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For car companies, selling well under the brand not only has a more mature technical level, but also needs to carry out brand marketing and maintenance to enhance the influence of the brand. For this reason, the investment in marketing is also a necessary expenditure for all automobile companies every year.

A few days ago, Morketing Research Institute, a well-known media in the marketing industry, compiled a list of marketing expenses in the automobile industry. It is understood that the list selects 20 automobile groups and more than 40 automobile brands among the "2019 most valuable automobile brands in the world", while the data comes from the financial report data of various car companies in 2019, with a cumulative cost of nearly 770 billion yuan.

Judging from the list, the top car companies that invest in marketing are all major multinational automobile groups, with the top three brands of Volkswagen, Honda and Daimler Group respectively, with marketing investment of about 100 billion yuan in 2019. In fact, car companies' sales management expenses account for about 10% of revenue, which also reflects that car companies with higher profits will also invest relatively high in marketing. But the differences between different car companies are also huge. For example, Toyota, the second-largest seller in the world last year, invested relatively little in marketing, not even in the top 10, just less than 10% of Volkswagen.

Generally speaking, the marketing expenses of car companies generally include sales, advertising and general expenses. Compared with smaller luxury cars, luxury cars will spend more on advertising than popular brands, just as BBA, as a first-tier luxury brand, costs significantly more than other joint venture brands.

But it is not only the investment in advertising, but also the investment in the management of dealerships and salespeople, which is also the reason for the larger proportion of investment by car companies. According to a previous report, Ford's sales management expenses accounted for the lowest proportion of turnover among multinational car companies, at 7%, while Volkswagen was as high as 14%; second, Mercedes-Benz's sales management expenses were higher than BMW; Peugeot was higher than Renault; and Nissan was higher than Toyota.

Although there is little difference in organizational structure between Volkswagen and Toyota, the two largest car companies by sales in 2019, the marketing investment is huge, also because the Volkswagen brand has been mired in the "emission door" incident since 2015. more money needs to be invested in related aspects to achieve the rebound of brand power. In addition, compared with Toyota, which has sustained strong prices or even "price increases", Volkswagen also needs to increase sales through substantial sales promotion.

Therefore, the means of large-scale advertising and promotion in marketing not only make Nissan's bicycle sales management cost much higher than Toyota, but also higher than most European and American car companies. But it seems that as sales and revenue have continued to decline in the past two years, Nissan has also reduced the cost of marketing investment in order to achieve cost control.

There are also some independent brands in the list, such as Geely, Great Wall and BYD, among which Geely cars with the highest investment are often seen in China in the past two years. However, the investment of independent brands in marketing is generally less than that of multinational car companies, which is also the reason why multinational car companies sell and globally. In addition, the marketing costs of ultra-luxury brands such as Ferrari and Aston Martin are mainly due to low sales, and the organizational structure does not need too many sales stores, which can achieve certain results by virtue of its own ultra-high awareness.

Generally speaking, the amount of investment in marketing is not only a problem in the management of automobile enterprises, the impact of brand power will also lead to different investment in sales management expenses. Therefore, how to maintain or grow sales through less marketing expenses has become a concern for every car company. after all, in the current environment where the epidemic continues to spread, how to save costs has become a problem that major multinational car companies need to face.

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