The Ronseal School of Marketing

After much hot air on this blog, it was an incredibly proud moment when the staff at motors.co.uk gathered to watch our advert broadcast during Emmerdale.  I was incredibly nervous about its screening, still suspicious that we hadn’t booked the ad, or had missed a compliance requirement on its submission.

But it screened, and it looked beautiful.  As many of us have said during the creation “it looks like a proper advert”.  We now know it to be a real advert!

We have come an incredibly long way in a short period.  Stripping back our consumer messaging to its very core and also understanding exactly where our brand fits.  motors.co.uk has always focussed on trust and reassurance, and its partnership with newspaper groups has naturally targeted it at a certain audience.  However, we have moved from having a slightly circumstantial brand positioning to a very explicit view of who our audience is.

This will flow through the company to inform product design, tone of any messaging as well as providing the sales team with confidence to know the value and identity of our leads for dealers.  At its core we want to promote “smart, safe and easy car search”.  Additionally, we want people to engage with our brand around some of the emotions of car ownership and buying.  Not all car owners are experts on the specifications, but we all possess hundreds of memories and feelings about our car.

However, I get ahead of myself and make this sound all too fluffy.  I want to reassure you of how basic the first line of our brief was – “we want people to know what motors.co.uk does”.   Fortunately, the team at A&N Creative were able to nail this point quickly and grant us the luxury of thinking more about our brand messaging and positioning.  Thanks to their creative ideas and the research activity led by our head of research, Dermot Kelleher, we were able to be much smarter.

The result is a campaign that after almost 2 weeks on air has seen a significant increase in traffic, engagement and response.  People are also remembering the brand with 150%+ increase in direct and branded search traffic.  This has been an amazing response from a medium that is often pitched for medium-long term brand building.  There is still work to be done in understanding the data and being able to optimise future campaigns, but the initial signs are overwhelmingly positive.

The title of the blog isn’t as crazy as you think.  Production costs were tight and the deadlines even tighter.  The back-up plan was me addressing the camera, pleading with people to come to motors.co.uk.  Perhaps one day … but only if I move into mattress sales.

How accurate is Three Men and a Baby?

After a 5 (plus 9ish) month sentence, Bianca was finally treated to a night out.  Her prison officer Ted left with me and me alone.  Sure I’ve spent lots of time with Ted before, but usually I have had the emergency button of “the boob” if things got out of hand.

Ted slept on the way to drop Bianca off, probably a good thing as it struck her that she was going to be Ted’less for the next few hours.  I decided to kick off my good, responsible parenting immediately and drove home the long way to make sure that he slept for at least 30 minutes.

A weary Ted woke to finally realise that his mother wasn’t around.  There was a weird 10 minutes where Ted was still a little sleepy, a little confused and quiet as he wondered why a) his dad was around on a week day and b) his mummy hadn’t come back.

Ashamedly, I settled with him on my lap and had a quick glance at work emails until Ted wrestled the iPhone from me and into his mouth.  He was back in the room.  The giggles started and he recommenced his quest to steal my glasses.  Even as I type I struggle to see the screen through his grubby fingerprints over my specs.

The next 3 hours were brilliant.  We laughed.  He climbed me.  He dribbled on me (lots).  We played with his toys.  He even played exceptionally patiently whilst I tried to work the steriliser and make his bottle without burning myself.  I knew I’d taken too long and was feeling nervous when I heard a screech from the living room.  My senses went on high alert, was Ted beginning to feel abandoned?  Nope, he’d reached over, got a toy in his mouth and seemed to be laughing at Friends on the TV.  As I rushed in, he stopped, smiled at me and then turned back towards the TV.

I think this summarised the whole thing.  He absolutely bossed our afternoon together.  He held the bottle I tried to feed him with.  He reached for the toys he wanted to play with.  He threw himself backwards when he wanted to play “row row row your boat”.  And even rubbed his eyes 5 minutes before he was due his bath as if to say “I’m not sure you’re aware of the schedule, but I’d quite like my bath now”. 

The sad thing is that once asleep, I couldn’t think of anything else to do but do some work.  I keep looking at the monitor wondering if he’ll wake up wanting to play again.  (he did wake up and he just wanted milk – but only at an acceptable temperature, so I had to make a second bottle)   

I know that it would be incredibly difficult to do this all day every day as Bianca does so naturally (and excellently), but I felt privileged to have this special bit of father/son time.  I hope he enjoyed it and that he’ll let me have another go – frankly, it’s his decision.

Here's a pic of my boss, commanding from his high chair

*****

Incidentally – how weird is this?  I was trying to find the scene from 3 Men and a Baby where Tom Selleck stares blindly at the selection of nappies and formula in a supermarket, when I found this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF2f__k0Pnw

apparently a whole internet craze about a ghost boy in the film.  I am freaking out.

Economics of a Rate Freeze

Today motors.co.uk announced a freezing of our rates to automotive dealers.  The decision to announce comes on the back of feedback from the market about upward pressure on their media spend.  Obviously a lot of the spend is directed to one major provider, but there has been a trend in the market due to the increasing importance of the internet in generating response for dealers.

At motors.co.uk our aim is clear – to grow quickly to provide automotive dealers with a must-have source of media and to provide consumers with the best used car search experience.  However, our approach is to do it in a collaborative, transparent manner.  We believe that by increasing the confidence of both buyers and sellers we will make the market bigger.

The realities of business mean that whilst we have frozen rates, we believe there is a commercial value to the response we provide to dealers and that we should be recompensed for this.  To generate the response that we do, we have invested millions of pounds in marketing and will continue to spend heavily (as our latest TV campaign shows).  Although the internet lowers initial barriers to entry, it is expensive business building an online brand.

Whilst our rates have been frozen, our traffic and response continue to increase.  Consequently, we are becoming cheaper by the day on a cost-per-lead basis. 

We are lucky to have the backing of one of the UK’s largest media groups, Daily Mail and General Trust, who have a rich history of creating household media brands.  This has provided us with the confidence and resources to invest in marketing, technology and staff to ensure that motors.co.uk can handle fast growth and comfortably serve thousands of dealers.

The balance we have to find as a challenger online brand is to deliver clear value to our customers whilst ensuring we generate sufficient financial return to invest in marketing and technology and also generate a commercial return appropriate to the level of risk taken.  The internet has democratised some sectors but it has also over-rewarded established brands who can bypass the vagaries of search.  Although the current long-tail of poorly populated classified sites and aggregation engines may confuse the customer, I believe that consumers and dealers both deserve choice in classified advertising.  Obviously, I hope they then choose motors.co.uk!

Insight into the upcoming TV campaign

The upcoming TV campaign continues to keep us all busy, but also incredibly excited about the prospects.  The adrenaline is flowing at a rapid rate throughout the whole business as the campaign forces us to ensure everything is set for a successful campaign.


We made the decision to go on TV relatively late (in comparative terms), but this provided a sense of urgency which has fuelled our work habits and rate of change.  It is my hope that both dealers and consumers get to see this velocity and hunger to provide a leading site for used car search.


The campaign forced us to address a number of questions about the business, from the brand message, to the consumers that we are targeting and even whether our business cards are appropriate!  Through extensive research and some soul searching we made the decision to lead with a new creative campaign.  


This was a difficult decision as Sensei was the product of lots of hard work and research. However, we believe the market has changed and the key messages of motors.co.uk need to be kept simple, to provide clarity to consumers about what we do and why they should visit.  As a young business we need to change things!


We wholeheartedly believe that the market underserves the general car buyer.  We need to remember that buying a car is a big decision with a lot of pressures.  Furthermore, we discovered that consumers are excited and scared in unison.  The consumer often believes that they are being "ripped off" or paying over the odds.  I think that as an industry, we have a job to do to show that there isn't a hidden agenda and do whatever we can to breakdown the information asymmetry.  I am confident that motors.co.uk can address this gap and we will be working with dealers to improve public perception and increase the enjoyment of the car buying process.


So ... as a result of the TV campaign, the branding across motors.co.uk and its advertising will change.  We are incredibly impressed by the efforts of AN Creative  and think that the message will be clear and simple but also very charming.  The core values of motors.co.uk have not changed, but we believe we've found some effective tools for communicating this.  Our dealers can only benefit as this increases traffic to motors.co.uk.


I'll be sure to post more as we have it for distribution, but here is a teeny sneak preview...

Welcome to DK!

Just a quick one today, to welcome the excellent insight of Dermot Kelleher to the world of Blogging.

DK is the Head of Research at motors.co.uk and has his finger tips on the wealth of data that flows through our business.  Highly recommended following for anyone interested in trends in online used car advertising ... and occasionally some rambling adoration of Spurs.

What consumers want

It has been a breathless start to the year at motors.co.uk as we prepare for a burst of TV advertising.  The campaign will be conducted in a single region (Yorkshire) to allow us to test various concepts from creative through to sales and account management.

We are very excited by the creative we are set to roll-out and believe that it will have the dual impact of immediately increasing traffic and response, as well as increasing brand awareness of motors.co.uk.  As the UK’s second largest used car advertising network, recognition of the brand is too low despite it’s significant audience.  This creates a huge opportunity to build from our significant inventory and traffic levels to provide consumers with a fresh, trusted brand.

What has fascinated me most has been the insight from interrogating the consumer’s behaviour and emotions in used car search.  In addition to analysing our own search data and performing online surveys, we got to hear from a number of individuals in focus groups.

These groups revealed how imperfect the process is and the underlying nervousness in making a purchase.  Buying a car should be an exciting experience, and consumers do tend to feel an air of anticipation.  However, most of us aren’t petrol heads and so naturally suspect that we’re going to be “done over” in any deal.  The perceived information asymmetry between a dealer and a regular consumer is enormous.

Most consumers don’t understand how thin the margin is on a used car and suspect that they are paying hundreds or thousands of pounds more than the car is worth.  I believe the market could go further in increasing transparency in the process to provide people with confidence.  Personally, I enjoyed my purchase from Car Giant because I knew that I wouldn’t have to suffer the ignominy of a failed negotiation in front of my wife (flexing my muscles slightly as I buffed off a paint protector upsell).

Throughout the research, we discovered that consumers are underserved by the internet.  By that, I mean that the lack of confidence translates into a propensity to visit multiple sites (portal, review and dealer own) to arm themselves with as much information as possible.  (But even then, consumers don’t fully understand what they are being presented -  AutoTrader was frequently perceived as only having private ads, one person even expressed surprise that the price on AutoTrader was the same as the dealer’s (even though they were the same car))

Consequently, we found that although the first place people tend to look for a used car is online, 80% of people visit more than one website in the process (see the chart below).  As a dealer, this means that media spend across a network of sites is fundamental to capture response. 

Our target market tends to be consumers who are looking for more confidence in the car buying process, trying to form an opinion of their own without being rail-roaded by a friend or relative who is a petrol head (though this person tends to be taken along to help inspect the car and complete the purchase).  Therefore, we have a job to do to empower the consumer to allow them to find the selection of cars relevant to the search, regardless of whether they know exactly what make or model to start with. 

The TV campaign has been a shot of adrenaline for me in my capacity as a (wannabe) marketeer.  Brand is so easily taken for granted (and ignored), but I have realised through this process that as motors.co.uk we have the chance to show everyone that buying a used car really isn’t that scary and certainly not the domain of petrol heads only.

The Facebook opportunity for dealers

Last week, AutoExposure launched its new Facebook Business Profile Pages for automotive dealers.  I am incredibly excited about this product as it creates a wealth of opportunities for dealers and allows AutoExposure to flex its creative muscle. 

However, like many businesses, I think dealers are wondering how Facebook and social media will really make a difference to their business. Don’t people just use Facebook to spy on friends and Twitter to stalk celebrities?!

I thought it worth laying out some of the trends surrounding social media and why there is a real opportunity for dealers to capitalise on its potential.

• Facebook is the second most visited site in the UK after Google, and accounts for the most page views in the UK (16.4%) (Hitwise Oct 2010)

Get your business and cars on Facebook and they will be exposed to an enormous amount of eyeballs (if communicated properly)

•  37% of people use social media as part of their car buying process (FlyReaserch Feb 2011

           Because social media is a trusted environment, people often use it as a way of asking questions of friends.  Each of these people becomes a potential customer.

            Building a relationship with users in social media allows you to become part of their decision making

             This number is only going to rise

• A “Like” from a consumer is seen by all of their friends.  The average user has 130 friends

How difficult is it to get a customer to tell people that he endorses your services?  A simple click on “like” means that it will be seen by that customer’s 130 friends. 

Once a customer has liked your page, they are available for you to interact with offers, promotions and other conversations.  (apologies if I use the word “conversation” a lot, but it’s the best way I can think of describing the ongoing engagement with consumers, so different to a simple newsletter)

With Facebook being a closed environment (ie the site tries to keep you within Facebook), it is almost worth thinking of Facebook and the Internet as two separate things.  Just as websites became a new shop window, so too does Facebook (and other social media) allow dealers the chance to add another façade. 

The difference now is that customers can talk back, which increases the need for a professional approach to managing the page.  There are plenty of examples of consumers building negative campaigns against brands, here’s a particularly amusing one http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Cameron-wants-change-Give-him-30p-and-tell-him-to-Fk-Off/115547365137261

It is better to be part of this process and be in a position to respond professionally.  By inviting consumers to share comments with you, there will be chances to learn about your business, but also to build a personality and relationship with consumers.  Negative feedback is a fact of business, and car dealers are often an easy target given the emotion of the purchase.  But, ignoring the behaviour is dangerous.

Instead, why not lead with offers and promotions for customers who engage with you?  If a customer has remembered your brand through Facebook, there is more chance that they will feel an affinity with you and ignore the competition. 

Remember that anything you post on social media will live forever, so make sure it speaks properly for your business.  Do not confuse your business profile with your personal one and swap banter with mates.  As a business owner, make sure that any administrators of your accounts use a consistent voice that is appropriate to your brand.

Fundamentally though, simply building a page isn’t enough.  With a website, you can get away with not updating it.  With social media, unless you maintain an appropriate level of conversation (ie do not SPAM), you will disappear.  But the reward of interaction is well worth it.

At AutoExposure we have integrated car search tools into the dealer’s Facebook Business Profile Page allowing consumers to not only see about offers, opening times etc, but to actually search for stock.  Our hope is that it means our dealers always have something to talk about and an additional response tool.

The real excitement internally is not with the launch, but with the direction we can take the product, we have loads of ideas and will get lots more.  It will be great to work with our dealers as social media rapidly becomes an important part of the dealer’s media mix.  To badly paraphrase Hot Chocolate; “it started with a like”…

(not wanting to push the sales message too much, but here's an example of our product)