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

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

Automotive Market Intelligence Features/interviews/forward models www.sophus3.com

Automotive Market Intelligence Data / Brand KPIs / Whitepapers www.sophus3.com

Car Brands Online: Review Published annually: two sections Numbers: online traffic generated by car brands and behaviour of audience Themes: developments and concepts that are driving car brands’ digital strategy www.sophus3.com

Part 1: Numbers 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 www.sophus3.com

Big Numbers The ‘Big 5’ audience www.sophus3.com

The digital showroom Where they come from 40% of search 40% Search traffic is paid for 22% online media 18% ‘other’ 17% direct entry 0.5% social www.sophus3.com

When they come Day of week Weekly heartbeat signature. Traffic peaks midweek. Sunday: traffic levels continue to grow plus highest dwell times (green line) www.sophus3.com

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’ www.sophus3.com

What they do The virtual funnel 46% look at model page 18% ‘configure’ a car 6% use the dealer locator Only 1% 4% look at a consider a test drive brochure request www.sophus3.com

What they do Length of visit 200 seconds average visit length www.sophus3.com

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 € € € € € € € € € € € € www.sophus3.com

Part 2 : Themes Developments and concepts that are driving car brands’ digital strategy and which will be significant in the year ahead www.sophus3.com

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’. www.sophus3.com

Themes “We are all exceptions to the rule” More than a quarter of the Top 10 ‘Digital’ – gives ‘choice and voice’.   ‘alternative’ vehicles viewed before Barriers to brand and product or after a visit to a model page are consideration eroding. in a completely different segment. Dissatisfaction with the ‘first  (And more than 40% of the top result’ the default setting for surf 20) and research. PCPs etc. are making ‘premium’  Audi A1 is considered as an  products accessible. alternative by shoppers in other Premium brands creating lower  segments even more frequently entry points (A1, A-Class etc.) to than it is viewed by other further blur distinctions. ‘supermini’ shoppers. www.sophus3.com

Themes “We are all exceptions to the rule”  Digital personalisation –  Personalisation mixes unravelling and addressing technology and process to build each individual’s unique a one-to-one relationship with interests – becomes not just each individual who touches desirable but a critical the brand. necessity  A common-place with online shops (Amazon etc.) more challenging for automotive OEMs www.sophus3.com

Themes “One -to- one interaction” Car buying infrequent – little •  Personalisation in automotive is or no transaction history to driven by ‘Big Data’, self work from. learning algorithms, and Research and consideration is • refined rule sets to actively over an extended period: only engage visitors a tiny proportion of site  ‘Human’ layers – such as ‘live visitors will be ‘in market’ chat’ – complete the one-to- “Customers should feel • one response and progress served, not stalked ” interaction from online to offline www.sophus3.com

Themes “The responsive web”  Responsive Web Design part of delivering a personalised experience  ‘Flexible’ web content ensures best user experience optimised for any device  www.vw.com (April 2014) example of RWD www.sophus3.com

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’ www.sophus3.com

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? www.sophus3.com

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 www.sophus3.com

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 of ‘accommodating’ these devices to according them primacy www.sophus3.com

Themes “Leads, leads, (and more) leads”  OEMs look to increase one-to- one contacts by acquiring third-party leads.  Third parties will grow in significance as comparison outstrips loyalty within shopping process www.sophus3.com

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 often poor www.sophus3.com

Themes “Can we get ‘social’ right?”  Backlash against ‘social’  OEMs still struggling to define  Social drives very little traffic presence within ‘Social’ directly to OEM sites  Premium brands scared of  But acceptance that huge, and compromising their mystique? separate audience to be  ‘Fire and forget’ posting of engaged with: product focused content  Facebook active reach of 15-  Lack of engagement and 27% of those over 13 in ‘Big interaction – ‘asocial’ stance 5’ markets  Brands more comfortable within  YouTube active reach 24-36% YouTube www.sophus3.com

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 .” www.sophus3.com

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 .” www.sophus3.com

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. www.sophus3.com

THANK YOU See you soon! www.sophus3.com