Customers
Mercedes-Benz Turkey: Accelerated Sales Through a Hybrid Marketing Approach
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October 28, 2022
A company that needs no introduction, Germany’s Mercedes-Benz has been synonymous with high-quality commercial vehicles for over a century. Turkey has historically been a strong market for Mercedes-Benz, with many thousands of vehicles sold in the country over the last decade.
In a push to boost sales of their famed Sprinter, Vito, and V-Class vans across the country, Mercedes-Benz Turkey decided to integrate WhatsApp Business Platform into its marketing efforts.
The Problem: Delayed conversions
Mercedes-Benz Turkey captured leads for their vans with social media campaigns but struggled to quickly and effectively turn those leads into sales. Interested parties had to fill out extensive forms and wait for call center agents to call them before purchasing a van.
Those who were willing to wait could finalize the deal in about two days. Mercedes-Benz Turkey wanted a faster turnaround. The goal was to enable those who’ve shown a definite interest in owning a Mercedes van to get the keys to their Sprinter, Vito, or V-Class the day they reach out.
The Solution: Combine social outreach with WhatsApp messaging
When thinking of ways to convert leads, Mercedes Benz quickly realized that WhatsApp made sense.
It’s one of the most widely used communication tools in Turkey, with 41 million WhatsApp users in 2021, according to Statista.1
Mercedes-Benz Turkey’s digital campaigns via social media were capturing leads well, so WhatsApp didn’t want to scrap these ads. Instead, the company hypothesized that using WhatsApp with social campaigns would be the best solution.
To test this idea, Mercedes-Benz Turkey tracked the progress of three campaigns over the course of a month:
- Business as Usual (BAU): The company's current, unchanged lead generation campaign without WhatsApp (social media ads followed by forms/waiting for agents to reach out)
- Click to WhatsApp (CTWA): A new campaign featuring direct WhatsApp engagements (an ad with a call to action (CTA) to start a conversation via WhatsApp)
- BAU + CTWA: Both campaigns working in tandem (the company’s current social media apps with a CTA for initiating a conversation in WhatsApp instead of filling out a form)
Mercedes-Benz Turkey integrated Meta’s Conversions API with the WhatsApp Business Platform so connections between marketing events and customer actions could be tracked securely.
With each of the three campaign methods, Mercedes-Benz Turkey tested six ad variations oriented around distinct customer appeals (like vehicle capabilities). It didn’t take long for Mercedes-Benz Turkey to realize that the combined campaign was most effective.
The Results: 93% increase in conversions
By using WhatsApp in conjunction with social media ads to make direct communication with customers easier, Mercedes-Benz Turkey was able to increase both leads and conversions. With the new hybrid approach, in just one month, the company saw the following:
- 93% boost in incremental conversions
- 2.7x more qualified leads
- 78% lower cost per qualified lead
- 44% more consumers reached with the same investment
- 63% increase in customers taking the next step toward purchase after initial interest was established
- 300+ new leads and 100+ incremental leads qualified
“Integrating WhatsApp Business Platform into our traditional marketing and sales channels lets us meet customers’ needs for fast, direct communication,” said Nergis Sevinc, Mercedes-Benz Turkey Digital Marketing Coordinator.
The Future: Integrating WhatsApp with traditional marketing channels
After such a successful month, Mercedes-Benz Turkey plans on introducing WhatsApp messaging to many other channels outside of social media ad campaigns.
The goal is to respond to direct customer inquiries faster and speed up the process of getting already-interested buyers into their new vans.
“With WhatsApp Business Platform, we've enabled more impactful support, improved responsiveness, and gotten more people behind the wheel of our elite commercial vans,” said Mercedes-Benz Turkey Communications Team Manager Serhat Yaka.
