7:52 am, April 22, 2025
We recently explored the influx of Chinese car brands into the UK market, and how dealer groups can start capitalising on the appeal of their reasonable price points, advanced EV technology, and bonus features.
There can be an element of uncertainty when you’re adding a new brand to your forecourt, especially if it’s a newcomer to the market.
Without a proven track record, it can be difficult to know exactly who the right demographic will be, making it hard for marketers to strategise effectively.
But with the pressure on to reach profitability with a new brand quickly, marketers need to work out what resonates – and fast.
If you’re in charge of marketing a new brand – Chinese or otherwise – for your dealer group, you need to be able to extract key insights about your audiences and what compels them to book a test drive or buy a car.
With Mediahawk’s call tracking, marketing attribution, and customer journey mapping tools, you can do just that.
Who is your ideal buyer?
When new brands launch in the UK, you’ll have the manufacturer’s market research to help you build a profile of who might want to buy one of their cars. But that might not offer the insights you need.
‘New means untested, and there’s no guarantee that the customer personas identified by the manufacturer will accurately reflect the interests of UK buyers, especially if car culture is different in the brand’s home country,’ explains Faye Thomassen, head of marketing at Mediahawk.
You need to use actual customer journey and sales data to accurately pinpoint:
- Your buyer demographic – who are they, and what do they have in common with each other?
- How your buyers research brands, models, and features – and what encourages them to make a decision
- Which marketing channels, campaigns, and activities bring in the most prospective buyers – and which you can link directly to test drives and purchases
Once you have quantifiable data that tells you who your key audiences are and how to reach them, you can refine your marketing strategy to attract similar buyers, sell more cars, and achieve profitability with your new brand.
Three ways to build a buyer persona with Mediahawk
Through Mediahawk’s features and integrations, you can rapidly build a detailed map of your customers’ demographics and buying journey.
Our platform unlocks hidden insights and delivers in-depth analysis to inform your strategy.
Sales Matching
Our Sales Matching feature provides a direct link between activities and sales, identifying which marketing channels bring the right people to your dealership.
You can slice the data any way you need, to uncover which campaigns deliver the most sales, the highest-value sales or, most usefully for introducing a new brand, the sales of a particular manufacturer or model.
This means you can track which sources your target audience use to reach you, whether that’s PPC, organic search, social media, or Auto Trader, and increase your investment in those channels.
‘If you’re just starting out with a range of Chinese EV models, for example, you can start this persona work by charting the sales of similar cars from other brands,’ adds Thomassen.
‘As the sales for your new models start rolling in, you can continuously update your customer persona using that data.
‘If you’re just starting out with a range of Chinese EV models, for example, you can start this persona work by charting the sales of similar cars from other brands.
‘As the sales for your new models start rolling in, you can continuously update your customer persona using that data.’
Dealerweb integration
We know how important it is for your systems to support and inform each other, especially when you need to see results quickly.
Mediahawk integrates with the Dealerweb lead management system to help you simplify attribution and build your personas more effectively.
Mediahawk pulls information from Dealerweb to match leads to sources – so you know you have the right attribution for Sales Matching and other analysis.
This feature also flags any opportunities that aren’t already in Dealerweb, so you can follow up and ensure you capture those leads.
Speech Analytics
We use conversational AI to help you unlock hidden insights in your calls, so you can pinpoint the questions buyers ask about your new brands, their decision triggers, and any gaps in their journey.
Mediahawk’s Speech Analytics feature automatically records, transcribes, and analyses each call for you to review.
You can set up ‘voice tags’ – certain words, phrases, or questions that are relevant to your new brand – that categorise calls based on what was discussed. With this insight, you can unpick which topics are most relevant to your buyers, and adapt your strategy to ensure you’re answering their common queries and continuing to refine your targeting.
Put your persona to work
There are so many ways to use this persona data to boost sales for your new brand and put your dealership on the path to profitability more quickly.
You can use your analysis of successful sales calls to create custom audiences in Google Ads, targeting your personas with ads that reference the key topics they research on your site or discuss on the phone. And you can offer more resources on your site to answer frequently asked questions around factors like range, features, and pricing.
You can get creative, too. One of our clients uses sales data for its new Chinese brands to create hyper-local offline marketing campaigns.
For example, when someone buys an Omoda, the team sends out a mailshot to their neighbours, with a hook like, ‘Did you know your neighbour just bought an Omoda?’. With static call tracking, our client has been able to trace major success back to that activity.
Summary
As new Chinese brands join the UK market, they’re bringing exciting opportunities, but also novel challenges.
BYD, which is now the UK’s fastest-growing car brand, has seen its brand recognition grow from 1% in 2023 to 31% in 2024. That’s impressive progress, but there’s still a huge proportion of UK car buyers who aren’t familiar with the brand.
With 25% of people citing a lack of familiarity as a barrier to purchasing, you’ll need to identify and reach the right buyers quickly – which means relying on untested manufacturer personas won’t cut it.
With Mediahawk, you can rapidly build and refine a detailed, accurate buyer profile for your new brand and models, so your risk pays off and you hit profitability fast.
Next steps
Reach out today to book a custom demo to see how you can boost sales for every brand on your forecourt with more accurate customer personas and smarter customer journey mapping.
Visit our website to learn more.
