The vehicle leasing and personal contract hire (PCH) industry in the UK has seen significant levels of growth in the years since the global financial crisis of 2008, following the trend of other forms of car financing services in general, particularly personal contract purchase (PCP).
According to the BVRLA broker survey of December 2019, personal contract hire sales for cars grew by more than 20% year-on-year, with personal contract hire now making up 64% of the leasing and contract hire industry. In the same period, business contract hire (BCH) for commercial vehicles grew 9%. Since 2013, the number of new personal contract hire contracts has grown from 11,948 to 55,275 in 2019. Search activity and interest from Google search users has reflected increased activity in the market.
As we have seen interest grow in various forms of car financing options since 2010, such as PCP car finance, interest in leasing has also seen a sustained level of annual growth. Between 2015 and 2019, UK search interest in the term “car leasing” experienced a 32.6% increase.
Much of this interest revolves around the areas of the market that have traditionally been the most important. What we see from our analysis is that, unsurprisingly, much of the activity from consumers relates to premium German manufacturers and models, with the high list price of such vehicles and strong residual values making leasing an increasingly attractive and popular option for consumers.
But this increase in interest has also come ahead of a period of both significant change and challenge for the motor industry.
The drive from governments around the world to promote low and zero-emission motoring, combined with the efforts that manufacturers have made to develop electric and hybrid vehicle technology, has accelerated interest in ultra-low-emission vehicles (ULEVs). That interest has translated into activity within the leasing market, as consumers look to leasing as a way of getting into low-emission motoring. Keywords relating to the leasing of electric and ULE vehicles make up around 35% of the total search volume within the UK vehicle leasing sector.
In recent years, we have also seen manufacturers, brokers and dealer networks put a greater emphasis on digital as a consumer touch point.
Back in February 2019, Tesla announced that it would close its dealerships and move to an online-only business model and although the company subsequently performed a swift U-turn on that decision, online has become a much bigger part of the customer journey across the industry. In late 2020, BMW suggested that it may advance plans to move to a digital direct-sales model following successful trials of such a scheme in South Africa (Autocar, November 2020).
Such a shift towards digital will only have been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns that saw dealerships closed for a significant part of 2020. As we have seen in other industries that were particularly affected by lockdown measures, consumers have shifted large parts of the purchasing journey to digital touchpoints, and it is the brands with strong search and online presences that have been able to capitalise.
This report explores which of those brands have been able to use organic search to capitalise on this market growth. It will highlight which brands have been able to generate traffic from the biggest keywords in the sector, as well as which brands are performing in important sub-segments of the vehicle leasing market, including electric and low emission vehicles, vans and commercial vehicles and for important manufacturer and model keywords. We will demonstrate which brands have been able to consistently drive traffic from organic search across the keyword set, using strong search marketing foundations to rank prominently for keyword terms across the top and middle of the funnel.
As well as highlighting the leading brands in the market, the report will demonstrate how many others have an opportunity, by following search engine marketing best practice, to increase their organic search presence, increase traffic and, in turn, the effectiveness of their investment in digital.
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