Who are Best Canadian Digital Agencies?

[George Nenni]

In working with Canadian dealer-customers, there are the known nuances/challenges with inventory feeds, kilometres, litres, email spam regulations, and French/English accommodations for required provinces. Who are the best purpose-built providers, or U.S. providers that have required accommodations?

 

[craigh]

I'm up here in Canada and we do a fair bit of digital work, but I wouldn't say we encounter that many issues with the things you listed.
Inventory feeds are pretty accessible, kilometres is a simple change, L/100km comes from Chrome.

For the email spam laws, that's a trickier one - you have to make sure the vendor has a specific opt-in column so they can trace each customer back to a specific time that they consented to be email marketed to. Once a dealer no longer has an active contract with a customer, their options to contact the customer rely entirely on that consent. Our SMS laws are similarly strict - promotional SMS is risky without explicit consent.

As for French, it's not a very common requirement outside of Quebec and Ottawa. In those areas, translation is readily available.

 

[CarlAutofusion]

We're not located in Canada but we do work with several dealerships in Canada. We can pull inventory feeds from Canadian dealers, we are familiar with the advertising rules (such as the disclaimers concerning HST) and the OEM compliance rules.

We, however, currently do not run any email campaigns for Canadian dealers so we are not familiar with those rules/regulations. Craig is correct on the French translations.

 

[Josh S]

What specifically would you be looking for? Perhaps an example use-case?

There are many Canadian vendors up here - some do everything, some do a few things, so the list may be different depending on what you are after.

 

[Marc Lavoie]

Hi George, I'm based in Montreal, the French-speaking/billingual part of Canada.

It's a loaded question, send me a quick email if you'd like to connect. I'm sure I can guide you better.

 

[Ryan Hartigan]

We get better results than anyone in the industry hands-down, as long as the dealers listen to us on how to work the leads initially.

I don’t know about a lot of the things you’ve mentioned. We only do inventory ads for retargeting. We only do French ads in NB and Quebec, or if there’s a Spanish/French rep at the dealership that can work them outside of these provinces.

If a dealer is using TurnoverCRM, then we set it up to fall within CANSPAM laws. If they’re using Facebook Messenger or GMB, then they already have implicit consent. When we move to text then, we don’t need an opt-out message (which actually drastically decreases response rate on the initial leads).

For us, it’s literally just about sales. If we’re not getting sales then it’s not working. If we’re not able to track to the sale for the client then it can also be a bit of an issue.

the only reason I know what works is because I’ve worked hundreds of my own deals off of my own leads the last six years. Even to this day, I’ve worked like five or six ups. Every car I’ve ever sold were from the leads I generated myself.

 

[George Nenni]

I think you shouldn't just find specialists in Canada, there are many agencies you can work with remotely, and they could help you.

But can they all run SEO, SEM, paid social in both English and French Canadian languages? In most cases no, without a Canadian focus. So far impressed with LeadBox, definitely recommended.

 

[GerryFoster]

https://www.sterlingsky.ca/ (Great group of SEO's there, and some key influencers in the industry, as well).