Auto Marketing on the Internet: Six Ways It's Getting Done

Auto Marketing on the Internet: Six Ways It's Getting Done

By Dale Buss

Over the last year or so, automakers have moved closer to the forefront of big-brand marketing online as they dramatically increase their expenditures on Internet advertising.

In doing so, OEMs are drawing on a dozen methods. Here are six of them. Look for the other six on Thursday in part three of this series on Edmunds.com's AutoObserver :  

Moving Lower in the Funnel

OEMs are working harder to exploit the Internet's unique capabilities for capturing consumers at moments when they're unmistakably and actively shopping for vehicles. The vast majority of vehicle purchases - some estimates are as high as 80 percent - begin with research online.

"This is an area where there is a tremendous opportunity for optimization," said Susan Thomson, Chrysler's director of media. In fact, she said, Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli meets with Thomson and her colleagues monthly for two hours about each major online-improvement project.

Chrysler, for example, has improved conversion of its own Web site visitors into sales leads by about 36 percent over a year ago. "We've looked at every single page and every single link on the site to refine it to make sure that it is engaging visitors and getting them excited and turning them into hand-raisers," said Chuck Sullivan, Chrysler's director of interactive marketing.

The company also has been working with Edmunds.com and other third-party sites to understand how best to adjust advertising content and creativity on those sites to lure visitors to Chrysler's sites. "We don't want them to start at the top [of the funnel] again" when they get to a Chrysler-brand site, Thomson explained. "If they were as far down as the lease-payment page [on a third-party site], we want to get them to the right page on our site."

Meanwhile, GM recently enhanced its "geotargeting" capabilities, so that people sniffing around GM vehicles on third-party sites don't have to enter their zip codes to find out about relevant local incentives and other offers. And it has automated the process by which consumers see any one of thousands of different display ads depending on where their Internet Protocol address indicates that they live.

Pounding SEO

All automakers are feverishly trying to improve their efforts at marketing via "search-engine optimization" (SEO). Search-engine advertising accounted for 41 percent of all online ad dollars spent last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, while display ads accounted for only 34 percent.

So OEMs buy millions of search terms on Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that bring up their products and web sites in text ads that accompany each search. GM's term purchases, for example, include "Chevy Detroit," "Chevy," and "fuel-efficient vehicles."

"But we're also doing a lot with optimizing our own site to make sure, when people search, we score high on 'organic' lists that [comprise] their search results," said Rudy Privitelli, Mazda's group manager for relationship marketing.

Seeding Relationships

OEMs are trying to hook more consumers with web-site activities, e-mail newsletters and other digital devices so that they can enable a crucial dialogue to blossom.

For example, over the last year, more than 30,000 consumers signed up with Hyundai online indicating that they wanted to be contacted once the company's new Genesis compact sedan became available in the U.S., which occurred in July.

After the car's big advertising debut on the Super Bowl in February, Hyundai built "conversations" with these people through e-mail messages, and a web site that features games, trying to sustain their interest over the six months until the car's launch.

"This is what's different online: You're able to continue the conversation with consumers," said Chris Perry, Hyundai's U.S. director of marketing communications. "We give them tools and information to engage them and to continue the relationship, and that will push them out to visiting the dealership."

Similarly, a Web site for the Traverse crossover vehicle that Chevrolet intends to introduce in September already has logged more than 900,000 consumer visits and compelled more than 30,000 people to become "hand-raisers" and request information about the vehicle.

"One thing we like about digital is that it allows us to bring depth of content [which attracts consumers], and then we can track consumers through the whole shopping process," said Kim Kosak, general director of advertising and sales promotion for Chevrolet.

Blowing Out Launches

Automakers are turning many of their vehicle debuts into unprecedented online events. One reason GM's Malibu launch was considered a great success, for example, was that it began last October with a one-day advertising "takeover" of many popular web sites. Chevrolet has even bigger plans for a home-page takeover accompanying its Traverse launch.

BMW reached what Patrick McKenna, its North American manager of marketing communications, called a "turning point" in March when it used the internet to help launch the 1 Series - relying on the medium more than it has for any previous vehicle introduction. "We didn't use TV to launch the way we have other models," he said.

And in its home-page takeovers, BMW experimented with new creative approaches. For example, on Microsoft's MSN.com site, a 1 Series was seen "driving" across the screen, spraying out "headlines" that took formed into advertisements by covering actual news headlines with messages about the car.

"It would only be for about 1.5 seconds at a time, because MSN didn't want them up for too long," McKenna said. "But for a split-second, we were taking over the content with great visuals, and there was no way you could miss that there was a new 1 Series." BMW saw "amazing spikes in traffic on our web sites," he said.

And when Chrysler introduced its Dodge Journey crossover last spring, a hefty 27 percent of its marketing budget went online. The company especially targeted young women, whom it figured would be instrumental in vehicle-purchase decisions for the growing families who are Journey's primary demographic target.

"These women are spending a lot of money online, and they're talking with other mothers, and they're doing their homework before going into dealerships," Chrysler's Thomson said. "We wanted to be where they were and intercept them."

Exploiting Video

Many automotive marketers now are raving about huge new possibilities for effective video content online. Crisper visual and audio resolution enabled by today's broadband networks, as well as some capabilities of the internet that TV can't offer, are luring OEMs into all sorts of new online-marketing adventures - just as consumers are hungry for more.

Toyota, for instance, launched a major redesign of its web site in large part to greatly expand video capabilities, said Doug Frisbie, national media manager. "This includes some new technology that provides more 3-D views of vehicles," he said about the overhaul completed in February.

Mazda's research indicated that videos of its products and features dramatically increased consumer engagement with its web site as measured by price-quote requests, searches of dealer inventory and other "key performance indicators.

"Consumer behavior after watching video far exceeded my expectations," Privitelli said. "I would have anticipated maybe a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in [key performance indicators], but we were seeing increases of 200 percent or more."

So Mazda has been adding substantially to the video trove on its site. And it's not just streaming, say, its TV commercials. "The ones that work best for us are those that are most relevant to the car-buying experience, such as features and benefits of a vehicle," Privitelli said.

Producing "Shows"

The Internet has become so much better at accommodating high production qualities that more automakers are going Hollywood, making their own serials and other shows solely as online-marketing vehicles.

In doing so, of course, they're stealing a page from BMW, which pioneered the practice in 2001 by fielding a series of eight short web films made by celebrity directors including John Frankenheimer and Ang Lee. The "pull marketing" innovation, which only subtly featured BMWs, received 100 million views online.

Nowadays, automotive practitioners of this strategy are more likely to aim  online episodes at narrower targets.

So, for example, Mercedes-Benz has been reaching out to younger consumers who might someday be able to afford a luxury vehicle by testing its own music show online, Mixed Tape Music Magazine, which features video clips by artists such as Jennifer Lopez and Mark Ronson. And GMC has commissioned a Spanish-language "reality series" about a Miami-based professional soccer team that will be shown on Yahoo Telemundo - and will weave in the Sierra pickup truck.

Toyota has just produced an online "miniseries" aimed at a segment of African-American women consumers it calls "Femme Flossers." Camry is the best-selling vehicle among African-American females in general, but it "isn't in the consideration set" for this discriminating subgroup, said Monica Warden, account director at Burrell Communications, the ad agency that put together the project for Toyota.

"They know about [Camry] and think it's a great-quality vehicle," Warden explained, "but when they think of themselves, they're more inclined to look at an Altima, Accord or 300."

So over the summer, Toyota ran If Looks Could Kill on BlackVoices.com, a portal sponsored by AmericaOnline. Each Monday featured a new episode about "Bianca," an African-American fashion designer, involved in a love triangle, whose father is an ex-CIA operative. "Her Camry is really her sidekick and her accessory," Warden explained. "The car is integrated like the car placement in a movie."

After two weeks, the web show had attracted about 80,000 unique visitors, a traffic level that Warden called "high."

PHOTOS:

1. More than 30,000 signed up online for information about Genesis, Hyundai's first-ever true luxury sedan.

2. Mazda found requests for price quotes and other information increased when video was incorporated into website presentations.

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.