Your Guide to Automotive Marketing on TikTok

In the rapidly changing world of automotive marketing, businesses need creative and effective ways to connect with their target audience. TikTok, with its large and diverse user base, offers automotive brands new ways to build meaningful connections and drive real business results. Whether the goal is advertising vehicles, selling car parts, or promoting services, TikTok’s unique approach to automotive digital advertising helps brands reach consumers where they are most engaged.

Why TikTok is the key to the fast lane

Automotive advertising on TikTok allows brands to tap into a global, diverse community of users ready to engage with fresh and authentic content. By leveraging TikTok’s ad solutions, they can show up in a way that resonates with today’s digital-first consumers.

Key benefits for automotive marketers:

• Massive reach: TikTok has a worldwide audience and myriad car-loving communities that brands can connect with through high-impact automotive advertisements, helping them reach key demographics like millennials and Gen Z. In fact, brands, creators, and consumers are rallying around passionate autophile communities here, with hashtags like #Cars (19M posts), #CarTok (4M posts), #CarsOfTikTok (11M posts), #Automotive (1M posts), and #Mechanic (1M posts) driving significant engagement and creating opportunities for brands to connect with their audience in authentic and impactful ways.¹

• Creative formats: TikTok’s creative tools make it easy to craft engaging automotive advertisements that stand out, including video-first ads and branded hashtag challenges that can increase user interaction and sharing.

• Proven results: With TikTok’s automotive digital marketing solutions, brands can build awareness, drive leads, and generate sales. TikTok’s diverse range of ad formats ensures the message gets noticed.

How TikTok opens doors for automotive brands

1. Build brand awareness: TikTok’s video-centric platform grab attention and make automotive advertisements feel natural and engaging. Formats like Branded Hashtag Challenges create viral trends that encourage user participation, helping brands grow organically across the platform.

2. Promote new models and offers: High-visibility formats like TopView and Brand Takeovers offer prime real estate in users’ feeds for things like launching a new vehicle or running a special promotion. With these tools, automotive ads can make a powerful first impression, driving awareness and interest.

3. Sell car parts: TikTok isn't just for big-ticket items like vehicles—it’s also an ideal platform to sell car parts and accessories. With precise targeting and creative ads, auto enthusiasts or customers looking for specific parts are within arms reach. Automotive digital advertising makes it easy to promote deals through things like dynamic videos that showcase product features or live-streamed tutorials on how to install a part.

4. Drive action: Robust targeting options help brands reach users who are actively in the market for automotive solutions. Automotive advertisements on TikTok can inspire users to visit a website, book test drives, or even purchase parts directly online, driving real-world results for any business. In fact, 92% of TikTok users take some action following the content they see.²

High-performance advertising solutions

TikTok offers a variety of ad formats tailored to the needs of automotive brands.

• In-Feed Ads: The power of TikTok lies in the For You feed, and In-Feed Ads are the most native and direct way to show up in this environment where users are primed for discovery. From maximizing awareness and consideration to optimizing for conversions, it all starts here.

• Spark Ads: Boost the visibility of organic videos (posted by either the brand account itself or by TikTok creators) by serving them as In-Feed Ads. Compared to standard In-Feed Ads, Spark Ads have a 30% higher completion rate, 142% higher engagement rate and 43% higher conversion rate.

• Branded Hashtag Challenge: Turn the TikTok community into co-creators at scale with this unique engagement event, an excellent choice for eliciting community engagement.

• Branded Effect: Another good choice for provoking engagement and user-generated content, these special 2D and 3D video effects inspire users to interact with content and make it their own.

Success stories: Driving results with TikTok ads

TikTok’s platform has been a game changer for many automotive brands. Nissan Australia made great use of the Duet feature to drive awareness around the local launch of the new JUKE: they challenged the TikTok community to Duet a video of the new model with their own voiceovers for a chance to be featured in the new TV commercial. This became one of the country's most successful TikTok campaigns, with over 34,000 users posting their own video creations.

The automotive market and TikTok

In today’s competitive automotive market, standing out requires more than just traditional advertising. TikTok gives brands access to innovative automotive marketing solutions that combine creativity with precision targeting. And it's the perfect place to do so, considering 65% of TikTok users have followed or made a purchase from a brand they found through TikTok.³

Start your engines with TikTok automotive marketing

Ready to transform your automotive marketing strategy? TikTok offers the best automotive advertising solutions to help you reach new customers and grow your business. From creating high-impact automotive ads to engaging users with creative automotive advertising, TikTok is the go-to platform for today’s automotive brands.

After you sign up for a TikTok Business Account, start your journey by working with your sales contact to get it verified. This will give you a verification badge, which is the blue checkmark that you see next to a profile’s handle. It assures users that your account is legitimate and belongs to your brand. If you launch straight into paid ads without setting up an official branded account, you'll be missing an important opportunity to start building your audience and prime them for future organic reach.

Sources

1. TikTok Internal Data Global, as of November 2024.

2. TikTok Marketing Science Global Time Well Spent Study (Global Results) conducted by Kantar March 2021.

3. TikTok Marketing Science Global Entertainment Study 2021, conducted by Material