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Luxury-car manufacturer Porsche is heavily invested in the digital-marketing space, and the company understands the importance of being in all of the places that its potential buyers are. Joshua Cherfoli, online and relationship marketing manager at Porsche Cars North America, gives us insight into the company’s digital-marketing strategy.
As a luxury-car manufacturer, can you talk about how you use digital media and marketing tactics to help consumers who are in the research phase move through the purchase funnel?
The primary use is to make sure we are in places where consumers are consuming content already to provide engagement and the opportunity for consumers to interact with our brand. We know that people are consuming content on a regular basis, and so we concentrate on finding the most relevant places to engage with the digital consumer.
How important is social media to your overall marketing strategy, and what would you say the strategy behind your social-media efforts is? Increasing fans? Gaining more likes?
Social media is very important to us to us. We incorporate social into our regular communications and overall planning. In terms of the approach, we have approached it in a way that stems from understanding that fans and customers use social media daily, even hourly. I bet you checked your Facebook right before we got on the phone. We want to be providing relevant content that is engaging for people, that helps them make a connection with the brand. We never had an explicit goal in terms of the number of fans and never had any targets in terms of the number of likes for an individual post. For us, it is just about providing engaging content that people enjoy.
What about mobile? How does Porsche take advantage of the immediacy of the mobile channel to reach consumers while on the go?
Yes, we are using mobile. We have worked to make sure our sites and other content is consumable on mobile devices via a mobile destination for porsche.com, and we ensure that our content can be consumed regardless of the device that is being used. We are also running media on mobile devices to make sure we connect with users where they want to be. Our mobile strategy carries over to all the mobile devices to include tablets and mobile phones.
For car manufacturers, video is at the center of most campaigns. What does Porsche do to differentiate itself from the competition in terms of its online video strategy?
We certainly realize, just like other car manufacturers, that watching cars in motion is compelling, and we take advantage of that. Our cars are beautiful, so we showcase them in the most dynamic way. We create a fair amount of video and update our YouTube channel regularly.
Which new-media channel would you say is Porsche’s priority in 2012? Which is a must-have? Why?
I don’t think I am comfortable nailing it down to one. We understand that all of the channels are viable for different people for different reasons. To reach the most people, we need to prioritize more than just one channel.
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