Automotive video marketing 3.0: Creating content is also about building relationships

With the intensified competition in the automotive industry and the evolution of consumer behavior, automotive marketing has entered the 3.0 era. This article explores how to build diversified user relationships and achieve efficient conversion from traffic to transactions through the video account platform in this new era.

"Many people want to see if I show my phone at the auto show." A few days after appearing at the Guangzhou Auto Show, Yu Chengdong, chairman of Huawei's Terminal BG and Intelligent Automotive Solutions BU, opened his own personal account on the video account and released a new product "spoiler" in a relaxed and chatty manner.

This video is only 23 seconds long, but it has been forwarded over 100,000 times. A popular comment reads: "This is like a small press conference."

CEOs and executives are becoming more and more common in car companies and even brands in all walks of life. This is because consumers want to get the CEO's personalized industry views, personal charm, thoughts and biases, and make an overall judgment on the brand based on this, which will eventually affect their purchasing behavior.

Behind the changes in user needs is the iteration of automobile marketing models. In the past few years, the rise of new energy vehicles has driven automobile marketing to quickly transition from the traditional media 1.0 era to the social media 2.0 era. Internet marketing methods such as social platforms and live broadcasts have become conventional promotion tools for auto companies. However, as the market involution, represented by new energy vehicles, automobile functions are more "consumerized", and the dimensions of considering whether to buy a car are more diverse and complex. Before buying a car, a lot of "homework" is often done online. The personal personality of the above-mentioned CEO, brand concept, and specific store services and after-sales quality are all considerations.

This has significantly lengthened the decision cycle and decision chain for car purchases. A single marketing method that relies on extensive, homogeneous, and traffic exposure is no longer enough to convince users to make a purchase. Consumers need to be reached through multiple links and multiple touchpoints to complete the final transaction.

In this context, two core demands of automakers in the era of automotive marketing 3.0 have emerged: one is to achieve diversified and three-dimensional user reach; the other is to ensure smooth conversion in each link and turn traffic into actual sales.

Video accounts are one of the key points of marketing layout for major auto companies. At the 2024 Annual Car Awards Ceremony on November 14, the sharing content of Bu Yuqing, head of Tencent Advertising Mutual Selection Platform Operations, emphasized the dual positive cycle of brand and expert content, public and private domain traffic formed by WeChat, and further released a signal to encourage high-quality authors and brands in the automotive field to co-create high-quality content.

From our observation, Video Account is currently the only platform that smoothly connects the public and private domains and closes the entire chain from clues to decision-making. At the same time, Video Account is also the platform with the most three-dimensional content ecology, the most diverse touchpoints, and the closest to consumers' social circles and final decisions.

Therefore, by observing the latest marketing cases of various brands, we tried to summarize how car companies can use the Tencent ecosystem to carry out content marketing.

1. In the video account, don’t focus on “traffic” but on “relationships”

When observing the marketing cases of car company CEOs on video accounts, an interesting phenomenon is that CEOs care more about building "relationships" than traffic.

In other words, in video account marketing, car companies pay more attention to establishing trust and emotional connections with consumers through continuous communication, interaction and content creation than short-term fierce promotions and large-scale advertising. The "relationship" formed with consumers through video accounts allows consumers to not only understand the brand through the traffic hotspots at a certain moment, but also be willing to pay attention to the brand for a long time, participate in interactions, and even become loyal supporters of the brand.

Lei Jun's video account is one of the important windows for Xiaomi to communicate with users. On the video account, Lei Jun does not simply launch promotional activities or short-term hot topics, but instead publishes personal opinions, stories behind products, and dialogues with consumers over a long period of time. This continuous and long-term interaction and communication has enabled Xiaomi to establish a relationship of loyalty and trust with fans.

Daily and regular content can play a greater role in video accounts. Therefore, CEOs have shown their true selves, including sharing their personal hobbies and daily life, conveying a kind of affinity and sincerity, so that fans and consumers can feel that there is a warm and thoughtful person behind the brand who is making decisions and innovations.

In the "Wei Jianjun's Weekend" series of live broadcasts, Wei Jianjun not only introduced the models of motorcycles during his driving tours, but also shared his five-kilometer outdoor hike, introduced Baoding delicacies such as donkey meat huoshao and beef pancakes, and reviewed his motorcycle collection. The audience in the live broadcast room commented: "Wei Jianjun is 60 years old, and he still takes advantage of the weekend to tell stories to everyone."

In addition to Yu Chengdong, Lei Jun, and Wei Jianjun, many CEOs and executives of car companies, including Li Bin of NIO, Zhang Yong of Nezha, and He Xiaopeng of Xpeng, have opened personal accounts on Video Number, sharing their daily lives or insights in videos.

The unique "relationship" ecology of Video Account is related to its position in the WeChat ecosystem. As an "atomic component" that can circulate freely in the WeChat ecosystem, Video Account can be fully circulated in WeChat Moments, WeChat groups, public accounts and other scenarios, and use this as a touchpoint to integrate into the consumer social relationship chain, thereby establishing in-depth interaction.

This is especially suitable for car companies, which are not limited to CEOs, but also include employees, KOCs and other perspectives to build user relationships, and present a more authentic car brand and its products in an all-round way through a "thousand faces for thousands of people".

2. Building Diversified User Relationships

From a broken down perspective, car companies' building of user relationships on video accounts, that is, content layout, can be divided into three levels: official account matrix, KOX content matrix, and KOS/factory store live broadcast matrix.

First, build brand influence through the official account matrix. Take BYD as an example. It has set up multiple accounts on the video account, such as BYD, BYD Auto, BYD Auto Dynasty, etc., to form different content outputs for different market demands and brand positioning.

The core content of these accounts revolves around brand values, including the release of brand promotional videos, auto show news, official reports, etc., with the aim of making consumers identify with the brand's philosophy and culture. In addition to brand promotion, the official account matrix of auto companies also plays a role in word-of-mouth management. By responding to consumer feedback, publishing customer reviews, and resolving product concerns, auto companies can effectively manage their brand image and enhance consumers' trust in the brand.

Secondly, user relationship management is carried out through content matrices such as KOX (KOB/KOE/KOC/KOL). On video accounts, car companies not only rely on the promotion of the brand itself, but also further deepen the emotional relationship with users through cooperation with founder IP and KOL/KOC. For example, the live broadcasts of CEOs such as Lei Jun and Wei Jianjun mentioned above.

At the same time, car companies have launched various forms of content through cooperation with KOLs/KOCs, such as workshop Vlogs, test drive videos, function explanations, and user car pick-up experiences, to help potential consumers understand the core features and user experience of automobile products. This form of content can not only demonstrate the professional performance of the product, but also enable consumers to have a stronger emotional connection with the brand through the personalized narrative of KOLs/KOCs.

FAW-Volkswagen and video influencer "Jetta Xiaozhou" collaborated on a video that was forwarded over 100,000 times

The next step is to convert sales leads through the KOS/factory store live broadcast matrix. At present, most content platforms have gaps in the conversion process of each link. For example, some platforms are good at front-end exposure, which essentially acts as a "billboard". The touchpoints are mainly in the public domain, and they cannot solve the semi-private domain link from retention to transaction of car companies. The layout of car companies in video accounts can help them achieve accurate conversion of sales leads through the KOS live broadcast matrix on the basis of brand influence shaping and user relationship building.

We learned through official communication that, at present, through the link of "video account - public account - Chexunda mini program", car companies can link the public and private domains. Specifically, the short video content of the video account is equivalent to the trusted business card of the car company, which helps to build a persona and establish trust; the public account is a continuous reach in the private domain, which can gather highly sticky users of the brand; the Chexunda mini program completes the functions of converting traffic and guiding customers to stores.

In addition, automakers can work together with dealers in various regions to showcase new cars and launch promotional activities through live broadcasts, and guide viewers to leave contact information through mini programs or corporate WeChat. These activities often include limited-time discounts, gifts or test drive benefits, which stimulate the audience's desire to buy and thus convert them into effective sales leads.

For example, the live broadcast on the video account of Handan Ruilong FAW-Volkswagen 4S store had over 200,000 viewers for a single show, with the peak number of leads obtained in a single show reaching 2,000, and the number of leads obtained in a single month exceeded 13,000.

We believe that, judging from future trends, a content strategy that emphasizes both "live streaming + short videos" will be better.

3. More efficient conversion from marketing to purchase

The last and most critical step in marketing is to convert leads into actual purchases.

In the automotive marketing process, from brand promotion, social interaction, guiding customers to stores, making deals, to after-sales service, the smoothness of lead conversion and acceptance between each link is the key to improving conversion efficiency.

In the past, if consumers wanted to obtain further follow-up services or store sales wanted to store leads in the private domain, they often needed to manually add contact information. The inconvenience caused by this resulted in conversion loss.

Through deep integration with the WeChat ecosystem, Video Account can achieve smoother full-link conversion. The link of "Video Account-Official Account-Chexunda Mini Program" can reduce the risk of loss caused by platform jump. It is worth mentioning that, at present, Chexunda Mini Program supports one-click authorization to retain information. In addition, after the official account is upgraded to a service account, in addition to live broadcasting and retaining information, it can also provide car product sales, maintenance services, etc.; after successfully guiding users into the private domain, user assets can be continuously operated for a long time.

It is worth noting that one of the barriers of video accounts is reflected in the rich and mature private domain tools in the WeChat ecosystem. For example, WeChat for Business, because it has accumulated enough corporate trust in the past few years, car companies dare to deposit customers in the private domain of WeChat for Business. Another benefit is that many traditional car companies already have a mature WeChat operation system, and the WeChat ecosystem has also established a more direct system and function for the conversion of public domains to private domains, such as factory and store live broadcasts.

In other words, the accumulation of WeChat private domain tools in user minds, infrastructure, and customer reserves is something that new private domain tools built by smaller vertical platforms and other platforms cannot catch up with in the short term. Therefore, we can still keep our expectations in terms of private domain tools.

In the current automotive marketing ecosystem, Video Account is one of the platforms that connects the public domain and the private domain and achieves smooth conversion. Combined with the WeChat ecosystem, Video Account also provides automakers with a complete marketing closed loop from online to offline. Through a precise, smooth, and traceable full-link closed loop, Video Account has a higher conversion efficiency from "traffic to transaction", which to a certain extent avoids invalid exposure of automakers.

In 2024, involution and differentiation became the keywords of the automotive industry. Affected by factors such as market competition, macroeconomics, changes in consumption structure and policy orientation, the growth rate of production and sales in the overall passenger car market has slowed down compared with the past few years.

However, at the beginning of the year, the launch of Xiaomi Motors caused a sensation; in the third quarter financial reports released by various automakers, six of them still maintained growth. This means that in the fierce market environment, some brands have fallen behind, but some players have gained advantages through innovation and promoted market reshuffle.

In the new market landscape, the new multi-touchpoint and multi-link marketing model represented by video accounts will be the standard for future marketing of auto companies. How to further refine each aspect and reach more accurately may become a competitive point for auto companies in video account marketing.

Author | Zhao Xiaomi This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Narrow Broadcast], WeChat public account: [Narrow Broadcast], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.