Key Takeaways

• Video is the car buyer’s essential shopping and research tool which educates, entertains, and engages in-market consumers.
• Due to video test drives' popularity, video-centric auto-related companies like Friendemic and Wistia, among others, have developed "Video Ignition" and "A/B Testing" respectively.
• " 88% of prospective buyers use the Internet for their research."

Introduction

The Automotive Consumer's Behaviour

• A recent Autotrader study has shown that “88% of prospective buyers use the Internet for their research.”
• According to a survey conducted by Millward Brown Digital, after watching a video, 61% of potential shoppers use their computers to look for more information.
• Automotive consumers visit an average of 4.2 websites before contacting a dealer.
• After watching a video in a marketing campaign, 49% of customers visit a dealer, while 37% of them search dealer inventory.
• Besides, 33% of possible shoppers talk to their friends and families about the content of the video.
• Although 95% of car sales take place at a dealership, most individuals begin the process of buying through the internet and then contact the dealership.

COVID-19 Impact

•  Consumer behaviour has changed significantly over the last few years. Coronavirus contributed to consolidate the shift in the automotive industry since it increased the need for a virtual buying experience.
• Higher intent to make a purchase on the part of consumers has indicated that COVID-19 has increased both the volume and value of calls. For example, in 2020, 41% of organizations reported a phone conversion rate of 25%.
• Since 2020, in the US there was a decrease of 18.2% in automotive digital ad spend as can be seen in the chart below.

 

Source

Content and Format

• Automotive digital marketing has different channels like “pay-per-click advertising, social media, and video email”.
• It has been estimated that 57% of automotive dealerships send their email campaigns on a monthly basis.
• It is advisable that content includes both informational aspects and discounts in sales.
• According to statistics, 65% of emails are opened on a mobile device. As a consequence, 42% of prospective consumers will delete emails that are not properly rendered on smartphones or tablets. As a matter of fact, 89% of marketers lose leads because of technical problems.
• Content is very important because 87% of in-market consumers view multiple videos of cars before contacting a seller and each time they see the video they acquire more knowledge about cars.
• Also, 87% of buyers regard video descriptions as helpful.
• When a video is linked to a dealership’s landing page, the conversion rate increases by 80%.

Demographics

• In 2020, among car buyers, 38% belonged to Gen X, 32% to Baby Boomers, and 23% to Millennials.
• Generally, people between 25-54 years old show a preference for the newest vehicles.
• 63% of new car buyers live in suburbs while 67% of them have income over $75,000.
• Even though consumers use the internet for research, only one in four prefer fully online purchases.

Popularity

• “Video is now the car buyer’s essential shopping and research tool. Video educates, entertains, and engages in-market consumers while helping them to make an informed buying decision.”
• “The watch time of “test drive” videos on YouTube has grown by more than 65% in the past two years.”
•  92% of mobile users share videos of cars with their friends and relatives.
• Video in email marketing has become so popular that Friendemic has developed an app called “Video Ignition” that provides dealerships with tools that make it easier to communicate to potential customers through text or email. Video Ignition increased conversion rates for dealerships by 30%.
• Recently, Wistia introduced the “A/B Testing” feature that allows dealerships to easily test any aspect of their videos like button copy, color, email gates, and variation of content among others. By means of an embedded code into the dealership's website, it is possible to compare two videos and see which one performed best.

Research Strategy