Dealership YouTube · Minnesota, Iowa & Wisconsin
The car dealer YouTube marketing agency run by a former dealer group marketing director.
We build dealership YouTube channels that actually get published. One shoot day on your lot becomes a long-form review, a month of short-form clips, a blog post, and ad creative for the paid channels you already fund. Your inventory, your salespeople, your store.
176,067
Views on videos we published
113
Videos published in 2026
6
Dealer and shop channels
Counted live from our clients’ own YouTube channels, every video published since January 2026. Not lifetime channel totals, and not review copies on our channel.
Why dealership video usually fails
Most dealership video marketing falls into one of three buckets.
None of them is a channel. A channel is a library that compounds, publishes on a schedule, and answers the questions your shoppers are already typing into Google and YouTube.
Option one
The tier-three template
Your OEM-approved vendor sends the same walkaround every store in the country gets. Stock footage of a vehicle that is not on your lot, a voiceover nobody at your store recorded, and your logo on the last four seconds. It is technically video. It is not your dealership, and no shopper has ever chosen a store because of it.
Option two
The in-house hire
Sixty to seventy thousand a year, plus camera bodies, lenses, audio, lighting, and an editing suite. Then somebody still has to decide what gets made, write it, schedule the talent, and keep the calendar full. Most stores get about six strong months before the person who was hired to shoot video is running the sales contest instead.
Option three
The sales manager's phone
Vertical clips shot in the service drive at noon, wind in the microphone, filmed by whoever was free. Occasionally one of them is genuinely great. None of it is repeatable, and it usually ends the same way: a channel with fourteen videos and nothing published since 2019.
The stores that win on YouTube are not the ones with the best cameras. They are the ones that published every month for two years while their competitors were still deciding whether video was worth it.
Who you are actually hiring
I ran marketing for a four-store dealer group before I ever pitched one.
Most agencies pitching your store have never worked inside one. I spent three years as Director of Marketing for Penz Automotive Group here in Rochester, on the leadership team of a group that grew from one franchise store to four, and from 65 employees to 170. I owned marketing across all four stores and 17 departments.
New and used vehicle lead volume grew at a double-digit rate year over year during that stretch, and the service departments grew their customer counts alongside it. I know what a GM is measured on, because I sat in those meetings.
Director of Marketing, Penz Automotive Group
Three years on the leadership team of a Rochester dealer group that grew from one franchise store to four, and from 65 employees to 170. Marketing across all four stores and 17 departments.
Marketing Manager, Subaru of Rochester
Store-level marketing inside a single franchise rooftop, which is a very different job from group-level strategy and taught me what a GM is actually measured on.
Internet Sales Consultant, Tom Kadlec Honda
I have worked internet leads on the floor. I know what a bad lead looks like at eight at night, and I know which marketing creates them.
MBA, ECBA, and Google Analytics certified
Saint Mary's University MBA, an IIBA business analysis certificate, and GA4 certification. The measurement side is not an afterthought here.
Measured in the same tools your store already runs
How the video gets made
One shoot day, an entire channel.
Dealership video production only pays off when it is a repeatable system rather than a project. Here is exactly what happens, in order, every month.
01
We plan against search, not vibes
Before a camera comes out we look at what shoppers in your market are actually searching, which trims are sitting on your lot, and what your sales team gets asked every single day. That becomes the shot list. A video about the trim differences on the model you are thirty units deep in is worth more than a beauty reel.
02
One shoot day on your lot
We come to your store and shoot your people, your inventory, and your service drive. Your salesperson explains the vehicle in their own words, because a person who sells that car every day is more convincing than any script we could write. It takes a few hours, not a week.
03
The long-form build
Every shoot produces a full walkaround or review, six to ten minutes, properly edited, color corrected, captioned, and titled around the terms people search. This is the asset that keeps working. It is the one that shows up when somebody two towns over searches the model at eleven at night.
04
Four or more short-form cuts
The same footage becomes vertical clips for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and Facebook. One question, one answer, fifteen to forty seconds. These are what get discovered, and they feed people back to the long-form video and to your inventory.
05
Published, not delivered
This is where most video vendors stop and where the value actually is. We publish to your channel with real titles, descriptions, and tags, push the clips to your social accounts, turn the transcript into a blog post on your site, and hand the best footage to your paid channels as ad creative.
What lands in your account every month
- ✓One long-form review or walkaround, six to ten minutes
- ✓Four or more vertical short-form clips
- ✓Offer video tied to the month's OEM incentives
- ✓Titles, descriptions, tags, and thumbnails built for search
- ✓A written blog post from the shoot transcript
- ✓Ad-ready cuts for Meta, YouTube, and CTV
- ✓Everything published to your channels, not emailed as files
The work
Real videos, on real dealership channels.
Every video below is published on the client’s own YouTube channel, not ours. That is the whole point: the audience, the subscribers, and the search equity belong to the store.
2026 Subaru Forester Sport Onyx Edition, First Look
Subaru of Rochester
Best Features of the 2026 Volkswagen Atlas
Bud Brown Volkswagen
The Best AWD SUV You Haven't Driven Yet, 2026 Nissan Rogue
Nissan of Rochester
Yukon, Terrain, or Acadia? Is the 2026 Acadia Worth It
GMC of Rochester
Custom, New 2026 Silverado, Right Here in Minnesota
Chevrolet of Spring Valley
How an Auto Body Shop Does an Insurance Repair
Quimby's Collision Center
More complete packages, including every short-form cut, live in the portfolio.
Pricing
What a dealership YouTube program costs.
Published, because you should be able to tell whether this is worth a call before you get on one. Both programs are month to month after the first ninety days.
Most Popular
Dealership Channel Program
$4,000–5,000/mo
The full YouTube channel program. This is the one that includes long-form video.
- ✓Monthly on-lot shoot day
- ✓One long-form review or walkaround per month
- ✓Four or more short-form vertical cuts
- ✓Published to YouTube, Shorts, Reels, and Facebook
- ✓Search-optimized titles, descriptions, and thumbnails
- ✓A blog post per shoot on your website
- ✓Co-op claim handling
Ad Creative Engine
$2,000–2,500/mo
The entry point, built on budget you already spend on paid channels.
- ✓One to two foundation shoot days per year
- ✓Monthly repackaging into 15s and 30s cuts
- ✓Offer videos tied to the month's OEM incentives
- ✓Creative for Meta, YouTube, and CTV
- ✓Brand-compliant and co-op claimable
Multi-rooftop groups are quoted per store, and shooting several stores in one trip brings the per-store number down. Stores outside our drivable radius can run the same system remotely with a vetted local videographer, detailed on the dealership marketing overview.
Questions dealers ask
Dealership YouTube marketing, answered.
What does a car dealer YouTube marketing agency actually do?+
It builds and runs your dealership's YouTube channel as an owned marketing asset instead of producing one-off videos. In practice that means planning content against what shoppers search, shooting on your lot with your staff, editing long-form reviews and short-form clips, writing search-optimized titles and descriptions, publishing on a schedule, and repurposing the footage into social posts, blog content, and paid ad creative.
How much does dealership video marketing cost?+
Our Ad Creative Engine runs $2,000 to $2,500 per month and covers one to two foundation shoot days a year repackaged into monthly ad creative. The full Dealership Channel Program runs $4,000 to $5,000 per month and adds long-form video, four or more short-form cuts per shoot, social management, and co-op claim handling. Multi-rooftop groups are quoted per store.
How many videos does a car dealership need on YouTube?+
Consistency matters far more than volume. One long-form video and four to six short clips per month, published every month without gaps, will outperform twenty videos released in a burst and then abandoned. YouTube rewards channels that publish predictably, and so do shoppers who subscribe.
Do you use our salespeople on camera, or actors?+
Your people. A salesperson who sells that model every day answers objections more convincingly than any script, and shoppers can tell the difference immediately. It also means the person a shopper watches online is the person waiting for them when they walk in, which is a real advantage at the point of sale.
Is YouTube better than Facebook for car dealerships?+
They do different jobs and the same shoot feeds both. YouTube is where a long-form review keeps earning views for years and captures shoppers actively researching a model, so it compounds. Facebook and Instagram are better at reaching people in your market who were not looking yet. We publish to both from a single shoot day rather than choosing.
Do you work with dealerships outside Rochester, Minnesota?+
Yes. We are based in Rochester and regularly shoot across Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, including the Twin Cities, La Crosse, Mason City, and the surrounding markets. Stores inside a drivable radius get on-site shoot days on a regular cadence.
Can this video creative be used for co-op reimbursement?+
We build to your manufacturer's brand standards so the creative stays claimable, and we handle the claim paperwork as part of the Dealership Channel Program. The straightforward way to think about it is that you should use your co-op money, just not your co-op vendor's stock creative.
Who owns the footage and the finished videos?+
You do. The videos live on your channel, the footage is yours, and if we ever stop working together you keep everything we produced. We are not interested in holding a dealership's content hostage as a retention strategy.
How long before a dealership YouTube channel produces results?+
Short-form clips start getting reach within days because discovery is fast. Long-form videos build slowly and then keep going, which is the point: a well-titled model review published this quarter is still pulling in shoppers a year later. Plan on a six to twelve month horizon for the channel to become a dependable traffic source, with usable ad creative from the very first shoot.
Next step
Twenty minutes, and you will know if this fits your store.
Pick a time below. We will look at your current channel, what your competitors in the market are publishing, and what one shoot day at your store would realistically produce. No deck, and no pressure to decide on the call.
Prefer the phone? 507-250-2433. Or send a message instead.
Where we work
Dealership video production across Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
Wessel Marketing is based in Rochester, Minnesota. We shoot on-site for dealerships throughout Southeast Minnesota and the surrounding region, including Rochester, the Twin Cities, Owatonna, Austin, Albert Lea, Winona, Spring Valley, La Crosse, and Mason City. Stores further out run the same program remotely with a vetted local videographer and the same production standards.