The Client

Toyota is a truly global business, building vehicles in factories on six continents around the world and directly employing more than a quarter of a million people. Its products are sold in 160 markets worldwide. The United Kingdom is a key market for Toyota both in terms of sales and manufacturing.

The Challenge

Toyota recognised the decline of traditional advertising channels and the importance of the Internet as a selling tool and approached Connecti to evaluate and implement a search marketing programme for the car manufacturer. The main objectives of the project were to:

• Increase the number of test drive requests
• Increase the number of brochure requests
• Reduce the offline marketing spend of their dealerships by implementing more cost effective online alternatives

The Solution

Connecti’s digital solution for Toyota included the development of a dealer-marketing portal and on-brand dealer marketing sites with sophisticated content management systems each containing maximum search capability.

Connecti recognised that important purchase specific key phrase’s relating to the company’s core models were not represented within the major search engines and created new content for Toyota GB in a bid to capture additional customers via the online channel. Connecti’s marketing team determined the automotive industry keyword popularity and recommended target keywords as well as ideal content, copy and linking opportunities. Connecti implemented crucial keyword data into every single product page of the site. The marketing team at Toyota were also instructed to converge copy with keyword data and Meta data was compiled for each of the pages on the site based on crucial keywords and embedded content.

It was also vital for Toyota customers to have a positive user experience to guide the searcher directly into the specific area of the site. Connecti ensured each dealer site was ethically coded, sufficiently content rich and fully navigable to maximise robust search engine exposure with particular focus on Google, Yahoo and MSN search.

The Results

As a direct result of the campaign designed and implemented by Connecti, Toyota GB’s UK dealer network experienced a 37% increase in online test drive requests and a staggering 43% increase in online brochure requests.

The regional email campaigns have generated an estimated £1.2 million in additional sales for the year to date and the marketing spend for the company’s dealers has been reduced by 17%.

Between the main site and dealer sites the UK wide search engine marketing campaign has led to a 14% in overall site traffic across the organisation.