Content marketing is a fundamental area of marketing in the Automotive industry. Whether part of SEO, Paid Marketing, social media, email marketing, or any combination of the above, content marketing is a tried and true way to make sure that your audience is aware of your brand and your products at whichever part of the customer journey they might be on.
Like content marketing in any industry, automotive content marketing comes in all shapes and sizes. From website and written content to video, social, email and even published real-world materials, content marketing has countless use cases to go alongside it.
Here, we’ll look at just some of these various formats and content types available to automotive marketers and how they may be best used for any KPI that you’re working toward.
Types of Content
Not to be confused with formats for content marketing, there are various different types of content that can be used to get your message across to your desired target audience. These different content types can be used for practically any format of content marketing too, giving you a diverse and multifaceted approach to your content options. That means you can use any type of content in any type of format, all to give you the best possible chance to reach your audience in their native environments and get the results you need without getting lost in the noise or cost of distribution.
Brand News
Brand marketing is often one of the most prevalent forms of content marketing in the automotive industry. With such high involvement purchases at the end of the conversion funnel and such strong, embedded branding in place in what is one of the strongest industries in the world, brand marketing is a perfect example of content marketing being used to increase awareness, loyalty and positioning all in one form of marketing.
Examples of brand marketing being used as content marketing could include anything from awards and innovations to corporate social responsibility, marketing campaigns and advertisements being explained in more depth, or more interactively, repositioning to a different market, or anything else that could be required for a product range to be well received.
Product Materials (New models, trims, features)
Moving away from the brand and more into the product area of content marketing, product relating content marketing is the next logical step into the world of automotive content. Product content needs to do a massive amount of work in the automotive customer journey, often acting as a touchpoint across multiple aspects of the journey.
In this particular instance, product marketing would normally be seen in the form of an announcement of a product, an update to a product line, or even specific capabilities of a particular product. This is of course not an exhaustive list, but is the most common use case for the type of marketing, especially in paid marketing.
Further Product Explorations (Model comparisons, feature explanations)
Moving into more developed and typically longer-form content formats, further product marketing is typically the supporting port of call for product content marketing. This might help to highlight particularly important product features or help to provide more details for marketing materials that are in a shorter form like TV advertisements or display advertising.
Long-form product marketing may include in-depth feature explanations, model comparisons, and even reviews or market reception in some cases, where products can be explored in more depth and at greater length for the more involved customer base. This is often designed to help get customers over the line from a sales perspective and get them into dealerships or into online conversion funnels, but like all of these types of content, it may be used much further than this.
FAQ’s (EV Ranges, Seat Number, MPG, Safety)
Taking an often less competitive but lower funnel route to audience, addressing customers in the form of FAQ’s and customer queries being answered is the next form we will be discussing. Answering some of the most prominent questions that may be out there about products has a multitude of benefits for automotive businesses. It can help to save time for sales and support staff with potential customers, it may help to rule out rivals and keep mid-funnel customers engaged, it might help dispel myths or fake news, and generally help to reassure customers that products are what they need them to be, without wasted time.
So what does this type of content look like? Generally, things will be in video or written form almost always. This allows highly specific queries to be addressed without diluting other forms of marketing like those seen above, but in doing so, it also has a unique benefit that is often forgotten about. This type of content especially in these formats generally survives for years in the used market as well as is prevalent in the new market,
Post Purchase (How To’s, user guides etc)
Content marketing is a tool that can be used even after and well into the post purchase experience just as much as it can be in the pre purchase journey. Having things like apps, video guides, explanations, feature updates and so much more, automotive manufacturers and sellers alike can create incredibly valuable content that keeps users engaged and delighted throughout their ownership of a product.
Doing this has more effects than the obvious. Of course, there is the benefit of doing this which is increased customer satisfaction, without a double. On top of this too, there is also the likelihood of brand or product advocacy too, showing off various features or support quality to others that may be in the market both now and in the future, doing wonders for the overall lifetime value of a customer just through content marketing.
Formats of Automotive Content Marketing
Content marketing comes in different formats, as well as different categories or purposes. While many types of content have an almost best-suited or native format, any format can be used for content marketing realistically speaking. In fact, where you serve it and the audience you are serving it to are almost always the more important factors than the content type when determining content format.
These are just some of the most commonly seen formats for content marketing in the automotive space:
- Video
- Written
- Social Media
- Infographics
- Case Studies
