Perran Moon, B2B marketing director, Trader Media Group

Since the closure of its Auto Trader magazine, Trader Media Group is now firmly focused on digital. B2B marketing director, Perran Moon, talks to Maxine-Laurie Marshall about how it’s encouraging its audience to go digital too

Perran Moon, B2B marketing director at Trader Media Group must get questioned about his name on a regular basis as he doesn’t even wait for me to ask where it comes from. And I can’t lie, I was curious. “Unusual name, I’m Cornish. My origins are, and folks still live, in Cornwall. So I’m a long way from home.”

Family etymology out of the way, and I want to quiz Moon about the decision to close the print edition of Auto Trader; its magazine aimed at car buyers. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that another print publication has opted to go online only, especially considering Trade Media Group had made no secret of its plans. Moon says: “It’s been a very long journey for us. I mean years and years in the making, and it’s only really now we’re finalising the transition.”

What’s interesting for Auto Trader, a B2B2C company, is that the decision was led by the consumer. “The consumer is going almost exclusively online now and we’ve seen a decline in the number of people who search for cars via magazines compared with online.

“Because we are, by quite a significant margin, the biggest online vehicle search company we use the analytics, data and insight from those searches to give to our dealer customers to help them understand where future trends are going.”

It’s all very well knowing that his customers’ customers were ready to move online, but not all car dealers are as digitally switched-on as their customers. Some dealers still feel an internet lead is less valuable than a walk-in, so I asked Moon how he is preparing his possibly reluctant audience for digital?

Moving away from traditional

Moon says: “About 20 per cent of our target market is already flying with digital. Then you have a chunk of probably 70 per cent who are somewhere on that digital journey, and then inevitably there are a relatively small number of dealers who are still of the opinion that the internet is the great evil. So our focus is on that big 70 per cent, we’re working with them to provide the tools to help them maximise the opportunities.”

This can only really mean two things: thought leadership and content marketing must be a priority for Moon. “Absolutely”, he confirms.

In order to ensure his content really resonates with his audience, Moon has redefined Auto Trader’s ecrm strategy. It’s now based around providing highly personalised content. “We can pull in specific information based on a customer’s account, so the communication is directly relevant to them. That’s had a dramatic effect on our levels of engagement.”

Email open rates are up from mid 20 per cent to over 40 per cent now. Click through was four-to-five per cent and is now eight or nine per cent. And that is a direct result of the relevance of communication we’re sending out to customers. “There’s no silver bullet, there’s no quick fix, it’s just based on a good old understanding of a dealer’s businesses. Then you feed that intelligence into your ecrm strategy.”

To grow the brand’s thought leadership status, Moon makes an effort to work closely with the press.

“We work with trade media on providing relevant stories that are going to be of interest to their readers. And we now have a series of monthly communications that appear in key publications, which talk about what we think is coming up and where things are going. There’s no question that it has supported our overall strategy.”

Moon’s top tips

Time to think ‘cross-platform’
User behaviour on mobile is different from desktop. Site loading speed, physical location details and multiple clear calls-to-action are relatively more important on mobile due to the navigation journey of a mobile site.

Design for conversion
With eye tracking tools available, site design processes need to be focused on prioritising high-value real estate areas with the most relevant content.

SEO is still king
Over 90 per cent of car buyers now start their search on a search engine. Keeping abreast of the latest Google algorithm updates is a great starting place to ensuring that natural search performance is optimised.

Don’t be irrelevant
A comprehensive understanding of customer business priorities combined with supportive internal systems that allow a high degree of personalisation should form the basis of any successful eCRM strategy.

 

Marketing’s in the money

With various strategies in place to ensure its target audience of dealers is up-to-date with the latest digital developments, the last edition of the magazine was published at the end of June. In order to make it a significant issue and really drive home the new digital message, 500 issues had a limited edition cover-wrap featuring a video about autotrader.co.uk’s digital heritage embedded into the cover. An excellent way to make a statement and draw the attention of key customers, but when I asked about the cost Moon laughed and agreed with my assertion that it must’ve cost a fortune.

Spending money for the right reasons doesn’t seem to faze Moon or those who determine the marketing budget. Moon and his team were fortunate enough to have seen their combined consumer and trade marketing budget increase by 25 per cent over 2012/13.

“We have very clear commercial goals that require us to increase the number of leads we’re generating for our customers. The more leads we have, the more trade customers we can attract. You have to reinvest in marketing and product development. As market leader, we simply cannot afford to stand still, and the business understands that. We’re really trying to push the boundaries within the automotive sector and you don’t do that sitting in a room, you do that by talking to people, developing, testing and not being afraid to fail and not being afraid to try stuff that doesn’t work.”

 

 

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