Filling Digital Marketing’s Skills Gap at Your Dealership: Train, Hire or Outsource

This post first ran on March 21, 2022, as a short note on a marketing survey. This version is rewritten for the dealer who has to decide who actually does the work.

At most powersports stores, digital marketing belongs to one person who also does three other jobs, or to nobody at all. The sales manager boosts a Facebook post on Friday. The office manager answers Google reviews when she remembers. An agency runs ads nobody inside the store can log in to. That is the skills gap: not a lack of talent, but a list of jobs with no clear owner and no one who knows what good looks like.

You do not fix it by hiring a "digital marketing manager" and hoping. You fix it skill by skill, deciding for each one whether to train someone you have, hire, or outsource, and keeping control of the accounts whichever way you go.

Why one person ends up owning everything

Digital marketing grew one tool at a time, each with its own login, and each got handed to whoever was nearest.

The result in a typical store looks like this:

• Nobody can say which channel sold last month's units.
• Logins live in one person's inbox, or an agency's.
• Ads are judged on clicks and impressions because that is what the report shows.
• Training happens only when something breaks.

The fix starts with a list of what the store actually needs done.

The seven skills a dealership needs

These are the jobs, not job titles. One good person can cover several.

1. Google Business Profile. Hours, categories, photos, questions and posts kept accurate. This is often the first thing a local shopper sees. Our guide to Google Business Profile posts for dealers covers the posting side.
2. Website and listings. Inventory that is current, photos that sell, pages that load fast on a phone, and the same units showing correctly on your listing sites.
3. Search and social ads. Building campaigns in Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager, setting budgets, and judging them on leads and sales.
4. Email and text, with consent. Sending the right message to the right owner or shopper, and only to people who agreed to hear from you.
5. Analytics and attribution. Reading Google Analytics, tying leads to sales in the CRM, and knowing which channel earned which deal.
6. Content. Walkaround videos, model comparisons, event photos and service tips that give the other channels something to say.
7. Reviews. Asking happy buyers for a review, answering every review, and spotting a pattern in the bad ones.

Train, hire or outsource: the decision table

This is our recommendation for a typical single-rooftop powersports store. Your answer may differ, and that is the point of writing it down.

Train when the work is daily and local

Train when the job needs store knowledge and happens every day: Business Profile, reviews, content capture and basic inventory updates. Outsiders cannot photograph a trade-in at 4 p.m. or know that the service bay closes early on Saturdays. Training costs time, not much money, and the skill stays in the building. The risk is that it gets skipped in a busy month, so calendar it.

Hire when one role can stay full-time

Hire when the workload is steady enough to fill a role and you have someone to manage it. A single in-house marketer can own analytics, Business Profile, reviews and content, and manage the vendors for the rest. The trade-offs are cost, the time to find the right person, and the risk that all the knowledge walks out the door with them. Our article on how management hires and builds a stronger sales team covers interviewing and onboarding, and the same habits apply to a marketing hire.

Outsource when the platform changes faster than you can follow

Outsource when the tools are specialist and change often, such as paid search, paid social and marketing automation. A good vendor brings tested setups and people who do this every day. The trade-offs are less control, a monthly fee, and the temptation to stop paying attention. Outsourcing the work never means outsourcing the ownership, which is the next section.

What most skills-gap advice misses: ownership

Most advice on the skills gap stops at "train your staff" or "find a good agency." It misses the part that costs dealers the most when a vendor or employee leaves: who owns the accounts and the data.

Google's own help pages show why this matters:

• Google Business Profile. Google says "A Business Profile can have multiple owners but only one primary owner," and "Only owners can remove other owners and managers." Managers cannot add or remove users or delete the profile. If an agency is the primary owner and you are a manager, the agency controls who can touch your listing.
• Google Ads. Only the Admin access level "Can give account access, change access levels, and cancel invitations from other users." A Standard user can edit campaigns but cannot decide who else gets in.

So the rule is simple: the dealership holds the top-level role on every account, and vendors get the lowest level that lets them do the job. That means the dealer as primary owner of the Business Profile, a dealer login with Admin access in Google Ads, the dealer as an admin on the Meta business assets and on Google Analytics, and the domain and website content in the dealership's name where the contract allows. Put a shared store email address on these, not one person's inbox, so a departure does not lock you out.

The second half of ownership is reporting. A vendor reporting clicks, impressions and "engagement" is reporting what is easy to measure. Ask for leads, appointments and units sold by channel, matched against your CRM. Our article on choosing the right analytics tools shows how to set that up, and how data-driven marketing works at a dealership explains why the CRM, not the ad platform, should be the source of truth.

How to manage an agency or vendor

Use this checklist when you sign a new vendor and again at every quarterly review.

• Accounts in your name. The dealership is primary owner or admin; the vendor has its own named user.
• Data you can take with you. Contacts, consent records, campaign history and reports can be exported if you leave.
• Reports on sales, not clicks. Leads, appointments and units sold by campaign, checked against the CRM each month.
• One named contact. A person who knows your store, your brands and your season.
• Written scope. What they do, what you do, how fast they respond, and the exit terms.
• Leads land in the CRM. Every form, call and ad lead goes straight to your sales team. Our guide to connecting your marketing tools to the CRM has the test to run.
• Consent handled in writing. For any vendor that sends email or text, ask how consent is recorded and how opt-outs reach every system.

On consent: under the FCC's telemarketing rule, marketing calls and texts sent with an automatic dialing system need the customer's "prior express written consent," and the rule treats a reply such as "stop" or "unsubscribe" to a text as a reasonable way to revoke it. Marketing email has its own federal rules under the CAN-SPAM Act. This is general information, not legal advice. Have your own counsel review your consent wording.

Free official training worth the hours

The platforms train people for free, and their courses are kept current with the products, which third-party courses often are not.

• Google Skillshop. Google's help page says Skillshop's "Foundational certifications continue to be available free of charge." It also says Skillshop developed professional Google Ads certifications in Display, Search and Video, which are "currently available only to a limited audience" and will require a fee in the future. The free foundational path is enough for someone who will manage an agency rather than build campaigns.
• Google Analytics courses. Google describes "free e-learning courses designed by Analytics experts": "101: Get started using Google Analytics (GA)," "102: Manage GA data and learn to read reports," "201: Dive deeper into GA data and reports," "301: Use GA with other tools and data sources," plus a Google Analytics Certification. These live on Skillshop under the old Analytics Academy name.
• Meta Blueprint. Meta's course catalog includes short courses such as "Get started with Ads Manager," "Your guide to audience targeting" and "How to post on a Facebook Page." The catalog page we checked showed no prices; Meta's paid certification exams are separate, so confirm the cost before anyone signs up.

Pair platform training with management training. Someone who will manage vendors needs to read a report and ask hard questions, not build campaigns. Our leadership training picks for dealership managers help there.

A 90-day plan to close the biggest gaps

Days 1 to 30: take stock and take back control

1. List every account: Business Profile, website, listing sites, Google Ads, Meta, email and text tools, Google Analytics, review sites.
2. For each, write down who holds the top role. Move it to the dealership where it is not.
3. Score each of the seven skills from 1 (nobody does it) to 3 (done well) against the "what good looks like" column above.
4. Pick the two lowest-scoring skills that touch sales most. Those are your first gaps.

Days 31 to 60: assign and train

5. Decide train, hire or outsource for those two skills, using the table. Name one owner for each.
6. Enroll the owners in the matching free course: Skillshop, the Google Analytics 101 and 102 courses, or the Blueprint Ads Manager course.
7. Set a weekly 20-minute slot for Business Profile updates and review replies.
8. Ask every vendor for a report in leads, appointments and units sold, starting next month.

Days 61 to 90: measure and decide what is next

9. Build a one-page monthly report that ties spend to sold units from the CRM.
10. Rescore the seven skills. Keep what moved; change the owner or the vendor where nothing did.
11. Pick the next two gaps and repeat.
12. Fold the result into your one-page annual digital marketing plan so owners and budgets are written down for the year.

For the content skill, our guide to content marketing for powersports dealers has topic ideas a trained salesperson can shoot on a phone.

Where PSX Ascend fits

For the skills most stores outsource, PSX Ascend offers two options. Our Automated Marketing Platform (AMP) is described on its product page as "a managed service with campaign setup, proven email templates, monitored touchpoints, and complex customer-experience workflows supported by its dealership marketing team," and it works inside the same platform as the CRM, so marketing activity and sales follow-up share one view. Our connected powersports dealership websites include built-in local SEO, keyword targeting and manufacturer-specific landing pages, with inventory connected to the site. Your team keeps the daily, local work: Business Profile, reviews and content.

You can also see the same marketing automation platform on our sister site, PSXDigital's marketing automation platform page.

Sources

• Skillshop Help, Professional certifications for Skillshop Google Ads/GMP/GA.
• Google Analytics Help, Enroll in Analytics Academy courses on Skillshop.
• Meta, Meta Blueprint course catalog.
• Google Ads Help, About access levels in your Google Ads account.
• Google Business Profile Help, Manage your Business Profile owners & managers.
• Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, 47 CFR 64.1200, Delivery restrictions.