Pulse Advertising says short-form video, creators and authentic content are reshaping how car buyers research dealers and brands.
Let me be direct: social media is no longer a marketing support channel for the automotive industry.
It is the primary arena where car-buying decisions are researched, shaped, and in many cases, practically made – before a single human interaction with a dealer ever takes place.
I say this having spent years working with automotive clients and watching the data compound.
According to GWI Global, 37% of TikTok users are currently in-market for a new or used vehicle. In separate consumer research, 45% of Americans said they would consider purchasing a car through social media. That is not a fringe behaviour. That is the mainstream shifting in real time.
The question I put to every automotive business I work with is this: if a potential buyer looked at your social media today, would it give them a reason to choose you or a reason to look elsewhere?
Platforms have changed. Have you?
Social media has fundamentally restructured itself around short-form video and authenticity. TikTok’s average brand engagement rate hit 3.70% in 2025 – more than seven times Instagram’s 0.48%. Algorithms on both platforms now actively reward content that feels native, human and real over anything that looks like a broadcast ad.
This matters enormously for automotive. The traditional playbook – glossy campaign imagery, press releases repurposed as captions, product shots with no context or story – is being algorithmically deprioritised.
What performs is genuine: a service manager walking through a common fault, a salesperson doing a real model comparison, a delivery moment filmed on a staff member’s phone. The production value is irrelevant. The authenticity is everything.
User-generated content (UGC) consistently outperforms brand-produced material by a significant margin. Instagram posts featuring UGC achieve around 70% higher engagement than standard branded content, while UGC campaigns on TikTok outperform brand-created content by 22%.
The practical implication for dealers is real: your customers are not just referral sources – they are a content asset you are probably underusing.
What you can learn from who does it well
Mini is one of the clearest examples of a brand that genuinely gets the social media brief. Their global TikTok account has accumulated over 1.1 million followers and 8.6 million likes – not through high-budget productions, but through content that leans relentlessly into the brand’s personality: playful, self-aware, and community-obsessed.
It builds a world people want to live inside, where owning the car feels like belonging to something. That is the benchmark.
BMW is another benchmark worth studying. Over the twelve months to March 2025, the brand added 2.3 million new Instagram followers – the second fastest-growing major automotive brand on the platform globally. The strategy was built around enabling a community of over 17,000 creators to generate content, rather than centralising production. BMW shifted its role from broadcaster to facilitator.
The influencer question and how to answer it
The influencer debate in automotive usually gets framed as binary: expensive celebrity at one end, questionable micro-creator at the other.
A credible automotive creator with 80,000 highly engaged followers in your market will consistently outperform a lifestyle celebrity with three million passive ones.
Sprout Social’s 2025 research found that 59% of marketers planned to work with more influencers compared to the previous year, with a growing share specifically shifting toward smaller, more targeted creators. The ROI logic is straightforward: relevance beats reach.
For dealers specifically, the opportunity is more local than it might appear. Regional lifestyle creators, community figures, and local content accounts can be extraordinarily effective at driving showroom visits and test drive bookings – at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.
What to do with this information
Start with consistency – three well-considered, platform-native posts per week will outperform 20 recycled campaign images. Build community by responding to comments, resharing customer content and involving your team visibly. Then explore creator partnerships, not as a luxury but as a scalable, cost-effective route to credible content at volume.
Polestar’s head of content and social media Hunter Skipworth knows that automotive strategy can no longer be rooted in those glossy images anymore. The most effective influencer strategies in automotive are not about reach for its own sake – they are about finding the right voices to tell specific stories to specific audiences.
The buyers are already there. According to Sprout Social’s research, nearly one in three consumers now starts their purchase journey on social platforms rather than traditional search engines. The showroom visit is still happening – but it is increasingly a confirmation, not a discovery.
Social media is where the decision is being shaped.
Author: Mikhail Hanney, UK managing director, Pulse Advertising
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