For a long time, cars have not been a regular customer in e-commerce live broadcast rooms. The high unit price of tens of thousands of yuan means that the decision-making cycle is longer, and consumers often need offline test drives to buy.
However, due to the impact of the epidemic, live car sales have gradually become the "standard" of the automotive industry, from internet celebrity anchors to brand self-broadcasting, from traditional car companies to new car-making forces, increasingly adopting a combination of online and offline marketing models.
According to the "2021 White Paper on the Live Broadcast Value of Chedi Dealers", as of May 2021, the number of dealer accounts launched on the Chedi platform has approached 25,000, accounting for 64% of the whole platform.
In the new car purchase scenario and marketing system, there are still many questions worth exploring: what kind of car live broadcast is more attractive to users to watch and place orders? Can live cars be sold in 2022? What impact will online marketing have on the offline service model? We talked to the Wuling Live E-commerce team, comprehensive industry reports and cases of various platforms, hoping to inspire you.
The big trend of automotive live broadcasting in 2022
The explosion of car live broadcasting began in 2020, which is also known as the "first year of live broadcasting of Chinese cars".
As a traditional consumer goods, the sales link of automobiles relies heavily on the offline service model, after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, offline business stopped, major car companies and 4S stores have opened live broadcasting business in panic, trying to establish an online sales position, and auto live broadcasting has ushered in explosive growth.
Live car sales have obvious advantages in brand promotion and "gathering customers".
For sellers, under the enthusiastic explanation of the anchor, the information about brands and vehicles can reach consumers faster and more widely, and interested viewers can leave personal information such as names and telephones in the links in the live broadcast room, or directly pay a deposit to place orders, which helps sellers to enhance brand awareness and obtain a large number of sales leads. For consumers, live car viewing saves time and effort, interaction is efficient, and can be freely compared and selected.
According to the "2021 Auto Live Broadcast Data Report" released by the auto live broadcasting platform Understand Chedi, from being catalyzed by the epidemic to entering the normal operation, auto live broadcasting will continue to maintain rapid development in 2021. The number of brand dealers, used car dealers and car masters has shown an upward trend. Among them, brand dealers account for more than half of the total number of anchors, the average monthly live broadcast increased by 408%, the number of interactions increased by 263%, and live broadcasting has become the mainstream position of brand promotion and marketing conversion.
The picture is derived from the "2021 AutoMotive Live Data Report"
Taking the 2021 Double Eleven as an example, the person in charge of Tmall Automobile revealed to China Automotive News that the transaction volume of Tmall Automobile during the Double Eleven period increased by more than 600% year-on-year, of which the e-commerce live car sales transaction reached a new high, an increase of more than 1800% year-on-year, and the transaction volume accounted for nearly 10%.
It can be seen that in 2022, the automotive live broadcasting industry facing consumers still has a lot of room for growth.
Who sells cars in the live room?
The automotive live streaming ecosystem is mainly composed of live broadcasting platforms, sellers and the supply chains behind them, users or consumers.
Live broadcast platforms include e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, as well as video platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Station B, as well as auto vertical content platforms such as Autohome, Yiche, and Zhichedi.
Among the sellers, car manufacturers, that is, brand parties, OEMs, and car manufacturers, are mainly responsible for building cars, and many brands have now opened new media accounts for marketing. Taking Douyin as an example, according to the new list of November 2021, the influence of Car companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Geely Automobile, and BMW China is at the forefront.
In November 2021, the top 20 automotive companies were in the top 20 influence list
Compared with the manufacturers of automobiles, brand dealers (also known as 4S stores, special stores, etc.) as the pioneer of car sales is the main force of broadcasting. At present, the traditional channel of automobile sales is the authorized business model, that is, the main engine factory authorizes dealers and 4S stores to sell cars, and the use of direct operation models such as Tesla, Weilai, and Ideal is a minority. Despite the increasing diversification and digitization of automobile circulation channels, the role of dealers still occupies an important position.
Used car dealers are also on the front line of sales facing consumers, but they are not selling new cars, but used cars. This market is relatively more complex information, one car and one situation, live broadcasting can improve the interaction efficiency of both parties to the transaction, so the frequency of second-hand car dealers is also relatively high.
In addition, car masters, namely KOLs or KOCs, will publish short videos or live broadcasts through evaluation of cars, shop exploration experiences, plot interpretations, etc.
"1+N+K+X" account matrix model
From the "2021 Giant Engine Vehicle Live BroadcastIng Industry Research Report"
This article mainly focuses on the live broadcast of brands, dealers and used car dealers.
How to play auto brand self-broadcast?
At first, automakers mainly cooperated with Internet celebrity anchors and celebrities to carry out live streaming with goods.
As early as October 2019, actor Lei Jiayin had joined hands with Taobao anchor "Chen Jie Kiki" and blogger "Handmade Geng" to sell cars live, and the cumulative number of visits in the 2.5-hour live broadcast room reached 4.59 million.
The picture is derived from the car headline
However, the real reason for attracting users to place orders may be due to the strong promotion of the promotion, the right price, and the good reputation of the product.
On April 10, 2020, Luo Yonghao live-streamed the haval F7, and the half-price policy made it sell out in an instant, and 11,357 car purchase coupons worth 2,777 yuan were robbed.
In 2021, the March 8 Festival Kuaishou e-commerce joined hands with Wuling, and 200 Wuling Hongguang MINIEV electric vehicles were sold for the whole vehicle, and after the subsidy of 5,000 yuan per vehicle, the price dropped to 27,800 yuan.
Wuling Hongguang MINIEV
The low-price strategy cannot be long-lasting, and always discounting the car in the live broadcast room will inevitably have a negative impact on the brand. How to let consumers plant grass, order cars, and even complete full transactions through live broadcasts, rather than being attracted by only half-price gimmicks, has become a problem in front of car companies. Even most of the car live broadcast only to achieve the step of retaining capital, that is, to obtain the contact information of the intended customers, and then lead to the offline store transaction, there is still a way to go before the direct online transaction.
Live room retention page
Starting from 2021, taking advantage of the brand's self-broadcast outlet, some of the pioneers of the car brand have opened the official live broadcast room, tried to build their own traffic pool, and further directly faced consumers to sell cars, such as "Wuling Automobile", "Geely Automobile", "Lynk & Co Automobile", "Haval SUV" and so on.
Take Wuling as an example. The most well-known product of SAIC-GM-Wuling is the "god car" Wuling Hongguang, which can take down a family car within 100,000 yuan at a price that is close to the people.
Under the trend of the basic peak of the production and sales of fuel vehicles and the rise of new energy vehicles, Wuling launched the micro-electric vehicle Hongguang MINIEV in July 2020, which became a popular Internet celebrity in one fell swoop, with sales exceeding 400,000 units in the 13 months of listing.
Hongguang MINIEV, which comes with its own traffic, has also brought a welcome to the Wuling brand self-broadcast.
During the 2021 Double Eleven period, Hongguang MINIEV macaron version appeared in the official live broadcast room of Wuling Automobile, opened the full sales mode of the whole vehicle, and finally won the first place in the Douyin car single product hot list and the first place in the Tmall auto business self-broadcast list.
According to the data released by the Wuling Live E-commerce Team, only through brand self-broadcasting, the cumulative transaction volume between Wuling Automobile and its Baojun Automobile Douyin Live Broadcast exceeded 100 million yuan in 53 days.
In addition to the combination of explosive products and new products for sale, how does Wuling realize the live sales model of full subscription?
"How to pick up the car", "How long to arrive", "is there a discount for naked cars", and other such questions are often seen in the Wuling live broadcast room.
First of all, regarding the price, unlike the national unified pricing of Tesla's direct sales system, traditional car companies need to carefully weigh up live e-commerce, online car purchase is currently difficult to replace the sales system composed of 4S stores and dealers, so the live broadcast room generally does not directly reduce the price, but in the three forms of deposit expansion discounts, lottery, after-sales rights and interests packages to benefit consumers.
Wuling Live operates hierarchically on the rights and interests of fans
Second, regarding the full-money deal, this is a new challenge for both automakers and consumers. Wuling live broadcast room products are divided into large deposit coupons (need to pay the final payment offline) and vehicle coupons (full purchase of cars) two kinds, the full purchase of cars will be delivered by the manufacturer's package mail to the home, and the use of sales consultant 1V1 copy.
Users with car purchase intentions are sometimes unable to pay the full amount in one lump sum, and the team will generate a dedicated car purchase link for the user, which can be paid in two installments. After completion, the anchor will congratulate the user on the full order, and then cooperate with the call to stimulate potential users to place orders.
Large orders can generate a dedicated link for the user (link 6 in the right image) and pay in two installments
Finally, regarding delivery and after-sales, the current delivery time of Wuling is uneven, the fastest is 5 days, and the slow one is more than 15 days, but it is not slow in the traditional car purchase mode.
The person in charge of Tmall Automobile once told China Automobile News that the idea of car live broadcasting is not to sell cars but to obtain clues has become outdated, and manufacturers have proved feasible to sell cars in full through live broadcasting, and this model still has greater room for growth in the future.
From 2021 Double Eleven to Double Twelve, Wuling is trying to open up the full link of live broadcasting all-round car sales. The person in charge of the Wuling e-commerce team said that the core lies in solving the problem of full link efficiency, the write-off rate is a key data, and the orders to be written off are larger, which needs to break through the original system barriers, and the new system of personnel, logistics, products, data and other consumers is still under construction.
Flow chart of the online sales model of passenger cars in the future, the source of the 2021 China Automobile Circulation Industry Annual Conference
From this point of view, in 2022, the real arena of auto brand self-broadcast may not be in the front-end live broadcast room, but in the business model transformation behind it.
How do brand dealers and used car dealers sell cars?
For dealers, selling cars can not only rely on consumers to enter the store independently, but also need to open up more and higher quality sales leads through social media, auto content platforms, short video platforms and other channels.
The traditional 4S store model is "people looking for cars", while the live broadcast mode is "cars looking for people", and the online live broadcast room is a channel that can directly reach consumers, and is not limited by time and geography.
Different from the manufacturer's self-broadcast, dealers open live broadcasts to obtain local traffic, the core is to reduce the cost of customer acquisition, increase the number of leads, and the anchor is often played by sales consultants.
Since October 2019, Zhichedi launched the live broadcast business, backed by ByteDance, and is currently the leading automotive live broadcasting platform in China. The 4S store can open the function of the 4S shop in the douyin live broadcast room, which supports making an appointment for test drive, inquiring about the reserve price, and viewing the car series on sale.
Douyin live broadcast understands the Car Emperor 4S store function
"Brothers, how does the model look good?" "Landing price background private message, we have spot." In the dealer's live broadcast room, front-line sales personnel or introduce basic information such as model, configuration, performance and so on to the camera, or take a mobile phone to shoot the interior, take the audience to experience the car from the first perspective, and answer various questions related to the car.
Through the high-density information interaction of live car, the anchor can help consumers to see the car at close range and efficiently complete the most important decision-making process in the car purchase process. Even if there is no intention to buy a car for the time being, dealers can also use live broadcasts to mix their faces.
As more and more dealers begin the normalization and refined operation of auto live broadcasting, the effect of live broadcasting has also expanded from clue collection to direct transactions.
"Xiaoying Talking Car" has only more than 200,000 fans in Kuaishou, but the monthly sales of live car sales can reach 40 units, supporting most of the 4S stores. According to media reports, anchor Xiaoying has 12 years of experience in car sales, in addition to talking about car professionals, she will also teach users some bargaining, car inspection, after-sales skills, sincerely share "dry goods", so fan loyalty is high, old customers bring new customers, and even drive off-site car purchases.
The sales scene shifts from offline to online, but what remains unchanged is the process of building a sense of trust, and the key to promoting the turnover rate of live car broadcasting is inseparable from the trust of people. This is even more pronounced in the informationally asymmetrical used car market.
Traditional second-hand car evaluation mainly relies on looking and listening, which can be said to be "a thousand cars and a thousand faces, a thousand cars and a thousand prices", across the screen, consumers are more worried about stepping on the pit. Second-hand car dealers hope to increase exposure with live broadcasting and sell cars as soon as possible, because the turnover rate determines the profit of a used car. How can a trust relationship be established between the two?
The person in charge of the "one plus one car" monopoly of "one plus one car" with more than 4 million douyin fans said that douyin is a double-edged sword, and good and bad content can spread quickly, and bad content often spreads faster. In order to gain customer recognition and increase sales and brand awareness, you cannot be falsely deceived, otherwise it will affect long-term operations.
In addition to false marketing, the vulgar plot of used car live broadcast with goods, playing pornography is also a big minefield.
Ultimately, it's authentic, interesting quality content that really engages customers online with used cars.
"One Plus One Car" has several cases of direct online order transactions, but the vast majority of customers still have to go through offline experience. Therefore, "online high-quality content + offline perfect experience = increase in transaction volume", thereby improving vehicle turnover.
In addition, it is also necessary to make good use of marketing tools such as addresses and phone calls to obtain accurate traffic and increase the conversion rate of leads.
Will live streaming cars still sell in the future?
According to the interpretation of the automobile market of the Association of Automobiles, at present, China's automobile market is in a period of change, the automotive industry is changing to the direction of electrification and intelligence, from the perspective of thousands of people, China's automobile market still has a large room for growth in the future, and the aftermarket and other formats will gradually mature.
On the consumer side, the post-90s generation has become the main force of car purchases, and the new generation of consumers pay more attention to intelligent and personalized services. The live marketing of automobile brands should also meet their needs, and integrate and innovate online and offline service models.
For auto brands, the layout of live e-commerce is not only a new online channel, but a huge change to the original marketing system, involving manufacturers, dealers, live broadcast platforms, consumers and other multi-party games.
In the future, the myth of live car sales will continue and will be written by the pioneers of the new system.
The author | Curly hair
Edit the | Zhang Jie
Proofreading | Bamboo
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