What’s the worth of good PR in the car finance industry? Richard Brown puts the questions to an independent lender, a manufacturer’s captive finance provider and a finance broker.
Doug Gillies is managing director of Toyota Financial Services, running the UK finance operation for Toyota and Lexus. Toyota has garnered substantial national and international coverage of its press campaigns of late, having its ‘Real Deal’ advertisement for the GT86 by Saatchi & Saatchi banned online despite wide praise for its quality, and scoring one of the most talked-about adverts from this year’s Super Bowl with the ‘Wish Granted’ short for the Ravv4.
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Can a car-maker’s finance provider be a consumer-facing brand? Could it ever be seen as a separate brand on a par with the car-maker itself?
Yes, undoubtedly. The world has changed, and finance solutions are now an integral part of the vehicle buying process.
However, we wouldn’t want to be seen as a separate brand, nor would we ever want to vie for supremacy.
The Toyota and Lexus products are the heroes, and our role is to enable Toyota and Lexus dealers to sell more vehicles.
We achieve this with an aligned marketing strategy based on accessibility and affordability for the consumer, with a range of transparent and competitive new vehicle offers.
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By GlobalDataThere is one complete proposition for the consumer, with finance an integral part of the package.
It is probably fair to say most customers don’t make the distinction between us, as a finance captive, and ‘Toyota’ or ‘Lexus’. As far as they’re concerned, we’re one and the same. This isn’t surprising, since although the companies are separate legal entities with separate systems and procedures, our processes are so closely aligned that as far as the customer is concerned we speak and act as one.
We work in close partnership with the Toyota and Lexus dealer networks, and are aligned to deliver a seamless experience for the customer.
The result of this is that our finance customer retention has doubled in the past two years, with Toyota Financial Services and Lexus Financial Services (TFS/LFS) facilitating key strategies with their respective dealer networks.
How have things changed in the past few years in the way you market your company to customers? Has the increase in dealer finance, itself, encouraged customers to know more about TFS and its products?
We have enjoyed significant growth in the past few years. In 2012 alone, our new business volumes exceeded £930m (more than 77,000 new contracts), an increase of over 40% year-on-year.
We also achieved substantial growth in our branded PCPs, with AccessToyota and Lexus Connect volumes up by an average of 63%.
Both the Toyota and Lexus ownership propositions are now stronger than ever, with a five-year and three-year warranty respectively, strong residual values, and reduced cost of ownership from hybrid technology.
We act as an ‘enabler’ to ownership, by providing vehicle finance at the point of sale via our AccessToyota and Lexus Connect payment solutions.
Our communication to current and prospective customers focuses on accessibility and affordability. We also encourage conquest for Toyota and Lexus by providing a compelling range of online finance offers for private and business users to drive consideration at the start of the customer’s purchasing process.
As an example of this, the Toyota website received an average of 650,000 visits a month in 2012, of which 25% visited the specific finance pages.
How do you market yourself to consumers, dealers and brokers?
Our route to market is through the Toyota and Lexus dealer networks.
Although we have many customer touchpoints, we direct customers back to the dealer for a financial review of their motoring costs. In many cases this will lead to the customer deciding to change, since they could benefit from lower monthly payments, greater economy from fuel-efficient cars, plus a new warranty.
Our role is to focus on creating strong customer propositions – delivering value for money, with little or no cost to change.
What’s the purpose of having a press office in 2013?
We are fully aligned with Toyota and Lexus, which have an established, highly-regarded PR function and a strong network of press contacts. Communication channels are continually evolving, and our developing social media team play a key strategy in engaging with prospect audiences and interacting with customers on the various social media platforms.
What has been a recent favourite press campaign?
TFS/LFS would never advertise direct to the consumer, as our role is one of an enabler to our dealer partners rather than a consumer-facing entity in our own right.
Toyota and Lexus create desirable vehicles; our role is to help the dealer networks to maximise the conquest opportunity these offer.
A good example of this would be the launch campaign for the critically acclaimed GT86 – headlined as the ‘Real Deal’ – which invited drivers to step away from their gaming consoles and rediscover the thrill of driving in the real world and was underpinned by an AccessToyota finance offer.
James Wilkinson is co-director of Car Loan 4U, the nationwide motor finance broker based in Macclesfield, and Danielle Mannus is social media manager. Formed in 2006, Car Loan 4U specialises in web-based and direct-to-consumer business and made a push for increased online representation in 2012, which included the hiring of Alfred Eccles as head of editorial SEO (search engine optimisation) and social media, Ross Kelly as SEO executive and the online editorial team of Dean Simmons and Dave Sargant.
Being both web-led and in tune with getting the brand name spoken about, Car Loan 4U has commissioned and published a range of customer and car data online in the past few months, from driver safety to speeding habits.
How does a car finance broker become a consumer-facing brand?
Wilkinson: Even though we are a car finance broker in industry terms, our route to market, automation and processes differentiates us from the traditional broker. On top of this, our committed team consistently exceed customers’ expectations delivering them with a positive new experience.
The transition from online car shopping to offline purchasing is not as smooth as it could be, and Car Loan 4U provides an unmet need for consumers.
Mannus: One of the key ways in which any company can develop their brand as consumer-facing is through opening the lines of communication with customers through social media networks.
Social media networks provide marketeers with the opportunity to reach audiences on a mass, segment and one-to-one level, on a regular basis, at work, at home and even from their pocket or bag on the go. As a car finance company, Car Loan 4U recognises that building a high level of consumer trust is essential to developing market growth and building long-term meaningful relationships.
We aim to build the Car Loan 4U brand reputation and trust by creating a social community where we offer fast real time responses to our customers enquiries, post both informative and entertaining exclusive content, encourage our customers to provide honest feedback about our company and reward our communities for their engagement with our brand.
How have things changed in the past few years in the way you market your company to customers?
Mannus: Digital marketing experts across the world have been unanimous in their conclusions that social media is now a key factor in any successful internet marketing campaign.
As an online business, Car Loan 4U has therefore invested resources into developing our social media marketing efforts. Particularly over the past few months we have built consistently branded social business profiles across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
On purpose, we have worked to personify our business through social media by showing our communities the individual team members who audiences are communicating with and answering customers queries on a one-to-one basis in real time. We want to inform our communities that we are a business with an extremely positive, strong corporate culture.
We want our communities to learn that we have a talented and motivated workforce who provide a super-efficient, hassle-free car finance service, because we genuinely care about helping customers to get the car they want for the best deal, which is why we provide online live chats.
Finally, we also want our customers to know that we love cars.
Shamus Hodgson, director of sales and marketing at Moneybarn, has often led the public defence of subprime finance and was part of the team that saw the company rebrand itself from Duncton in 2011 as a step in its ambition to become one of the country’s largest mainstream finance providers.
How do you turn a subprime lender into a consumer-facing brand?
Moneybarn is very much of the view that non-prime lending doesn’t have to be non-mainstream. Just because customers are not able to access prime finance, it doesn’t mean that the service or brand experience should be anything less than exceptional. Our customers and introducers deserve the best levels of service and we strive to meet and exceed their expectations in this regard.
From a brand perspective, this means that we focus on being approachable, progressive, reliable and professional in our visual identity and tone of voice.
How have things changed in the past few years, particularly post-2008, in the way you market your company to customers?
For Moneybarn, specifically, the major change was rebranding the company in 2011. This was much more than just a change of name and logo – it was a total redevelopment of our business model and approach to the market. The net result is that our proposition is more accessible, understandable and acceptable to consumers. Our core business is very much centred on supporting our broker partners, so we’ve worked in partnership with them in extending our reach into the dealer market, and made our direct channel customer-friendly, while trying not to tread on the toes of those brokers who are reliant on the internet channel. Above all, we’ve invested heavily in ensuring that, regardless of how our customers reach us, the experience remains consistently positive.
What’s the difference in how you market the company to consumers, dealers or brokers?
There’s a consistency of message in our marketing and how our core values of professionalism, being straightforward and welcoming apply, irrespective of audience. Our USPs of speed and certainty in underwriting, breadth of product offering across near-, non- and subprime and our focus on service are all equally applicable to consumers, dealers and brokers.
richard.brown@timetric.com
