You know the photo. Customer beside the car, ribbon on the bonnet, salesperson slightly out of frame, caption congratulating the Smiths on their new Everest.
Every dealership posts it. It costs thirty seconds, everyone smiles, and it feels like content. Here is the problem. It is content about the dealership’s win. The Smiths love it, their family likes it, and not one person who is currently deciding what car to buy gets anything from it at all.
The delivery photo is not alone. Most dealership feeds run on three defaults.
The delivery photo, which is the dealership celebrating itself.
The reposted OEM ad, which is the manufacturer’s message, run for free by a dealer who already paid for the privilege through co-op. Every other dealer in your brand is posting the identical asset the identical week.
And the showroom fun. The lolly bowl trend, the staff birthday, the dress-up day. Harmless, occasionally charming, and about the staff having a laugh.
None of these answers a single question a buyer actually has. That is the flaw they share, and it is the whole argument in one sentence.
DEALERSHIPS POST ABOUT THEMSELVES. BUYERS ARE SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS ABOUT THE CAR.
01 — WHAT YOUR BUYER IS DOING RIGHT NOW
A car purchase has a long consideration window. Weeks, usually months. Almost all of it happens alone, on a phone, at night, watching video.
That buyer has real questions. What are the wheel options on the Ranger. What is the actual difference between the two hybrid variants. What does the bigger screen get me. How do I turn the lane assist off, because it is driving me mad.
Right now the videos answering those questions come from an American YouTuber, a generic OEM brand film, or a reviewer with no connection to any dealership. Every one of those videos moves your buyer forward. Not one of them has a dealership’s name on it.
02 — THE GAP IS THE OPPORTUNITY
If the video that answered the question came from a dealership, that dealership is in the consideration set before the first enquiry ever lands. Not through advertising. Through being useful first.
That is worth sitting with, because it is not a lever anyone else holds. It costs nothing in media spend. The OEM does not control it and cannot hand it to the dealer up the road. It is presence you own outright, earned in the window where the decision is actually being made, weeks before anyone walks in.
The delivery photo will keep getting posted, and that is fine. It has a small job to do for the customer in it. Just stop counting it as marketing, because the person it needed to reach was never going to see it, and would have scrolled past if they had.
The better question is what a feed built on answers looks like, and where you would even start. I have written about that separately, starting with the handover library, which is the piece almost nobody builds and the one with the strongest business case.
I’m Jerry Zimmer. I run The Branded Story in Adelaide, and I have been making video for a Ford dealership since 2020, alongside Lovells Automotive and Snowy River Caravans Adelaide. If you run a dealership and this sounds like your feed, book a call.