Online Conference Auto.ru 2.0: What The Experts Told About

The Auto.ru team held the second online conference for dealers and representatives of the auto business. The main topic is how to survive in the new conditions, when the self-isolation regime and the coronavirus have affected the automotive market, and how to rebuild the business to the new realities. Almost a thousand viewers watched the live broadcast - the conference became one of the largest online events for the auto business!

We invited celebrity hosts - Sergey Stillavin and Rustam Vakhidov, experts in advertising systems and services for dealers - Auto.ru, Yandex, Google, MyTarget, TikTok and VKontakte, as well as representatives of the largest car dealers and Igor Mann, one of the most famous marketing consultants in Russia. … Let's briefly describe what the experts talked about.

Victoria Kurchanova, head of the regional development sector of Avto.ru, shared the results and forecasts of sales in the markets that had entered the fight against coronavirus before Russia: China, European countries and the United States. Taking the example of China, which was the first to cope with the consequences of the pandemic, it can be understood that the popularity of private cars has grown: they are safer. Victoria also discussed the Russian market - sales forecast, user interest in buying cars, cases of dealers and manufacturers, and talked about updates for dealers to Avto.ru. Since the beginning of the year, we have the opportunity to create and upload panoramic photographs of cars, online booking and stickers have been launched, call tracking has been updated and a new channel has been developed for the sale and redemption of used cars between professional sellers - "Auto.ru Expert". The speaker's presentation is available here.

Victoria Zapara, Yandex Key Account Leader, and Anastasia Vorozheikina, Yandex Key Account Manager, shared the latest trends in the auto business and analyzed the current market situation. They talked about the decline in the consumer sentiment index among the population, about the fear of losing their jobs and income, which led to a decrease in demand for loans and large purchases. However, the self-isolation regime has created a deferred demand for cars - people are willing to buy cars. For more details on attitudes towards personal and public transport, changes in consumer behavior, as well as the dynamics of Yandex's online traffic on automotive topics, see the presentation and video from the speakers.

Andrey Zavoloka, the head of the Auto Google vertical, also spoke about the experience of Chinese colleagues who, before the rest of the world, survived the coronavirus epidemic, restructured business processes and "returned to life." The creation of virtual showrooms, online car presentations, remote test drives and other processes new to the industry have helped to keep consumer interest from falling sharply.

The speaker spoke about the interest of Google users in buying cars and gave recommendations on how dealers can build a strategy for working in a crisis period and what tools can help. We leave a link to the expert's presentation.

Yakov Peysakhzon, Sales Director of MyTarget (Mail.ru Group), spoke in detail about the promotion of the auto industry in social networks, gave case studies of car dealers and shared tips for effective targeted advertising. One of them is a creative, “correct” banner, on which 60% of success depends. What does it take to "hook" a user? Display a low price item in the title, make an attractive picture, indicate the region where the offer is valid, advertise a popular item, and make a call to action.

In addition, Yakov examined in detail the growth rates of advertising budgets, the dynamics of the share of advertising costs among market participants - car dealers, classifications and sellers of auto components and spare parts. Over the past three years, classifieds have invested most of the budget in promoting mobile apps, while dealers have invested in cross-platform ad formats. The speaker demonstrated seasonal activity and interests of users: for example, the interest in premium cars was 4 times higher than directly in the purchase of such cars.

The presentation is available at this link. We recommend you save!

Irina Razvina, VKontakte customer service manager, using the example of specific solutions, told which tools will help during the crisis, and which - at the exit from it. The expert identified three advertising formats that are now the most useful and relevant: website advertising, collecting applications and recording with a survey. Irina shared tips for increasing the effectiveness of advertising activities and reviewed business tools on VKontakte. A lot of useful and interesting things! You can watch the presentation here.

Svetlana Butyanova, Marketing Director of TikTok, spoke about a new platform for the business community that can become an effective channel for attracting customers. She highlighted the most popular video genres and hashtags with which you can "enter" TikTok. According to her, it is very important to “be in trend” and not impose your own content format on the audience.

Svetlana proposes to divide the advertising opportunities of the platform into two large parts: formats that help to increase brand awareness, and those that solve the tasks of lead generation. The main recommendation is to combine these formats. Some of the tools available to the seller are: brand takeover, topview, info, interactive elements, for example, voting, hashtag challenge.

Among the most impressive automotive cases is the hashtag challenge from Mercedes-Benz - MBStarChallenge. The company has collected more than 73 thousand videos that participated in the challenge, and 180 million views of these videos. Svetlana spoke in detail about how and with what advertising format a dealer should start working on TikTok. You can see it in the recording of the conference.

Denis Migal, founder and CEO of Fresh Auto, called the coronavirus pandemic "a lifejacket for all auto retail." Because restrictions and a self-isolation regime have pushed dealers to change, transform, and new opportunities. According to Denis, for effective work, dealers need to ask themselves the question: what prevents them from working today? Having worked through the points that appear after the answer, it will be possible to increase the efficiency of the dealership. Emotional reasoning on how online processes will affect the future of offline sales and the work of auto retailers in general - in the conference video.

Alexey Tomenko, founder of Boston Auto, also raised the topic of online transformation when talking about used cars. Boston Auto is one of the first companies to announce and launch distance selling with free delivery in the Volgograd region. One of the most pressing problems faced by the company is the lack of trust on the part of the buyer.

The retailer uses products and tools that have helped build customer confidence. Among them: open technical and legal expertise of a car, the ability to "buy" a car warranty - 6 months or 10,000 kilometers, free delivery in the region, online processing of credit products, as well as the ability to return the car without giving a reason within 14 days. Another way to build trust was with car presentation videos, which also helped increase conversions by 40% and attract new customers from Youtube. How the company built its work during the crisis, in Alexey's presentation and in the video.

Denis Kim, Head of the Marketing Department of Rolf Group in St. Petersburg, shared his experience of transforming the company during the coronavirus crisis. Their main focus is to make the online shopping experience a breeze. To do this, the client has the opportunity to communicate with the dealer through messengers, remote loan processing, remote approval of sales and purchase agreements, contactless car delivery and much more are set up. However, the speaker believes that the need to go online, which many market participants are talking about, is significantly overestimated. But those sellers who are optimizing distance selling will have some advantage. We advise you to get acquainted with its presentation and listen to the speech.

Igor Mann, a marketing consultant, gave the main anti-crisis advice for everyone: make a plan, work on it and constantly adjust it. The expert also spoke about the key theses from a marketing point of view that need to be adopted during the crisis: why the client should choose you, why it is important to find new sales channels, revise prices and add new products aimed, among other things, at promotion. And why it is necessary to stay as customer-centric as possible. A lot of useful and interesting information in Igor Mann's presentation can be found at this link.