Honest answer: not every dealership does. If your stock sells itself, your phone rings all day and your socials are full of fresh content, keep doing what you're doing.
For everyone else, the question is really about time and skill. Selling cars is a full-time job. So is modern marketing. A dealership today needs vertical video, paid ads on Google and Meta, an active social presence, a Google profile full of reviews and a website that converts. That's five different skills, and most dealerships have nobody whose actual job is any of them.
The usual options
Do it yourself. It works until stock gets busy, and stock always gets busy. Marketing is the first thing dropped and the last thing picked back up. The algorithm notices.
Hire someone in-house. A decent full-time marketer costs a serious salary, and one person still can't shoot, edit, design, write and manage ad accounts at a high level. You end up paying a specialist wage for a generalist output.
Use a general agency. They'll do competent work, but you'll spend the first six months teaching them what a 261 reg is, why July matters and how a trade-in enquiry differs from a service booking.
What the right agency looks like
An agency earning its fee should know the motor trade before day one, show up at your dealership to shoot real content, run ads built around your actual stock, and report in cost per lead rather than likes. If they can't name the busy months in the Irish car year without googling, keep looking.
That's the gap we built Marketing 4 Motors to fill: a full marketing team, motor trade only, for half the cost of one in-house hire. If you're weighing up your options, book a free call and we'll tell you straight whether you need us or not.