Relying on the extreme, Yiche achieved straight overtaking.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “entrepreneurial forefront” (ID: chuangyezuiqianxian), Author: Li.
Cycle means change and ups and downs. Whether it is a crisis or an opportunity depends on how far you look. To achieve sustained growth in the down cycle of the auto market, Bitauto chose to continue to break and reshape.
Production | Forefront of Entrepreneurship
Author | Teacher Li
From the “freezing moment” at the beginning of the year, the recovery in the second quarter was brewing, to the contrarian climb in the third quarter and a full recovery in the fourth quarter, 2020 is destined to be an extraordinary year for the Chinese auto market. While most companies are implementing “cold treatment” of the epidemic, Yiche is constantly exerting its strength to raise its brand high; customized “Novice Driving to” with Hunan Satellite TV to test water variety marketing; increased video content and launched multiple weights Grade video section…
What is also reflected in the data is a rising curve. According to the data of Aurora Big Data, a third-party data agency, in November this year, the MAU of Bitauto App (Both Auto + Car Quotes) reached 31.1 million, ranking first in the industry. Among them, Bitauto’s MAU was 19.629 million, a year-on-year increase of 51.4%, and the MAU of auto quotes was 11.472 million, an increase of 48%. QuestMobile’s data also reflects the high growth of Bitauto: As of November 2020, the DAU of Bitauto App has increased year-on-year for 24 consecutive months, and MAU has increased year-on-year for 25 consecutive months.
Facing the mountains and valleys, the turnaround in the down cycle
Some people are puzzled by the practice of BTS, and some are curious about how BTS reverses the cycle. In fact, this is the process of constant breaking and reshaping of Bitauto, which tests the grasp of the long-term trend of the industry by the helm of the company.
At the 2020 China Auto Dealer Summit Forum held by Bitauto the day before the Guangzhou Auto Show, CEO Zhang Xu’an said “We are back” summarizes the growth of Bitauto this year. Under the three-dimensional growth strategy, Bitauto has achieved the number one position in multiple dimensions: Bitauto App (Beeche + Car Quotes) is No. 1 in the monthly mobile app industry from January to October; No. 1 in the cumulative number of new users from January to October; No. 1 in the industry in terms of the number of dealers’ cooperative merchants from January to October.
As the first automotive internet company to go public in the United States, Bitauto has also experienced a corporate cycle. Twenty years ago, taking advantage of the dividends of China’s auto industry and the Internet, Bitauto rose rapidly, and since 2015, it has gradually lost the top spot in the industry. In 2018, Bitauto began to carry out a series of changes, from products, brands, content, and operations, fully opening the adjustment and upgrade model. There is also a background here. In 2018, China’s auto market experienced negative growth for the first time. It was called a year in the valley. The auto industry had to face the cycle of shifting from an incremental market to a stock market.
At a time when traffic is getting more expensive and the cost of acquiring new users is getting higher and higher, both Internet companies and offline companies are facing the actual problem of user growth. When automobile consumption enters the stock market, users become a key breakthrough. User growth, in addition to new additions, also depends on operations to enhance the life value of users. So what is the difference between Yiche in terms of new, promotion and transformation?
New battlefield for vertical platforms, incremental users and incremental content
Nowadays, users’ attention is becoming more and more distracted, and the mobile Internet has gradually broken the margins, and many new players have entered the vertical field of competition. As a veteran company in the field of automotive vertical Internet, Bitauto needs to find a new breakthrough in the increasingly changing competitive landscape. “Starting from users is not only the judgment of Bitauto in the inventory era, but also the starting point of its growth strategy.” Yang Yongfeng, senior vice president of Bitauto, said that Bitauto is doing “cutting in with users who buy cars.”
From the perspective of the overall environment, China has become the world’s largest auto market. Even if the growth rate slows down, it is important to know that there are 173 cars per 1,000 people in the Chinese market. , And the United States has 837 cars per 1,000 people. In the long run, China’s new car market still has great opportunities.
Going back to the automotive Internet field, car buyers, car owners and car fans are the three major categories of automotive Internet users. These three types of users have their own characteristics, such as long-term low frequency and short-term high frequency for car buyers, and car owners will use them according to their own needs.
In addition, car Internet players also present their own different characteristics. The main business of Bitauto is information and shopping guide for new cars. Therefore, it is cut from car buyers and further subdivided to define first-buy users as increase A large number of users, redemption and additional purchase users are defined as existing users. For Bitauto, incremental users have the greatest value. “Incremental users have no gap in brand recognition. This part of users is a good breakthrough.” Yang Yongfeng said.
When the target population for growth is defined, it needs to be driven by a most suitable growth strategy in order to continuously release its energy.
Yang Yongfeng and his team found through research and analysis that automobile products have a great feature. The mainstream products will be updated every year. At this time, all graphics, videos, pictures, and quotations will be zero. At this time New “incremental content” needs to be mass produced. “We start with the new content of the new car, and invest more time and energy in tool content, media content, and interactive content.” For vehicle parameter configuration and other work, the standard has been set higher. In standard live shooting, standard video, The five levels of ultra-clear VR and the evaluation system have strengthened a number of detailed rules and indicators, which can be called the most stringent “abnormal” standards in the industry. They have made breakthroughs one by one in terms of the timeliness and coverage of new car launches.
Meeting on a narrow road, the brave wins, insist on the ultimate in basic products
In addition to incremental content, the construction of a basic content system is also an important starting point for Bitauto to enhance user experience. The great value of vertical platforms to incremental users lies in the fact that users can find professional, comprehensive and convenient basic information on them. Behind the seemingly procedural basic content is high frequency and cumbersome, which also means a lot of human and financial investment.
Although 5G and the digital economy era are bringing new changes to all walks of life. But in Yang Yongfeng’s view, “the automotive Internet industry does not have the opportunity to overtake on a curve like the new energy brought to the automotive industry. It is still a big straight. How should the big straight overtake?” Just as Li Yunlong often said in “Bright Sword”, “The brave wins when we meet on a narrow road.” In this hand-to-hand combat, everyone can only fight for basic skills and courage.And perseverance.
For automotive Internet applications, basic skills refer to tool content. That is, most users download and use automobile Internet applications, and their original intention is nothing more than to look at beautiful car models and interior pictures, to understand the parameter configuration, evaluation, word of mouth of the intended model, and to inquire about the quotation of the intended model. In other words, whoever can make the content of the model library such as the gallery, video library, and parameter configuration solid, will be more popular with users.
Yang Yongfeng introduced that since two years ago, Yiche put the aforementioned tool content into an evaluation form. The horizontal axis is the degree of importance, and the vertical axis is the satisfaction evaluation, which serves as a reference for evaluation and improvement. . In order to move the small dots in the indicator to the upper right corner (and important, user satisfaction is high), Yiche gave the team a “dead order”-especially simple things, divided by various methods, cut to Infinitely detailed, achieve the ultimate.
For example, for pictures of similar car models, Bitauto has developed 171 standardized viewing angles, such as “45 degrees from the front and horizontal to the right”, “45 degrees from the rear and horizontal to the left”, and “front. “Horizontal”, “front of the front side of the car to the left horizontal”…… Not only the new cars just launched in accordance with the standards, the old cars in the past should also be re-photographed in accordance with the new standards.
As another example, as users’ preference for video content grows, Yiche has launched a video car viewing system, which stipulates 25 standard demonstration points for each car, and each point has a display time of 10-20 seconds… so small , The ultimate standard, makes Yiche’s photographers and videographers seem to be workers on the industrial assembly line.
Such standards are also applied to tool content such as the VR car viewing and fare distribution of Yiche. Although the process is painful, the results are wonderful. After the efforts of the last two years, the content of Bitauto tools basically falls in the upper right corner of the evaluation form, that is, the satisfaction of the items that users care about is relatively high. “In the past, some of the indicators in the Bitche model library were weaker than those of the friends. Now they are not only higher, but most of the indicators are higher than those of the friends.” Yang Yongfeng said. Relying on the extreme, Yiche achieved straight overtaking.
This harshness is also reflected in the external customer acquisition. In addition to seeking breakthroughs in its own traffic pool, Yiche also set its sights on the outer star sea. Under the influence of the epidemic, many brands have begun to cut back on food and clothing, but the epidemic is also a window period. If the opportunity is grasped, it can bring unexpected gains. Bitauto has increased its delivery, but the difference is that both brand advertising and performance advertising are more refined.
For example, in brand advertising, through pre-launch research and targeted advertising, through data-based methodsMethod for evaluation; for performance advertising, it is to make a refined operation of the whole process, subdivide it with various standards, conduct minimal monitoring, and adjust the effect in time, and improve the delivery strategy through continuous adjustment and optimization. “Our team has a value, that is, doing the right thing and doing the right thing. To achieve the ultimate in basic work, you will definitely exceed your expectations.” Yang Yongfeng said.
Don’t do a one-off sale, long-term customer service
If an Internet application only focuses on solving the problem of users buying a car, then the advantages and disadvantages are equally obvious. The advantage is that the attracted users are quite accurate, and the chances of staying online after watching the car are high. This is undoubtedly very powerful for a platform that matches dealer transactions to achieve commercial value. But the disadvantage is that car consumption is typically low-frequency and high-priced. Data shows that the average car replacement cycle for Chinese consumers is about 5 years. This means that users may not come to the platform for 5 years after buying a car.
In this regard, Yiche is also very clear. Starting with car users is not to give up car fans and car owners, but to create features for car users, and then drive content and services that satisfy car fans and car owners to go hand in hand. Yang Yongfeng said, “This requires us not only to look at the user’s immediate behavior, but also to look at his consumer demand this year and even the next few years.”
For car users, Bitauto will pay close attention to its behaviors from downloading and registering to later viewing information and checking quotations. It analyzes user preferences based on big data and uses a multi-faceted distribution mechanism for users to want to see. Content. When the user hasn’t logged in to the application for a period of time, Bitcar will also wake up old users through Push, preferential activities and other methods.
Many things that reverse the cycle are oftenIt is “homeopathic”. While achieving its own growth, Bitauto also uses it as a fuel to empower the industry with data and technology. As Liu Xiaoke, president of Bitauto, said, at this time, the “younger” Bitauto has transformed into a data, technology and content-driven technology company. Being good at leveraging the macro cycle, doing the micro cycle to the enterprise, respecting users and trends, is also the strength of Bitauto.
*The title picture in the article comes from Photograph.com, based on the VRF protocol.