Why OEM Marketing Matters
For manufacturers, the dealer network is the last mile of customer acquisition. OEM marketing ensures that every dealer not only has the inventory to sell but also the digital presence to be found. Without a cohesive OEM–dealer marketing strategy, even the best product risks being invisible in local markets.
Four Core OEM Marketing Tactics — Updated for the AI Era
1. Partner With Local Dealers
The Strategy: Co-op marketing remains foundational, but the execution is digital-first. OEMs provide dealers with ready-to-deploy campaigns, branded content, and AI-powered tools to maintain consistent messaging.
The AI Advantage: Generative AI allows OEMs to create hundreds of localized ad variants, blog posts, or social captions tailored for each dealer market — while preserving brand voice and compliance.
2. Implement SEO + Local SEO
The Strategy: OEM visibility depends on both traditional SEO and local discoverability. Optimizing Google Business Profiles, location pages, and dealer microsites ensures buyers can find the right product nearby.
The AI Advantage: AI can automatically identify trending local keywords, optimize structured data, and even recommend the best times to update listings. This makes local search execution scalable across hundreds (or thousands) of dealer locations.
The Stat: 42% of consumers now use unbranded, generic search terms when choosing a local business — up from 35% in 2024.
3. Leverage Social Media
The Strategy: Social platforms are no longer optional. With 73% of consumers discovering brands on social, OEMs must equip dealers with content, guidelines, and paid media strategies.
The AI Advantage: AI tools can generate social content at scale, auto-optimize paid campaigns, and analyze engagement data to refine strategies. For OEMs, this means every dealer can publish brand-approved content without manual bottlenecks.
4. Produce High-Quality, Trust-Building Content
The Strategy: Buyers want proof, not polish. User-generated content, product demos, and authentic customer stories carry more weight than slick brochures.
The AI Advantage: AI can repurpose content — turning a product demo video into dozens of short-form clips, social snippets, and blog posts. AI-driven analytics can also reveal which types of content (reviews, how-to videos, or comparison posts) most influence buyer trust.
The Emerging Role of AI in OEM Marketing
OEM marketing is no longer just about partnership — it’s about partnership at scale, and that’s where AI comes in.
- Content at Scale: AI enables OEMs to deliver dealer-ready campaigns in every market.
- Hyperlocal SEO: AI helps optimize for local discovery in search engines and AI-driven recommendation tools.
- Predictive Analytics: AI models can forecast demand shifts, helping OEMs and dealers allocate resources where sales are likely to grow.
- AI in Customer Discovery: With nearly 1 in 5 consumers using AI tools like ChatGPT for local recommendations, OEMs must ensure their products and dealers show up in these results.
The Bottom Line
OEM marketing is at an inflection point. Traditional co-op campaigns alone can’t keep pace with how consumers discover, evaluate, and choose products today. Manufacturers must integrate AI, SEO, social media, and authentic content into their dealer strategies to stay visible.
In short: OEM marketing in 2025 is digital-first, AI-powered, and dealer-driven. The brands that adapt will not only win visibility — they’ll win trust, loyalty, and sales at the local level.
