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The objective of this research project is twofold: to outline how and why Windsor Group is meeting the challenge of modernising their marketing operations with new digital technology in the automotive sector. Chosen Company: Windsor Group Windsor is held to be one of Ireland's leading automotive dealership franchises. Ranked 314th overall and 34th for transport industry category in the Irish Times Top1000 companies (Irish Times, 2017), Windsor has a long tradition in selling and servicing vehicles from their operational group of dealerships. Established in 1964, employing over 300 staff, and famed for their Dublin car auctions of the 1960s, Windsor have long marketed themselves as putting consumers' best interests at heart by providing affordable options across the life-span of the consumer. Whether a consumer is purchasing their first car, a new car or family car, and wherever a consumer is at on life's journey, Windsor has always had the car for them. They are life-time consumer retention oriented, community based, relationship selling invested, and future focused. With a brand rejuvenation project, a new marketing team of six, and an increased marketing budget in excess of €1million, they recognise that they face considerable technological challenges in terms of: moving their marketing towards a digital media model, integrating zero emissions and hybrid petrol technology models to their brand marque portfolio to align with carbon emissions regulatory requirements, and adapting their service and sales operations to vehicle intelligent mobility and software sophistication for road safety (RSA, 2017). Thus, this report focuses on how new digital technologies will become increasingly important to facilitate this ethos relying on a full-funnel brand marketing framework to produce engagement, lead generation and conversion with the introduction of modern digital channel marketing (e.g., LinkedIn, 2016; HubSpot,2017). Moreover, the report researches why the economic context calls for this full funnel approach to digital modernisation (e.g., profitability by market or competition displacement), to maintain and grow this national leading brand (e.g., CSO Automotive Indices, 2017; CSO Economic Indices, 2017; CSO, Irish Top Motors, 2017; SIMI, 2017). To achieve the research objective a quantitative-qualitative mixed methods research method (e.g., Bryman & Bell, 2015; Bryman, 2016) tested if key communications content (i.e., a manageable cross-section: corporate news), could generate organic industry significant engagement, lead generation, and conversion for target segments key to Windsor’s sales strategy, by introducing a new digital blog and its social media distribution (i.e., website Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter). A full-funnel marketing framework of automotive marketing was used to map consumer engagement from point of brand awareness for the 181 pre-sales period November 2017 (i.e., blog engagement) to lead generation (i.e., clicking through to landing page) aligned to key market segment sales targets to the sales period January 2018 (i.e., market share and sales results 10-day-report 181 for sales period January 2018). An analysis of this engagement and lead data showed that blogging is an effective new digital technology which increased lead generation for the following commercial, community, and trust building automotive content categories: finance offer news on new and used models, commercial product releases and brand marque awards news, road safety, hints and tips, and community sponsorship (see Kotler, 2013; HubSpot, 2017). The results show that our new blog achieved an average click through rate (CTR) 3.5 times greater than the automotive industry average (see HubSpot, 2017), and for early in-house sales figures that have become available; brand marque Nissan achieved a 11.2% sales increase and 0.8 market share increase (versus the same period in 2017; *Nissan represents 70-80% of our dealership capacity; Nissan 10-Day Market Analysis 181, Irish Market, January 12th 2018). Moreover, our new policy of supporting our commercial marketing with 10% communications aligned with national road safety category campaigns (i.e., recycling content from RSA and Government initiatives from September 2017), excitedly became active in a year in which road fatalities were lowest since 1959 (RSA Annual Review, 2017). Finally, Windsor LinkedIn which runs in tandem with the Windsor blog now ranks 3rd rather than 8th for followers compared to key competitors such as Frank Keane BMW and Joe Dufffy Group, with the number of visitors, shares, and comments increasing up to threefold from blog conception in September to end of year 2017 compared to the first half year. The secondary research explains why Windsor must meet the challenge of modernising their marketing due to external factors other than company marketing tradition such as economic market forces, which have defined, and will continue to define all future marketing strategy for the automotive sector regardless of brand identity. Drawing from economic data and secondary data sets and sources such as the Central Statistics Office (CSO), Irish Motor Society (SIMI), KPMG, CDK Global and Red C Research, conclusions are drawn about how population demographics, consumer spending, and UK Imports will impact the Irish automotive market, thereby determining what will constitute viable market segments and digital marketing target audiences moving forward. The report concludes with a discussion of how the evolution and impact of technological innovation may affect: target audience differentiation, impact positively both locally and globally by growing an online automotive market economy with lean operations and community flourishing prospects, prepare automotive industry for the challenges presented by diffuse social media networks, and intelligent mobility software technologies for automotive road safety. |
