When a competitor down the street launches a massive weekend event or floods the market with a new campaign, the natural instinct is to respond immediately. You gather your team, scramble your marketing vendors, and rush to get a counter-promotion into the market. You feel like you are protecting your territory.
In reality, you are playing defense in a game that requires offense.
By the time you react to a competitor’s move, the damage is already done. They have already made the first impression on the local buyer, and you are spending your budget simply to counteract an idea that is already established in the buyer’s mind. This reactive mindset keeps your dealership one step behind. You are letting your competitors set the agenda for your market, leaving you constantly scrambling to catch up.
The Mirage of the Competitor’s Creative
The reason dealerships fall into this reactive loop is that competitor advertising is highly visible. You can see their billboards, hear their radio spots, and watch their social media campaigns. Because you can see the creative, the natural temptation is to copy or counter it.
What you cannot see, however, is the actual result of those campaigns. You have no way of knowing whether that event drove profitable sales or simply burned their budget. You are reacting to the appearance of a strategy, not the results of one.
Reacting to the visible advertisement rather than the underlying buyer data means you are spending your budget chasing your competitor’s audience instead of building your own.
Breaking this reflex requires a different question. Instead of asking what your competitors are doing, you need to ask who your competitors’ customers are, and how you can reach them first.
Mapping Your Backyard
The shift from reactive to proactive marketing begins with a clear understanding of your local market data.
A practical starting point is to analyze your pump-in and pump-out registration reports. This data shows you exactly which local buyers are leaving your territory to purchase from other dealerships, and which ZIP codes are being actively won by your competitors.
Once you identify these areas, you can stop wasting budget on broad counter-promotions and start targeting your marketing with geographic precision. You can shift your focus from “what ads are they running?” to “which geos are they taking, and am I showing up there first?”
When you use proactive market intelligence to set the competitive agenda, your ad cost per sold vehicle goes down. It is far less expensive to reach a buyer early than to try to win them back once they have already narrowed down their decision to a few competitors.
The dealer who knows the market best sets the agenda. Everyone else reacts to it.
Chris Petrawski
President, Head of Ad Strategy at Bedford Advertising.
Over a career spanning retail, automotive, and higher education, Chris has managed more than $500 million in advertising spend. His campaigns have earned a Gold Medal in the Educational Advertising Awards, multiple ADDY Awards, and a Best in Show TELLY Award, and his work has been featured by Facebook, Instagram, and the American Advertising Federation (AAF).
Chris also volunteers with Genesis Women’s Shelter, where he manages their Google Ads grant — work that earned him 1st Place in the AAF National Public Service Awards. In 2018, Ad 2 Dallas named him to its 32 Under 32, recognizing the top marketing and advertising professionals in DFW.
Since becoming President of Bedford Advertising in 2022, Chris has led franchise dealerships across the country in maximizing sales growth and profitability.