Consumer Marketing
Continuing to invest in bringing buyers to your adverts
Learn about our campaigns from Britain’s Biggest Matchmaker, our partnership with What Car? And Autocar, how we’re raising awareness of electric vehicles, growing our social media channels and engaging in-market buyers through CRM.
Britain's Biggest Matchmaker
“Life is full of twists and turns. Finding the perfect car to suit your circumstance is in the little details. And no one does details better than Auto Trader. Helping you understand, learn and feel comfortable that you've found the perfect car for your moment.”
This sentiment has evolved our campaign platform, Britain's Biggest Matchmaker, which has ran since 2020, to showcase Auto Trader's proud history and heritage in matching car buyers and sellers in Britain for over 45 years.
All our Matchmaker campaigns target a mass audience, including both in- and out- of market consumers and feature across television, radio, broadcast video on demand (BVOD), paid social display advertising, and PR. This is then amplified through Auto Trader's own channels, including email, organic social, YouTube, search, display advertising and the app.
Helping consumers find the right car for them
Our latest multi-million-pound marketing campaign; launched on Boxing Day 2022 is an evolution of our Britain's Biggest Matchmaker platform and focuses on helping consumers find the perfect car for their life and circumstances. At Auto Trader, we understand that car buying can be a stressful experience, so we're here to make the car buying and selling experience easier.
Reaching 98% of the population over 14 times between Boxing Day 2022 and 31st March 2023, the campaign is estimated to achieve over 122 million impacts across the campaign period, directing them to the Auto Trader site and onwards to your stock.
Learn more about the campaign
Show on the Road podcast
Taking the traditional celebrity podcast out of the studio and into a car for a road trip like no other.
Our podcast builds on the Britain’s Biggest Matchmaker platform as we match celebrity guests to cars most suited to them and their stories. Sitting in the passenger seat, our guests reveal the places and experiences that have brought them to where they are today.It also opens up another channel to reach new and wider audiences.
Our guests span various lifestyle interests, from reality TV to sports, cooking, and even train-spotting, guaranteeing a diverse audience engaging with Auto Trader.
Discover more on the PodcastOur always on approach
Campaigns are run throughout the year to support each of our marketing priorities and ensure consistent consumer engagement. These can be seasonal, such as the March and September number plate changes or product marketing campaigns like our Valuations campaign and are designed to increase traffic to an area on site.
We’re also reactive to the news agenda and world around us, jumping on timely opportunities to retain Auto Trader’s relevancy and increase brand saliency.
For these campaigns we’ll use a range of channels which will include, paid and organic social, PR, our own Homepage Takeovers and InSearch ads and CRM to ensure high engagement from our audience.
Partnerships
Exposure across the biggest Channel 4 shows and sports coverage
Harnessing Channel 4’s range of shows and high reach, Auto Trader have partnered with the channel to extend our Britain’s Biggest Matchmaker campaign and reach viewers exploring either buying or selling a car.
Running across Channel 4 and Channel 4 Streaming, the multi-platform deal is estimated to reach 37 million adults in 12-months, giving us exposure across the biggest Channel 4 shows and sports coverage.
We’ll drive viewers to site with a series of bespoke adverts and idents that will appear alongside relevant programmes related to different reasons for buying a car. Highlighting to viewers that whatever the reason they’re searching for a car, Auto Trader is the place to help them find their match
See all the details
Partnering with Global Media
As part of the evolution of Auto Trader's Britain's Biggest Matchmaker platform, from May 2023, Auto Trader have partnered with Global, the Media and Entertainment Group.
The partnership spans various promotional elements, including sponsorship of weekday afternoons on Global's radio brands Capital and Smooth, and mid-mornings on Heart FM, reaching mass audiences at key times of the day. Estimated to reach 25 million adults across the year, the partnership will highlight the diversity of today's car buying public, helping to drive awareness of the UK's largest digital marketplace for new and used cars and driving consumers to site to find their next vehicle.
Learn more about the partnership
Powering used car search for What Car? and AutoCar
Since July 2022 Auto Trader has provided the Used Car vehicle listings on What Car?, and its sister site, Autocar.
Powering their used car search helps capture consumers earlier in their car buying journey when consumers are researching their next car on What Car? and Autocar.
The partnership widens sales opportunities by reaching a further 24.9 million highly engaged consumers each year on these sites and brings them on to Auto Trader to complete their journey or to view more new and used cars.
Raising electric vehicle awareness
Partnering with Green.TV Media
Our ongoing commitment to supporting and inspiring consumers, and the industry, to make the transition to electric vehicles will see us support Green.TV Media across several campaigns and events. These have already included World EV day, the EV Summit, EV LIVE and Top Women in EV.
The partnership will help drive huge awareness of Auto Trader as a new and used EV destination to millions of engaged electric car considerers, with Green.TV Media already reaching over 1 billion people since their launch in 2021.
Electric Car Giveaway
Auto Trader gives away an electric car every month in a free-to-enter prize draw. The winner also receives up to £1,300 to use for their car insurance, covered by comparethemarket.com and a brand-new electric car charger (plus free UK installation), covered by Hypervolt.
Launched in 2021, the campaign aims to raise awareness of electric vehicles whilst giving consumers a helping hand with their journey into electric, by removing the barriers which typically impede them.
The page now attracts over 800,000 views every month, where consumers simply complete a form to enter the draw for a chance to win. The brands featured in our Electric Giveaway can see huge uplifts in search volumes, ad-views and leads.Over the next year, we expect to see the Giveaway reach new heights as we showcase the breadth of electric vehicles available for every type of journey - because every journey is different and every journey matters.
Reaching over 2 million consumers a month over email
We continue to grow our marketable database and now exceed 1.8million consumers that want to receive Auto Trader emails. These emails feature everything from advice and support, vehicle reviews, new car offers to handpicked car adverts, averaging 50% unique open rates and 5% unique click through rates month on month, rates well above industry average.
In addition to our email marketing support, we regularly engage with users through other programmes such as saved search, pulling in the latest adverts based on a consumer’s search behaviour, ensuring we regularly surface your car stock. A combination of our email programmes results in over 2.3 million unique recipients that we regularly engage with every month.
Our social media following continues to grow
Auto Trader’s social following continues to grow. The purpose of Auto Trader’s social media is to stay front of mind for our audience by providing them with engaging content and interaction opportunities that sustain our relationship with them between car buying cycles. At over 1.8M followers and with 208% growth over the last 3 years, our social channels now have a following that is nearly six times more than Cazoo, Cinch and Car Gurus UK combined