- The buyer looking for a connected car is about to get lucky. I'm all about a car that's wired for everything.
- Electric cars and hybrids have got to find some design chops. Environmentally attractive, but the wallflower at all the parties.
- Car buying is a year-round sport. Which means auto marketers are always on their toes.
Let's break this down.
The buyer looking for a connected car is about to get lucky
Get this: 65% of consumers would switch car brands to get the technology features they want. When you think about how loyal we tend to be with our cars, this is a pretty fantastic shout-out for integrated technology in the car. The funniest thing about our demand for connected cars? Our number one desire from that technology is streaming music. In the old days we called that "the radio." Even crazier? Twenty-five percent of car buyers would be willing to have in-car advertising in order to pay for basic connectivity. (It's strange to think about paying a fee for our car connectivity, but it will essentially be like paying for internet access at home.)
The connected car market is growing 10 times faster than the overall car market. By 2020, most cars will be built with the necessary hardware to connect to the internet. That's only four years from now! In the meantime, connected cars have a high price tag that makes them inaccessible for most car buyers. This is because it's mostly luxury cars that are going full-connect. In the next few years, connected car technology will become much more accessible.
What this means for auto marketers: Hype the technology features in the cars you're marketing. And be specific. Most people don't know what it means to have a connected car, but they know they want one. A connected car is wired into the internet and allows streaming music. It also can identify traffic signals, congestion and accidents and let the driver know what's coming. It might have front and rear end collision alarm warnings and a fatigue warning device. All of these features can be in your ad copy to draw clicks.
- Younger shoppers trump older shoppers when it comes to hybrid, electric and diesel vehicles, but they don't like their higher price. So even though they would buy one of these cars if they could, they can't afford to. Until our youth start making bank the way our wiser citizens do, it's going to be hard for hybrid and electric cars to get serious traction. Except:
- Auto shoppers want to drive an electric car - but they want it to look good, too. Evidence: Tesla, an electric car, has a waiting list with a quarter of a million people on it, for a car that won't even roll off the production line until late 2017. The Tesla is a sleek, nice-looking car. This is all the excuse electric and hybrid car makers need to shake up their design team.
I'm no expert, but I assume that the reason current hybrids and electric cars (Tesla notwithstanding) look the boring way they do is because of what's under the hood. This is a case where design follows function. We can't be far from the time when this is reversed.
What this means for auto marketers: If you're marketing a hybrid, electric or diesel car, targeting your audience should be your first priority. A buck-shot approach will not work when your audience is so narrow. Paid search marketing lets you choose specific geographic regions, age group and gender to target. Get started with remarketing, to deliver ads to searchers who have already visited your website. Focus ad copy on financing options so your audience is aware of the support available.
Car buying is a year-round sport
When the team at Bing analyzes automotive activity, they break cars into three groups: Luxury, Non-luxury and Online Marketplaces and Dealerships.
For luxury makes, click-through-rate is pretty steady across the year, with a couple of bumps:
Same for non-luxury cars:
What this tells auto marketers is that people are pretty consistently searching for cars throughout the year, and clicking on ads with equal consistency. Happily, the type of ad that has the most influence on the car-shopping process is digital - search engines. Strangely, only 36% of auto marketers in the US use paid search advertising. This is all kinds of unfortunate - unless you're one of those who are already using this platform, in which case you have an automatic advantage over other auto marketers.
What this means for auto marketers: Notwithstanding the moderate surges in auto searches, it's critical that your annual paid search marketing budget be robust throughout the year. In the charts above, you can see where cost per click (CPC) dips. When clicks are less expensive, it's a good time to experiment with some ad copy that you might not ordinarily run. Set up some ad copy tests that will help your campaign evolve with the changing interests of your audience.
In my own search for a new car, I'm definitely wearing a path deep and wide on my search engine. Before long (73.3 days, apparently), I'll find the wheels of my dreams and finally close all those open tabs from my image searches.