Does paying by transaction really save car dealers money?

Mondo Cars Updated on 2024-01-29

In the field of auto marketing, lead marketing has started very early, but for a long time, there have been a series of pain points in auto dealers from lead acquisition, lead cleaning to lead conversion. In today's highly competitive car buyer's market, how to manage the leads well is the first operational priority of the car dealership.

In the traditional CPT (Cost Per Time) model, when users have the need to buy a car, they will retain capital on the vertical platform of the car, and the car dealer will pay these platforms to purchase the user's information, and then the salesperson will contact and follow up these users until the transaction.

The disadvantages of this model are: the number of clues is large, but the foaming is serious, and a large number of water-filled clues affect the identification efficiency, and it is difficult to really drive salesThe same leads may also be distributed to different distributors, which not only has a low conversion rate, but also increases the burden on the business.

Cars are not as simple as FMCG purchases, but have to go through a long process, in addition to the pre-invitation to the store, but also through the test drive experience, but also involves finance, insurance, boutique and other derivative services, which is much more complex than the traditional sense of e-commerce.

Based on these industry issues, UnderstandChedi launched the CPS model in 2021 and introduced it to the whole industry in 2023. CPS stands for Cost Per Sales, which calculates advertising expenses according to the actual number of products sold to achieve accurate measurement of transaction costs.

At present, there are more than 26,000 CPS merchants and more than 110 brands. Among them, the overall sales contribution of the head dealers in the car emperor has increased by more than 50%. In 2024, we will upgrade the products and services of the CPS model, focusing on two key words - efficiency improvement and burden reduction, aiming to save money for brands and dealers with real results.

In the view of Mu Yinfei, general manager of Jutong car dealers and effect products, the purpose of upgrading CPS is first of all to allow dealers to invest less energy and generate more transactionsIn addition, the CPS model has been running for a year, hoping to copy the good part to the entire industry after productization and informatization, and help the entire industry to make corresponding improvements in the efficiency improvement of the post-link.

01. CPS scenario: make unilateral capital retention into two-party interaction

The shortcomings of the CPT model have been criticized by the majority of dealers, that is, a large number of low-quality leads have caused ineffective follow-up. In the CPS scenario, one of the biggest changes compared with the original CPT model is that the way of interacting with users has changed from the past to online real-time IM consultation.

The basic model of the traditional IM communication model is "one customer to one person", and this "one person" is the online sales staff or sales consultant in the store.

The dealer personnel of this model should not only do the showroom reception, but also do a series of online actions. **During the peak period of consultation, there will be a certain amount of communication pressure for offline personnel.

According to Lu Lansheng, strategic planning manager of Ju Che dealers, in 2024, Che Di will launch the DCC workbench. It is equivalent to a communication platform, from "one customer to one person" to "one customer to one store", the online sales manager or marketing manager of the 4S store can be dynamically allocated according to the actual personnel situation of the store in the DCC workbench, so that the customer's consulting needs can be met more quickly.

The DCC workbench will also be equipped with a series of intelligent functions including industry knowledge base, automatic response and intelligent customer service, which can help the terminal quickly meet the needs of users while accelerating the overall communication efficiency.

The purpose of this is to allow users to do better interaction with merchants at a low cost, and at the same time allow merchants to provide more services, thereby reducing the user's decision-making chain and decision-making cost.

In the era of mobile Internet, the core demand of users is instant gratification. When the user clicks on the connected channel, they can immediately have a direct connection with the store, and the trust relationship is built in advance.

02 "Label" user data

In the past, after the dealer got a clue, he didn't know what the customer's real intention was, whether he wanted to see the car first, or had already selected the modelDealers just blindly invite, but it is difficult to increase the transaction rate.

In the CPS mode, users need to be tagged in the process of completing conversion. In Mu Yinfei's view, one of the biggest advantages of the byte system is the labeling of user behavior.

Labeling, in fact, is to clarify the needs of users and analyze them.

For example, although the customer has retained the capital, but at what point in the car purchase process, just to see the car, or want to test drive the vehicle, or have already selected the model, only need to see which store has the current car, which store has a greater discount, these need to be understood by the dealer.

Through a series of marketing actions, Chedi has pre-positioned transaction services, such as providing in-store coupons, after-sales coupons, test drive coupons, and corresponding payment coupons.

Confirm the users with clear needs in advance, fully understand where the customer has reached in the car purchase decision, and clarify the "label", which can not only greatly reduce the repeated operations of subsequent sales consultants, but also help dealers keep these high-willingness customers in their stores. After the customer needs are clear, the dealer will do the follow-up purchase communication.

03 Thousands of stores and thousands of situations, how to send clues to be accurate?

* In the process of requesting distribution, the actual situation of the dealer terminal is actually quite complicated, and each store has differences in local brand competition, market share, store personnel professionalism, management level, management efficiency, etc.

Thousands of stores and thousands of situations, and then match the actual situation of "thousands of people and thousands of faces" of users buying cars, which will bring more complex changes.

Theoretically, lead distribution models tend to push leads to stores that are close to each other and have better service levels and response times throughout the region.

But in fact, there will be many niche differences in each user's car purchase focus. For example, a customer of a luxury brand may be more concerned about being able to mention the car right away, rather than caring about the distance.

Therefore, the best way to distribute leads is to match user needs with the most suitable stores. That is, in the front-end recommendation logic, give a higher weight to the corresponding merchants who have existing car declarations in the store and recommend customers to this merchant.

For example, when a customer retains capital at a certain point in time and in a certain area, it is necessary to first look at whether the customer is retaining capital during working hours, or during rest time, whether he is retaining capital at work or at home, what is the customer's trajectory, what is the most likely demand, based on multiple factors, and then through interaction to determine which store is suitable to push the customer to.

In addition, due to the different overall vehicle allocation mechanism, the inventory of different models in each store is differentDue to the relationship between stores and banks, the implementation of the overall financial, replacement and other policies of the main engine factory will be different at different stages. Combined with the situation of the store and the tendency of the user itself, we can do more accurate distribution.

The CPS model can help merchants to identify the most valuable users or the most suitable users on the front end, so as to improve the matching efficiency.

Not only that, but we have also cooperated with nearly 20 car brands in data co-construction. After the data is co-built, there is a deep transfer or back-link data, which can be obtained forward through the algorithm, and which users' tags are more conducive to conversion. In other words, it is possible to capture more accurate users and clues through data co-construction.

According to Lu Lansheng, in the past two years, Knowing Chedi has tried to customize this lead distribution model and front-end customer acquisition model for thousands of stores in more than 50 cities across the country, which has actually brought more than 20% increase in store arrivals, verifying the feasibility of this direction.

04 Where is the weak point of the dealer in the conversion of leads?

In fact, in the process of transformation, service is even more important than simply retaining capital, because service is to treat the customer as a real customer and a person, rather than treating him as a clue or a mobile phone number, which is very important.

In the transformation, Mu Yinfei found that the weak point of the dealer is also obvious

First of all, the dealer's choice of delivery channel is not clear. For a long time, dealers are using a more crude way of delivery, anyway, there are manufacturers to write-off, spend this money is over, but when the effect does not meet expectations, it will be found that in the current market environment, dealers need to see which channels are effective.

Second, online service capabilities are uneven. For example, invitation, the reason why the new ** conversion efficiency will be higher is because of interaction. From the user's point of view, it must be better to have interaction than to fill in the form unilaterally. Today's car buyers are increasingly accepting of online interaction, which puts forward requirements for the ability of online services.

Thirdly, whether the transaction service is in place. The final transaction is still in the exhibition hall under the **, but are the offline dealers really in place?For example, many of the dealers' GP3 (comprehensive gross profit margin of vehicle sales) rely on financial derivatives, but not all sales consultants can understand the financial business.

Therefore, from channel selection to the invitation process behind it, and then to all aspects of offline conversion, dealers have a certain room for improvement.

05 CPS is a weight, measure and not a member settlement method

For dealers, CPS is more like a measure and not just a way to settle for members, as most people understand.

For example, two stores of the same brand of a group that understands Chedi's in-depth cooperation in a C-level city, one in the east of the city and the other in the west of the city. All the process data operated by the two stores were tracked accordingly, and the CPS difference between the two stores was 50%.

Why is the gap so big?

Understand Chedi tracked about 600 node indicators, and found that the cost ratio of the lead delivery channels of these two stores is different, the invitation ability of DCC is different, the conversion skills and reception capacity of the store are different, and the conversion of derivative products and income is also different, and the difference is very large. The results showed that stores with higher ratings had lower CPS.

Although the scale of profit should be used to measure the operation of a 4S store, in the face of the current market, dealers should be more concerned about reducing costs, which is a higher priority for dealers.

Returning to the essence of CPS, it measures whether the channel can generate better value in the whole transaction chain. If the cost can be lowered, it will be a better channel for dealers.

06 How to help dealers reduce their burden?

According to reports, in 2024, the car emperor will focus on the terminal to do the landing burden reduction action, the first is the rule to reduce the burden.

When it comes to burden reduction, we must first mention assessment. Compared to the CPT model, CPS actually increases the cost and workload. If according to the idea of CPT mode, a form can send clues, and there is no need to pay attention to the so-called back-link, including data backhaul, then the improvement of the transaction rate cannot be guaranteed.

After a year of full operation, the CPS model has discovered some situations, what kind of online service is better, from the most basic online polite language, to a series of invitation words, to some deeper capabilities, it should actually have a standard.

Therefore, in the CPS mode, the company has established an assessment model with service scores as the core. That is, according to the key indicators that affect the transaction conversion, the dealer is assessed whether it is in place.

In the past year, the service score of Chedi CPS has increased from 10 continues to iterate to 4Version 0.

In Mu Yinfei's view, the CPS model has become more and more clear to find out which key actions and which key indicators can really be related to the actual transaction conversion of the terminal, and constantly make adjustments.

In this process, in fact, around the entire assessment rules and corresponding assessment items, we are constantly doing subtraction, the purpose is to promote the terminal to focus on doing things that can really improve transaction income.

In the future, we will further simplify the service assessment system and focus the rules on the indicators that can best correlate with the actual service transformation of the terminal. Compared to the current service points 40 model, the overall burden reduction in the weight of the score is more than 20%.

At the same time, we will also build rules with manufacturers to provide exemption items for head dealers, such as the reduction of nearly 2 3 assessment items for head merchants, and 1 3 reduction for head and waist merchants, the core purpose is to enable these excellent stores in the industry to travel lightly to create more increments.

For example, many dealers with good service already have good service Xi, such as a high timely response rate of im, and the overall polite language is very good. For these dealers, there is no need to increase the so-called assessment burden, but let them travel lightly.

Not only that, in 2024, we will also launch a new giant car SaaS platform, that is, a data management background, which provides a full range of tool backgrounds around the data aggregation and reporting analysis of the digital management of the entire store, as well as the support of corresponding analysis tools, so as to minimize the original human pressure brought by the data aggregation process and the risk of data inaccuracy caused by the reporting work.

07 Summary

In the current market environment, the pressure on the operation of automobile dealers is huge, and in terms of marketing, both manufacturers and dealers hope to spend the cost on the cutting edge and pursue a more extreme cost performance.

For service providers, only by constantly adapting to the needs of terminals for marketing channels and online services under the new model, keeping pace with the times, helping merchants to focus on the core energy of getting transaction income in a real sense, and based on the real cost-effective output, can manufacturers clarify the real contribution of platforms and channels, so that dealers can truly improve efficiency and reduce burden, and let dealers really save money.

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