Understanding and using TikTok is the best social media platform for car salespeople and dealers to generate leads and convert them to sales, according to an industry digital marketing coach.
Marc Lavoie, Founder and Content Director of Autobahn Academy, which helps Canadian and American dealership clients with customer acquisition, said TikTok is more effective than Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. But he added that some people have a misunderstanding of TikTok.
“TikTok is not only about teens and dancing. This is nuts,” he wrote in a post this week on his LinkedIn account.
In an interview with Canadian auto dealer, he added: “Car salespeople and finance people do really well on TikTok. It only makes sense when you really try to understand what’s going on. I’ve been watching (clients) do everything on TikTok for the last 12 months and I just see a lot of opportunities and they are pulling metrics like I’ve never seen and I’ve been in the business for 15 years.”
He said he’s seen a six per cent to 15 per cent conversion rate of customer leads from TikTok posts.
“In an industry where we’re used to converting one per cent of our customers, I just think it’s crazy,” he said. “I think what’s really driving me to help dealers with this now is that those leads convert from 30-50 per cent of sales.”
One of his clients, Marc-Andre Lapointe, Owner of Cornwall Seaway Hyundai and Seaway Chevrolet, engaged Lavoie’s services a month ago after watching him do a webinar about TikTok’s reach. He was impressed by TikTok’s algorithms and how to engage people organically after previously concentrating on Facebook.
He’s learned from Lavoie that doing videos about a specific feature of a car hooks customers as opposed to a salesperson trying to be funny.
“We’re very new at it,” said Lapointe. “We’re two feet in saying, ‘Let’s focus on this and let’s try to build viewership and try to build leads off of it.’”
