Toronto, Ontario — Snapchat has become a staple in many millennials and Generation Z lives because it’s how they grew up learning the news. Now, dealerships are attempting their hand at Snapchat to try and entice younger drivers to investigate the Canadian automotive market.
Consumers, particularly those younger than 30, are spending more time on social media during the pandemic, and yet, many dealerships have not ventured beyond Facebook to apps such as Snapchat.
Data shows that the groups drawn to Snapchat aren’t shying away from the car market. Millennials and Generation Z were the only two groups for which vehicle registration rose from the first quarter of 2020 to the second quarter, according to an Experian study.
For example, Snapchat recently stated that the app reaches 75 percent of Americans born from 1981 throughout 2010 who make up those generations.
Snapchat’s popularity gives stores more opportunities to target users with tools such as “Snap Ads,” which appear as people pursue the site and last only a few seconds. These ads allow stores to push pictures, animated images and videos to users, then capture those leads by encouraging users to express interest by swimming up on the screen. The destination could be a sign-up page for users who want more information about a vehicle, for example, or a place to explore vehicle features.
A Boston Consulting Group released a study commissioned by Snapchat, which found that 62 per cent of millennials and the younger Gen Z have increased their time on social media since the pandemic began. That compares with 42 per cent from older generations, according to the study, which includes 9, 500 consumers 16 and older in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada and France.
On average, Snapchat users opened the app more than 30 times a day in the second quarter. The average number of posts-known as snaps—created each day by users grew 25 per cent over the year in the third quarter.
The pandemic has forced many dealerships to rethink their marketing strategies, by engaging consumers on multiple social media fronts, such as tweaking the buying process to make it more accessible for online shoppers. The health crisis could lead to permanent changes in the consumers’ habits, making them more accustomed to handling more of their vehicle purchases and service needs in the coming years via social media.
A Snapchat study from late July to early August found that 54 percent of users in the market for a vehicle are “very or somewhat comfortable” with a dealership picking up their vehicles for repair and dropping them off afterward, or having a newly purchased vehicle delivered to their homes. That was a 10 percentage-point increase from three months earlier.
