The Q2 2024 benchmarking report for UK car leasing companies has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK car leasing companies perform across the digital space.

The latest Q2 2024 benchmarking report for car leasing companies has just been published. It covers the largest 12 car leasing companies, including Lex Autolease, LeasePlan, Arval UK, Alphabet, Volkswagen Financial Services, Santander Consumer Finance, Novuna, Tusker, SG Fleet UK, ALD Automotive, Zenith Vehicles, and Rivervale.

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 companies 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 Q2 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 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 car leasing companies 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.

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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.

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 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.

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. As with ensuring their site is technically compliant, car leasing companies will want to ensure they are delivering a quick, easy-to-use site which encourages users to choose their company over competitors.

For Q2 2024, the mobile site speed ranged between 65 and 3, with Zenith Vehicles reporting the lowest site speed. This car leasing company should take steps to reduce their page weight, such as limiting the amount of text and the number of images on a single page.

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. Car leasing companies 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’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA for this quarter ranged between 76 and 33, with only 2 companies reporting lower than the average score. However, the brand to watch is Novuna, which flagged the lowest DA. While they didn’t receive the fewest number of backlinks, they received the fewest number of domains. It’s important that brands receive backlinks from a range of domains to help with their DA.

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. As with many companies, we are seeing a sector-wide fall in traffic, indicating this is an area consumers are cutting back on during the cost-of-living crisis.

Six of the brands reported a loss in organic traffic, and Zenith saw the biggest loss (-42% on desktop and -46% on mobile). On the other hand, ALD Automotive saw the biggest increase in traffic (+422% on desktop and 838% on mobile). This significant traffic increase could indicate that they recently updated their URL.

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. For car leasing companies, 'reviews' and 'image’ results are a useful way of grabbing attention from potential customers directly from the SERP, and standing out from competitors.

Rivervale is at the top of the leaderboard for the highest total of Universal Search appearances (7,127), with the majority of these appearances coming from ‘reviews.’ Interestingly, no other brand reported appearances for ‘reviews’, and they should reach out to past customers to help improve this category.

The Longtail Keyword Opportunity

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. When companies are offering similar services, it’s important that they focus on organic visibility with keywords to help them rank higher than their competitors.

Santander Consumer Finance reported the most longtail keyword appearances in positions 3 (218), and they saw 585 appearances in positions 4–10. Rivervale is around half way for appearances for positions but saw the most appearances for positions 4–10 (676). Ranking high in this position means that brands have the opportunity to increase their visibility.

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.

We’ve included 3 examples of LeasePlan’s sponsored Facebook posts. This car leasing company used the same text template across all posts but updated to the car make and model they were referring to. While it’s wise to have a template to follow, this can lead to customers becoming fed up with seeing the same content, and the brand risks not showcasing their personality to their followers.

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 retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. It’s important that brands don’t just focus on the number of social media followers they have but that they assess social media engagement, too. Brands could have millions of followers but receive no online interaction, suggesting that their followers are no longer active or that they need to reassess their social media content.

The majority of the brands favour Facebook, and Tusker reported the highest engagement rate. Interestingly, this car leasing company was in the bottom 4 for the total social media followers, demonstrating that the point above is something to consider.

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. Brands should take steps to ensure their websites have no accessibility alerts by reducing redundant text, updating meta descriptions and amending any broken links.

Tusker flagged the most accessibility alerts (78). Upon closer inspection, the majority of these alerts are due to suspicious alternative text, which they must address to avoid impacting readability for those using a screen reader.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q2 2024 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.

Photo by Grahame Jenkins on Unsplash