Opinion: Tips for automotive marketers for 2024

As a new year dawns, as marketers, what can we do to keep the momentum of the market’s recovery? Here are a few suggestions:

• Impress upon your leadership to impress upon the policymakers to reduce the GST on smaller-capacity vehicles: cars, two-wheelers and commercial vehicles. Keep the pressure on at all times about this as it is fundamental to how your industry is recognised and respected by the government.
   
• Stop spending money on influencers; their time is gone for good. Use the same money instead on building an internal alignment with your brand and creating some of your best brand ambassadors from within your own colleagues.
   
• Also talking of brand ambassadors, do you still want to spend money on people who actually do not align with your brand’s DNA and look authentic enough? Even if they claim to ‘join forces’ with you?
   
• Talking of ‘brand’, please start investing in your mother brand over individual product brands – the returns from this will be much more than you can ever predict.
   
• Marketing too has a responsibility towards sustainability – stop using unsustainable materials in all your events, and cut back on even the littlest of things. Do all attendees need plastic neck tags?
   
• Celebrate milestones as they always allow you to reconnect with your tribe and even induct new ones; Maruti Suzuki really missed a huge opportunity to celebrate its 40th anniversary with us millions.
   
• Spend more money on a deep understanding of two specific segments: those who have repeated buying with you and those who have not chosen you. The former tells you what to improve upon and the latter tells you what to change.
   
• Spend less money on things like showrooms that are becoming increasingly undifferentiated and a CapEx nightmare as margins get squeezed. Redirect half of it to enhance service facilities and the other half to creating immersive experiences where your prospect spends more time.
   
• To work on the overall sentiment of the prospective buyer, focus on multi-city roadshows outside of the metros, even if you have a network presence. Nothing matches the intensity of getting both prospects and customers in one place for some rich engagement.
   
• Invest in deep tech that allows insight mining at a granular segment level to make your marketing activities more measurable.
   
• Lastly, consciously infuse candour in all your communication as your intended recipient consumes content about you from many more sources and platforms that you cannot monitor, let alone control. Have a terrific 2024!