How do you persuade car dealers that an Auto Trader package upgrade means their cars will be more prominent and therefore more likely to sell quicker?

Leverage their confidence and bravado.

We recognised that the car dealers’ behaviour could be used to our advantage by dramatising the benefits of Auto Trader’s ‘prominence’ products.

The Self-serving Bias is a need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive yourself in an overly favourable manner.  

Car dealers, in general, behave like this. It’s why they are so successful! 

So we created a campaign that was designed to demonstrate how the increased attention their vehicle stock would receive, thanks to an Auto Trader package upgrade, was going to reflect on them and their business. 

We used common imagery that signifies fame and popularity, and represents the extent of the coverage afforded by the specific prominence tools on offer. 

The headlines made the retailer feel like their vehicles (and therefore their business) were going to get all the attention, exposure and a bigger audience. All of which dealers want to continue to be successful. 

The campaign was executed by Auto Trader’s in-house design team across website, social and email in October 2020.

“We launched the prominence campaign just over a week ago and it’s already proving a great success. We’ve had 48 leads through already in a week and made some sales off the back already. I think this is already the best performing campaign I’ve seen here in terms of leads generated.”

Eddie Tomlinson, Senior Marketing Manager