Jesse Cannon-Wallace doesn’t have a TikTok strategy.
Still, Cannon-Wallace, who works as a Atlanta Northeast Mercedes Benz Dealer, has been able to build over 120,000 followers on the platform through organic posts documenting test drives, tutorials and product features for the dealer fleet.
For Cannon-Wallace, who goes by @benzblogger, TikTok has been a catalyst for increasing brand awareness and therefore car sales, at least anecdotally. Especially as the auto industry looks towards recovery after the pandemic and inflation.
“I think TikTok is bringing me new sales faster than any of the other platforms,” Cannon-Wallace said. (He didn’t disclose specific sales figures.) “I immediately noticed that as my platform grew, I was getting more appointments and more customers coming in to buy cars.”
Increasingly, local car dealerships and other brands that sell high-volume items say they are finding success on TikTok given the app’s low barrier to entry, preference for authentic and organic content, and the new functionality of search The latter has become a bigger focus recently, with advertisers and the platform itself changing to keep up with changes in young people’s online search habits.
“[Consumers]in the past, it may have gone to Consumer Reports [to research big purchases]”said Yunilda Esquivel, director of strategy at the laundry services agency. “Unsurprisingly, TikTok is a search engine for Gen Z consumers: how to do things, where to find things, especially when it’s about things like traveling and discovering new brands.”
Matt Eldridge, Product Expert or BMW Genius at BMW Tuscaloosa, Alabama, started TikTok-ing last year with an organic approach. Because of TikTok’s reach, it has been able to get the dealership in front of a wider audience and has sold at least four high-end special cars because of it, he said.
It’s a similar story at Lockhart Cadillac, where Jason Fox serves as brand manager, spending a few hours a day managing @lockhartcadillac’s 141,000 TikTok followers. For Fox, TikTok presents more opportunities to go viral and reach a wider audience than platforms like Instagram or Facebook, especially because of its algorithm.
“We’re always here trying to crack that code and make our video even further,” Fox said.
And the amount of time people spend in the app is increasing. Insider Intelligence reports that US adult users will spend nearly an hour a day on TikTok this year, beating its previous forecast of 47 minutes by 18.7%. And where shoppers’ eyes are, advertisers are sure to follow. TikTok is expected to account for 3.1% of all digital ad spending this year, up from 2.4% in 2022, Insider Intelligence also reports.
Also, TikTok is no longer the Gen Z app. Per app business, 34.9% of TikTok users are between the ages of 18 and 24. Meanwhile, 28.2% of users are between 25 and 34 years old. That means big-ticket item retailers have a built-in audience, agency executives say.
“As a brand, you now know it’s the fastest growing segment [on TikTok] is over 35,” said Samantha Deevy, partner and head of strategy at agency Fig. “These are the people who obviously have the means to buy large items.”
Media buyers and agency executives expect TikTok’s search functionality to become a more mainstream approach later this year to keep up with Gen Z, who are increasingly turning to TikTok to start your product searches online. Already, brands, including the aforementioned car dealership marketers, are leaning towards the new feature to capture a larger market share of car buyers. When it comes to ad dollars, Google remains the tried and true search engine, at least for now, advertisers say.
But TikTok has gone from the home of viral dance videos to something of a peer-to-peer recommendation service, especially with the rise of influencers, agency executives say. Consider #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt, a viral hashtag featuring videos of influencers, brands and users showing off their latest purchases. It represents a fundamental shift, executives say, in the way people shop online, serving as a makeshift peer-review feature for today’s young shoppers.
In a statement emailed to Digiday, Hillel Hurwitz, founder and CEO of brand strategy and creative agency Bald, said: “Instead of relying on traditional advertising channels like TV ads or billboards, people now turns to TikTok to discover and evaluate products.”
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