Are your brand new cars visible online?

By Chris Penny, 06/05/2020

Following the SMMT’s announcement in the last few days about April’s new car transactions being down 97% year-on-year, I have to say, I was surprised that even 4,000 cars were registered. And whilst that statistic is alarming, demand from consumers for new cars is still bubbling. 56% of people who were in-market before COVID-19 are still looking to buy, albeit later, and 14% are looking to buy imminently. Whilst 52% of the consumers we surveyed said they’re open to buying a new car.

However, despite those clear signs for consumer appetite towards buying a new car, I do have some worries around the process of buying a new car. There will be consumer concerns around factory order lead times, visiting dealerships, test drives etc. And equally there will be challenging situations for retailers with worries over consigning too many new cars, pressure on pre-reg, residual values and possibilities that buyers pull out of factory orders.

But there are massive opportunities for retailers. Many of you will be aware of Avonmouth Docks – one of numerous ports across the UK where thousands upon thousands of brand new, unregistered vehicles are stored. Conservative estimes suggest that at any one time, around 200,000 brand new physically available vehicles are on the ground, but the majority of them not advertised online. And particularly now, that presents a problem for buyers. Because if these vehicles aren’t advertised online – where the vast majority of people do their research (even more so now) – they simply won’t be able to find them.

We asked consumers, how long they’d expect to wait to receive their brand new car, and a whopping 30% said they had no idea, whilst 1 in 5 said they’d expect to wait more than 6 weeks. With the number of brand new cars available on the ground, there’s a huge opportunity for retailers to get that stock in front of consumers online.

During March and April, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of brand new vehicles advertised on Auto Trader, with around 45,000 advertised currently. We’ve also seen an additional 150 retailers sign up to advertise their new cars with us since lockdown. That’s because our new car proposition prioritises giving visibility of new car stock, over factory orders – with the added aims of encouraging consumers to buy locally to help retailers sell more profitably. You can see a range of case studies and best practice here.

Much of this recent progress has been driven by integrations with OEM’s, making it significantly more efficient for retailers to advertise their new stock on Auto Trader. Today, we’ve got integrations with 17 brands. And there are even brands who are sharing manufacturer finance offers with us, to enable consumers to see available monthly payments on brand new vehicles.

As I said on this weeks’ webinar, if you’re already advertising new vehicles with us or if you’re considering doing so, our data is demonstrating that you should always leverage quality over discounting. That means providing good quality images of the vehicles in your adverts, a snappy attention grabber and description of the vehicle.

As you can see in this chart, the more images displayed in your new car adverts, the more people will view your adverts. So quality of advertising is vital, and we’d suggest utilising our best practice guides to help you achieve that.

If you’re a franchise retailer and you’re not yet advertising your brand new vehicles with us and you’d like to find out more contact us via brandnew@autotrader.co.uk – we’re currently offering a two month free trial and dedicated support to help get you up and running.