6:34 pm, June 28, 2023
This year has seen new car supply headaches reduce drastically since 2022 with the global semiconductor crisis continuing to ease after the pandemic.
That being said, advertising the best new car stock online remains a challenging task and one that firms across the industry have risen to admirably over the past 12 months and beyond.
Our two highly commended firms both impressed voters with their ability to funnel new car buyers towards their dealer partners but in the end there could only be one winner.
Carwow blew dealers away by building an impressive brand with a huge following on social media and YouTube. The firm is able to consistently provide impressive new car leads to dealers and claims this prestigious award for the third year in a row.
The company, founded in 2009, now has more than 12m registered users, 3,000 trusted dealer partners and an impressive rating of 4.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
The outfit also offers a host of data-driven tools and services, including lead generation, stock sourcing, brand building, e-commerce training, marketing and advertising.
It currently employs more than 250 people in the UK, Germany and Spain and managing director Sally Foote was keen to pay tribute to the hard work put in by the entire team.
She told Car Dealer: ‘It’s a big vote of confidence for the teams who work incredibly hard behind the scenes and that they are getting it right for our dealer partners.
‘We are a marketplace, our success is predicated on how well we are serving both sides of that, and we wouldn’t be here without our dealer partners.
‘To win an award that is voted in by the partners is just a huge compliment to the teams and really positive feedback for them that we’re getting it right.
‘We are extremely pleased to have won this award and humbled for the third time in a row.
‘I think when you look at awards like these that are voted in by your partners, they mean that much more to you.’
The prize comes at the end of a busy period for Carwow as it fights to stay ahead of its rivals.
In the past 18 months the outfit has launched a used car business.
Reflecting on the rapid rise of the firm, Foote added: ‘Over the last 18 months or so we’ve materially changed our business.
‘We’ve launched a used car business, and we’ve been scaling our stock sourcing product so to get the feedback from our partners that we’re still doing really, really well at new car marketing is just extremely, extremely encouraging.
‘It has been a busy time, I think we acquired a business called Wizzle about two years ago with the intent of launching a stock sourcing platform for partners and we’ve scaled that materially.
‘We’ve grown that over 100 per cent, just in this year alone and last year, it was 200 per cent growth year-on-year. We’ve been really focusing on scaling that as a service to our partners.
‘Also last year, we launched used cars so we now allow our partners to list their used stock as well as their new stock and to take factory orders on the site as well.
‘We’ve really diversified our offer to partners and a lot of that work is still very much at the beginning of those journeys but it’s been a very busy 12 to 18 months.’
- W: carwow.co.uk
- T: 0800 808 5885
- E: [email protected]
