Online Marketing: Car trade is becoming increasingly active

Expenditure on online marketing is rising steadily: according to a recent survey by Autoscout24 of more than 500 brand-linked and independent dealers, the share of online marketing in 2015 rose to 54.2 percent (measured against the total budget for advertising costs). This represents a huge new record, if compared with the results from 2014, when just 36.6 per cent of expenditure was used for online marketing measures. The new results even mean that advertising on the Internet has become more important than all traditional forms of advertising added together.

E-Marketing accounts for 80 percent of the budget

In nominal terms, too, dealers' marketing budgets continue to increase: while in 2014 an average of 5.5 percent of sales was used to promote vehicles, by 2015 the figure had risen to 6 percent. It can be observed that the amounts used vary between independent dealers (6.5 percent) and authorised dealers (5.3 percent). The proportionate expenditure for online marketing is also higher for independent dealers. At 47.5 percent, almost half of the independent dealers already invest more than 80 percent of their marketing budget in e-marketing.

Almost every trader is present on online exchanges

Nearly every car dealership is active in the network. A total of 97.8 percent advertise their car dealership on the Internet, 92.7 percent use online exchanges as a sales aid, over 70 percent have their own website, 32.4 percent use (also additionally) a manufacturer's website. Search engine marketing - such as via Google AdWords - is used by 40.4 percent, followed by social media on Facebook & Co. with 35.3 percent.

Outlook:

Online activities will continue to increase in the future and with them the size of the budget. The willingness of retailers to invest, at any rate, is unbroken: 87.4 percent of retailers want to spend more or at least as much in 2016 as in the previous year. It remains to be seen what this means for the traditional media such as print and out-of-home - currently 37.8 percent of retailers are already completely doing without offline advertising.