Ask ten dealers what they spend on social media and you will get ten different answers, because they are not buying the same thing. One is paying for software. One is paying a person. One is paying an agency retainer that also covers their ad buy. Comparing those numbers to each other is meaningless.
So the better question is not how much but what am I actually buying, and what does it still leave on my team’s plate?
The four things a dealership can buy
1. A scheduling tool
The cheapest line item and the most misunderstood. A scheduling tool gives you somewhere to queue posts. It does not choose the topic, shoot the vehicle, edit the clip, write the caption, or remember that it is Thursday and nothing has gone out this week. You are buying the last 10% of the job.
The hidden cost is hours. If someone at your store spends four hours a week on content, that is not a cheap solution — it is a solution you are paying for in payroll you already committed, on a person who was hired to do something else.
2. An in-house hire
The best content in the business comes from someone standing on your floor when the delivery happens. That is genuinely true and worth saying plainly.
The cost is the whole cost, not the salary. Payroll taxes and benefits typically add a meaningful percentage on top, and then there is the part nobody budgets: recruiting, training, managing, and the day they leave and your social goes dark until you replace them. For most single rooftops the honest math is that a competent part-time marketing person costs more than a done-for-you service, before you have managed them for a single hour.
3. A marketing agency
Agencies are usually strong at advertising and think in campaigns and quarters. That is the right shape for a media buy and the wrong shape for social, where the unit sells on Tuesday and the photo is worthless by Friday. Retainers start high, social is often a line item rather than the focus, and turnaround is measured in days.
Worth it if you are buying a broad marketing program and social comes along with it. Expensive if social is the only thing you actually wanted.
4. A managed, done-for-you service
Someone else creates the content and the video, writes the captions, schedules it, and posts it. You approve. The invoice is higher than a tool and lower than a hire, and the hours on your side round to zero.
What the comparison actually looks like
| What you buy | Monthly cost | Your team’s hours | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduling tool | Lowest | Highest | A queue. You still make everything. |
| In-house hire | Highest total cost | Managing them | Best content, if you can keep the seat filled. |
| Marketing agency | High retainer | Some | Strategy and ads; social often secondary. |
| Managed service | Middle | Minutes | Finished posts, waiting for your approval. |
We have deliberately not put dollar figures in that table for the tool, hire, and agency columns. Those swing enormously by market, and a number invented for a web page is worse than no number. Run your own on the cost calculator — it uses your real salary assumptions rather than ours.
The one figure we will commit to: our own plans run $795, $1,495, and $2,495 a month, with no setup fee and no contract on monthly. That is public on the pricing page, so you can benchmark against it honestly instead of guessing.
The number most dealers get wrong
Almost every stalled dealership account started strong. Two good weeks, a burst of posts, then the floor got busy and it stopped. That is not a budget failure; it is a capacity failure, and it is why the cheapest option so often produces the worst return.
A stalled account is worse than a small one. Reach decays, and rebuilding it takes months. So when you price options, the question to hold in your head is not “what can I afford?” but “which of these will still be running in month six?” Anything that depends on someone at your store finding a spare hour is the plan that quietly dies.
What good spend actually includes
Whatever you choose, these are the pieces that make it worth paying for at all:
- Consistency — three to five posts a week minimum, never a three-week gap
- Vertical video — Reels, Stories, and Shorts are what reach people who don’t already follow you
- Someone watching the comments — a post that produces “is this still available?” and gets no reply for two days was a waste of the post
- Your actual branding — your logo, your colors, your inventory, not stock photos of cars you don’t have
- Approval before it posts — your name is on it
If a quote is missing two or three of those, the price is not the problem with it.
A simple way to decide
Answer honestly: is it getting done right now?
If someone at your store is posting consistently and enjoys it, buy them a scheduler and stop reading. You do not need a service, and we will tell you that on a call.
If it is not getting done — if the last post was three weeks ago and everyone means to get to it — then no tool solves that, because the tool was never the missing piece. Time was.
Common questions
Is dealership social media worth the money?
When it runs consistently and somebody answers the buying-intent comments, yes. When it runs in bursts, close to worthless. Consistency is the variable that decides it, not budget.
How often should a dealership post?
Three to five times a week is a realistic floor for a single rooftop; daily is better if the content holds up. What matters more is never going dark for three weeks.
Should we hire in-house or outsource?
Hire if content can be a real full-time job and you can absorb the total cost and the turnover risk. Outsource if you want it running every week without adding someone to manage.
Do we need to spend on ads too?
They are separate budgets solving separate problems. Organic social builds presence and produces inbound comments and messages; ads buy reach. Get organic running consistently first — ads pointed at a dead-looking page convert worse.