Automotive ad campaigns’ performance? A simple solution for car brands to increase leads and conversions

The automotive industry is focused on ad campaign’s performance. And rightly so.

• The 2020 European car market fell by 23.8%. In parallel, the automotive advertising expenditure was forecasted to shrink by 21% in 2020. Although a rebound in automotive ad spending is expected in 2021 and 2022, it will be a long haul to full recovery. 
• Moreover, McKinsey predicts that consumer intent to buy a new car in next 12 months has dropped by 13 percentage points across Europe. Marketing and ads budgets are under pressure. Yet, car sales targets will remain as ambitious as possible despite the circumstances. 

Therefore, the ecosystem (brands and ad/media agencies) are exploring ways to significantly improve automotive ad campaigns’ performance.

How to increase automotive ad campaigns performance?

• On the positive side, we have been been impressed by the creativity shown by brands and their agencies: they have embraced new consumers habits and constraints.  
• Oowever, the car-buying process has faced an accelerated change. Following the tracks of many other verticals, it is now fully embedded into the 21st century: consumers spend more time than ever gathering information and shopping online (with the willingness to complete the entire transaction digitally and take ownership of the car without ever visiting a dealer). 
• Therefore, we are looking at campaigns that translate into better quality leads from their marketing and advertising channels. With a lower cost of acquisition and higher marketing RoI. And last but not least increased conversion rates at brand level.

For all these reasons (campaigns performance, buying-process moving completely online, the dealer role changing), there is a strong incentive to streamline the whole marketing / advertising / shopping experience.

⏩ Yet, there is one innovative angle that has been overlooked.

Agencies and brands have been focusing on design creativity, formats innovation, targeting, segmentation, persona and personalisation… Going beyond and above these techniques, there is one significant innovation in hyper-personalisation that they should explore.         
This relatively simple solution is indeed providing superior results. From our experience, it increases ad campaigns performance (increased CTR and quality leads), and consumer conversion (into sales and revenue), in the +30% to +50% range.

This solution can be applied:

1. On ads only (display and branded content coming top of the mind)
2. On websites only
3. On the whole lead generation and conversion chain (ads + website)
   

The innovative angle – how do consumers make decisions?

There is no such thing as a unique approach to decisions. Every one of us makes decisions following our own process.

Message resonance that leads to consumer’s action   

• If your ad does target consumers with a value proposition and a call to action that don’t resonate with them, they won’t be interested (despite the ad being relevant to them).
  The same issue is true on websites: if the consumer journey is not adjusted to their own buying process and mindset, the experience will be subpar. That means that the excitement non-existent, the connection with this client missed. And the conversion potentially lost, which is unfortunately often the case.       

Different decision-making profiles

• These tailored approach to different buying profiles (buying modalities framework) was explained in a previous paper, where we explored 4 key main decision-making profiles. Also called four distinct buyer types:
  ◘ COMPETITIVE ◘ SPONTANEOUS ◘ METHODICAL ◘ HUMANISTIC

• The speed at which a consumer makes decision (fast vs. slow), and the main driver of this decision (logic or emotion) will determine how they react to your offer: are you dealing with a competitive buyer? A spontaneous one? Someone who is methodical? Or a humanistic type of person?   
  Each of them is likely to react positively to a value proposition and a call to action (or a consumer journey) that is tailored to their profile. Show them an ad designed for another profile, and they are unlikely to take any action.
  This solution proves very effective to boost automotive ads campaigns performance.

Creating these ads that generate resonance and reaction with car buyers

To increase any automotive ads campaign performance, we are mostly focusing on 2 key characteristics of an ad: its value proposition and its call-to-action (note: the visuals could be part of it too).         

Let’s take the example of an ad for an attractive electric vehicle.

You can think of 4 different value propositions that do not appeal in the same way to the 4 profiles:

• 100% tax deductible
• From 39040 €
• Up to 455 km between charges
• Client rating: 9.1/10!

You can also create 4 different CTAs:

• Get an offer
• Call your dealer
• Download the brochure
• Read clients’ reviews

Do they all work? Yes, but not with the same profiles! For example, competitive buyers have made their research before, and are ready to buy if you get in front of them the “best offer” for a product they perceive to be the “best”. On the opposite, for this this same ad, at this moment of their journey, they will be blind to clients’ ratings and reviews.
Automotive ad campaigns performance can be significantly increased (+30% to +50%) by using several variations of a same campaign, served to the right profile.

The automotive website’s consumer journey that resonates and converts:

Consumers are taking an more active than ever role in the car buying process. They usually start their journey online (more than 90% of car buyers go online for information), searching and visiting brands and dealers websites. 

The positive aspect is that automotive brands websites are usually covering all the aspects of the 4 profile, as per the real example below:

They do let you book test drives, call a dealer, download a brochure, see current offers, read reviews, and configure your car: nothing is really missing.

• However, this catch-all menu doesn’t appeal to any specific profiles. The consumer experience is limited. Yet, based on each profile, brands website can easily be optimised by creating personalized landing pages and journeys, leading to much increased excitement and conversion (either online or with a dealer).
• Are there any risks not showing all value propositions and CTA, and instead serving a profile specific journey? There are none, if the consumer profile prediction is made accurately: you will be able to measure the tangible outcomes increase in sales and revenue.

How to implement this solution within your organisation?

There are 2 parts:

1. Analysing and predicting each of these profiles? Access to data is not the issue. The requirement is to understand each consumer behaviour (online) and to translate it into buying profiles.          
2. Creating Value Proposition and CTA that resonate with each decision-making profile.
   

We will show how automotive ad campaigns’ performance can be transformed, in our webinar – 🗓️ Save the date (we don’t do this often!): Thursday 11 March 2021, at 11 am Central European time (that is 10 am London time). You can register here.

Keywords #: hyper personalisation, buyer modalities, conversion rate optimization,

PS: You can’t make this webinar? Do feel free to get in touch with Jean Littolff or Peter Coopmans at Addrelevance.

#Automotive #Personalisation #DigitalAdvertising #ClickThroughRate #AI

The Addrelevance solution (www.addrelevance.ai) significantly increases the impact of digital content/ads, and online conversion (+30 to 50% click-through rate and conversion rate). Their innovative process is unique: powered by Artificial Intelligence, it goes well beyond current advertising targeting, personalisation, and segmentation solutions, by predicting websites visitors’ decision-making profiles.

Addrelevance is supporting advertisers, brands, ad & media agencies, and media publishers: they use the buyers’ profiles provided in real-time by Addrelevance to serve content, value propositions, and call to action that do trigger consumers’ action.

Addrelevance is an AI, data, and adtech startup based in Belgium. They are supported by Microsoft, by imec.istart, and are an IAB approved vendor (GDPR and TCF 2.0 compliant). 

📝 All the following keywords are part of our eco-system, and we believe you can optimise their outcomes: digital advertising, personalisation, hyper-personalisation, display ads, branded content, programmatic, direct, programmatic direct, programmatic guaranteed, private marketplace, PMP, targeting, contextual targeting, behavioral targeting, retargeting, analytics, data management platform, DMP, inventory, measurement, impressions, impression tracking, clicks, click tracking, conversions, reach, click-through rate, CTR, cost per mille, CPM, cost per click, CPC, cost per action, cost per acquisition, CPA, conversion rate, CR, CVR, amount spent, revenue, real-time bidding, RTB, supply-side platform, SSP, ad exchanges, demand-side platforms, DSP.