Customer Profile

This customer is a leading electric vehicle (EV)  player in the Indian market, and its headquarters is in Bengaluru. Founded in 2013, the company is a pioneer in the EV space and has been producing a third generation of EV 2-wheelers.

With an excellent brand recall, the brand continues to invest in Customer Experience through its experience centers and showrooms. They have also established a pan-India network of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. With over 250+ customer sales and service touch points, it is one of the fastest-growing EV brands in India.

Background

Today’s consumers are online, and digital engagement dominates consumer-to-business interactions. Mobility as a space is seeing tremendous shifts, and over the last decade, Electric Vehicles have taken a front-and-center position in the Indian consumer’s mindset. They happen to be one of the fastest-growing segments, especially with Gen Z. 

Auto Dealerships are one of the most searched categories, with consumers vetting businesses online before making purchase decisions. Particularly in the EV space, there is heavy competition, and a significant quantum of discovery and decision-making happens online through search/comparisons of electric scooters and electric two-wheelers. 

2 in 3 buyers use smartphones to search online for a dealership. Google is the primary starting point for these searches, and there has reportedly been a 400% growth in “near me” searches for auto dealerships. 

These searches and relevant dealership touch point visibility are important for a brand because 76% of consumers doing a “near me” search take action and look to engage with a dealer within 24 hours.

The marketing and dealer development teams understood the power of Google ‘near me’ searches and realized that they needed a focused strategy and action plan to capitalize on them. With their focus on Customer Experience coupled with the fast pace of growth, the team needed specialized tools and technology to scale Local SEO and the digital presence of their locations.

Challenges – Lack of consistent digital presence on Google

When a consumer searches for a product online, they have a high intent to purchase or engage to get more information. At that juncture, being digitally present, active, and ranking becomes a top priority, particularly in the EV space, which is a highly competitive market.

While this EV brand had a strong brand reputation and recall, it had not invested in the tools to optimize its digital presence, capture new leads, or “get found” for generic keyword searches like “electric scooter,” “electric motor scooter,” and “electric 2 wheeler,” which dominate Google.

While the brand itself had best practices and a strong presence, percolating it to all touch-points across the network while retaining the necessary control and visibility for the central marketing team was proving to be a huge challenge. They were missing out on some key aspects, such as 

• Standardization, consistent branding, and, most importantly, optimization of digital profiles for organic visibility were missing across their network and proving to be a challenge while scaling.
  
•  Inability to centrally manage key updates to dealership profiles.
  
• Lack of sufficient alerting/notification mechanisms while updates were done to key information or overall profile status changing.
  
• Inability to slice and dice review related insights based on certain parameters.
  
• Analytics and insights on organic Google Search data for dealership touchpoint performance were unavailable.

Solution – Listing Management & Local SEO strategies

Zceppa’s All-in-one Location Marketing Platform helped the brand overcome the problem. Listing Manager and Review Manager, along with the Central Dashboard, helped effectively address challenges at the individual location while providing the necessary visibility and controls to the central marketing teams.