In 2020 Volvo cars launched Care by Volvo – a new way for owning and accessing a vehicle. But in transforming the automotive space, they were presented with numerous challenges in the user journey and content strategy.
In introducing and building a new concept such as car subscription service, it was critical to understand marketing efficiency – certainly when it came to understanding the business case of developing the Care by Volvo offer.
Launching something new, especially in such an established industry as this one, was always going to be challenging. And to get started effectively there were a number of considerations…
Introducing this new way of accessing a car meant that we couldn’t lean on any previous knowledge about our consumer’s behaviour. We, therefore, had to take a data-driven test and learn approach to get an understanding of how best to present Care by Volvo to consumers, and also who those audiences might be. At the same time staying true to the Volvo brand.
A unified media and creative team
The main factor defining the success of this collaboration has been the integrations of all areas of marketing. Oftentimes, the different areas of digital marketing are siloed and perhaps work towards different incentives – which at times might even counter each other.
Within this project, we have integrated all areas from media buying, data projects, analytics and creative both operationally and structurally between the teams with common objectives.
Setting new standards for performance
In launching a new product to such an established industry, we had to set out to create a comprehensive map of every conversion point – small or large – and link these signals to our overall picture of performance at every stage of the funnel.
This then allowed us to see where we were missing – or losing consumers – allowing us to work with Volvo to build our own benchmarks and make adjustments to content or messaging based on this real-time analysis.
Identifying previously overlooked audiences
With Care by Volvo, we wanted to avoid making assumptions about our audiences. Therefore, we kept our audience brackets wide and allowed creative adaptation through messaging and visuals to steer the targeting on platforms instead.
By testing different variations of these, we found that we could gain more traction with both younger, and female audiences – challenging some of the more traditional assumptions about the audiences you might see in the automotive space.
Digital maturity for creative
We develop our clients’ creative maturity by engineering tailored creative solutions for different audiences and touchpoints in the user journey. Ensuring each creative plays to the unique strengths of digital channels. Through an iterative process we continuously develop, test, and improve creative assets and concepts. Allowing data and consumer insight guide us in everything we do.
Aligned expectations with business goals
It is fundamental to take that step back and define what success looks like before jumping into any project. It’s a bit of a clichè, but data does not speak for itself. When we dive into insights, simply looking at tables and dashboards won’t make much of an impact. Connecting this information to business objectives is what will make data actionable.
Optimisation for full funnel marketing
The media mix was mature and structured to cover the full funnel efficiently, but we needed to direct the platforms to the right users at the right stage, without using targeting that was too restrictive for algorithmic optimisation. Adapting content was key here, but also having a strong data infrastructure to evaluate results consistently.
It’s been a pure joy working with Precis. The expertise they have in unifying both content and paid and having that set up as one team means we are always optimising, not only from a content perspective, but also using data as a guiding star to take our next steps.
Emelie Överdahl
Head of Marketing, Volvo Cars Sweden
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