Key facts
- A new travel trailer, fifth wheel, or motorhome is a five- or six-figure purchase, so buyers research floor plans, tow ratings, and financing for weeks before they call a lot.
- Sales and service run on separate clocks: showroom traffic follows camping season and the RV show circuit, while the service bay's busiest stretches are spring de-winterizing and fall winterizing.
- Most RV owners keep a unit three to seven years, so the lasting revenue sits in storage, parts, and warranty work, not the first sale alone.
- Buyers cross-shop by brand and floor plan first, so a page built for a specific manufacturer, like Forest River or Winnebago, earns a search that a generic 'RV dealer' page never sees.
- None of these numbers are hidden: ad management costs a tenth of whatever budget you spend (never less than $600 a month, never marked up), site pages run $50 apiece past a 10-page floor, and a full rebuild lands somewhere between $1,500 and $20,000+.
How RV buyers actually decide
Nobody buys a $40,000 fifth wheel the way they buy a used sedan. RV shoppers treat the purchase like a mortgage: they compare floor plans across several dealers, check financing terms, and read reviews about the pre-delivery inspection before they drive out to a lot. Many will pass a closer dealer for the exact unit and price they found online.
That research window is the opening a 90-day plan has to use. A buyer typing a manufacturer's name into Google, not 'RV dealer near me,' is already deep into the decision, and a page built for that exact brand and floor plan meets them where a generic inventory page cannot.
A second, separate buyer shows up at the same dealership: the owner who already bought from you and now needs winterizing, a slide-out reseal, or warranty work. That buyer isn't shopping floor plans. They're searching 'RV repair near me' on a tighter timeline, and they book with whoever answers first.
Channels, in order, and why
Start with Google Ads on brand and floor-plan searches, because paid is the only channel that produces calls before the lot's map ranking has time to build. Run a second, smaller ad set for the service bay from week one; winterizing and warranty searches convert fast and cost less than showroom traffic.
A Google Business Profile tuned for 'RV dealers near me,' plus a page for every manufacturer and class the lot carries, comes next and takes longer to move, but it eventually produces map-pack visits that never cost a dollar per click.
A six-figure purchase gets checked against star ratings before anyone visits, and increasingly against whatever an AI assistant says when someone asks who to trust nearby, so that reputation work backs up whatever the ads and the brand pages promise. Email and reminder flows come last, since they need a customer list and a booked sale before they have anything to work from.
A budget band in plain words
A dealership running one Google Ads account with a modest daily budget lands near the $600 monthly minimum for management, plus whatever it sends to Google for spend. A dealer building out ten or more SEO pages for its manufacturers and classes adds $50 per page and up from there. Rebuilding the site so it shows live inventory and online booking, where the current one falls short, runs somewhere in the $1,500 to $20,000+ range depending on scope.
A realistic first-quarter total for a single-location dealer covers one ad account, ten SEO pages, and either a website rebuild or a lighter tune-up of the existing site. Multi-brand lots carrying several manufacturers should expect the SEO line to grow as more brand pages get added over time, not all at once.
Weeks 1 to 12: what actually happens
The first four weeks are pure setup: call tracking and lead-source tagging go live before a single ad runs, the inventory feed gets fixed so it filters by class and floor plan, financing pre-qualification and booking for a walkthrough or service slot get added, and the earliest Google Ads campaign launches on your two or three fastest-moving floor plans alongside a separate service-bay push if winterizing or de-winterizing season has already started.
By the second month, the first wave of manufacturer and class SEO pages is live, ad spend has shifted toward whichever floor plans the early numbers show converting, review requests are firing automatically after a PDI walkthrough or a finished service ticket, and missed-call text-back is catching calls that come in during a busy showroom day.
The final stretch is where reminders and reporting take over: seasonal emails timed to actual weather go out for de-winterizing or winterizing, a trade-up sequence launches for owners ready to move up from a towable, the remaining SEO pages get published, and the quarter closes with a clear cost per sold unit split across new, used, and service.
The numbers to watch
Cost per sold unit, tracked separately for new and used inventory, tells you whether ad spend on a floor plan is actually worth it, not just whether it's generating clicks. The service bay's cost per booked appointment deserves its own line too, since it's often what keeps revenue coming during the months new-unit sales cool off.
Map-pack ranking for 'RV dealers near me' and for each manufacturer name you carry shows whether SEO is gaining ground. The star rating and review count buyers actually check before a six-figure purchase deserve a monthly glance too, since a number that stalls for weeks is worth chasing down on its own.
How often a call goes unanswered, and how fast the automatic text-back reaches that caller, rounds out the list; a dealership that misses calls during its busiest showroom weekends is losing sales that never show up anywhere else in the data.
What we would charge to run this
Managing the ad account runs 10% of whatever you decide to spend, floored at $600 a month, with not a cent added on top of what actually goes to Google. Manufacturer and class SEO pages run $50 apiece, with a ten-page minimum to start, so a dealership pays only for the exact pages it decides to build.
A live inventory feed and online booking, where the current site can't manage either, come as one of eight fixed website packages, priced somewhere between $1,500 and $20,000 or more depending on what the dealership actually needs. Getting started costs nothing, the whole arrangement runs month to month with nothing locking you in, and a 30-day guarantee means an underperforming first month costs you nothing.
Send over your dealership's inventory and market, and a proposal with real numbers lands in your inbox within one business day.
Related questions
Google Ads typically produce calls within the first 6 to 8 weeks once campaigns are live. SEO, AI search visibility, and review growth take longer, usually 3 to 4 months, before they carry real weight, so the plan runs both together from week one instead of waiting on one before starting the other.
Start with Google Ads on the two or three floor plans selling fastest right now. Paid search produces calls immediately, while SEO and reviews need a few months to build, so ads carry the dealership through that gap.
One page per manufacturer and class combination the lot carries in meaningful volume is the starting point. A lot carrying five brands across towables and motorized units might need eight to twelve pages before every combination a buyer searches has somewhere to land.
The buying psychology stays the same, since a used unit is still a large purchase researched over weeks, but the ad and SEO targets shift toward 'used RV dealers near me' and specific used floor plans rather than new-model manufacturer pages.
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