How to choose a marketing agency for a stairlift or mobility dealership
An agency is one of six ways to get more cash-pay buyers: hire in-house, a generalist local agency, a specialist agency, a shared lead network, a freelancer, or run it yourself. Which is right depends on how many locations you run and whether the enquiries reaching you are exclusive. Here is what each costs and when each is wrong.
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Who is this page written for?
The owner, general manager or sales manager of a US mobility or home medical equipment dealership that sells stairlifts, scooters, lift chairs, power chairs and ramps.
If you are shopping for a stairlift for yourself or for a parent, this page will not help you and a dealer's own website will. This is a page about buying marketing, written for the business that sells the equipment.
We are one of the six options and we sell one of them. The row is marked, and so is the price.
What are your six options, and what does each one cost?
Four of the six publish no price. Read the last column first, then the exclusivity question in the next section, because in this category it decides more than the fee does.
| Option | How you pay | What it costs | Right when | Wrong when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hire in-house | Salary, payroll taxes and benefits. | US median annual wage May 2025: $166,790 for marketing managers, $133,660 for advertising and promotions managers, before payroll taxes and benefits. | You run several locations and the media budget across them makes one salary a small share of the total. | You are a single showroom. The salary is larger than the media budget, and a marketer with no budget generates meetings, not appointments. |
| A generalist local agency | A monthly retainer, or a percentage of what you spend. | Rarely published. Ask for a sample invoice from a current client. | You need the website, the listings and the reviews cleaned up more than you need enquiries this month. | They treat you as a home improvement contractor. The buyer is not the user, the purchase is emotional and delayed, and the copy written for a roofer does not survive contact with it. |
| A specialist agency | A monthly retainer. Ask whether they will take a second dealer in your metro. | Rarely published. Our offer Wealth Marketing AI is $3,500 a month flat, never per lead and never a share of the sale, one dealer per Nielsen DMA. | You want cash-pay buyers who reach you first rather than fourth, and you are willing to change what your enquiry form asks. | The specialist is already running the dealer in the next town. Ask before anything else, and ask for it in the agreement. |
| A shared lead network | Per lead, usually shared with three or more competitors. | Priced per lead and rarely published. Of 567 readable US dealer sites we crawled, 12 carry a national lead-network reference in the page source. | You have idle sales capacity this week and will take a low close rate to fill it. | The enquiry reached four dealers at once and you are competing on who calls back fastest. The cost per lead looks good and the cost per sale does not. |
| A freelancer | A monthly retainer or an hourly rate, agreed privately. | Not published anywhere we could verify. | You need one channel run properly and you already know which one. | Nobody covers the holiday, and the tracking number, the ad account and the page all live in one person's login. |
| Run it yourself | Media only, plus your own hours. | Home and home improvement averaged $8.33 per click and $90.92 per lead on the 2026 LocaliQ benchmarks, against $5.42 and $66.69 across all industries. There is no mobility-specific row in that report. | You are testing whether the demand is there at all, and the first hundred enquiries are worth learning from personally. | The national brands and lead networks are bidding on the same terms in your metro, and an untended account loses that auction slowly and expensively. |
Where those figures come from
- Primary US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 median annual wages.
- Primary What Medicare actually publishes about these products: durable medical equipment coverage and wheelchairs and scooters.
- Vendor-published LocaliQ 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks, updated 1 June 2026.
- Ours The Stairlift Enquiry Study 2026: ten public signals read from 596 US mobility and DME dealer websites across the 25 largest metros on 15 September 2026. 567 were readable.
- Not published Four of the six rows have no published market price, and the specialist row carries only ours. That is the market, not a gap in the research.
Who wrote the list you are reading?
Most pages titled "best marketing agencies for" a category are published on the website of one of the agencies on the list, and that agency is usually near the top of it.
The check takes ten seconds and you can run it on every result you open, including this one. Look at the domain in the address bar. Open its services page in a second tab. If that domain sells the same service the list is ranking, the list is an advertisement with a table in it. Then look for a named author and a date, and ask whether either is on the page at all.
We sell one of the options above. Our row sits in the table in the order the options happen to run, not at the top, and the row carries the price and the limit rather than a claim. Run the check on us too.
What should you ask any agency before you sign?
Eight questions. The first is the one that decides whether the rest are worth asking.
Will you take a second dealer in my metro, and is that limit in the agreement?
A good answer is a straight no with the metro named in writing. Everything else on this list matters less than this one, because two dealers with one agency bid against each other in the same auction.
Who owns the ad account, the tracking number and the landing pages?
A good answer is that the dealership owns all of it and the agency holds access you can remove today. A tracking number that belongs to the agency is your customer list held as leverage.
What will the enquiry form ask before my rep calls?
A good answer names the qualifying questions: who the equipment is for, which product, when they need it, and whether they are paying cash or financing. On 330 of 372 readable forms we crawled, none of those four were asked.
Are these enquiries exclusive to me, or shared?
A good answer is exclusive, said plainly. If the answer involves a network, ask how many dealers receive the same contact and get the number in writing.
What will the ads say about Medicare?
A good answer is nothing that is not on medicare.gov. Stair lifts are not covered, and leading with coverage attracts the buyer who is not going to pay cash. This is a compliance answer and a targeting answer at the same time.
How will a buyer book a time rather than leave a name?
A good answer is an online booking step for an assessment, a showroom visit or a quote. Of 213 dealers we crawled that offer a home assessment, 176 give no way to book one.
What happens to the enquiries that come in after six in the evening?
A good answer names the routing. Mobility is bought at night, after the fall, after the hospital call. Of 567 readable dealer sites, 126 state hours and say someone is reachable outside them.
What is the one number in the weekly report?
A good answer is cost per booked assessment or cost per sale, with spend, enquiries and appointments on the same line. Impressions and reach describe the ad, not the business.
What does a daughter shopping for her father actually find?
On most dealer websites she cannot find a price, cannot book a time, and is never asked a single question about the person she is buying for.
We read ten public signals on the websites of 596 US mobility and durable medical equipment dealers across the 25 largest metros on 15 September 2026. Of the 567 readable sites, 41 print a price beside a main product and 157 publish a price anywhere. 12 let a buyer pick a time online, and of the 213 that offer a home assessment, 176 give no way to book one. 330 of 372 readable enquiry forms ask none of the four buying questions, and none ask all four. 126 state hours and say someone is reachable outside them.
Nobody was contacted and no form was submitted. No dealer is named for a poor result. The method, the ten signals and the metro list are in The Stairlift Enquiry Study 2026. Three of those findings can be fixed on your own site this week, with any of the six options above or with none of them.
What does a marketing agency for a stairlift or mobility dealership cost?
Almost nobody publishes it. The public anchors are the salary comparison, a US median annual wage of $166,790 for marketing managers in May 2025, and media cost, $8.33 per click and $90.92 per lead for home and home improvement on the 2026 LocaliQ benchmarks. There is no mobility-specific row in that report.
For reference, Wealth Marketing AI charges a flat $3,500 a month, never per lead and never a share of the sale, for one dealer per Nielsen DMA.
Are shared leads from a national network worth buying?
They are worth buying when you have idle sales capacity this week and will accept a low close rate to fill it. They are the wrong buy when you are measuring cost per sale, because the same enquiry reached several dealers at once and the race is decided by who calls back first.
Ask how many dealers receive the same contact, and get the number in writing rather than in the pitch.
Should a dealership hire a marketer instead of an agency?
Hire when you run several locations and the combined media budget makes one salary a small share of it. Do not hire at a single showroom, where the salary is usually larger than the media budget and you end up with management capacity and no traffic.
The comparison figure is the May 2025 US median annual wage of $166,790 for marketing managers, before payroll taxes and benefits.
Why do generalist agencies struggle with mobility?
Because they treat the dealership as a home improvement contractor. The person searching is usually not the person who will use the equipment, the purchase is emotional and delayed, and the copy that works for a roofer does not survive contact with a daughter deciding on behalf of her father.
The tell is the enquiry form. If it asks for a name and a phone number and nothing about who the equipment is for, the agency has not understood the buyer.
What does our own research say a buyer meets on dealer websites?
That she mostly cannot find out what anything costs, mostly cannot book a time, and is mostly never asked a single question about the person she is buying for. Of 567 readable US dealer sites crawled on 15 September 2026, 41 print a price beside a main product, 12 let a buyer pick a time online, and 330 of 372 readable forms ask none of the four buying questions.
The full method, the ten signals and the metro list are in The Stairlift Enquiry Study 2026. No dealer is named for a poor result.
How do I tell whether a best agencies list in this category is independent?
Look at the domain publishing it and open its services page. In this category there is very little to check, because almost nothing has been written for the dealer rather than for the person buying a stairlift.
This page is published by a company that sells one of the six options on it. Run the same check here.
If the specialist row is the one you want, this is what booking a call gets you.
Twenty minutes on your metro, your close rate on cash-pay products, and what your own enquiry form asks today. If a dealer in your DMA is already signed, we will tell you on the call and that is the end of it.