Competition in the game can be fierce. Buyers might have dozens of options to choose from.

So how do you stand out above the rest? Marketing.

What is marketing? Marketing is the actions you take to persuade customers to purchase your vehicles over the competition.

In the game, we have narrowed these actions down to budgets, divided by category and location.

Marketing is available in any city with a branch location. Choose a city on either the world map or the mega menu. And then select the Marketing button.

This is the marketing window.

At the top is each category of marketing.

The current budgets for those categories are here.

The Per Capita value is how much money you’re spending on marketing at this location per person who lives here.

You adjust the budget with this slider or manually type in the new budget here.

Be sure to apply your changes here.

Every year, the maximum budget for marketing increases. Checking this check box and then hitting apply will lock the slider percentage in relation to the maximum budget.

For example, if you set the slider to 50%. The game will automatically increase your marketing budget to 50% of that level every year that the maximum budget updates.

Each category of marketing has minor effects on specific types of vehicles. But for the most part, the importance of a category is related to the maximum costs.

You must set the budget for each individual category if you use the World Map.

However, the Mega Menu provides an “All Forms,” which applies changes to every category. And it also has an “Apply To All,” which applies changes to all cities.

Now that you know how to assign a marketing budget, how does it work?

Marketing increases your Vehicle’s Buyer Rating. The effect can be dramatic if your marketing efficiency is high. See the Vehicle Buyer Rating videos for more details.

Marketing Efficiency is how effective your marketing is. Each city has a marketing efficiency value. The game applies that value directly to the buyer rating of every vehicle you sell in that city.

We base your Marketing Efficiency value on your budget, marketing skills, and your marketing department morale.

The more money you spend on marketing, the higher the maximum efficiency can be.

However, your Marketing Efficiency does not reach the maximum value immediately. Instead, it slowly grows until it reaches that maximum value.

If you reduce the budget, and the maximum value falls below your current marketing efficiency rate, your efficiency rate will immediately drop to the maximum value.

You can view your Marketing Efficiency value in the Operations, Marketing Efficiency report.

Marketing works on a district level if you wish to reduce micromanagement. There is also an Auto-Market tool in the Autocommands. This Auto tool will assign 10% of your quarterly profits to marketing.

While Marketing is very expensive, over time, it can be quite rewarding if you face competition.

High marketing efficiency values can easily increase your design’s desirability significantly. Leading to increased sales as you take sales from your competition.

When you have a monopoly or near-monopoly in a market, you can forgo marketing in that location.