Growth hacking and creative marketing ideas for automotive industry
Discover the best growth hacking and creative marketing ideas perfect for automotion sector and automotive companies. Marketing campaigns and experiments focused on brand awareness and sales of more units, the best-known campaigns that highlight security, technology and innovation in automotion and some great classics that built up what automotion is today.
Really Speed dating
Ford’s Valentine’s Day video to promote the Ford Mustang went viral. In the clip, a woman meets different men for separate blind dates, subsequently inviting each to take a ride in her car — a red Ford Mustang. After each of the men were sufficiently freaked out, the woman stops the vehicle and tells them that she’s a professional stunt driver (Prestin Persson) and that the encounter has all been a part of “Ford Mustang’s Speed Dating.” Can you think of a speed dating for your brand?
If you use your brand message, you don't need to use your product.
Ford ran a campaign in which he urged his target to try new things. However, he did not directly urge using his product; instead, he urged people to try activities such as ax throwing, mechanical bulls, and MMA fighting.
Double negative equals positive
In this ad, the viewer may be initially confused because it talks about the product not being able to do something that its competitors can do. However, in the end the ad takes on the opposite meaning bringing the brand's key value. Can your product be presented in this original way?
Growth Hacking is a term coined by Sean Ellis, a business angel with investments in Dropbox, to define a strategy according to which the growth of a company is pursued through analytical techniques, creativity and curiosity, where the ultimate goal is get more customers and reduce the cost of acquiring these customers to the minimum possible.
- How does it apply to the automotive industry?
- Should car manufacturers and independent companies follow these methods?
Growth Hacking arises from the need to identify new growth strategies away from conventional advertising and the excessive spending of money, especially based on small business needs.
It was originally especially adapted to the startup ecosystem, since this is where the lack of initial resources is most efficiently supplemented with more experimental and mixed techniques - marketing and product development. However, nowadays growth hacking is a methodology implemented in all types of businesses and, if followed, brings incredible benefits and exceptional results for pretty much any business growth, and it is widely used to increase sales in B2C companies that have certain B2B dynamics, like in automotive industry where the sales cycle is long and customer journey much more complex.
Over 95% of car sales nowadays are made in specific dealers, but searching is the first place people start their buyer journey. It is clear to most auto retailers that online advertising is the key to attracting new leads to the dealers, and this should also be our key goal when it comes to growth hacking for the automotive industry: set up our KPIs, or key goals, on tangible results that increase sales based on units solds.
One of the biggest challenges facing automotive marketers is gaining the trust of their potential customers. Reviews are perhaps the most effective automotive marketing strategy there is, due to how it influences the trust. Once we have our KPIs and goals (increase sales by x%) we start designing growth drivers, which are hypothetical ways of achieving these goals.
A growth driver could be SEO strategy (being on top of SERP), Google Ads account optimised and structured or strategic partnerships. Once we have growth drivers designed, we can test them though specific sets of experiments. One of the sample experiments for Google Ads driver could be AdGroup setup, of 2-3 ads per ad group, specific keyword optimization for bidding on competitors keywords. We would measure the number of leads from each one of these and closed sales to determine whether a growth driver should be validated or rejected.
Finally, the heart of growth hacking methodology for the automotive industry is learnings tracking. Learnings are everything and thanks to them we can make sure never to make the same mistake again with a campaign or an experiment. If you are open to new ideas and their correct prioritisation and track learnings in each sprint, you are on the right track to grow you automotive business.