How BMW is using content to ‘enlarge the upper sales funnel’
BMW is looking to widen its potential audience by creating “relevant and snackable” content that engages consumers beyond cars.
BMW believes a mobile-first, content-led approach will help it attract a wider audience and claims the recent relaunch of its website has already increased mobile visitors by 27%.
Speaking at Mobile World Congress 2019, the German carmaker’s global head of digital marketing, Jorg Poggenpohl, explained how BMW is extending its content beyond automotive to “enlarge the upper sales funnel”, meaning it is now also creating content around lifestyle, design, innovation and fashion.
“Based on data-driven insights we wanted to create relevant and snackable content in helpful and entertaining ways,” he said. That way the business hopes to reach both existing customers and those that might be considering BMW but don’t yet own one.
BMW claims the new mobile site loads in 1.9 seconds – three to four times faster than before – and said the click-through rate from BMW.com to regional sites where customers can find further product information has increased by 44% – four times higher than before.
“This was not in mind but we shifted it,” Poggenpohl said, adding that BMW is now getting 49% more site visits through SEO and the average user is spending 3.13 minutes on the site on mobile.
“We were thinking customer, consumer-first, which means for us mobile-first with speed,” he said. “We did it by combining two technologies, AMP [accelerated mobile pages] and PWA [progressive web apps], to bring both ends together on one site.
“It also shows when creative and engineering prioritise speed from the beginning of the project, before the first line of code is written.”
BMW is set to become the first automotive customer to use AMP Stories on its site in April, which Poggenpohl said will make the mobile experience “even more immersive, engaging and faster”.
