How to advertise caravans, motorhomes & campervans online

The UK leisure-vehicle market is in rude health. Touring caravans, motorhomes and campervans have all seen a surge of interest, and buyers are researching and purchasing online more than ever. Yet most dealers still funnel their entire advertising budget into the same place they always have: the classified portals — paying a per-listing or subscription fee that climbs every year, whether a unit sells or not.

There’s a better-value channel sitting right next to it, and it’s the one buyers increasingly start with: Google and Meta Vehicle Ads. This guide explains how leisure-vehicle dealers can use them, why they often work out cheaper than the portals, and what you need to get your stock live.

The classified-portal problem

The specialist leisure marketplaces and the big vehicle portals run a simple model: you pay to list, and you pay more to list more. For a forecourt of touring caravans or motorhomes, that’s a fixed monthly cost regardless of how many actually sell that month. And every one of your listings sits on a page surrounded by your competitors’ stock, all fighting for the same click.

It works — portals do drive enquiries — but it’s an expensive way to be one option among many, and the pricing power sits entirely with the platform. Vehicle Ads give you a second front where the economics are different and the control is yours.

What Vehicle Ads change

Google Vehicle Ads show your individual units, with a photo, price and location, right in the search results when someone looks for the kind of vehicle you sell. Meta Automotive Inventory Ads do the same across Facebook and Instagram, matched to people whose behaviour suggests they’re in the market. Three things make this attractive for a leisure dealer:

• You pay per click, not per listing. Your budget follows genuine interest, and an unsold van on the forecourt isn’t costing you a fixed monthly fee to advertise.
• It’s your stock, front and centre — not buried in a marketplace between two rivals.
• You keep control of budget, targeting and which vehicles you promote.

Crucially, this isn’t an either/or. Most dealers run Vehicle Ads alongside a portal presence, and shift more budget across as they see the cost-per-enquiry compare.

Why leisure vehicles need proper handling

Here’s where most feed tools fall down: they’re built for cars, and they treat a caravan like a car with the labels swapped. But a leisure buyer doesn’t search the way a car buyer does. They search on berths, layout, MTPLM, roof type, belted seats — the things a car feed has no field for.

Getting those attributes into the feed correctly is what keeps your listings approved and competitive. That’s the whole reason we built dedicated pages for each type, mapping the fields that actually matter:

• Advertising caravans — berths, layout, MTPLM, payload, single vs twin axle, fixed bed and end washroom.
• Advertising motorhomes — coachbuilt vs A-class vs panel van, berths, belted seats, mileage and MPG.
• Advertising campervans — base vehicle, conversion, roof type (pop-top or high-top) and how many it sleeps.

Trajekt is UK-built and we run these leisure feeds ourselves, so this detail is handled properly rather than crammed into car fields. That accuracy is the difference between a feed Google shows and one it quietly holds back.

Google or Meta — which first?

For leisure vehicles, most dealers start with Google Vehicle Ads, because it captures buyers at the high-intent moment they’re actively searching for a specific type of van. Meta Vehicle Ads then work brilliantly for demand generation and retargeting — putting your stock in front of people browsing Facebook and Instagram who fit the buyer profile. The good news is you don’t choose: Trajekt generates both from the same inventory, so they never drift out of sync. Our Google vs Meta vehicle ads guide goes deeper on the split.

What you actually need to get started

The barrier has never been the ads — it’s the feed. Google and Meta each need your inventory delivered as a structured file, in their exact format, kept current as stock changes. Building and maintaining that by hand is impractical. That’s the job Trajekt does:

• Connect your stock once — your website platform, a DMS export, or even a CSV or Google Sheet stock list.
• We map the fields — the leisure-specific attributes included, with UK conventions (miles not kilometres, GBP, the GDPR VIN exemption).
• It stays live — new arrivals appear and sold units drop off on every refresh, so you never pay to advertise a van that’s gone.

If you’d like to see the whole flow end to end, the how Trajekt works walkthrough shows each step, and the automotive feed management overview covers the dealer-specific detail.

And if you sell used cars too

Plenty of leisure dealers carry part-exchange cars or run a used-car arm alongside. The same feed engine handles those — see the used car dealer feed for how Trajekt manages make, model, mileage, VIN handling and sold-stock removal for a forecourt of cars.

The bottom line

You don’t have to keep accepting rising portal fees as the only way to advertise leisure vehicles online. Google and Meta Vehicle Ads let you reach more of the right buyers on a cost-per-click basis, with your stock front and centre and your budget under your control. The only thing standing between you and live ads is a properly-built feed — and that’s exactly what Trajekt is for.

Ready to try it? Start free with Trajekt — no card needed — or read the type-specific guides for caravans, motorhomes and campervans.