The Second Half of Automakers: Building a New Online Infrastructure
The automotive industry's landscape has become more intricate and bewildering.
In 2024, with inventory consolidation and market repositioning as the industry's main themes, automotive companies have already acknowledged the reality and lowered their stance. Sub-brand mergers, product structure adjustments, automotive company bosses going live themselves, and online channel layouts... Among the various methods, one reality is revealed: Everyone is attempting to find a stable driving force for business growth in the next stage.
The auto show has always been a window for the outside world to observe the trends in the automotive industry. In the Guangzhou International Auto Show, which is regarded as the year-end battle for automotive companies, some interesting trends have emerged.
"Half of the sales come from online." Many automotive dealers said. After the new car-making forces initiated from online, the online process of the automotive industry seems to have accelerated significantly. At the auto show site, near the booths of various automotive companies, there is a group of anchors holding live-streaming equipment. Most of these anchors have another identity - the automotive dealers of this brand.
Of course, the sales volume mentioned by the dealers comes from online, but the transactions are not completed online. Unlike the retail industry swept by e-commerce, the online process of the automotive industry as a bulk commodity seems not to be rapid. For consumer durable goods that cost hundreds of thousands of yuan, only a very few people will choose to purchase them completely online. More people still need to go to the offline stores.
However, it cannot be ignored that the dealers who are experiencing the market battles firsthand are voting with practical actions to move online.
Online, the Discovered Certain Increment
The automotive industry has truly recovered.
The latest data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers shows that from January to October this year, the production and sales of automobiles were 24.466 million and 24.624 million respectively, with year-on-year growth of 1.9% and 2.7% respectively. In addition, from January to October, the production and sales of new energy vehicles increased by 33% and 33.9% year-on-year respectively.
It can be seen that the industry has improved significantly with the strong momentum of new energy vehicles, but it does not mean that it can "return to the past". A big reason is that as more players pour in, the track becomes crowded, but the demand from consumers has not increased significantly. At present, when the population size and market demand are relatively fixed, automotive companies are competing in products, technology, services, and prices.
The reality is that the industry's recovery comes at the cost of the automotive companies' profit transfer - the price war. Data released by the China Automobile Dealers Association recently shows that in the first three quarters of this year, the profit of the domestic automotive industry was 336 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.2%.
Everyone is seeking new increments. Currently, there are two relatively clear paths to provide incremental space. One is to "find new increments" overseas, and the other is to "compete for existing increments" domestically. Going overseas may not be a feasible idea for every automotive company, but the competition for existing increments may have a new trend.
Strictly speaking, the number of cars in China is calculated in hundreds of millions, and the vehicle age replacement cycle is shorter than that of the international market. The market demand always exists. The difficulty for automotive companies is not that "no one buys", but that they don't know "who will buy".
In the decades when the automotive industry has experienced both boom and bust, the change in customer acquisition methods is not complicated. From online to offline, the consistent core action is to dig out as many "customer leads" as possible, and then find the target users to attract them to the store for the final transaction.
Cooperating with automotive vertical media, constantly planning marketing events on social media, and operating various content platforms... In the past long years, no matter how automotive brands transform, they follow the same logic: Go where the users are.
"The transformation of automotive marketing to new media is essentially a transformation of the customer acquisition method," said Feng Fei, Assistant General Manager of Beijing Automobile Sales Company, in a live conversation with Kuaishou Auto at the Guangzhou Auto Show. This view may have pointed out a recognized industry fact: The customer acquisition method in the automotive industry is changing from "people looking for cars" to "cars looking for people".
"The industry has entered an era of very fierce stock competition. We found that more and more OEMs no longer adopt the pure hard advertising propaganda methods in the past. They place more hopes on the new media platforms with value and users and start to operate their own positions." Wang Qiufeng, the head of Kuaishou Auto Business, told 36Kr.
Position Management, the Infrastructure Reconstruction of "Online Stores"
The march of automotive brands into new media, especially content platforms, is not new. Whether it is the successive live-streaming booms of corporate founders and executives, or the increasingly mature automotive content ecosystem, it proves that the value of content platforms in terms of traffic and volume has long been recognized.
The call for "online stores" is not small, but the thinking of most automotive companies still follows the inertia of "people looking for cars". The brand's official account has been opened; automotive video content has been released; and the marketing of promoting products by key opinion leaders has been done... In fact, it is still a relatively classic contact logic, using the platform as a channel for advertising and publicity exposure, which is just new wine in old bottles.
In the final analysis, the fundamental reason is that the positioning of the position is not accurate. In the traditional era, the dealer system such as 4S stores is the absolute position, and the contact point of the store is the contact point of the brand. The positions of the new car-making forces are either to establish their own stores, service centers, or absorb dealers as the basic market, or to break through the situation through their own mini-programs, apps and other online channels to form a closed loop.
No matter which one, the value of these positions is more reflected in the post-link of receiving leads, conversion, service, and after-sales. In the past two years, the new car-making forces' attempt to move stores into commercial complexes may be a new position attempt, taking into account multiple functions such as exposure, sales, and service. However, comprehensive problems such as high operating costs and limited radiation range make them more appear in high-tier cities.
And some changes are taking place. Especially in the case of thinner profits and tightened budgets, the demands of automotive brands are no longer one-way, but become "complex" - they need both brand exposure, effective leads, and in-store transactions. This has led automotive companies to continue to migrate and find new ways out.
In the first half of this year, 36Kr reported that Haval Automobile built its own business matrix by introducing a large number of dealers to settle in Kuaishou. It only took half a year to obtain 120,000 leads and sell 780 products. Half a year later, more scattered individual actions of OEMs and dealers have begun to form a joint force. On content platforms such as Kuaishou, they have really started to build an online store position that can connect with the offline link and have achieved considerable results.
In 2024, the commercial ecosystem of the Kuaishou Auto Position continues to thrive. The content production scale of manufacturer brand accounts and dealer accounts has increased by 39% year-on-year, driving the overall lead scale to increase by 195% year-on-year. Among them, the representative customer FAW-Volkswagen broke through 1.94 million in the platform's customer acquisition scale in the first half of 2024, and the cost of leaving information dropped to less than 20 yuan... It is even more rare in the current environment with increasingly fierce competition.
It can be seen that the value of content platforms such as Kuaishou as the core "position" online is becoming the mainstream cognition of the automotive industry.
Data may be more illustrative. Take Kuaishou as an example. Its data shows that as of now, more than 120 automotive companies' official accounts and 27,000 dealer accounts are operating accounts on Kuaishou through short videos or live-streaming to obtain leads and complete sales conversions face-to-face with users. In particular, the number of dealers operating on Kuaishou is rising rapidly. Compared with the same period last year, the growth rate this year exceeds 20%.
And Kuaishou, which has been continuously exerting efforts in the automotive business in the past year, has also insighted into this trend. At this Guangzhou Auto Show, Kuaishou officially announced its one-stop solution for "position management".
"Position management will be a necessary new business infrastructure for automotive companies." Wang Qiufeng told 36Kr. Under the dual background of the shortening of consumers' car purchase decision-making link and the intensification of market competition, it can be said that it is an inevitable trend for automotive companies to layout "cars looking for people" and carry out forward-looking operations.
In Kuaishou's vision, the matrix accounts of dealers and OEMs are only the first step, which is a joint force in marketing volume. In addition to operating accounts, there is also a series of platform ecological supports such as the connection of data backends, the matching of delivery tools, the exploration of AI applications, and the closed loop of lead conversion.
This is also a new judgment made in response to the new environment and new trends after the continuous iteration of the integrated solution of product effectiveness and operation 1.0 proposed since August last year.
Take Hongqi as an example. When Hongqi cooperates with a big IP, the value of Kuaishou as a volume field is fully released. After obtaining a large amount of exposure, the potential users gathered through the official Kuaishou account of Hongqi and the dealer accounts will be subdivided into different groups from R1 to R5, from content exposure to test drive reservation and even conversion. Hongqi can see the flow direction of different levels of people in a marketing campaign in the data backend and formulate more refined and specific strategies. And the accumulated crowd assets will not be repeatedly reached, but will consider the full life cycle of users from a longer time dimension to further reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Nowadays, the infrastructure construction of Kuaishou's operating position is also becoming more and more perfect. First, traffic infrastructure. Currently, Kuaishou has fully switched to DSP bidding delivery to achieve more accurate user reach. The emergence of intelligent marketing products such as Intelligent User Acquisition and Lifecycle (UAL) has expanded the certainty of traffic. For the unique dealer matrix scene of the automotive companies, it has also upgraded its ability to carry out one-to-many centralized delivery and other operations. Second, product infrastructure. From the iteration of customer acquisition tools such as lead generation entrances, search, and private messages, to the evolution of potential customer tools for mining and cleaning and identifying potential car buyers, to the back-end capabilities of one-stop management, the digital capabilities of the Internet platform itself are also the entry point for automotive companies to improve efficiency.
What is more subtle is the relationship between Kuaishou and automotive companies. From the perspective of automotive companies, the core criterion for considering a traffic channel is naturally Cost Per Sale (CPS). After obtaining effective leads, how to invite and how to convert more depend on the digestion of their own system. However, the criterion for considering the position channel has changed to Cost Per Lead (CPL). The "position" not only needs to consider the production-investment ratio of the front link, but also the operation and digestion of the entire enterprise model.
"At present, some automotive companies that do better in position management on Kuaishou are more concerned about the degree of CPL optimization that the platform can bring." Wang Qiufeng admitted that although CPS is important, it is not suitable as the only value criterion for considering a position. According to her, Kuaishou is investing platform resources to accelerate the construction of the third-party service provider ecosystem in the automotive field, providing more professional services such as accompanying and agency operations for automotive brands and dealer groups, aiming to build a new online position with more automotive companies.
At the same time, Kuaishou's position infrastructure can also become a certain driving force for the transformation of automotive companies. Taking data as an example, the background data of the matrix accounts of automotive brands and dealers can be connected. On the one hand, it helps the brand to further grasp the situation at the end of its own system. On the other hand, it can also help the brand provide a more flexible testing form, which can be the brand's centralized management of the allocation of the advertising budget according to the incentive policy, or it can be the screening of potential dealers through business policies to redefine the ecological order.
A Convincing Driving Fulcrum
Why Kuaishou?
Objectively speaking, as the core entrance of traffic in the current environment, content platforms may be the choice of automotive companies, but Kuaishou may not be the only one. However, Kuaishou's own exclusive advantages cannot be ignored.
In terms of the platform size, according to the latest data of Kuaishou, its daily active users have exceeded 400 million and are still maintaining a growth rate. Among them, the number of people interested in automobiles exceeds 200 million, and the interest base in the automotive industry is also relatively stable. In addition, there is Kuaishou's exclusive crowd. According to the "White Paper", its platform has more than 46 million non-overlapping automotive interest groups compared with other mainstream short-video platforms, far exceeding the volume of automotive vertical media. This is itself an opportunity fertile ground that has not been fully cultivated in the automotive industry.
And Kuaishou's unique value in the new-line crowd is an indisputable fact. Among the 60% new-line users, the proportion of automotive interest users reaches 70%, and it is not a data stack in a specific region, but a new-line regional penetration nationwide. For example, the proportion of automotive interest users in East China and North China exceeds 40%. In a market environment with abundant supply and gradually fading brand mentality, whoever can instill the mentality into the new crowd first obviously has the first-mover advantage.
Before this, the breakthrough completed by the new car-making forces through online channels has opened a new world for the automotive industry. But not all automotive companies' transformations have smoothly entered the fast lane, and more people have been stuck on the road. And now, whether it is a new energy brand or a traditional automotive brand, some people have found a new position that can be continuously operated on content platforms such as Kuaishou and found a driving force for stable growth in the future.
And what is worth looking forward to is, will the same group of people be the ones to take the lead this time?