Kavak

The Objective

Driving awareness, traffic and leads

As car buying habits have shifted post-pandemic, consumers have become less motivated by the automotive industry's traditional marketing tactics. With this in mind, Kavak — one of the world's leading pre-owned car companies — was among the first automotive brands to leverage TikTok ads to drive full funnel sales performance in the Latin American market.

However, understanding how to add TikTok into Kavak's existing media mix posed several workflow challenges: how can the Kavak team leverage TikTok to drive leads and brand awareness? How should Kavak approach creative production for this new channel?

To address these concerns, Kavak turned to badged TikTok Creative Partner, VKNG Agency, to create a TikTok-first content strategy to meet its key business goals.

The Solution

TikTok-first creative

To achieve its full funnel sales goals, Kavak worked with the TikTok team and VKNG Agency to develop a multi-pronged creative and campaign strategy. First, Kavak wanted to establish a strong TikTok presence to create a foundation for future campaigns, drive brand awareness, create authentic connections with audiences, and better understand their content preferences on the platform.

To do this, Kavak shifted its digital creative approach from more traditional and hard-sell to user-centric, entertaining, and authentic. VKNG Agency helped Kavak produce content that featured popular creators and incorporated trends, humor, and effects. To maximize this strategy, the brand utilized Spark Ads to boost the reach of top-performing organic content.

As it gained significant traction with its TikTok content strategy, Kavak prioritized meeting its lead generation goals, launching acquisition creative for key sales periods such as El Buen Fin, key sales days, and financing periods. To do this, VKNG Agency produced optimized creative for organic placements, In-Feed, Spark Ads with Display Cards, and Catalogue Ads.

Moving away from creating content that focused solely on the sale price, VKNG Agency produced creative that featured valuable tips and tricks for car maintenance and driving that audiences asked about in Kavak's TikTok comments section. By addressing key consumer needs and difficulties, the brand engaged with its audience in a more meaningful and actionable way.

The Solution

Lower cost leads

Kavak's bet on TikTok as a critical acquisition tool and a way to connect with new and current audiences paid off. It surpassed 2 million followers and 19 million likes marks on TikTok in less than a year (starting from 0).

The implementation of In-Feed Ads, Spark Ads with Display Cards, and Catalogue Ads, had the best creative performance across all digital media outlets, with a 90% conversion rate (depending on the objective) and over 160 million views in total, across the campaigns implemented throughout the year.

Additionally in the Campaña de Financiamiento 2022, TikTok generated 60% of Kavak's highest lead metric in that period, making it an integral channel in the brand's acquisition strategy. Looking forward, Kavak will optimize its TikTok strategy to grow in new markets, drive authentic connections with new audiences, and increase performance throughout their sales funnel.