AS DEALERS find it increasingly challenging to chase down every last penny of profit in an industry returning to the trading conditions of an earlier decade, Gumtree Cars and sister sites CarsGuide and Autotrader are focusing on forging stronger relationships with dealers as they strive to strengthen the brands and businesses of their retailer customers.

Director of motors at Autotrader Group, Benn Sykes, told GoAutoNews Premium in an exclusive interview that it made sense to keep rolling out new online tools and services to make its group of dealer clients as prosperous as possible. He said the group’s business model of sharing up-front the name and details of dealer advertisers allowed it “to go into partnership with its clients” not only to display cars for sale but to build their brands with the car buyers researching on the group’s three sites.

“In 2025 I want to make sure that we are growing together, not independently of each other,” Mr Sykes said.

“We are planning a world where we give the retailers more opportunity for brand-building on our platforms.

“The opportunity for us and for them is to work together, knowing full well that if buyers visit our website or theirs, we’re not concerned. If a consumer is looking at a dealer listing on our site, that audience is shared. 

“We are not in the business of preventing our car buyers from knowing up-front what retailer is selling the car or restricting photos that reveal where the dealership is.

“We encourage our dealers to use their brands and help them build their brands every step of the way.

“So we want to be able to help dealers build their own brand with us. We don’t see it as competition. We are allies. 

“It’s the antithesis of the other guy and we need to encourage that point of difference in the market. Put simply, we thoroughly believe in that open platform, and I want to encourage it and drive that difference every step of the way.

Mr Sykes said dealer clients have their own webpages that are linked to all of their listings. 

“We have their address details, opening hours, maps, their phone numbers, all of that readily available. “We will be ingesting their social media feeds into their dealer profiles. We are encouraging and building video into our listings and we are giving them more opportunity to work with our data tools to maximize the return on their investment.

“The Internet is a big, wide web, so we’ll be helping them follow that user elsewhere. We more recently launched what we call Autotrader Connect, which is a performance-based product, effectively allowing us to re-target users and drive consideration on meta platforms; Facebook and Instagram. 

“We are working on how to build on that and go one step further. How do we better help dealers with their own SEO, their own SEM and their own digital marketing provide greater service?” 

Autotrader Group is also working on joining in the online trend for dealers to publish their own “walkaround” videos of cars in stock.

“We believe video is critically important. It is a great medium and more dealers want to do more with it. 

“The beautiful thing for us is we’re going to allow that video to be able to help dealers brand themselves, to build trust organically. They’re not just going to run photographs of a car, they can have their own video that sells the car, the dealership experience and post sales experience. All together as one, and run that on our site.“Our job is to make it simpler and easier to get their videos out there.”

Mr Sykes said that the two multi-million dollar outdoor advertising campaigns in the past 12 months for Gumtree, including Gumtree Cars, “have benefited us greatly”. 

“We have seen an increase in the type of vehicles and the type of listings on site and from a B2B perspective, our dealer partners have been very supportive of us going out and spending money in those channels for that brand. 

“In terms of the inventory that we now have on site, “We have moved away from the cheap and cheerful that Gumtree traditionally was known for way back in the day, and we’re increasing that average list price from about $30,000 and we’re now seeing an average list price of $40,000 plus as the biggest growth sector.

Benn Sykes

Meanwhile, in the background the group is also working on a dealer assistance Smart Listing tool as it looks to innovate its Dealer Central solution. The tool scores each car as it is being listed online and recommends which of the dealers inventory is best placed for their sites and should be listed as a priority.

“It will take into account make, model, year, condition, pricing, and then look at the sheer weight of supply and demand. So we know who our audience is. We know what they’re looking at. We know what’s moving and what isn’t,” Mr Sykes said. 

Mr Sykes said that site traffic over the past 12 months has been steady.

“In the past six months, we’ve seen a paring back of a decline of sorts, which is to be expected with reduced vehicle demand in H2. However, we want to make sure that our audience is unique to us, and that’s still very much the case,” he said.

“But what is important is that the dealers that we’re now working with and the partners that we now have are more trusting of us and our brands.”

By John Mellor