The automotive industry is undergoing a profound transformation with electrification and intelligence as the core.
According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the market share of new energy vehicles in the first 10 months of this year was 304%, of which the market share of new energy vehicles reached 33 in October5%。The recent debate between Xpeng and Huawei over AEB highlights the popularity of intelligent driving. According to IDC**, by 2024, more than 71% of new cars shipped worldwide will be equipped with intelligent and connected systems, and the market will gradually mature.
At the same time as technological change, the marketing model of car companies is also changing.
The marketing of car companies has reached a crossroads of change.
For a long time, most automobile manufacturers have adopted the "Y-shaped sales funnel model", that is, through the promotion of public domain and private domain traffic, expecting prospective car owners to stay and then enter the 4S store offline, place an order, and make a deal. In terms of communication channels, most of them adopt the method of "hard bombing + automobile vertical media cooperation".
But in recent years, the way has changed a lot.
On the one hand, yesFrom the perspective of the development stage of the industry, when new energy vehicles and smart cars are increasingly on the stage, these new things need a long time to popularize science, especially after discussion and even controversy to get the attention and recognition of users. For example, the recent public relations battle between He Xiaopeng and Yu Chengdong about AEB has attracted many people in the automotive industry and many KOLs to join, which has greatly increased users' attention to AEB, active safety and other topics.
On the other hand, the path of users to buy a car is also changing. j.d.Power's "2023 China Sales and Service Satisfaction Study" shows that73% of consumers have already thought about the model brand they want to buy before buying a car, and finally buy the brand of the model, an increase of 5 from 20223 percentage points, more and more consumers have made decisions through online browsing, social discussions, or remote consultation with dealers before entering the store. This means that car companies must pre-empt user interactions, especially through continuous topic dissemination.
In addition, the uniqueness of the automobile category also determines the importance of brand building. Cars are high customer unit price products, and have typical family decision-making characteristics, users will rarely buy impulsively, usually do more homework before making a decision, such as consulting friends, browsing the web or related reviews, etc., users in addition to paying attention to specific models, but also pay more attention to the brand. Especially when Gen Z, who pays more attention to emotional value, has become the main group of car buyers, the way of brand communication is also changing a lot. It turns outWhoever can empathize with Gen Z will become their preferred car brandThis is a good illustration of the fact that luxury brands such as BBA in the fuel era are being challenged by cutting-edge brands such as Ideal, NIO, Xpeng, and Wenjie, which pay more attention to social interaction.
Many changes have come together to show that:In the context of the deep changes in the pattern of the automobile industry, the reconstruction of channels, and the changes in user needs, car companies that are becoming more and more involuted in marketing urgently need to carry out marketing changes with the times.
How to make a change?Huawei is a good reference, the return of its 5G mobile phones, has triggered waves of topic discussions, accumulated a strong emotional potential energy, this potential energy not only inspired the hot sales of Huawei Mate60 series mobile phones, but also transferred to its empowered Wenjie, Zhijie and other models, to promote the hot sales of Huawei smart cars.
This fully shows that emotional empathy can stimulate consumers' attention and recognition more than rational function display and traffic operation in many cases. Human-centered, continuous topic resonance with users, and obtaining their emotional resonance may be a new path for automobile marketing in the era of great change.
The right posture to stimulate "emotional potential energy".
Since emotional potential energy is so important, what can car companies do to empathize with consumers and stimulate their emotional potential energy?
We might as well start with the ideal example, the ideal has sprung up, in addition to the product accurately hitting the pain points of home users, it is very good at stimulating emotional potential energy through topic marketing. Li Xiang, who is familiar with social **, knows how to create topics very well, and makes the ideal on the hot search again and again, such as the recent spread of the ideal mega can be called a classic textbook, Li Xiang first complained about the rendering on Weibo: "If it is really designed like this bird, I will kill the design team and jump off the building by the way", and then the ideal mega released was the same as the rendering, which inspired a group of KOLs to join the discussion, and even some good people made various PS pictures, and finally Li Xiang "fulfilled his promise" , posted a paragraph on Weibo about AI face swapping and jumping off the building**....The topic is created again and again, and the ideal mega has become the center of everyone's heated discussion.
This kind of marketing method is familiar, and it is very similar to the way many mobile phone manufacturers play:Constantly create topics - spark discussions, so as to continue to stimulate the emotional value of users.
The main communication position of this style of play must be both a content field and a social field, and only in this way can a "national discussion square" be formed, so that the topic can be broken through "hot spots + social". Taking Weibo as an example, as a people-centric social platform, whether it is an executive of an automobile company, a KOL in the car circle, or a user who is interested in the car, or even an official account of a car company with personality attributes, it is easy to connect, discuss and even quarrel, thus constantly pushing up the popularity of the topic. According to statistics, nearly 500 executives of car companies have settled on Weibo, and they are industry experts themselves, who can show up and popularize new energy, intelligence and other related topics in person. For example, in the recent AEB war, many car company executives went down in person and popularized topics such as AEB, intelligent driving, and active safety on Weibo, turning the public relations war into a technology popularization war.
The example of Geely Galaxy fully reflects the power of the emotional value brought by "square + social". When Geely officially announced the high-end brand "Galaxy" in February this year, an ordinary warm-up poster sparked a warm interaction between brands and netizens on Weibo, and the Chinese automotive industry gathered together to present itself in an unprecedented way, and related topics were read more than 1300 million. Similarly, there is also the collective linkage of China's automobile circle triggered by BYD's 5 million new energy vehicles off the assembly line.
Obviously,This kind of strong emotional potential energy is incomparable to simple live broadcast and grass planting, which can not only arouse huge attention in a short period of time, realize the topic of breaking the circle, and cheer for China's automobile industry in a group, but also reflect the upgrading of the pattern of car circle marketing, and drive the improvement of the overall brand reputation of Chinese automobiles.
Emotional potential energy can not only enhance brand power, but also become a lever to leverage the attention of new cars. In June this year, on the eve of Xiaopeng G6, Xiaopeng officially announced that Lin Zhiying became a brand friend, because this is Lin Zhiying's return after the Tesla accident, so it quickly became the focus of the topic on Weibo, and the momentum of "re-love" is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Since then, through the first experience of intelligent assisted driving in Guangzhou, "The Star of the Sheep" took advantage of the situation, warmed up the listing conference, and released and delivered vlogs, Lin Zhiying and Xpeng G6 continued to cause topics, with more than 1.1 billion Weibo-related readings, and the latest news is that Xpeng G6 won more than 200,000 Chinese brand pure electric SUVs in November.
This new marketing method has opened the eyes of many car companies, especially traditional car companies, and many of them are still in the era of short, live broadcast and even vertical media, and there are many misunderstandings about marketing reform.
The biggest misunderstanding is that the hottest thing at the moment is short ** and live broadcast, as long as you actively participate in it, you can solve the marketing problem. In fact, although the short ** traffic is very large, the cost is also very high, and the short ** and live broadcast have relatively high operating costs, such as shooting, anchoring, editing, streaming and other aspects of the cost. In the investigation, the author found that the establishment of a live broadcast team composed of 2 operations and 3 sales, including personnel wages, equipment investment, online drainage and other aspects of the annual investment of at least 500,000 yuan, the average cost of a single car leads is as high as tens of thousands of yuan, and the input and output are far from matching.
Moreover, although short ** and live broadcast are popular, they are not necessarily suitable for the automotive category. Relevant reports show that the effect of live broadcast in the automotive field is limited, and most of the live broadcast ** has less than 200 people, and the effect of turning fans is weak. The reason for this situation has a lot to do with the general low-end of the live online shopping crowd, and the research report of China Merchants ** pointed out that the online consumption capacity of the live online shopping crowd is less than 1,000 yuan, accounting for 768% share. A live broadcast may have a large audience, but the proportion of those who really have the strength and intention to buy a car is very low. As the top streamer of live broadcasting, Li Jiaqi once sold cars for a certain brand's live broadcast, with a peak number of 14.86 million, but the final transaction volume turned out to be 0 is a good illustration. The live broadcast may be more suitable for the new car launch scene at the moment.
What's more,Short**, live broadcast is not social, more of a broadcast-style one-way transmission, can not form a discussion field. In contrast, Weibo, as a square in the public domain, can form a chain reaction of topic propagation in people's discussions. Of course, any platform has its own advantages and disadvantages, and it also has its own application scenarios. For car companies, they should be good at combining the characteristics of different platforms to carry out combined marketing, such as:"One micro, one short and one vertical" ("Weibo + short** + vertical media") is a better combination. Specifically, it is to build a continuous discussion field with the help of Weibo's "social + hot spots" to continuously stimulate the emotional value of users;At the same time, with the help of the short ** platform, the functions and experience of the model are displayed in detail, so that prospective car owners can get an immersive experience;And then through live broadcast, vertical media to complete the door, to achieve clue retention.
Postscript: Car companies should pay attention to "emotional potential energy".
All in all, whether it is new energy vehicles and smart cars as new things that need to be popularized through discussion, or changes in users' car purchase paths need to strengthen the occupation of users' minds, or the category of automobiles needs to keep pace with the times in brand communication in the face of Generation Z, which pays more attention to emotional value, it all points to a fact:An automobile brand, while rationally attaching importance to refined user operation and transformation, should also pay attention to emotional interaction with users, and constantly create topics to stimulate users' emotional value.
Even to paraphrase a famous quote from the Internet:For a brand, the most terrible thing is not even negative, but "no one discusses".
Recently, I observed an example that confirms this.
Not long ago,Huawei released a ZhijieS7Parking substitute driving**:In the state of unmanned driving,Zhijies7Skillfully complete a series of operations such as giving way to pedestrians、Reversing avoidance、Extreme car、Automatic parking、Automatic driving,It's magical,Quickly appeared on Weibo hot search,It has become a hot topic。
Ideal quickly followed up and released a segment of its own Ad Max 30 real shots of unmanned valet parking**. It can be seen from ** that the technology can automatically realize the conventional processes such as entering the basement and passing through the turnstile, and it also demonstrates the intelligent unmanned operation on the way to valet parking such as meeting the car and reversing the car.
Two**, two topics have become popular: Huawei unmanned valet parking*** and ideal unmanned valet parking**, which also quickly broke the circle through the discussion of the topic, once again strengthening the leading position of the two manufacturers in intelligent driving, and also adding a lot of points to their brands. On the contrary, some other brands that once featured intelligence have been weakened by not seizing the hot topic into this discussion forum.
This example illustratesIn the era of great changes in the automobile industry, car companies not only need to grasp technology, have truly leading technological innovation, create "technical potential energy", but also need to grasp marketing, be good at creating hot spots, and create "emotional potential energy" with the help of topic discussions, and constantly strengthen their brand power.
Grasp with both hands, both hands should be hard.