The Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK car leasing brokers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK car leasing brokers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK car leasing brokers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK car leasing brokers, including Leasing.com, Select Car Leasing, All Car Leasing, Nationwide Vehicle Contracts, Leasing Options, First Vehicle Leasing, Hippo Leasing, Pink Car Leasing, Vanarama, LeaseCar, Synergy Car Leasing, and Intelligent Car Leasing.
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 car leasing brokers to win brand exposure, drive online views, and ultimately generate new leases. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.
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.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 car leasing brokers on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK car leasing companies or request a copy of the report for the full review.
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.
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 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 car leasing brokers was £5,459, 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 £3 . 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, 6 car leasing brokers have the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £6, and LeaseCar has the highest at £14.
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, Intelligent Car Leasing has the highest estimate monthly ad spend at £167,000, and All Car Leasing has the lowest at £109.
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.
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 car leasing companies, having an easy-to-navigate site is essential for drivers needing to enquire about leasing options and particular care should be taken of the pathways to key pages, such as contact forms or request-a-call options.
Leasing.com reported the highest 4xx errors (306), with SSE Renewables at a close second place (404 4xx errors). 404 errors can frustrate visitors if they’re searching for content and lead to a dead end. Excessive 404 errors can also harm a website’s reputation, as search engines can perceive the website as untrustworthy.
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. As with ensuring their site is technically compliant, car leasing brokers will want to ensure they are delivering a quick, easy-to-use site which encourages users to choose their company over competitors.
The overall mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 32 and 71, with All Car Leasing reporting the lowest site speed. With more users accessing websites from their mobile, optimising mobile speed shouldn’t be overlooked. Implementing lazy loading can reduce the overall download speed of a website, helping to improve the user experience for visitors.
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. Car leasing brokers can work with a digital PR specialist to develop campaigns that tie into the wider automotive sector, pick up traction with publications, and build their backlink profile.
A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it is generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA score for this quarter ranged between 71 and 31, with Pink Car Leasing reporting the lowest DA. A high-scoring DA can make it easier for a website to rank for competitive websites, and search engines take into consideration a DA score when ranking a website.
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. Car leasing brokers might expect to see less organic traffic due to the cost of living crisis, as motorists opt to buy older models as opposed to leasing newer cars that will be more expensive long-term.
Six of the brands reported a decline in organic traffic on desktop (with Pink Car Leasing reporting the biggest loss of -42%). Meanwhile, 7 brands reported a decline on mobile (with Pink Car Leasing also reporting the biggest loss of -53%). Website pages should be fast to load, encouraging users to access the website on either device and requiring minimal effort from a user for the content they’re looking for.
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. Car leasing companies will want to prioritise 'people also ask' results, as these are an opportunity to share information about the car leasing process directly from the SERP.
Select Car Leasing has secured the most overall Universal Search appearances (30,763), while Pink Car Leasing saw the fewest overall (764). ‘Images’ and ‘reviews’ were where brands reported the most overall appearances. Appearing in Universal Search results can positively impact a brand’s SEO performance, leading to higher engagement metrics (such as reduced bounce rates).
Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. This builds on what we've discussed within our Organic Performance section, as car leasing companies will want to ensure they have key, transactional phrases within their approach. 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. Car leasing companies will want to pay particular attention to high conversion-intent phrases, such as particular models or payment durations.
Select Car Leasing secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (4,267) and positions 4–10 (4,401). Brands can increase their longtail keyword appearances in all positions by using a keyword research tool to ensure they’re using keywords that are relevant to their target audience.
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.
We’ve included examples of Select Car Leasing’s sponsored posts. This UK car leasing broker should refrain from using both the same text and imagery on separate posts. Using the same imagery and different text (or vice versa) is fine, though, as this is a good way to test the engagement rate and what impacts this.
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 retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Social media could be especially useful for sharing information about any salary sacrifice schemes car leasing companies may offer, both to employers and employees.
Leasing.com has the most Facebook Likes (120,700), and Select Car Leasing has most Instagram followers (19,700). However, Vanarama secured the highest total engagement rate (11,727). Social media is a great way to build a community and connect with their target audience. Brands should regularly track and monitor their social media engagement rates and following numbers to assess what’s working and what areas they can improve.
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. Despite brands in the automotive space not typically needing to accommodate vision deficiency in their products, they should still ensure their site is accessible.
Intelligent Car Leasing secured the most accessibility alerts (129) and the most contrast errors (119). There are many reasons why websites have accessibility alerts, such as poor colour contrast, missing or incorrect alt information for images, unclear link text, video and audio missing captions, and more.
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.