Sophus3 I Paul Rutishauser Paul Rutishauser Editor, Auto Market - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Sophus3

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Paul Rutishauser

Paul Rutishauser Editor, Auto Market Intelligence paul.rutishauser@sophus3.com

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Automotive Market Intelligence Features/interviews/forward models

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Automotive Market Intelligence Data / Brand KPIs / Whitepapers

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Car Brands Online: Review

Numbers: online traffic generated by car brands and behaviour of audience Themes: developments and concepts that are driving car brands’ digital strategy

Published annually: two sections

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Where the numbers come from

2014 data for ‘Big 5' Markets Germany, France Italy, Spain and UK 63% of EU population 72% of the EU new car market Web visits actual & estimate for 36 brands

Sources

web: eDataXchange cars: ACEA / IHS automotive spend: Ebiquity

Part 1: Numbers

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Big Numbers The ‘Big 5’ audience

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The digital showroom Where they come from

40% Search 22% online media 18% ‘other’ 17% direct entry 0.5% social 40% of search

traffic is paid for

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When they come Day of week

Weekly heartbeat signature. Traffic peaks midweek. Sunday: traffic levels continue to grow plus highest dwell times (green line)

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When they come Time of day

Daily traffic peaks between 21:00 and 22:00. ‘Night owl’ visitors have highest proportion of tablet/mobile use (green area)

54% of visits outside

‘office hours’

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What they do The virtual funnel

46% look at

model page

18% ‘configure’

a car

6% use the

dealer locator

4% look at a

brochure request Only 1% consider a test drive

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What they do Length of visit

200 seconds

average visit length

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AMI KPIs

€ € € € € € € € € € € €

AMI Online performance measures: 2014 Q4

Germany UK France Italy Spain Visits per registration 81 94 107 120 127 Ad spend per visit €3.7 €1.8 €6.5 €10.4 €3.8 Ad spend per registration €302 €170 €696 €1,255 €478

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Part 2 : Themes

Developments and concepts that are driving car brands’ digital strategy and which will be significant in the year ahead

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Themes “We are all exceptions to the rule”

Tracked behaviour shows car buyers consider a huge variety of

• products. It is almost impossible

to group these ‘decision trees’ together as ‘customer types’ or to match these to a vehicle ‘segment’.

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Themes “We are all exceptions to the rule”

• More than a quarter of the Top 10

‘alternative’ vehicles viewed before

• r after a visit to a model page are

in a completely different segment. (And more than 40% of the top 20)

• ‘Digital’ – gives ‘choice and voice’.

Barriers to brand and product consideration eroding.

• Dissatisfaction with the ‘first

result’ the default setting for surf and research.

• PCPs etc. are making ‘premium’

products accessible.

• Premium brands creating lower

entry points (A1, A-Class etc.) to further blur distinctions.

• Audi A1 is considered as an

alternative by shoppers in other segments even more frequently than it is viewed by other ‘supermini’ shoppers.

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Themes “We are all exceptions to the rule”

• Digital personalisation –

unravelling and addressing each individual’s unique interests – becomes not just desirable but a critical necessity

• Personalisation mixes

technology and process to build a one-to-one relationship with each individual who touches the brand.

• A common-place with online

shops (Amazon etc.) more challenging for automotive OEMs

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Themes “One-to-one interaction”

• Car buying infrequent – little
• r no transaction history to

work from.

• Research and consideration is
• ver an extended period: only

a tiny proportion of site visitors will be ‘in market’

• “Customers should feel

served, not stalked”

• Personalisation in automotive is

driven by ‘Big Data’, self learning algorithms, and refined rule sets to actively engage visitors

• ‘Human’ layers – such as ‘live

chat’ – complete the one-to-

• ne response and progress

interaction from online to

• ffline

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Themes “The responsive web”

• Responsive Web Design part
• f delivering a personalised

experience

• ‘Flexible’ web content ensures

best user experience

• ptimised for any device
• www.vw.com (April 2014)

example of RWD

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Themes “The responsive web”

• ‘Find a match’ – modelled on

dating sites

• User can determine their entry

point – colour, engine, finance

• Drives user to existing

inventory not configuring a ‘theoretical purchase’

• Recommend you visit and

review: ‘a site stripped bare’

• Arguably a state of the art

‘digital showroom’

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Themes “Location, location, (and) location”

• Mobile devices offer rich

geolocation information

• Retailers exploiting this

through ‘geo-fencing’ – personalised offers served when individual detected within perimeter of an outlet

• ‘Geo-conquesting’ alerts to

activity at a competitor’s location

• But how can OEMs use this

information imaginatively?

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Themes “Mobile is a ‘given’”

• ‘Tipping point’ reached

(seasonally) last year: majority of visitors to OEM sites on tablets and mobiles

• Post PC age officially arrived
• Yet some sites still have

shortcomings on mobile devices

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Themes “Mobile is a ‘given’”

• Brands not seeing an

imminent ‘tipping point’ in their own device type statistics should urgently review their site’s usability

• Need to move from a mind-set
• f ‘accommodating’ these

devices to according them primacy

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Themes “Leads, leads, (and more) leads”

• OEMs look to increase one-to-
• ne contacts by acquiring

third-party leads.

• Third parties will grow in

significance as comparison

• utstrips loyalty within

shopping process

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Themes “Leads, leads, (and more) leads”

Tensions

• Cost of leads high
• Lead quality (how well

qualified? Sold on multiple times?)

• OEMs competing with own

dealer network for leads And

• OEM’s own lead management
• ften poor

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Themes “Can we get ‘social’ right?”

• Backlash against ‘social’
• Social drives very little traffic

directly to OEM sites

• But acceptance that huge, and

separate audience to be engaged with:

• Facebook active reach of 15-

27% of those over 13 in ‘Big 5’ markets

• YouTube active reach 24-36%
• OEMs still struggling to define

presence within ‘Social’

• Premium brands scared of

compromising their mystique?

• ‘Fire and forget’ posting of

product focused content

• Lack of engagement and

interaction – ‘asocial’ stance

• Brands more comfortable within

YouTube

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Conclusions

“The challenge for OEMs in 2015 is to reconcile a brand message designed for broadcast mediums with one that works within rapid, highly personal and/or individual digital interactions.”

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Conclusions

“Analytically, a major difficulty lies in assigning ‘fractional attribution’ – working out the value of each ‘bit’ in winning customers across all of the different channels now being exploited.”

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Conclusions

“Operationally, the apparatus of marketing, digital and sales departments may need rethinking so that staff within the OEMs can work together in encouraging and following through with one-on-one digital customer interactions.

See you soon!

YOU

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THANK