STRIVING FOR THE PERFECT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WITH DIGITAL SOLUTIONS David Willems (Toyota Belgium) The purchasing process of a car has undergone fundamental changes in the last five years. The brand s websites have become the most important showroom and consumers come to the physical showroom well prepared. David Willems, Marketing Director of Toyota Belgium, explains Toyota s approach.
Prior to 1992, the automotive sector was an open book. Everyone obtained all the information from the Belgian Vehicle Registration Authority (DIV), thus dealers knew the brand and the year of production of the cars. That data was used by the automotive sector itself, as well by other sectors for direct marketing purposes. The data was kept well up-to-date so car brands had, so to speak, no need to maintain their own database. However, after implementation of the legislation on the protection of privacy in 1992, that data was no longer available to car brands (unless for recall operations due to safety issues). That meant the automotive sector had to start from scratch in terms of data in the 1990 s. The Internet has facilitated new opportunities for data collection particularly in the last five years. - What data are you able to collect? David Willems: We get a relatively large volume of data from sales. Those data are the starting point and we have to enrich our data via the dealer. We invest a great deal of money to get the data as clean as possible, so we can approach the right client in the right way. In the past prior to 1992 there were more details available about people who had bought a second-hand Toyota. Now, we are only able to collect data when such a second-hand car comes into the network for maintenance. Data is more than just classic contact details (name and address details). After all, much has changed in that respect within a few years. Five years ago, a potential buyer would visit the showrooms of different brands 5 to 7 times before purchasing a car. The buyer was in the process of offline shopping and gathering information. The most recent numbers show that on average a showroom is only visited 1,2 times. Why? Because a large part of the purchasing process takes place online instead of during that physical visit to the showroom. Buyers go to the showroom only when they have decided online what to buy. That calls for a different approach regarding marketing and sales. Previously, salespeople in the showroom network provided a comprehensive explanation to people who knew little about the car yet. Nowadays, showroom clients are already well-informed and are just gaging what sort of deal they can get. It turns into a negotiation about the price. Our website has now become our greatest showroom. Thus, that website must be well-organised. We need to try to establish contact with people who are interested and are still in the buying phase, before they go to the showroom. We need to create leads, people who provide their names and telephone numbers. They leave a trail and we then need to try to attract them to the showroom. That also means we need a different type of salesperson. For example: as a buyer, you already know a great deal about the car you want, but how much is your current car worth? You can only find that out by having it looked at. That is how the dealer can persuade or attract the client. Dealers are in the process of transformation. All those factors make your job as a marketer exciting, but also more complex. We have to, so to speak, keep on driving the car on the road whilst changing the wheels. Therefore, the competences we require of marketers are also different. Everything revolves around data platforms, campaign tools, following up on statistics, big data, and the ability to put those into practice. EFFICIENT - So it s now about attracting people to your website. David Willems: There are two sides to the story. On one hand we have people who are in the market, who are active, and who want to purchase a car in the coming weeks or months. They are already in an advanced stage of the buying process. And on the other hand are those who are not yet engaged in making a purchase. Let s call them passive. What factors determine whether your car makes it onto the consideration list? Clients make 60% of their decisions before they enter the market. We need to influence those consumers daily. We use classic media to build image and brand recognition broadly and repetitively. Television is a powerful and efficient medium for doing that. You can reach many people, but the vast majority are not busy purchasing a car. For those people, the message is not the price, but what our brand stands for. Digital is more efficient in the short term. Once you decide which car you want, you have already made a great deal of progress and you are in the active phase. You are looking for specifics, like price and dealer information. You have already used the
configurator, requested a test drive. We try to approach those people with tactical, activating communications through banners and social media. It s my opinion that classic media is too expensive for that. Every year, 500,000 new cars are sold. That equates to approximately 40,000 per month. We have a consideration rate of 16%. That means roughly 8,000 people consider my brand in a single month. On average, they spend three months in the sales process. That means there are 24,000 people who are actively considering purchasing a Toyota during that period. Mass media is not the appropriate tool to reach those people. - So, in the active phase, you use banners, e-mails, and classic direct mail? David Willems: Yes, yes, all those tools. You have your own database, your own clients and you can predict whether they will enter the market again. Then you have prospect who have effectively requested a test drive. You know they will enter the market soon. They then receive a banner with pricing information. If you are not interested in the price of a car, you won t click it. Based on our findings, people will receive the most efficient communications possible. - Then you employ search engine optimisation and search engine marketing as well? David Willems: The full Monty! We measure what people do on the website and where they come from. The most valuable visitors are those that consciously go directly to the Toyota site. That s where we deploy our SEO. In addition, SEA also brings in high quality traffic from people who are already engaged in the market. However, that alone does not attract sufficient traffic. We need to do other things as well. We invest a great deal of time and energy in that. In the past, you simply paid per impression. This was followed by the pay per click model. The starting point was to place advertisements on the websites visited by your target group and that is where price setting was determined. We have moved away from that. We now focus mainly on analysing the cost per engaged visit. We know which website they have come from and what they are doing on the site. Do they move on quickly, or are they engaged? Those are the leads I want to buy and it doesn t matter where they come from. CHALLENGE - You also need to exchange information between Toyota Belgium s database and those of the dealers. David Willems: That is the challenge. We enrich the data we have with other sources. Those come from the dealers themselves or a third party. The online showroom s lead system is important. On the website, we collect the data of those visitors interested in making contact with the dealer. They go to the dealer and we follow up what the dealer does. Was contact made, was the lead converted into an offline sale? That is the process: website - data - showroom - offline - sales... The exchange of information between us and the dealer is evolving more quickly. Clients expect everything to be perfectly coordinated. Clients cannot receive information from us that does not correspond with what they get from the dealer. We need to manage the touch points perfectly so that we gain a single perspective of the client. We need the right system, the right procedures and the right people to do that. - The right people? David Willems: That is another challenge: the right people here and the right people in the network. We need to make the people in our network aware of the importance of the right information. After all, it is about giving the right information to the right person at the right time. That is the deciding factor. When you speak to clients, you need to know what information they have already been given, what has already been said. If they have had a live chat on the website, clients expect the dealer to know at a later stage of contact what was discussed during the live chat. - How can the dealer know that? David Willems: If you identify yourself on the website, I know which region you come from and I can pass that info on to the local dealer. If you have a live chat, we ask whether we may have your coordinates in order to discuss matters in detail. Most people have no problem with that, because they initiated the conversation themselves. Privacy is important. You may not spam people, but thanks to today s powerful systems and with the right tools, we
no longer need to spray & pray. If I send information that is relevant, I am not spamming, but catering to the convenience of clients. That s where I can make a difference as a brand. That is evolving exponentially. We can see what someone has done on the site, which model has been looked at and how many times, so you know where their interests lie. That is why, as a marketer, I am interested in digital solutions to strive for the perfect customer experience. We already know which phase the consumer is in and we send the right information, via the right channel (laptop, mobile) to the right person. LITTLE BY LITTLE - On average people buy a new car once every seven years. How do you keep in touch during that time? With magazines or e-magazines? David Willems: In the past we maintained regular contact with hard copy: we tried to maintain contact with less commercially-oriented messages and more information about what Toyota represents, for example, in terms of sustainability and technology. That is a broader array of information. However, we are now evolving into a world where that no longer happens on paper, but rather digitally. Instead of providing all the information at once, we now provide information far more in the form of snack bite content, small amounts of info that you release little by little, that can be read on a mobile in two or three minutes. It is not a digital newsletter that delivers the same information to everyone at the same time. We are moving towards a system where you receive tailormade info more frequently, based on your interests. If you have no interest in motorsports, there is no point in sending you a great deal of information about it. Measuring is the name of the game. You send an e-mail to see what people click on. That goes into the database and next time, they receive subjects that more tailored to their interests. You send general information in an e-mail to clients that have had their cars for 6 or 7 years, as well as a piece on the new models. We can then see whether someone has read it. That serves as a trigger for us to describe those models in greater depth next time. - It is a process of continual learning? David Willems: It is agile marketing, trial & error. Marketing used to be educated guessing. Not anymore. Now it is measuring, modifying, measuring again and modifying again. This way you arrive at optimal communications for a specific audience. It is no longer a one size fits all approach. It is as personalised as possible. Digital technology can already do far more than what we do in practice. That has to do with what we are able to do as an organisation and what personal information people are prepared to provide in order to receive information that is as personalised as possible. It is about striking the right balance between what you can do and what people want. As a marketer engaged in customer centricity, it is about the right channel, the right time, the right person and the right information. It should not create annoyance. It is not annoying to receive information you are seeking. It only becomes annoying when you receive info you do not want. That is the difference. MOTOR SHOW Something else. There is the Brussels Motor Show in Heizel, the Holy Grail for the automotive sector. You now see everyone doing things with tablets on the stands. David Willems: That is data gathering. The Motor Show is an interesting phenomenon. It is an opportunity for brands to present themselves to people who are not yet considering your brand. That is an opportunity to create awareness. It is a starting point. You go where there are many clients congregating in one place. You need to exploit that physical presence to the full. Not by collecting a great deal of data immediately, but by providing visitors with information. The expo is about being visible and providing information. Those who manage your stand must be trained well so that they are able to provide an answer to as many questions as possible. At the end of such a conversation, you have the opportunity to lead people to the network and collect information for the network for a test drive or a quote. Subsequently, the dealer, who has detailed knowledge, can contact them. It is about conversion to the network. It serves no purpose to collect leads there on a large scale if they are not yet genuine. It comes down to identifying genuine leads and contacting them as quickly as possible. Technology assists us in that. - What about lease cars? David Willems: That is a complex issue. We have two
target groups: the leasing companies and the user/ chooser. Leasing companies are b-to-b and the focus is on the cost of the vehicle and the scrap value. We occupy a strong position in the private market, but because we have no diesel vehicles we are not so strong in the corporate market. However, now we can make an impact there as well, with our hybrid vehicles. In terms of the user/chooser, we are less priceoriented. There, the focus is on valorisation of the vehicle and the design. You can utilise the user/ chooser as an ambassador to promote your brand in the company. Who is David Willems? Ad Van Poppel David Willems (44) has held the position of Marketing Director for Toyota Belgium since January 2014. His background is not in durables or the automotive sector, but in fast moving consumer goods. He started his marketing career in 1999 at Danone Belgium. In 2008, he started a four-year stint as Marketing Director for Danone Switzerland. Subsequently, he was the Marketing Director for Campbell Foods Belgium until 2014 when he moved to Toyota, a completely different kind of fast moving product. The exciting thing about Danone was that it involved FMCG products with a limited shelf life. You had to sell the product before it became unsellable. You could not hide behind the excuse of having to build up a long-term image. Every campaign had to have an immediate impact. When it comes to cars, you are dealing more with image and brand recognition that cannot be measured instantly against short-term results. That is no excuse not to measure and modify constantly. Besides, in the automotive sector, the sale is just the starting point, says Willems. So how did the switch from fast moving consumer goods to the automotive sector come about? I have a strong interest in digital developments, he answers. In FMCG, that is difficult to nail down. Toyota approached me with the brief to implement a new strategy. I viewed that transformation as an opportunity. After a number of years in FMCG, this offered an appealing change of direction and I recognised an opportunity for digital solutions. His interest in digital is reflected in the way he marries creativity with an analytical approach. You have a marketing scientist and a marketing artist. Digital brings the two together beautifully. You need to craft messages that turn heads, you must think from the client s perspective. But at the same time, you need to conduct research. After all, the numbers tell the tale. With digital, you see whether something is working straight away. What s more, Willems first studied law and then marketing at Vlerick Business School. In hindsight, law was not the right field for Willems. I had a rather romanticised view of law. I enjoy debating and arguing, but law proved to be more written than verbal. I became interested in the commercial world, marketing in particular. Marketing is a happy medium between being engaged in business and client psychology. It is about customer centricity to use a buzzword. When you think from the end client s perspective, that is psychology.