The automotive industry was severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.With limited travel and others fleeing home, the need for cars has diminished.Priorities.
For Toyota, its car sales in the Philippines fell to levels noted in more than 30 years in the country, while most of its business required physical presence, from local production to the sale of vehicles and services.
“It was incredibly complicated when, suddenly, physical activities were absolutely banned,” recalls Elijah Marcial, head of press relations and operations at Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP) Corporation, in a verbal exchange with The Drum.
“From a marketing point of order, although we already have several virtual marketing activities, we learned temporarily that it is at the point of progress that would allow us to have end-to-end transactions with our customer completely online,” he explains.
The most sensible thing is that Toyota is also suffering to expand its audience and maintain profitability, despite the simultaneous control of the aforementioned virtual marketing campaigns.
According to Marcial, Toyota made the same programmatic and social media advertisements and was able to get a lot of hits, but found that this is not necessarily its target market.
“There has been a sudden increase in online consultations, but less serious consumers have challenged our sales force to know how to touch them all and how to eliminate the most serious requests,” says Marcial.
“As a result, we have had to expand the audience to our true target market, which deserves to generate serious clues to succeed in the general public.”
The Japanese automaker turned to adtech Appier to direct a particular audience to TMP’s online page and found that users were very interested in advertising the products, promotions and facilities they were interested in.
Toyota has also allowed Appier to use its generation of synthetic intelligence to learn, identify and target users not only through demographics, but also through topics and interests, its generation of keyword guidance.
“This unique solution has helped TMP succeed in analyzing recently viewed content across users and knowing its true intent.In this way, TMP has made sure that its money is spent on consumers with the right mindset,” explains Marcial.
“In addition, proactive targeting of topics can help TMP succeed its consumers in the ‘golden period’ even before they intend to search.With it, TMP can target its consumers beyond its competitors.”
With Appier’s help, Marcial says Toyota can temporarily show existing consumers that it’s there with them in those difficult times by pointing out who has existing loans, insurance, guarantees or maintenance and who has asked for flexibility or an extension of conditions.
It also revealed that new consumers looking to buy a new car to avoid public shipping need to see more promotions or flexible financing.”We had to offer new financing formulas that are less difficult to manage and build the source of our affordable maximum we get those feedback from consumers basically through our virtual channels and we had to respond through the same channels as well.”
This article refers to: Philippines, Toyota, Adtech, Digital, Digital Advertising, Marketing, Mobile, Social Media, Advertising, Branding
75% of The Drum Magazine readers are senior or senior executives.
Get our exclusive monthly multi-format magazine content.
Subscribe and be polite, entertaining and empowered.
© Carnyx Group Ltd 2020 The Drum is a registered trademark and property of Carnyx Group Limited. All rights reserved.
Do you want to read this article and others like it? All you have to do is be a member of The Drum.The fundamental subscription is fast, loose, and you’ll be able to get daily updates.