Car brand marketing strategy!

As early as May of this year, Lao Zhao continued to call on brands to pay attention to the trend of Douyin search. I don’t know how many brands have tried it. The brands that have tried it have probably accumulated more experience and achieved certain results. It just so happened that a car brand recently asked Lao Zhao to help with advice on how to do Douyin search, so Lao Zhao did some research in this area.

Today's search is very different from the search in the past. Search behavior is no longer a point-based behavior of "search and go", but is integrated with platform content. Consumers "see and search" and generate search behavior under the stimulation of content. This has become a new trend in the industry. The search results are no longer just pictures and texts, but videos that are presented in a more vivid form, which upgrades the user experience. This is the new search.

What surprised Lao Zhao was that he didn't expect that many car brands acted quickly and started to focus on "new search" early on. Brands such as FAW-Volkswagen, Haval, Lexus, and Ora are all doing it. The new search on TikTok brings two most direct benefits to car brands:

1) Improve the efficiency of seeding, and get what you want instantly through new search

2) Create a big event and quickly gain brand fans

Beyond this, there is a lot of value hidden in the new search that people cannot see.

Taking advantage of these car brands' exploration journey on new searches, Lao Zhao shared his recent research results with everyone. We mainly discussed the following questions:

1) What are the pain points of current marketing for automobile brands?

2) What problems can new search solve and what opportunities does it bring?

3) How to use the new search?

1. What are the pain points of online marketing for automobile brands?

There are many pain points in automobile marketing . As the budget share of digital media increases, the problems become more prominent. Lao Zhao summarized several unavoidable pain points in the current online marketing of automobile brands.

1.1 It’s difficult to capture consumers’ attention!

The essence of brand marketing is to grab users' attention, and cars are no exception. Every encounter between a brand and consumers should be carefully planned and linked together, but the current market situation is that consumers are distracted by various advertisements and can lose them if they are not careful. If car brands want the advertisements they place and the traffic they purchase to be valuable, they must do both short-term hot spots and long-term operations. They must focus on user attention in short-term popularity, and accumulate fans in the long-term operation and convert them into capital for the long-term operation of the brand.

1.2 The user decision cycle is long, and high-potential consumers are prone to churn

Automobile consumption is a decision-intensive consumption process. Buying a car is not like buying fast-moving consumer goods. The process from marketing to conversion can be completed in a very short time. Users of a car brand will constantly compare other brands and models. From learning about them to finally choosing a brand of car, they have to overcome many information barriers and trust barriers. Consumers will inevitably waver during their decision-making journey, which is why high-potential consumers of automobiles are more likely to churn than those of other consumer products.

1.3 How to improve conversion results

The “extravagant” automobile marketing of the early years is becoming less and less common today. As the automobile market shifts to stock, marketing will inevitably focus on the rationalization of input and output. For consumer products that require heavy decision-making, such as automobiles, there are many channels to reach users, and high-priced items are difficult to generate immediate conversions. For car companies, all the representative data of online marketing will ultimately come back to finding more sales leads and converting them into sales under the premise of rationalizing marketing costs, or how to gradually build a higher degree of favorability and loyalty to the brand in the future for those that are not converted in the short term, thereby completing the conversion.

1.4 How to make integrated marketing more efficient

Automobile consumption is a process that focuses heavily on experience scenarios. Automobile brands usually use factors such as consumption habits, brand positioning, product types, and after-sales services to continuously stimulate user interest. Therefore, for the time being, offline car sales are still the main battlefield for car sales, while online, car companies value the most the realization of efficient and coordinated "integrated marketing", connecting passive exposure-active cognition-in-depth planting-long-term interaction-retention conversion, etc. Among these, if you carefully study the user decision-making process, media contact habits, public opinion and word-of-mouth effects and other aspects, you will find that search is the hub that can connect all of these.

2. New opportunities brought by new search to automobile brands

Why can new search help car brands solve the above pain points? Let’s first take a look at some of the features of the new search.

2.1 New search becomes the marketing hub for integrated marketing of automobile brands

Before the emergence of new search, the problem with automobile brands’ marketing was that it was difficult to link together passive exposure, active cognition, deep seeding, long-term interaction, and retention conversion. The emergence of new search can help automobile brands gain insight into user decision-making processes, media usage habits, etc., achieve efficient linkage, and make integrated marketing of automobile brands possible.

On the one hand, the new search engine uses the rich and massive content on the Bytedance Engine platform to take over the search users brought by offline advertising and various marketing resources outside Bytedance Engine.

On the other hand, the new search can attract users to the brand’s Douyin corporate account for private domain operations, and can also direct users to the brand’s flagship store, live broadcast room, event landing page, etc. for on-site conversion.

The new search engine transforms the originally scattered marketing behaviors into an integrated marketing system through two things: traffic collection and secondary distribution of demand, making brand marketing a truly "integrated marketing" behavior.

2.2 The growth of new search users brings new traffic channels to automobile brands

2.2.1 The number of new search users continues to grow

First, more and more users are using the new search. As of August 2020, the daily PV of Bytedance Engine searches reached 500 million. During this year's Spring Festival, Douyin's monthly active search users exceeded 550 million, and this number continues to rise. Let’s take a look at the impact of new searches on the automotive industry. From January to June this year, the total PV volume generated by automobiles was 1 billion, basically exceeding 5 million per day. The search growth in the automotive industry is very rapid.

2.2.2 Users from new searches are more proactive and more aligned with brands

Among the entire new search traffic, 60% of commercial search demand comes from content stimulation, that is, consumers will actively search after being inspired by content. On Douyin and Toutiao, there are a lot of car-related content from experts, which aroused the interest of consumers and triggered the linkage with new searches, which is the so-called post-view search. In addition, car brands can pay attention to the keywords in the Douyin video search box. These keywords are related to the video content, including keywords based on user interests and demand prompts. These keywords can help car brands better understand the content of user needs.

Judging from the user portrait, most of the users who use the new search are concentrated in the age group of 26-35, which is a very core group in the market. Judging from the entire income structure, this group of people has a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan, strong purchasing power, and is more suitable for car brands.

Based on the above two points, the new search brings a very important traffic supplement to automobile brands. It can not only quantify the search investment for exposure, but also make secondary use of the traffic and reduce the marketing costs of automobile brands.

2.3 New searches can help car brands improve conversions

2.3.1 Helping car brands improve users’ secondary cognition

When it comes to the impact of new searches on user cognition, it is actually the impact of secondary cognition, because most users who use new searches come with basic cognition.

Lao Zhao obtained the new search data based on the search split of the automotive industry and made statistics based on different types of words. The proportion of people searching for specific brands, products, and models reached 83%. What does this represent? In fact, this means that when users search on the new search, they have an initial understanding of car brands and specific models. These understandings may come from other media, traditional advertising, or from information flow or memory fragments generated by watching KOL content on Douyin and Toutiao. The results obtained through the new search need to further deepen the understanding of specific brands, products, and models. This is the first dimension.

The second dimension is that 11% of users searched for keywords related to experts, which is clearly a search behavior influenced by experts, which also proves the positive value of expert influence.

Therefore, whether it is a customer who has basic knowledge before or a customer who searches after seeing the content, they will get further accurate information through new searches, including: KOL evaluation content, hot videos, and content generated by ordinary users, etc. Content of different dimensions meets the cognitive needs of different users, which in turn affects their behavior and stimulates people to seek information again.

In fact, the secondary cognition brought about by new searches has developed towards a high conversion trend, from cognition to action. For example, users can obtain information through targeted search and complete their understanding of automobile products and functions. Through the hub role of new search, they can directly enter the inquiry or even action stage (receive coupons, make appointments for offline test drives, directly book and purchase, etc.). This allows the value of cognition to be further advanced, and the value brought by search is maximized.

2.3.2 Provide a moat for car brands to prevent brand user loss

Another important role of new search is to provide brands with a moat and prevent brand user loss.

First of all, consumers have preconceived ideas, and car brands can see brand-related information first through new searches.

Secondly, new search can help automobile brands guide public opinion and reduce brand wear and tear through the tandem effect of high-quality content + new search. Automobile companies can focus on adjusting products or promotion directions based on consumer feedback, forcing the company to develop healthily.

2.3.3 Provide auto brands with a shorter transaction path to improve conversion

The hub function of the new search also provides automobile brands with a shorter transaction path. Users can obtain information through search, and while completing their understanding of automobile products and functions, they can directly enter the inquiry or even action stage (receiving coupons, making appointments for offline test drives, directly booking purchases, etc.). This further advances the value of cognition and maximizes the value brought by new searches.

In the past, searches were all about people looking for products, which was difficult and complicated. With the combination of "search after viewing + interest search", the path from user cognition to trial has become shorter, and the chance of conversion has become greater.

3. How can car brands use new search to do marketing well?

From a strategic perspective, no matter what marketing methods automobile brands use to improve performance, they must have a long-term business awareness. Based on a set of data from Big Data, if you make a comparison among automobile brands, you will find that the effects of intermittent marketing for short-term purposes are completely different from those of marketing for long-term benefits. The brand influence of the latter can be increased by more than 120%, and the brand favorability is about 1.8 times higher than the former. Combined with new search, it can better exert the power of long-term operations.

Therefore, I would suggest that while car brands pay attention to the value of new searches, they must also pay attention to the role of search in the overall brand building, communicate with consumers in a more efficient way, and use integrated marketing to continuously influence consumer attention in order to achieve continuous results. Lao Zhao gave some suggestions to automobile brands from four aspects: traffic management, position management, content management and business management.

3.1 Focus on content capabilities and create a complete content system

The biggest difference between new search and traditional search is that it is inspired by content. The main genre is video content, and many users will watch the video before searching. If you look at these three points carefully, you will find that content management is the top priority in new search.

There are many competing products of automobile brands. If automobile brands want to strengthen user interest and deeply cultivate target users, then they must pay attention to the influence of content and create a relatively complete content system, such as different combinations of their own Blue V + Star Map Expert KOL + dealer production + amateur users, as well as matching content areas, laying out high-quality materials, leveraging hot content and other operational means, such as taking over hot spots and long-term activities, and strengthening the display of high-quality content on the site.

The content management of automobile brands includes the following aspects:

1) Collaboration with experts

The influencers that brands put on their huge star maps are part of the creation of the brand’s content system. Experts can help car brands to endorse their products, and users will actively search for products after viewing the expert’s content, which will also create a mutual superposition effect. This is a very important part of car brands initiating topic hype. High-quality expert works are also an important part of receiving search traffic.

2) Platform users spontaneously produce content related to car brands

The highlights of the car brand are the key to the spontaneous production of content by platform users. If there are enough highlights, it will trigger a large number of platform users to follow up. Combined with national tasks, challenges and other interactive gameplay, more ordinary users and brand dealers can be involved to form a high-quality content matrix, which will help the car brand to undertake searches and can also shorten the link to dealers to improve the efficiency of the back-end link.

3) Search and display materials

Search display materials can be the works of experts mentioned above, or self-made ones such as brand TVC. The core is the relevance between the search terms and the video creativity. Keywords and product highlights should be clearly presented, and brand words should be added to improve relevance.

Secondly, the video content itself must meet the triangle of user needs in order to make them more likely to convert through search.

Finally, there is the ability to update materials. If the update of materials cannot keep up, it will affect the effectiveness of both brand and bidding search marketing. Maintaining stable and high-quality updates is the guarantee of success.

4) Live broadcast

Live streaming itself is also a very important content for promoting content. However, there are some pain points for car brands to do live broadcasts. For example, it is difficult to inform users in advance and make reservations. One is to spend more money to buy traffic, and the other is to efficiently attract customers who have been reached in the past. When the new Wuling Hongguang car was launched, it was linked with the preheating communication through the search live broadcast product special + live broadcast reservation H5 to form a complete live broadcast chain [preheating->live broadcast reservation->user recall->live broadcast viewing]. During the launch of the live broadcast brand zone, the number of fans increased by 55,000, and the search volume increased by 99% compared with before the launch of the live broadcast brand zone.

3.2 Combining exposure traffic with new searches to create a traffic spiral

If car brands want to use new searches to carry out marketing, they also need to solve the traffic problem. Although content is the biggest new feature of new search, it does not mean that new search can be done well with content alone. The problem of traffic flow and the scale of exposure traffic will affect the overall effect.

3.2.1 Exposure traffic and search term layout

For example, when a car brand launches a new car or has an important public relations event, it will use multiple channels and platforms such as variety show sponsorship, offline outdoor large-screen billboards, online event marketing and opening screen exposure to reach users. Users will generate cognition based on the content they are exposed to and search for further information on Douyin or Toutiao. Therefore, we need to plan the content in advance for the key words and car brands that they may search for, and know what content to show to users when they search for brand words, product words, and event words respectively, in order to influence them.

Car brands must have the ability to mine search terms. First of all, car brands should pay attention to relevant keyword recommendations: Similar to the keyword prompts provided in the search drop-down box, keyword extraction and recommendations are based on the search needs of huge engine users, so we can record these keywords for the layout of search results for live broadcasts and short videos.

Secondly, even when using paid search ads, content platform searches should still focus on long-tail traffic words. If 1,000 words are laid out, and each word is read once every two days on average, the reading volume of 1,000 words is 500 per day. These traffics are accurate and are likely to generate conversions. Therefore, car brands should pay attention to the mining of long-tail traffic words. However, we need to calculate the cost of 1,000 words and when we can recover it. Short video platforms still need to take steps to spread high-quality content, and the cost of content production is somewhat higher than the cost of articles.

3.2.2 Acceptance of search requirements

Unlike fast-moving consumer goods, automobile brands generally do not have shopping carts on Douyin. They focus more on collecting user leads. Generally, there are no results such as products displayed. Instead, they focus more on user-generated content and search advertising. Therefore, car brands need to work hard on these two aspects.

For user-generated content, try to include keywords set by the car brand. You can guide users to join based on the selling points/highlights/topics sorted out by the brand itself, combined with national tasks. The collection title, video title, topic, cover quality, content quality, and account weight will all have an impact on the inclusion of search results.

Let’s focus on how search advertising works. For brands, it is simple to operate, cost-effective, and can get a relatively high search result position by spending a small amount of money. Let’s look at two typical scenarios: search bidding advertising and the combination of new search and information flow advertising.

1) Search bidding ads

The first user scenario is to directly use search bidding ads to meet user search needs. When doing search bidding advertising, the system will not simply show the results that the brand that spends more money wants to users just because of which car brand has more money. Instead, the system hopes that the information users see is the useful information they really need, rather than disorderly interruptions. Another point is that the platform hopes to help brands find users who are easier to convert and improve marketing efficiency, which is also the best solution for the platform's revenue. Therefore, search bidding ads also sort search results based on ECPM, but before that, they must be triggered, filtered, and relevance matched based on the keywords searched by the user.

Now that we know the core formula of paid search advertising, we know the direction we should work towards if we want to have the opportunity to appear in search results. We should focus on three aspects:

• Setting up an advertising plan

When setting up a search advertising plan, avoid insufficient account budget or too narrow audience targeting.

• Quality of creatives

The quality of the material determines eCTR*eCVR. So what factors determine the quality of the material? The cover, title, layout, labels assigned by the system, topics, quality of the landing page, etc. will all affect the quality of the material.

• Advertising Bid

There is no need to say much about advertising bids. If the plan does not work, the advertising bid may be one of the influencing factors, and the bid may be too low.

2) Combination of new search and information flow advertising

Great Wall Euler has made a very clever combination of bidding information flow and search, with the aim of further exploring the value of traffic, reducing backend costs, and improving overall conversion efficiency. Here are a few key points to mention:

1) Great Wall Ora has actually been running bidding ads all year round to collect sales leads, using information flow as a tool to actively find people;

2) Treat new searches as passive traffic to attract potential users, so that you can cover potential users that are not found in the information flow;

3) With the back-end conversion tool, when the user fills out the form, three most suitable dealers under ORA will be automatically generated for the user to choose from, which greatly improves the efficiency of follow-up of leads;

The efficiency of leads obtained through the new search is as high as 80%, and Great Wall Ora customers are very satisfied with the results.

In addition, the new search can also cooperate with Bytedance to meet users' search needs. If keywords are set when setting up the Bytedance delivery plan, targeted groups will get search results when searching for such keywords, which is very helpful for attracting traffic to the live broadcast room. I will not go into details here.

3.3 Maintain brand position and focus on private domain accumulation

How to avoid the loss of brand users is an issue that every car brand has to consider. Car brands can use new search to protect their users from the following two perspectives.

3.3.1 Maintaining brand position and positive search results

First of all, if car brands want to maintain their own brands, they should start from the following four aspects

1) Automobile brands can effectively prevent the loss of natural traffic by opening brand areas on Douyin and Toutiao in a timely manner. After Lexus opened dual brand zones on Douyin and Toutiao, it effectively avoided traffic losses of 18.7% and successfully built a brand moat.

2) The brand’s authority must be maintained. However, this authority cannot be achieved on its own, but must be endorsed by a large number of KOLs. When searching, users are very likely to find a KOL’s opinions on car brands and products, which are more authoritative when spoken by a third party.

3) Brands should ensure that the search results have a positive rate, preferably 100% positive results. Any negative review will affect consumer decision-making; even if negative content appears, it should not appear in the first few pages of search results;

4) Setting up a brand zone can effectively occupy the space. When Douyin users see this brand zone for the first time, they are more likely to have a strong impression of the brand. Lexus took advantage of this and made customized development on the page.

3.3.2 Pay attention to the continuous accumulation of private domain traffic

The second dimension is to pay attention to the brand’s own private domain and continue to accumulate fans. The new search can not only help brands recall users through functions such as brand zones, but also help users retain fans on corporate accounts. Moreover, user stickiness and loyalty are higher than fans from other channels.

Lexus has done a very good job in this regard. After paying attention to the overall development trend of search, they opened brand areas on Douyin and Toutiao. Through data analysis, we found that opening brand zones created a lot of in-depth value.

1) The first value is efficient increase in followers. Why does it increase followers? When people search for Lexus on Douyin, the account will appear, including on Toutiao. The brand area that can be searched not only has new product TVCs, but also direct links to official websites, test drive reservations and other high-frequency demand information. In addition, Lexus’ Douyin corporate account was also displayed at the front of the first screen, helping the Lexus Blue V account increase its followers by 13 times. With a private domain, Lexus can conduct secondary marketing to fans through video content and brand live broadcasts.

2) The second value is the value of planting grass. When a user searches for the Lexus brand on Douyin, Douyin will assume that the user is interested in such products and will recommend related content to users who have searched for the brand, thereby enhancing the user's understanding and cognition of the product and brand. Recently, Lao Zhao has been paying more attention to Volvo. He has done related searches on Douyin and can often see content related to Volvo.

3) The third value is the incremental increase in native exposure content. When car brands use influencers to promote their products, the high-quality content from influencers can attract users to actively search, and the system will also display other high-quality content to users, increasing the exposure of the content, thus creating a mutual superposition effect.

3.4 Make good use of search advertising brand zones to capture high-potential groups

Whether it is other advertisements on Bytedance or new searches, the core purpose is to help everyone grow their business. Let’s first look at a case study of Guazi Used Cars.

In the past, when we bought things, we followed the logic of people looking for goods. The entrance was very deep. We had to search for brands or anchors, enter the corresponding homepage, then click on the window, browse and find products, and finally make a purchase. The emergence of new search makes users' shopping process shorter. Guazi Used Cars provides users with a lot of convenience through its brand areas. First of all, when customers see brand advertisements, they can easily download the Guazi Used Cars APP, and at the same time, they can be guided to pay attention to the brand number of Guazi Used Cars. Automobile brands can make full use of the convenience provided by the brand area and design the links of the sub-menus under the brand advertisements to allow users to easily find test drives, official websites, news and other information, thereby stimulating users' deep perception.

Conclusion

New search is a master key and a marketing hub for the integrated marketing of automobile brands. It can help automobile brands solve challenges ranging from exposure, user awareness, mental conversion, and business operations. It has become a very important option for integrated marketing of automobile brands. Lao Zhao hopes to share his understanding so that more car brands can understand new search and make good use of new search to continuously bring marketing value to car brands.

Author: Lao Zhao Marketing Notes

Source: Lao Zhao's Marketing Notes