Big Wants Your Car - Automotive Marketing Case Study

BigMotoringWorld & BigWantsYourCar: SEO, PR & Paid Media

In the fiercely competitive car buying market, BigMotoringWorld needed a game plan to launch their direct-to-consumer business, BigWantsYourCar.com. We stepped in with an aggressive strategy that cut acquisition costs by 70% and secured top rankings in a market dominated by big players.

Problem

BigMotoringWorld, the UK’s largest independent car dealership, was facing a serious challenge during the COVID crisis. With manufacturers halting production, the demand for used cars was through the roof, and they needed a solution to secure inventory.

That’s when we stepped in to launch BigWantsYourCar.com, a direct-to-consumer car-buying business aimed at sourcing used vehicles straight from the public. The goal? To give Big Motoring World a major edge in a supply-constrained market.

Breaking into a space dominated by giants like WeBuyAnyCar, Motorway, and Carwow wasn’t easy. With limited high-value keywords and competitors pouring huge budgets into dominating the market, we had to act fast, smart, and efficiently to make BigWantsYourCar a serious player.

Solution

We delivered a multi-faceted strategy across Paid Media, SEO, and PR to give BigWantsYourCar.com the edge it needed to succeed.

Paid Media

From day one, we monitored lead performance in BigWantsYourCar.com’s CRM, tracking sales down to specific campaigns, keywords, and creatives. This allowed us to cut inefficiencies quickly and focus only on what delivered results.

We aggressively split-tested the website, optimising the user journey to ensure every click counted. The result? We took BigWantsYourCar.com from 0 cars bought monthly to over 1,000 while slashing the cost per acquisition by 74%.

Cost Per Acquisition: 74% decrease – (£411 vs. £106.18)
Website Conversion Rate: 32% increase

32% increase

In website conversion rate

74% decrease

In cost per acqusition

SEO

In the car buying market, there are only a handful of commercial keywords that drive sales, so we had to focus hard on what mattered. After running attribution modelling through our PPC team, we found that just 22 keywords were responsible for over 90% of car acquisitions. This insight meant our SEO team could direct resources toward the highest-impact areas.

Our SEO strategy drove massive increases across the board.

Q3 2024 vs Q2 2024 results:

Organic Users: +31.71% (5,321 vs 4,033)
Organic Conversions: +83.41% (1,227 vs 669)
Keywords: +39.33% (6,355 vs 4,561)
Page 1 Rankings: +127.58% (198 vs 87)
Clicks on ‘Sell My Car’: +461.98% (2,040 vs 363)
Cost Per Acquisition: -64.66% (£96.50 vs £273.07)

+127.58%

Page 1 Rankings (198 vs 87)

+83.41%

Organic Conversions (1,227 vs 669)

+461.98%

Clicks on ‘Sell My Car’ (2,040 vs 363)

PR

Competing with giants like WeBuyAnyCar and Carwow called for a bold PR strategy. Our PR team took charge, pushing viral stories, expert opinions, and reactive news to top UK outlets like The Sun, The Express, and The Daily Mail.

Weekly features in these publications helped boost BigWantsYourCar’s national visibility and authority. In addition to national media, we also targeted local outlets like The Birmingham Mail, The Bristol Post, and The Nottingham Post to support our local SEO strategy and build authority in key regions.

The result? A surge in clicks from high-value terms like ‘Sell My Car’, along with a big boost in Domain Authority and referring domains.

450 Links Generated
£801,240 in Value Created
330% Increase in Referring Domains
Domain Authority: Increased from 20 to 29 (Aug 2023 to today)

330%

Increase in Referring Domains

450

Links Generated

£801,240

Value Created

From the client:

You guys absolutely smashed it out of the park and your suggestions were fully in line with where we wanted to go with this, hence why it was such an easy and quick decision to make.

Ian Hajyzamanali, Head of Marketing, BigMotoringWorld