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Marketing ROI Calculator

Most dealers know what they spend on marketing and have no idea what it earns. Turn your spend, leads, and closing rate into the only number that matters — cost per car sold — plus your real ROI and break-even units.

Cost per car sold is the number, not cost per lead

A channel can have the cheapest leads on the lot and still lose you money if those leads never close. Cost per lead tells you what you're paying for attention; cost per car sold tells you what you're paying for revenue. Judge every channel — Facebook Marketplace, your website, third-party listings, referrals — on the second number, and the “expensive” source that closes often beats the cheap one that doesn't.

And closing rate is the quiet lever: it costs nothing to improve and it moves your cost per sale as hard as spend does. Before you add budget, look at what happens to your numbers if you close one more lead in ten.

Know your cost per sale by channel — automatically

This calculator works one channel at a time. DealerVLO tracks the lead source on every inbound lead and ties it to the deal that closes, so cost per car sold by channel stops being a spreadsheet you never update and becomes a number you can actually see.

  • Every lead captured with its source, tied to the customer record
  • See which sources actually produce closed deals, not just clicks
  • Automatic replies so fast follow-up lifts the closing rate itself
  • The deal jacket carries gross, so ROI math uses real numbers

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Common questions

How do I calculate marketing ROI for a dealership?
Judge the spend by what it produced. Leads × closing rate = cars sold; cars × average gross = gross produced; gross − spend = net; net ÷ spend = your return. This tool does it and adds cost per lead and cost per car sold so you can compare channels.
What's a good cost per car sold?
There's no universal figure — judge it as a share of your gross. A small slice of gross is healthy; approaching the gross means marketing is eating the profit; above the gross, that spend loses money. The calculator flags where yours lands.
How many leads do I need to sell a car?
The inverse of your closing rate — one sale per five leads at a 20% close, one per ten at 10%. That's why lifting your close rate lowers cost per car sold without spending another dollar; run it in the sensitivity table above.
Cost per lead or cost per car sold?
Both, but cost per car sold decides. Cheap leads that never close lose money; pricier leads that close can be your best channel. Pair this with the profit margin calculator to see the gross side of the deal.