Atlantic Motor Group Optimized $2M Annual Marketing Budget
A dealer group spending over $2 million annually on marketing had no visibility into budget distribution.
What They Were Facing
Atlantic Motor Group operates eight dealerships across the eastern seaboard, collectively spending over $2 million per year on digital marketing. Budget allocation was done at the beginning of each fiscal year based on the previous year spending, with little connection to actual performance data or market conditions.
Each location had autonomy over how their allocated budget was spent, and there was no mechanism for reallocating funds mid-year based on performance. Some locations were underspending their allocation while others were burning through their budget by Q3 with no remaining funds for the critical year-end sales push.
Corporate leadership received monthly reports from each location, but the data formats were inconsistent, metrics were defined differently across locations, and there was no standardized way to compare performance. Making data-driven budget decisions was effectively impossible.
How Axion Auto Helped
Atlantic Motor Group deployed the Axion Auto enterprise platform with centralized budget planning as the primary use case. All eight locations were migrated onto the platform over a 45-day period.
The centralized budget planning tool allows corporate to set group-wide budget allocations that distribute dynamically to locations based on configurable rules. Atlantic chose to weight allocation based on a combination of inventory volume (40%), historical conversion rate (30%), and market opportunity score (30%). Budget automatically shifts toward high-performing locations with available inventory.
Real-time spend tracking with automated pacing alerts ensures no location overspends or underspends their allocation. If a location is trending ahead of pace, the system alerts both the local manager and corporate marketing leadership. If a location is underspending due to campaign performance issues, it is flagged for immediate attention.
Measurable Impact
In the first year on Axion Auto, Atlantic Motor Group achieved a 3.5x improvement in group-wide marketing ROI. The dynamic budget allocation engine identified over $400,000 in annual spend that was being directed to underperforming campaigns and reallocated it to high-opportunity locations and channels.
Budget efficiency improved by 60% as measured by cost per vehicle sold across the group. The standardized metrics and real-time dashboards enabled corporate leadership to make mid-quarter budget adjustments for the first time, responding to market changes and inventory fluctuations in real time.
Every location now reports through the same dashboard with the same metric definitions, eliminating the inconsistency that previously made cross-location comparison impossible. Executive reports are generated automatically and delivered to the C-suite weekly.
“We were essentially flying blind with a $2 million marketing budget. Axion Auto gave us the instrument panel we needed. The dynamic budget allocation alone delivered ROI that paid for the platform ten times over.”
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