Why do I think traditional car companies can't learn from Azera's user operation model?

Over the years, we have come into contact with different automotive clients, and when it comes to the topic of user operation, the most frequently asked question is "Can we learn from the user operation methods of the new car-making forces represented by Azera?

In case studies, "borrowing" is often a euphemism, and often clients just want to see what they can "borrow" from, learn from, or even copy.

My view on this is very clear, can not learn, unlikely to copy and paste. There are many reasons, because I am a marketer, so I will focus more on marketing this slice to analyze my point of view.

First, who are the traditional car companies?

In 2009, the government launched the "Automotive Industry Adjustment and Revitalization Plan", clearly put forward the concept of China's automotive enterprises "four big and four small", the four big: SAIC Group, FAW Group, Dongfeng Automobile Group and Changan Automobile. Four small: BAIC Group, BAIC Group, Chery Automobile, China National Heavy Duty Truck.

Of course, this categorization is already a bit outdated, and the definition of "traditional automobile enterprises" in my article should be said to be the group of automobile enterprises powered by traditional fuel engines.

Second, why would a traditional car company want to learn from Azera's model?

The first reason is that the marketing game based on wholesale traffic is declining.

China's auto market has really entered the marketing era, which began in 1998 when Guangzhou Honda introduced the 4S store model into China and was imitated by a number of car companies. Before that, China's auto sales were in the early "planned economy" era, and money could not necessarily be bought.

And the 4S mature operating system, but also gradually constituted the "OEM is responsible for vehicle and parts production, sales companies are responsible for wholesale sales and network layout, dealers are responsible for retail and customer relationship maintenance" of the iron triangle of cooperation tone.

In the established rules, it is the dealer's job to have direct contact with the user. Brands pay a large portion of the budget to help dealers get sales leads, and dealers do the follow-up and conversion. But because of false traffic, user information selling, vicious price competition and many other problems, the transaction price of sales leads is close to the sky.

It's no secret that the price of a lead is hundreds or thousands, not counting the cost of converting a lead into a car owner. Therefore, for car companies, how to continue to get high-quality potential customers, is an inescapable problem.

The market plate is so big, in the car company's own brand and product strength is difficult to distinguish between the head of the media resources are in short supply, the long tail of the media resources are worrying about the quality of the background, the car companies do not have a more cost-effective, bulk purchasing traffic and sales leads of the marketing tools.

The second reason is that the user operation trend led by the new car-making forces has made people's eyes red.

Just at this time, the new car-making forces led by a wave of fan-based operation of the trend, do the first person to eat crabs, gave the traditional car companies a different perspective.

There is a set of data that I believe is more touching to traditional car companies.

The overall referral rate of Azera reached 48%, and during the epidemic, the referral ratio of Azera was more than 60%, which means that 60% of the new owners were introduced by the old owners of the notes.1

So what's the figure for the traditional car companies? You'll find it hard to find such data in public. Why?

For one thing, the numbers are harder to read, and not worth taking out to say that the general **** knowledge in the industry is that about 5% is considered to be doing well. But in my experience with automotive customers, the bigger reason is that traditional car companies lack effective and accurate statistical methods for "conversion of old customers". The lack of digitization and the disconnect between the data operations of the OEMs and the dealers have led to the hardening of the underlying data entry and monitoring systems, and there is a huge gap between the two players.

Furthermore, if we really want to learn others' user operation model, where is the gap between traditional car companies and new car-making forces?

We've heard a lot of theories about Ulai's user operation, including "treating users as family members", "building a user-oriented enterprise", and "ripple mode". In fact, in my opinion, this is not the key factor, the most breakthrough color, or remove the "middleman" link.

At the user operation level, who is the middleman? The chart below may provide some food for thought.

Traditional car companies rely strongly on the supplier outsourcing system, and the communication with consumers, often take two routes. Professional group to the media, the atmosphere group to KOL and water army. In 10 years ago when paper media and portals still have a place, most of the automotive media manuscripts are still used by the brand to provide PR scripts, so it is difficult for their content to impress the user, high and low. The water army can only maintain the volume of sound, lack of quality, light reaction, no response, it is difficult to cause users to **** Ming. Moreover, the supplier outsourcing communication method, there is a great deal of instability, and can not really represent the value of the enterprise, you and the user between the many layers. Today if the car companies still keep this set of operating model, I would prefer to chat with the robot of artificial intelligence.

We're not completely abandoning the outsourcing model of content providers, and it's true that we need an external brain to **** build good content. However, one of the best things that Azera Motor has done is to y implant its corporate culture into the hearts of its employees, and to incentivize them with a variety of assessment and incentive systems.

In addition, the era of centralized media has come to an end, and Azalea has seized the trend of "self-media" era, where everyone is a member of the media, and maximized the influence of individuals.

One thing we all know is that on the first NIO Day, Azera contracted all the users to pay for airfare and five-star hotels. A launch, spent 80 million, also evaluated by the outside world as the most money-burning launch. But in fact, this 80 million user fees spent on whether it is worth it, this account is calculated clearly.

In the past, when I helped customers to do the launch, the media and KOL's carriage and travel expenses also paid off a lot, but they took the A customer's money to help the A customer to speak, took the B customer's money to help the B customer to speak, the content is very difficult to have a difference, the user is not a fool, they know how to distinguish which is true, which is nonsense.

In fact, to summarize, one of the biggest impacts of the Internet trend is to remove a lot of "middlemen".

In the past, the marketing, is the manufacturers of the money stuffed to the media, stuffed to the supplier, now the operation of the thinking is, if the money, it is better to directly to the customer.

Finally, is it true that traditional car companies have no chance?

I wrote this article, not to chase the new forces, or sing the praises of traditional car companies. In fact, we all take different routes because of historical reasons, but we also have their own development opportunities. Some of the traditional car companies have recognized that it is difficult to turn around their elephants, so they also have their own efforts to find another way out of the process. In the daily observation and communication, we also see the traditional car companies in the user operation side of some changes.

For example, the tank of the Great Wall, the Link to Geely, Beijing off-road to BAIC. These brands are summarized as follows in terms of operation:

1. In terms of private domain operation, not only focusing on car owners, but also running fan cultivation. In addition to opening up the points system to vehicle owners, non-owners can also accumulate and use the points (Figure 4);

2. In terms of responding to users' needs, they try to follow up in real time, and bring the brand's "many-to-one" user service concept into play as much as possible (Figure 5).

3. In terms of creating a community of content, they use the "circle-breaking" approach to create a community that can be used for the purpose of "breaking the circle". The main goal is to "break the circle" and "be interesting" (Figure 6)

We can see that, although traditional car companies can't change the mode of dealing with users that has been accumulated for more than 20 years, the big groups have utilized some young brands in the market segment as a pilot, which at least shows us that they can make use of the brand's "multi-to-1" user service concept as much as possible. The pilot, at least, let us see the positive side of their courage to change.

The new forces, represented by Azera, need to pull in a bunch of people to help them preach because they don't have a brand or a model to build on, and the heavy investment in "users" is not so much a good move, but rather a desperate attempt to find a differentiating edge.

Traditional car companies have their own history and existing car owners, but of course they also have the baggage of history and stakeholders, and it's not realistic to completely look at the model of the new forces.

Let's just say that we all have our own paths, and it's not entirely impossible to learn, but if it's going to be in front of the hurt, the bosses will weigh the weight and value.

**Note 1: Li Bin, CEO of Azure, speaking at the 2020 (20th) Annual Meeting of Future Stars of Chinese Enterprises and China Entrepreneurs Eco-Conference

This article was first published on the Zhihu platform.