasons it fails.
05
05 — THE FIX
NOBODY WANTS TO BE ON CAMERA? IT STILL GETS MADE.
Most of the library needs no face at all.
Hands and vehicle only, voiceover added afterwards. That is not a compromise. A pair of hands demonstrating a screen menu is clearer than a person talking about one.
I make reluctant people watchable.
A dealership is full of people who can sell face to face and freeze the moment a camera comes out. Getting a nervous salesperson to be good on camera is a skill, not an accident, and it is the thing I am best at. The whole method is here.
Batch capture beats a weekly favour.
Every dealership has one person who is genuinely good on camera. It is almost never the GM and almost never the marketing coordinator. It is usually a salesperson or a service tech who just talks well. Film them once for ninety minutes and get two months of content.
Designed for churn from day one.
Assume the good on-camera person leaves. Assume the marketing coordinator leaves. The library is built so it survives both, because it will have to.
06
06 — THE WEDGE
SAME CARS. SAME ADS. SAME FINANCE. THE ONLY VARIABLE LEFT IS PRESENCE.
Within one brand, in one city, dealerships are close to identical. Same product, same OEM creative, similar pricing, similar finance offers. The genuine variables left are the people and the presence.
If you are number two in your brand in Adelaide, you already know it. So does the group, and so does the OEM, and the incentives that come with being number one are real money.
Content is the cheapest lever on presence you have, and it is the one the manufacturer does not control and cannot hand to your competitor.
07
07 — HIRE OR RETAIN
HIRE SOMEONE AND THE CHANNEL DIES THE DAY THEY RESIGN.
Dealerships that get serious about content usually hire for it. Then that person leaves, and the channel dies inside a month. The camera goes in a drawer, the schedule collapses, and eighteen months later the same job ad reappears.
The reason to retain instead of hire is not cost. It is continuity. In an industry with this much churn, content is the one function that should sit outside the org chart, because that is the only way it survives a resignation.
Run your own numbers on it. The hire or retain calculator is here.
08
08 — THE MONTH
ONE VISIT. FOUR HOURS. NO MEETING REQUIRED.
90 MINUTES
One model’s evergreen library. Handover set and how-to answers, filmed on demo stock.
60 MINUTES
Yard walkarounds on current stock. Runout, clearance, arrivals.
60 MINUTES
Batched Q&A with one staff member. Two months of recurring formats.
30 MINUTES
Pickup shots and detail.
Out of that visit: one full handover set, four to six stock walkarounds, and five to eight short-form cuts. First drafts in three business days. $1,500 a month plus GST, no cap on output.
That is not an estimate. It is what I have delivered at an Adelaide Ford dealership, month after month, since 2020.
09
09 — STRAIGHT ANSWERS
THREE THINGS I WON’T PRETEND.
I DON’T RUN YOUR AD ACCOUNT
I produce the content and shape the strategy behind it. Media buying and campaign optimisation stay with whoever does them now. When a BVOD campaign needs a fresh 15 or 30 second cut, that is a natural job inside the retainer.
I WON’T FAKE ATTRIBUTION
Nobody can honestly tell you which video sold which car. This is presence and preference. It shows up as reach, watch time, and salespeople telling you customers arrive already informed. If someone promises you more than that, they are guessing.
I WORK INSIDE OEM RULES
Co-op requirements, brand guidelines, approved imagery, pricing disclaimers, drive-away wording. It is real and I work within it.
10
10 — THE PROOF
AUTOMOTIVE IS NOT A SIDELINE. IT’S WHERE I LIVE.
Fifteen years, more than 2,000 videos, and most of my longest client relationships are in and around the automotive industry.
A FORD DEALERSHIP
SINCE 2020
SNOWY RIVER CARAVANS ADELAIDE
SINCE 2020
LOVELLS AUTOMOTIVE
SINCE 2021
“Before I worked with Jerry, I would have been 0% confident in front of a camera. Now I’m comfortable, I don’t stress before filming, and when I’m the only one available, I step up and nail it.”
A DEALER PRINCIPAL, ADELAIDE
YOUR COMPETITORS ARE POSTING ABOUT THEMSELVES. YOU DON’T HAVE TO.
One call. Bring your model range and your current headaches. I will tell you exactly what four hours a month would produce on your lot, and if it is not a fit, I will tell you that too.