Automobile digital marketing process!

In car companies, marketing and sales often fight with each other. Marketing says that they have received so many leads but the sales conversion rate is too low. When sales leads are not enough, they say that marketing provides too few leads. When there are many leads, they say that the leads provided by marketing are of low quality.

Bosses are often fooled by a few simple numbers in marketing or sales. They always feel that there is a problem but don't know who is right or wrong. They only know that they have spent a lot of advertising and event fees but have not increased sales much. In fact, the boss considers not only these issues, but also procurement/production volume (OEM), inventory/in-transit volume, delivery volume, and market share, all of which directly affect cash flow and profits.

In the past, bosses saw a form like this:

Such unstructured data is a challenge for the boss: it cannot present cause-and-effect relationships, nor can it quickly analyze the problem points and where to spend money to increase sales, and it cannot resolve the contradiction between marketing and sales.

1. Create a dynamic balance between marketing and sales systems

How to truly balance the marketing and sales dynamics so that every penny spent has high output is a good proposition. In November 2018, when a CRM project of a well-known automobile brand was coming to an end, a classmate of mine who was in charge of the operation and management of the automobile company asked me: Production and sales coordination and marketing coordination are very difficult points for brand marketing companies, and marketing coordination is more difficult than production and sales coordination. How to solve this problem?

This question has actually been bothering me for a long time. I have been thinking about it but have never given it deep reasoning.

In 2019, we finally calmed down and took a result-oriented approach, breaking down key businesses, integrating result indicators and process indicators, and presenting common indicators in a structured manner. What prompted me to reason deeply is that once marketing synergy is solved, the overall sales increase will be very obvious, especially for brand car companies with 200 dealers.

2. Dynamically balanced marketing collaboration model

Explanation of main indicators:

• Market share: This is the core indicator to measure the brand manager or the person in charge of the bicycle department, and it is also the main indicator to measure the regional market performance. Market share is divided into regional markets and segmented markets (own + competitors). For managers, the main thing to look at is the share of segmented markets.
• Vehicle delivery volume: Only when the vehicles are delivered will there be license plate volume and market share. The main factors affecting the delivery rate are: the accuracy of the forecast, whether there is enough money to purchase from the OEM, and whether the OEM has the cars. The first two factors assess the store’s operational capabilities. It will also involve the order delivery cycle and delivery rate in OTD, which assesses the operational capabilities of the OEM.
• Conversion rate: Different car companies have different definitions of conversion rate. The numerator may be the number of transactions (leads) or the number of orders (leads), but it all depends on the overall marketing + sales. If you only look at the conversion capacity of sales, it is based on the number of leads that should be followed up, not the number of effective leads. It is also necessary to explain here: transaction volume and order volume refer to the number of leads, not the number of transactions or order volume. In the case where a customer buys multiple cars, if the number of cars or the order volume is used, the conversion rate will increase suddenly, affecting normal forecasts, leading to blind optimism and affecting the achievement of sales targets.

If the boss often looks at such structured indicators, there will be a quarrel between marketing and sales! Moreover, these goals will be clearly broken down and everyone will focus on their own indicators.

3. If you just pile up indicators, it is not considered deep reasoning

The value of dynamic balance is revealed when setting a goal or adjusting a quantity. It can be deduced in forward and reverse directions.

Assumption: The conversion rate is fixed over a period of time. Increasing the amount of valid leads will increase sales.

Assumption: The amount of new valid leads in a fixed period is within a certain range. Improving the conversion ability of sales consultants will increase the conversion rate, shorten the transaction cycle, and increase sales is inevitable. Similarly, increasing the number of test drives will also increase conversion rates.

From the above two assumptions, it can be seen that after tracking the data for three months, the boss will be very clear about whether to invest in advertising to attract new leads, organize activities to promote transactions, or improve the conversion ability of sales consultants at each stage. By understanding the cost of attracting new customers or the ROI of an activity based on past data, you will know whether the investment is worthwhile.

For the Vice President of Sales/Vice President of Marketing, if they want to achieve a certain sales target, by comparing with the current actual situation, they will know what type of activities are needed to achieve various indicators and thus complete the sales target.

This, in addition to satisfying the above-mentioned decision-making needs motivated by goal achievement, can also support the realization of deeper management intentions, which I will leave for everyone to deduce on their own.

Appendix: The 4 yardsticks in the marketing field test the boss’s decision-making ability, the marketing’s global operation ability, the sales’ sales management ability, and the consultant’s conversion ability.

Channel contribution evaluation, sales funnel (published, click link)

Author: Wang Jianru

Source: Wang Jianru's Planet B