TikTok is the 5th most-used social app in the world, offering massive potential for automotive brands. Find out how to drive leads from TikTok in this guide.
TikTok is one of the top platforms to consume snappy, fun and entertaining content.
It’s the 5th most-used social app in the world and is expected to reach as many as 1.8 billion monthly active users by the end of 2024.
At the heart of the app’s massive success is its user-friendly format: short-form, easy-to-create, vertical videos.
In addition to being popular with audiences, TikTok also has a lot in store to drive vehicle sales.
So, what exactly is in it for your automotive business? Let’s find out.
TikTok offers boundless potential for automotive brands as the next generation of auto buyers is on the platform.
To add to it, TikTok’s immersive, community-based format is becoming increasingly attractive to modern automotive buyers. These buyers scour the web for firsthand information and meaningful interactions.
They can easily access this on TikTok, helping them make key purchase decisions.
As a result, users are actively seeking and engaging with auto-related content on the platform:
This engagement has further solidified the importance of TikTok for auto buyers in three key areas:
Additionally, 44% plan to purchase or lease a vehicle in the next 6 months.
All of the above highlights TikTok’s substantial impact on the car buying journey, making it the perfect platform for automotive lead generation.
By generating leads on TikTok you can connect with customers and tailor ads to them in a more ethical, seamless and effective way than traditional data collection.
Your leads get to opt-in of their own accord, and you can provide highly relevant offers without irking them or threatening their privacy.
The three most popular and effective ways of driving leads using lead generation forms are:
As the name suggests, Send To Website ads redirect leads to your website when they click on your CTA.
Leads can browse through your website and share their contact information through a web form.
This web form could guide leads to take different actions. For instance, they can:
Alternatively, you can redirect interested leads from your ad to a specific landing page.
Landing pages are different from your website because they're built and customised for a unique purpose.
For instance, you have both ICEV and EV/PHEV offerings but you want to capture leads specifically for the latter. You can create a custom landing page for the entire EV/PHEV range or even multiple landing pages for each vehicle.
TikTok Instant Forms is a first-party lead generation solution that is native to the platform.
Users click on the ad’s CTA, opening an in-app form where they can share contact information and signal interest in your brand or vehicles.
Instant Forms compulsorily need you to add a Privacy Policy URL to ensure users trust your brand and share their data willingly.
In the below example, Peugeot UK uses an Instant Form to capture leads for the Peugeot 2008 launch.
But instead of simply collecting contact details, the brand makes it interactive. This also helps Peugeot collect more qualified, higher intent leads for its marketing campaigns.
Instant forms are pre-filled. You can also directly integrate leads from Instant Forms into your CRM or download them manually.
TikTok’s native lead generation forms have several benefits, making them a compelling alternative to website and landing page forms:
You can connect Instant Forms to TikTok ads. Users who see your ads and are interested in your automotives click on the CTA button. This button then opens the form where leads can fill in their details.
Here’s how you can create a TikTok lead generation ad with an Instant Form:
The absolute first step before running ads on TikTok is ensuring you have the following:
If you don’t already have a TikTok For Business account, you can create one. Visit the sign-up page, fill in your email and set a password.
Select Agree To Terms And Conditions, and then click on the Sign Up button. Complete the verification steps to proceed.
On the next page, enter your Business Name, Website URL, Industry, Country/Region, Currency, Time Zone and Mobile Phone Number.
Your TikTok For Business account is now ready.
Once you’ve logged in, go to Campaign on the TikTok Ads Manager dashboard and click Create.
Source: ZoCo Marketing
Select Lead Generation as your Advertising Objective and proceed.
Source: ZoCo Marketing
You will have to complete a few steps to build your ad group.
Source: ZoCo Marketing
An important point to note is that you can only target audiences older than 18 years of age.
Source: ZoCo Marketing
Source: The Ecom Bull
The minimum budget is 50 GBP at the campaign level and 20 GBP at the ad level daily. You can change your budget anytime.
Learn more about setting a TikTok ad budget here.
Bidding indicates the amount you are willing to pay for the users to take action (set in your campaign objective and call to action) after they have seen your ad.
You can choose between 4 bidding methods–CPM, oCPM, CPV and CPC. You can find out more about bidding and its methods on this resource page.
Pro tip: Leave bid amount blank until you get a few leads (about 50) to get a better idea of what it costs to get a conversion
Finish the rest of the Ad Group settings and continue to the ‘ad creation’ page.
Once you’ve built an Ad Group, you will need to create the ad itself.
For Lead Generation campaigns, ads consist of a video, ad details (such as Text and CTA), and an Instant Form for leads to fill out.
Source: ZoCo Marketing
Here’s how you can create an Ad:
At the Ad Level, you can either create a new form or attach an existing Instant Form in the Destination section.
Next, customise the form under the Content tab by following the below steps.
Source: TikTok
Source: ZoCo Marketing
Source: ZoCo Marketing
Pro-tip: With third-party cookies quickly disappearing, Conversion API is your best bet to improve ad ROI. You can use tools like Driftrock to get important customer action data from Conversion API, which is pivotal for personalised marketing campaigns and CRM conversions. This data includes key page views/clicks, test drive requests and car configurations.
Save and complete the form.
Preview your Ad to see how it appears in different placements. Once you’ve finalised the ad details and Instant Form, submit your finished ad.
TikTok Instant Forms have a lot to offer your automotive business when it comes to lead generation. However, they also have a few restrictions in place to improve performance and safeguard user privacy.
Here are some key capabilities and restrictions to note:
You can include several pre-filled form fields in Instant Forms for user convenience and quick capture. These include Phone Number, Email, Address, Country, Province/State, City, First Name, Last Name and Gender.
Auto buyers may want to book a test drive or appointment at a dealership near them.
Instead of having them search and pick out a location themselves, you can automate the postcode field. Or you can streamline the process even further with help from integrations such as Driftrock’s Store Locator feature.
TikTok allows you to include up to 10 custom questions on an Instant Form in addition to the Qualifying Question.
You may choose from different categories of questions such as Short Answer, Multiple Choice, Appointment Scheduling and Conditional Answer.
You will need to list your Company Name and enter a Link URL to your company's privacy policy.
Additionally, you can add Custom Disclaimer, which can be toggled on and off. These can be ‘optional’ or ‘required’ for the user.
You can use Driftrock to track TikTok leads from first touch to conversion and even after sales. You can also pull the Source, Campaign, Ad Set and Ad for each lead.
Optimise your Instant Forms for lead submission by finding a balance between volume and quantity.
To do this, use features like More Volume vs High Intent, Classic, Advanced or Rich Content Forms, Lead Validation, end-to-end tracking and reporting from automotive marketing platforms such as Driftrock.
Maximise the effectiveness of your lead generation ads with Instant Forms by following a few best practices:
Frame your video vertically and leverage the power of sound because that’s what TikTok is primarily popular for. Plus, short-form content works best on the app, so share your key message early in the video.
Keep your video real and entertaining so viewers stay engaged and want to know more about you or your automotives. You can also overlay text to capture attention but remember to keep it crisp and informative.
Source: Mercedes-Benz, TikTok
Observe the latest trends and use them in your videos.
Lastly, optimise your Instant Form for mobile in a way that’s easy to read, needs minimum scrolling and where form fields are clearly visible.
When creating your ad, include a strong CTA in the ad copy, video captions and form. More importantly, be direct and tell leads exactly what they need to do. It avoids them getting confused and disinterested.
Show leads what value they will receive in exchange for sharing their details and what are the next steps. For example, if they fill out your Instant Form and book a test drive, they get 10% off on the booking fee (valid for 7 days) and someone from the dealership will be in touch shortly.
You can use spark ads and include display cards in your ad.
TikTok lets you customise the form. Make the most of it by personalising the form content and follow-up communication for each audience segment. Use the interests and user behaviour options to customise audience segments.
Create new videos using TikTok’s video editor and include trending audio from the app’s commercial music library. Trending formats and audio receive better traction owing to their popularity.
Lastly, you can explore the TikTok Creator Marketplace and collaborate with relevant creators to boost your reach.
Chevrolet working with Creators to boost reach
(Source: @bullseyeonthebargain)
Don’t be afraid to ask more questions! Find a balance between quality and quantity.
Experiment with basic versus advanced lead formats and high-intent lead forms to generate high-quality leads.
To collect leads into your CRM and track conversions, remember to click on Connect to CRM. You can also use platforms like Driftrock to automate the lead management and lead validation processes.
Connecting TikTok lead generation forms to your CRM allows you to respond to new leads immediately, capture their interest and boost your conversion rates.
Here’s how to connect your CRM to TikTok using Driftrock:
Driftrock has helped several automotive brands achieve consistent results from TikTok lead generation. Read on to find out more!
Driftrock enriches your lead gen and boosts vehicle sales from TikTok:
Using Driftrock, you can route TikTok leads to any CRM in real-time. You can also standardise the data and integrate the CRM with multiple lead sources.
Driftrock offers a central model tree and location lookup to streamline the integration process.
You can enable auto-responders and email notifications within the platform itself.
~10% of leads are invalid and waste sales resources
Validate email, phone numbers and addresses automatically with Driftrock. Plus, you can set custom qualification rules for lead acceptance and segmentation (for example, leads looking to buy in 3 months).
These features ensure that only higher quality leads enter your CRM and invalid TikTok leads are blocked.
To further optimise your campaigns, track and measure valid leads.
You can use Driftrock’s safe and scalable approach to (a) target, (b) exclude, and (c) find Lookalikes from audience segments for your TikTok campaigns.
Driftrock offers a simplified Conversion API for TikTok to improve your campaign performance in a cookieless world.
Never lose sight of your leads with Driftrock. You can track TikTok ads to conversion. Our granular tracking also lets you manually and automatically optimise campaigns for automotive purchases.
BMW Spain collaborated with Driftrock to drive high-quality leads from TikTok for the BMW 1 Series M Sport.
TikTok Instant Forms
The brand created an attention-grabbing video ad for TikTok with a CTA to its Instant Form.
Leads could engage with the brand in a highly interactive format while using a quick and easy way to request more information on the vehicle.
Safeguarding user privacy
The pre-filled Instant Forms with profile information (including full disclaimers, consent and privacy policy) simplified the process further and allowed for a GDPR-compliant solution.
Driftrock optimised lead quality
Driftrock’s automotive marketing platform connected TikTok leads to BMW Spain’s CRM using Lead Validation. We validated each email address so that only high-quality leads could be passed on to the brand’s marketing ecosystem.
We also tested two types of forms–basic and advanced lead forms–and monitored each type’s lead quality to optimise the campaign.
Results
BMW Spain achieved 47% lower cost per lead than other social advertising lead formats.
It also observed increased lead quality with advanced lead forms over basic forms.
And it’s not just BMW Spain. Driftrock has driven over $270 million in New Vehicle Sales in the last 12 months for 46 automotive brands across 12 markets.
Ready to join the high-performing automotive marketing club? Talk to our Lead Gen Expert today.
Driftrock's integrations push lead data, pull audience records & pull conversion data.
