[Industry] Talking about the sales strategy of the Chinese RV market

China’s RV industry has gone through nearly two decades in a stable manner, and its future is worth looking forward to. As far as I am concerned, perhaps the RV industry is not yet a complete industry, and its size is too small. More precisely, it is only a small part of China’s special-purpose vehicle industry sector, with a bright future. There is a long way to go.

I am very fortunate to have personally experienced the first ten years of the development of Chinese RVs, and I have a lot of feelings. Especially for the marketing of Chinese RV, as an industry insider, I also want to take this opportunity to talk about my recent feelings and views on the marketing of Chinese RV. 

Systematic Precipitation and Extraction

Because RVs are new things and imported products, we currently only use the thinking of operating traditional car marketing to sell RVs. There are similarities and differences. Therefore, it is necessary to settle down, discard the dross and select the essence, and seek common ground while reserving differences.

Do a good job in promotion, CRM, sales management, etc. These can be learned from our traditional auto industry experience. However, the RV itself has its own uniqueness: it is a refit product, and the original population is different from traditional passenger cars. How RV sellers and manufacturers carry out targeted communication is a problem that needs to be considered. Therefore, to do a good job in the marketing of RVs, we must first look at the attributes of RVs objectively from the perspective of the industry, and we can learn from some concepts and behaviors of traditional car marketing, such as exhibitions, parades, self-media promotion, etc. But at the same time, we must extract the essence, focus on our differences, and achieve differentiated promotion. For example, how do we accurately find the target group and how to solve customer experience problems? These are issues that require careful consideration by the RV industry.

Industry Orientation and RV Marketing

Selling RVs well is the responsibility of each enterprise, and it is everyone’s common responsibility to make the RV industry stronger and bigger. Today, at the beginning of the development of China’s RV industry, how to send positive and correct signals to users and the government is the duty of each of our enterprises. From the perspective of marketing, it is necessary to strive to advocate and actively publicize the value and significance of RV culture.

All RV owners have the responsibility to promote to the society what RV is, what is the value of RV, and what is the real RV culture, instead of trying to win other people’s attention through luxurious pictures and amazing prices. In China, the cognition of “RV is a luxury” still exists. In addition to consumers’ lack of understanding of this new thing, another reason is that there is a problem with the angle of our promotion. Some people deliberately promote RVs as mysterious, luxurious and high-end. Things that are out of reach make ordinary consumers daunted. Such guidance is not conducive to the healthy development of China’s RV industry, nor is it conducive to the popularization of RV culture.

As a basic principle of caravan marketing, it is to accurately convey the product information and product image of the caravan to the society and consumers. It is clear that the RV is a carrier, but a country has developed to a certain stage. With the gradual improvement of people’s economic conditions and quality of life, it has gradually become a part of our life. RV is a means of transportation for traveling, it is not a symbol of status and power, it should be the embodiment of quality of life and attitude towards life. Only by conveying ideas to consumers and publicizing RVs in this way can China’s RV market develop more rapidly and healthily.

Key Behaviors in RV Marketing

First of all, a clear concept, marketing is not just sales, not just Marketing.

A complete marketing behavior should include enterprise positioning, product positioning, channel construction, demand investigation, product planning, event planning, environmental analysis, supply chain planning and many other aspects. Therefore, marketing is the most difficult, and the difficulty is that it covers an extremely wide range and requires a lot of knowledge reserves. Here I don’t want to discuss one by one, but just talk about my personal understanding of marketing from several dimensions.

The first is the “human” factor. Everything needs people to solve it. A good strategy and a good idea need people to implement them. As far as I am concerned, the Chinese RV market is in urgent need of marketing elites. These elites can help companies correctly understand the current situation and future of the RV industry, and only these elites can dispel the notion that profit-seeking bosses just want to make quick money from the RV circle. Where do elites come from? The sky cannot fall, and universities do not have this major. We need to cultivate talents in related fields. Every enterprise should build its own team from the height of “talent strategy” and build its core competitiveness. Only in this way, RV The source power of the market can be guaranteed.

Secondly, several necessary actions must be taken well: market research based on demand, product planning based on demand, and market operation concept based on the company’s own situation. At present, China’s RV market is booming on the one hand, but chaotic on the other. The marketing of most companies has no routines or rules at all, and neither considers user feelings nor market rules. All behaviors are completely self-centered, imagining the RV industry too simply, and understanding product manufacturing too superficially. In the face of market competition, there is no bottom-line publicity in order to sell their own products, which has caused great harm to consumers. These are very bad marketing behaviors and marketing thinking.

The R&D and production of RVs must be based on the needs of users, and what the needs are must be based on scientific and reasonable investigations. There is a serious misunderstanding here: Many companies think that as long as I accept the demands put forward by users, then I will meet the needs. This is a wrong perception. Respecting user needs and meeting user needs does not mean blindly accommodating user needs. Users are users but do not understand design. In this process, enterprises must identify the value of appeals, evaluate the advantages and disadvantages, and selectively adopt and absorb them. This is the real respect for needs and consumers.

Product planning is not only about product design, companies should also consider the positioning, price, target audience and future development potential of each RV. A responsible company should objectively and comprehensively evaluate the product strength and reliability of its own RV.

epilogue

The marketing of RV varies from person to person, and different companies have their own different situations, so there is no one-size-fits-all truth in marketing behavior. There are only two purposes of corporate marketing: to win and retain more consumers, to gain loyalty; to seek the maximization of profits. No matter which one, the company needs to establish its overall strategy from the very beginning, and put the whole strategy into action, so that all employees are clear about the company’s strategic goals and action program.

The market is always full of competition and survival of the fittest. Although the caravan industry has just started and there is a blue ocean, the law of survival of the fittest will never change.