Yext, the Answers Company, and world leading automotive retailer Pendragon have announced the results of their collaboration, which saw Pendragon integrate Yext Listings and Competitive Intelligence to help manage dealerships across the UK.
Buying a car is not an everyday occurrence. Such a big decision means customers will take their time to research online and visit dealerships in-person, or a combination of the two. That’s why Pendragon has put countless happy customers on the road for more than 30 years.
With household dealerships like Stratstone, CarStore, and Evans Halshaw, part and parcel of its success has been driven by its commitment to digital innovation and operational excellence. No matter how customers embark on their car buying journey, Pendragon needs a clear and consistent digital footprint for potential buyers to land on the right web pages and locate the relevant dealership.
However, with 160 brick-and-mortar sites across the UK alone, each dealership is unique, with varying information and opening times that real-time updates are crucial to provide clarity and a standout experience, across every touchpoint , especially during periods of disruption.
Pendragon ultimately chose Yext to revitalise its listings, building a comprehensive Knowledge Graph to provide the automotive retailer with a next-generation CMS that would store important information. Once populated, Pendragon’s Knowledge Graph was able to work alongside Yext Listings to ensure accuracy and boost discoverability across 200 networks, including Google, Bing, Facebook, and Yelp.
“Before Yext, updating our listings was a huge challenge. We had to manually manage Google Business Profiles and Facebook listings, which was impossible to keep up with when changes were required daily during the pandemic” says Kim Costello, Chief Marketing Officer at Pendragon. “Yext was a critical partner for us in that challenging time, but we’re still continuing to see uplifts in brand awareness and traffic that we didn’t realise was possible through listings”.
Every one of Pendragon’s automotive retail brands and their respective branches are now able to make location-specific updates to everything from business hours to address data and other important information. The business optimises listings and drives brand awareness, while customers are provided with a digital experience that gives them everything they need in near real-time.
In addition to Listings, Pendragon was also able to gain new insights through Yext’s Competitive Intelligence, to see how they compared with competitors in local search and uncover keywords to optimise for. Through this, they were able to focus on securing more ‘real estate’ on search engine results pages (SERPs) for competitive terms that included major auto brands, dealerships or servicing for said brands (such as ‘Aston Martin dealership’ or ‘Mercedes service’).
The implementation of both Listings and Competitive Intelligence has led to 32% growth in Google Search views and 66% growth in Google Maps views. This surge in visibility has led to a 17% increase in clicks to website from Pendragon Google listings.
“The automotive industry has historically played catch-up with others in the retail sector,” says Nico Beukes, Senior Vice President at Yext. “But with more online-only options appearing, retailers need to find new ways to evolve their own operations in order to keep up with changes in consumer behaviour. Having access to a platform that gives you oversight of information and a customisable approach to customer engagement will give you the agility to thrive in the next era of automotive eCommerce.”
“Previously, we never really looked into the finer details of where our audience was coming from and how they were behaving. Now, we have granular insights on one centralised dashboard, which helps us to personalise our messaging and inform our decision making.” says Costello.
Check out the full customer story here.
About Yext
Yext (NYSE: YEXT) helps organisations answer every question about their business. Yext’s Answers Platform collects and organises content into a Knowledge Graph, then leverages a complementary set of products — including Listings, Pages, Reviews, and Search — to deliver relevant, actionable answers wherever customers, employees, and partners look for information. For over 15 years, thousands of companies worldwide have trusted Yext to create seamless content-driven experiences at scale across search engines, websites, mobile apps, and hundreds of other digital touchpoints.
Learn more at yext.com.
About Pendragon
Pendragon is one of the world’s leading automotive retailers. For more than 30 years, Pendragon has kept countless happy customers on the road through household dealerships like Stratstone, CarStore, and Evans Halshaw, which are all powered by Pendragon. Part and parcel of its success has been driven by its commitment to digital innovation, operational excellence, and going above and beyond for customers, whether they’re buying a Fiesta or a Ferrari.