Our marketing plans to support retailers as forecourts reopen
On Boxing Day we launched our most significant multi-million pound brand marketing campaign yet to UK buyers, Britain’s Biggest Matchmaker. The campaign aims to support the automotive industry, highlight Auto Trader’s rich heritage in the British car buying journey and our role in connecting the right buyer with the right seller. It’s already proving a success with campaign cut through the highest it’s ever been, and with March visits and time on site all setting new records up 27.2% and 22% respectively over 2019 levels [1] the campaign is off to a great start. More on that shortly.
We’re ramping up and increasing spend and focus on this brand activity from April as retailer forecourts reopen, running our main brand campaign, “Britain’s Biggest Matchmaker” to ensure that Auto Trader remains front of mind and visible to all buyers. Our series of light-hearted adverts will reach a mass audience across television, radio, broadcaster video on demand (BVOD), paid social and display advertising.
Targeting in-market buyers as forecourts reopen
We’re also building on the messaging we serve to in-market buyers as they engage with our owned and earned channels such as social or CRM and as they land on our website homepage or search results pages. Over lockdown this has reiterated how buyers can buy within the current restrictions, promoting buying from home with Home Delivery and Click & Collect.
As our research has shown, many buyers have been happy to transact from home using Home Delivery or Click & Collect where retailers have offered these services and adapted to serve buyer needs whilst shopping from home. However, our research has also highlighted that there is a portion of buyers waiting to complete their purchase in person at the dealership.
Waiting for…
We’ll evolve this tactical messaging to target this audience of buyers waiting for the forecourt experience with messages that build excitement that the wait is nearly over. This will link through to our “Buying online” information page which contains up to date information to let buyers know how they can buy as restrictions evolve.
The wait is over…
As forecourts reopen, we’ll switch this messaging out to let these buyers know that forecourts are open, and the wait is over. This will be targeted depending on the current restrictions in the buyer’s region. As it stands today, this means buyers in Scotland will start seeing this messaging on 5th April, with England and Wales following on 12th April.
Britain’s Biggest Matchmaker delivers strongest campaign cut through yet
We’ve recently surveyed 1,000 UK buyers to find out how well our new campaign, Britain’s Biggest Matchmaker” is working. There are very positive signs that the cut through and branding is working and outperforming recent Auto Trader campaigns. Our key metric for brand campaigns, master brand awareness is now back up at 92%, vs 89% this time last year [2] and campaign cut through, the measure of how many buyers can name Auto Trader after seeing the campaigns the highest it’s been [3]. This means that 920 out of the 1,000 UK buyers we surveyed named Auto Trader as a new or used car platform. This is 30% higher than our nearest competitor on this measure. We’re also really pleased to see that buyer recall of this campaign is already higher than our last one, meaning that it’s memorable and that Auto Trader is front of mind for UK buyers which should mean they come to us first when they are in market.
Sources
1 Auto Trader internal analysis of Google Analytics data, average number of unique advert views daily and time on site, 1st–30th March 2021 vs 1st–30th March 2019 (inclusive).
2 Net of mentions of AutoTrader for New and/ or Used car in prompted awareness. Base: Total sample (n=1000)
3 % of respondents who could name Auto Trader after seeing the campaign. Base: Total sample (n=1000)