The Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK dealerships has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK dealerships perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK automotive dealerships has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK automotive dealerships, including Sytner Group, JCT600, Arnold Clark, Lookers Motor Group, Vertu Motors plc, Inchcape plc, Marshall Motor Group, Group 1 Automotive UK, TrustFord, Stoneacre Motor Group, Listers Group, and Stratstone.

The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online, and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other dealership providers to increase market share, accelerate leads & sales, and improve brand recognition. The report highlights year-on-year digital performance, plus winner and loser comparisons across 20+ online performance metrics for the dealerships providers.

To see a preview and contents page of the Q1 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q1 2025 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 12 dealerships on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK automotive dealerships or request a copy of the report for the full review.

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What The Industry Research Report Covers

The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each retailer based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.

Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels

Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing. Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.

For Q1 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK automotive dealerships was £13,181, with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £11 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively. 

There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, both Arnold Clark has the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £o, followed by Group 1 Automotive UK at £2, and Vertu Motors plc has the highest at £33.

The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Vertu Motors plc has the highest estimate monthly ad spend at £815,000, and Arnold Clark has the lowest at £1,160.

By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.

Technical Website Compliance

Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. For automotive dealerships, they'll particularly want to take care over key pages such as offers, financing, locations, and new models that they have in stock, and ensure that prospective customers can easily find key information.

Inchcape plc flagged 461 4xx errors. Frequent 404 errors can signal that a website is poorly maintained, which not only affects search engines’ perception of a website but can harm how users perceive a website (and brand)..

Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance

When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. For automotive dealerships, they'll want to ensure they have a fast-performing site that gives off an exceptional first impression to potential customers looking to buy these large-ticket items.

The overall mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 75 and 15, with Vertu Motors plc reporting the lowest site speed and Inchcape plc reporting the highest site speed. Websites should take steps to increase their mobile site speed, such as optimising images (enabling lazy loading, compressing images and using responsive images). All websites should ensure they’re using a mobile-friendly website theme, as this will help to improve the users’ experience.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. For brands operating in the automotive industry, they should be working with digital PR specialists to identify opportunities and ideas for out-of-the-box, surprising PR campaigns.

A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA score for this quarter ranged between 70 and 42, with Listers Group flagging the lowest DA. Brands can increase their DA score by earning high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites and creating quality content that’s shareable (such as well-researched articles and infographics that attract backlinks).

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. The cost of living crisis and a drop in consumer confidence is having a wide impact across all non-essential sectors, as customers are cutting back on treats and expendable items. In the case of automotive dealerships, this could mean potential car buyers are sticking with their older models for longer, or only opting for used vehicles.

Only Inchcape plc reported a decline in organic traffic on desktop (-93%), and this automotive dealership was the only brand to report a decline on mobile, too (-95)%. A fast-loading website is more likely to increase a brand’s organic performance across devices compared to a slow-loading website. With this in mind, all brands should ensure they’re taking steps to improve their site speed.

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 'Local Pack' could be a key Universal Search result for automotive dealerships to optimise for, as a way to quickly appear for customers looking for nearby forecourts.

Universal Search appearances are important for websites, as they can help increase visibility in search engine rankings, lead to higher click-through rates and provide a better user engagement and experience. Arnold Clark the most overall Universal Search appearances (83,108), nearly double the runner-up’s total score. The majority of these appearances came from ‘images’.

The Longtail Keyword Opportunity

Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. For automotive dealerships, longtail keywords could include terms relating to the colour and make of a car, along with buying signals such as 'buy today' or 'with finance'.

Arnold Clark secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (7,541) and positions 4–10 (25,049). A longtail keyword strategy can boost a website’s SEO authority and enables websites to optimise for a range of related topics.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019. For automotive dealerships, they'll want to use Facebook ads to secure visibility on offers and new lines, and can use the platform to target specific locations where they're experiencing the toughest competition.

We’ve included examples of TrustFord’s sponsored posts. This UK automotive dealership should aim to reduce the number of lines of text they use for each post to help attract social media users as they’re scrolling quickly.

Top Social Shares & Content

When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Tying back to the Universal Search opportunity results, dealerships appearing for high levels of 'People Also Ask' and 'FAQ' results have already got a headstart in valuable content creation.

Arnold Clark has the most Facebook Likes (129,600) and the most Instagram followers (42,400). Social media engagement rates don’t necessarily affect search engine rankings, but they can increase brand visibility, which can indirectly boost SEO. The more users who share social media content are more likely to visit a brand’s website.

Website Readability & Accessibility

20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, retailers lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. Though automotive brands may not immediately think there is a need to remain accessible to visually impaired users, there are many forms of visual impairment that do not inhibit driving ability.

Marshall Motor Group reported the most accessibility alerts (275), while Vertu Motors plc reported the most contrast errors (89). Easy-to-read content and accessible features help users make quicker decisions and complete actions (like making purchases or signing up for newsletters). A clear call to action (CTA) that’s easy to read and understand can also increase conversions significantly.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 2025 REPORT

To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Mike Movassaghi.

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