Car retailers waste online advertising spend

Car retailers looking to maximise their sales by taking advantage of online channels are wasting a total of GBP17 million per year, according to research from fish4cars.

The wastage can be put down to poorly planned, designed and executed online car advertisements.

This is according to fish4cars, the used car sales website, which has analysed the 322,000 individual trade car advertisements posted on the site by over 3,000 dealers in October 2007.

Fish4cars discovered that 17 per cent of the adverts posted were not supported with a photograph, the number one factor that prospective buyers look for when browsing adverts online.

This means almost 55,000 adverts were effectively wasted.

In addition, fish4cars estimates that poor-quality advertisements lacking in basic details such as colour, transmission or number of doors are costing retailers an extra GBP20 million in wasted advertising spend each year.

According to Colin Mathieson, sales director, fish4cars: "Since the online advertising market for cars has boomed over the last two years, with 40 per cent year-on-year growth, it's fantastic to see that retailers are increasingly embracing new technological channels to sell their vehicles.

"It's worrying, however, that despite the 2008 market being worth an estimated GBP110 million, a large proportion of retailers aren't utilising their resources in the most appropriate way.

"In our experience, we have found that a lot of businesses are wasting a huge amount of their online spend because they are making basic errors when it comes to submitting their adverts.

"The situation was even worse in 2006 when a third of adverts had no pictures.

"There's been an improvement - 56 per cent of advertisers are currently using more than one photo on their advert - but there's clearly a lot of retailers that aren't using the site as effectively as they could be".

The fish4cars research also highlights the most common errors that car retailers make when posting advertisements.

As well as not adding photographs to the site, they include not including adequate information about the vehicle, or including out-of-date or library images to the advertisement.

In order to help its advertisers to get the best out of their online spend, fish4cars has prepared the following guidelines.

Pictures are key to capturing a prospective buyer's imagination.

A clear main photograph together with close-ups of the car details is ideal.

If the car looks attractive to you, it will probably be attractive to the prospective buyer.

It's essential to use detailed vehicle data and include as much about the car as possible - everything from make and model, engine size and number of doors.

If the seller doesn't include all of the information that the buyer would expect, then they'll be wondering if something is being hidden.

Detailed descriptions of the vehicle are also key.

This is where a seller can bring the vehicle to life for the car buyer, avoid acronyms commonly associated with newspaper advertising and type every word in full.

There is no need to squeeze your words into a smaller space as you might for print advertising.

Logos of the retailer help to create and reinforce trust in the mind of the buyer that they are dealing with a reputable vendor.

Links and deep links let the prospective buyer research your company and the car more fully, ensuring they are closer to buying by the time they visit you.

Publish a link to your own website in addition to a 'deep' link to the car on your own website.

Back to top