Membership fees can rise by 90% a year, but I didn't expect that the 4S store became a leek field for car apps

The car scene has been busy lately!

Tesla is busy cutting prices, car owners are busy defending their rights, and car dealers are busy begging for justice.

Around New Year's Day, the Hunan Provincial Automobile Chamber of Commerce issued a red-headed document complaining, accusing Autohome, Bitauto.com, and car emperors of "raising prices and grabbing money".

In the document, a car dealer in Hunan province spat bitterly: the membership fees of these three platforms are really going crazy.

Autohome's membership fee in 2023 changed from 162,000 yuan to 233738 yuan, an increase of about 44%;

Bitcar changed from 170,800 yuan to 238,800 yuan, an increase of about 39%;

The cost of Chedi in 2022 is 132240 yuan (280 units sold), and if the number of transactions remains unchanged in 2023, after offsetting various discounts, it is expected to be 255500 yuan, an increase of 93%.

Unexpectedly, just a few days later, the news triggered a chain reaction, and many automobile associations supported Hunan, and then the China Automobile Dealers Association personally coordinated the matter.

For a while, the entire automotive industry seemed to be lively.

Then the question comes, it is obviously an ordinary price increase problem, why is there a storm in the city?

It is mainly related to the "unreasonable charges" of the three major automotive content platforms.

These three platforms, as the most accurate car user gathering place on the whole network, have more than 150 million monthly active users, and Autohome has put up the slogan of "430 million people are watching", relying on these traffic, 4S stores have to contribute a large amount of revenue to these platforms every year.

In official terms, this is called the lead generation service fee, that is, the traffic promotion fee.

First, the car content platform will provide consumers with clues to 4S stores, and when you show your intention to buy a car on the car content platform (search for a certain model), the car content platform will recommend several 4S shops of related models to promote everyone to see the car on the spot.

At the same time, your personal information will also be packaged as a "car purchase lead" to the sales staff of each car, and then a large number of sales calls will come.

To this end, dealerships' 4S stores need to spend 200,000 yuan a year to buy this service and become members of major automotive platforms.

Although 20W is indeed not much for the annual turnover of tens of millions and hundreds of millions of 4S stores. However, under the addition of the huge base of 4S stores, the car platform can often get a lot of income.

And frankly, the Big Three of the current automotive content platforms desperately need this money.

Why do you say that?

Referring to the financial report of Autohome, the only listed company in the automotive head media, we will find:

In 2021, Autohome had a total revenue of 7 billion, and membership fees alone (lead generation services) collected 3 billion, which is the largest source of revenue, while year-on-year advertising revenue (media services) was only 2 billion.

According to the data provided by a dealer in Changsha, Hunan Province, Autohome charges a membership fee of about 16.2W yuan for each 4S store, according to this base, 3 billion, which means that about 2W 4S stores are members of Autohome. (Considering that fees in first-tier cities will also rise, this number may be less)

You know, the number of auto 4S shops in China during the same period is 3W fluctuating up and down. This market share is actually very exaggerated.

Moreover, this membership fee, it is not enough for each 4S store to pay it once.

Take the 79 4S stores in the report of the Hunan Automobile Association, almost every 4S store has bought members of two platforms, and the most exaggerated 4S store paid 64W in membership fees alone, which is estimated to be ssVIP.

Therefore, for 4S stores, it is already a relatively common phenomenon to enter multiple automotive content platforms at the same time.

In this way, they not only need to spend a lot of money to buy, but also have to buy several at once, which shows the determination of 4S stores to engage in this "special service" by any means.

You say, why is this lead generation service so good? The core is still in the iteration of sales methods.

In the early days of car sales, it was indispensable to push the model, either handing out flyers or making crazy calls, which not only cost labor, but also had a low conversion rate.

At this point, automotive content platforms have really made a good difference.

At present, in the publicity of major platforms, it is said that the distribution of sales leads can be achieved through technical advantages such as locking user behavior trajectories, user retention portraits, and big data algorithm pushes.

I don't need to say more about the power of big data.

Compared to the benefits of streamlining the sales team, the annual membership fee of 20w is indeed a good deal.

But then again, this change in sales model is all old yellow calendar. The latest trend is that the price-performance ratio of lead generation services has declined in recent years.

On the one hand, in order to rush sales, 4S stores naturally hope to obtain as many clues as possible, but paradoxically, 4S stores cannot determine the quality of leads.

Therefore, in order to prove that they are stronger than other platforms, car content platforms inevitably prove their ability by increasing the number of leads, which makes users with low willingness to buy cars are recommended to 4S stores in large numbers.

In this way, the clues provided by the car content platform have bubbled wildly.

It took 10 years for China's car sales to rise by 40%, and as a result, the number of leads in the automotive industry increased by 66 times.

On the surface, the volume of leads is indeed increasing, but after spending a lot of energy and time to follow up and screen, 4S stores found that they did not bring transactions, and the proportion of leads converted into purchases decreased sharply.

As a result, salespeople are forced to work intensively, and users are plagued by various sales calls.

However, it's too late to exit the lead generation service now:

First, the company's sales team has been streamlined, and it takes time to return to the previous ground push model;

Second, clue service is like an arms race in nuclear weapons, everyone has it, that is to be safe; If anyone has me or not, then there is only a beating.

In this way, the 4S store is pinched to death by the car content platform, and the media platform naturally has the right to raise prices.

In the past two years, the performance of automotive content platforms represented by Autohome has generally declined, with advertising revenue from 3.4 billion to 2 billion in 21.

The pressure to generate revenue is huge, so the sickle of the price increase is placed on the neck of the 4S store.

Of course, everyone is a fastidious person, and they won't just say, I'm going to make your money.

Just like Autohome and Bitauto.com, although the fee has increased by 40%, the reason is "industrial upgrading", there is no problem.

The flush reporter learned about ▼ at the head of Autohome

And the car emperor who understands the price increase the most, gives a more particular explanation: it is necessary to rectify the entire industrial chain.

Simply put, in the past billing model of the amount of leads, there were too many "junk data" in the clues provided by the platform.

Now, I understand that Chedi intends to make changes in the industry and embrace the CPS model, that is, from charging according to the length of use in the past to paying for leads according to transaction volume.

That seems like a good thing.

At the industry seminar in Chengdu in August, Che Emperor officially announced that he would carry out a change in clue services, although some people were optimistic, but there were also supporters.

However, now that the specific content comes out, the brand side seems to be unhappy.

In theory, charging according to the transaction volume is nothing more than a 4S store, after selling a car, giving the car content platform a certain fee.

But in essence, not only did Che Emperor not cancel the original annual membership fee, but the amount nearly doubled.

In response to this question, I consulted insiders who understand Che Emperor, but did not get a positive response.

Bad critics dared to guess that they increased prices so hard this year, and it is estimated that they are also confident in the reputation they have saved from the investment of large-cost content in the past two years, and they also feel that their CPS charging model works well.

On the side, the head of the marketing department of a joint venture brand 4S store in Changsha revealed:

 "In 2021, the fee for understanding Chedi is 130,000, and in 2023, the plan will be changed, at least 220,000. Whether the agreed 'guaranteed sales' of 220,000 li is achieved or not, the money given to the platform cannot be less, even if only one is sold, it is the same cost; but if the sales exceed the guaranteed sales, the cost will be higher. ” 

From a 4S store's point of view, this is really unreasonable, not only to charge a membership fee, but also to add a per-click charge that has never been tried before.

If this is the time when the automotive industry is booming, 4S stores may choose to try it enthusiastically to see the effect.

However, sales at Auto 4S shops have generally declined in recent months.

In November, 41.2% of dealer stores were closed, and most of them were closed for more than two weeks;

More than 73% of dealers fail to complete sales targets; Of these, 61.1% have a task completion rate of less than 80%.

Inventory backlog coupled with a shortage of funds, dealers are already on the line of life and death.

Now, the three major automotive content platforms have "forced the palace" together, adding another fire in the context of sluggish car sales, and the contradiction between automotive content platforms and automobile companies has finally broken out, and many companies have suspended or even directly suspended the renewal of contracts with the three major automotive platforms.

And the statements of different brands have their own careful considerations.

Powerful brands, resolutely not accustomed:

The online BYD sent an internal email saying that all stores are required not to buy a certain emperor New Year box (annual cooperation agreement),

Although the news has not been officially confirmed, the cooperation of BYD stores has indeed been suspended on the Chedi App.

According to the speech of a car blogger, it can also be seen that most of the car company dealers of BYD, Volkswagen, BMW, Cadillac, and Tesla and NIO have chosen to suspend cooperation.

One dealer said that this has strengthened the determination of some first-class car manufacturers to create their own private domain traffic, and everyone is moving closer to the direct operation model of new forces in car manufacturing.

In contrast, companies with more money have nothing to fear. Even the membership fees of many car dealers can be reimbursed by manufacturers, and they can also make a small profit. So the price increase, not a big problem.

However, from the perspective of the entire industry, the 4S stores sandwiched between the brand side and the car traffic platform do lack enough bargaining chips.

However, we can also clearly perceive that whether it is a better designed official website, mini program, app or dealer live broadcast, it proves that car manufacturers and dealers are now building their own traffic.

In order to hold the channel in your own hands and play with these platforms.

At this time, if the opening of the platform price increase, if it opens wider and wider, it is difficult to say whether the dispute between the two sides can end in a decent way.

But no matter how they fight, don't beat us consumers when buying a car, the most important thing is to eat.