Automotive marketing in China: from the feed to the dealer

Most Chinese car buyers have picked the model before they walk in. Often they’ve picked the store, too. Automotive marketing in China is won on Douyin (抖音) and Xiaohongshu (小红书), and in the hours after a buyer leaves a phone number.

China’s car market has changed fuel, and its buyers have changed habits. More than half the new vehicles sold there in 2026 are new energy vehicles, the Chinese term for electric and plug-in cars. Price cuts no longer set a brand apart. The work has moved earlier, into the feed, and later, into the lead follow-up at the dealer.

That holds for a foreign brand like Jaguar Land Rover and for a Chinese one like JAC Motors. Both are our clients, and you’ll meet both below.

Each platform does one job in the purchase.

Platform	Job in the car journey	What you publish	What you track
Douyin (抖音)	Reach, showroom live streams, local leads	Short video, dealer live streams	Leads by store, test drives
Xiaohongshu (小红书)	Owner proof and lifestyle	Owner and creator notes	Searches for your model, saves
Autohome (汽车之家), Dongchedi (懂车帝)	Specs, prices, comparisons	Model pages, dealer listings	Comparison traffic, leads
WeChat (微信), WeCom (企业微信)	The sales chat and owner service	Service account, rep chats, groups	Contacts added, repeat visits
Weibo (微博)	Launch news	Reveal posts, hot topics	Reach in launch week

If you haven’t launched, read the first three sections. If your accounts are live and leads are flat, skip to the dealer handoff. Every source on this page was checked twice in October 2026.

What changed: the EV shift and a new kind of buyer

The fuel changed first.

China sold 34.4 million vehicles in 2025, and 16.49 million of them were new energy vehicles, up 28.2%. Source: China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (中国汽车工业协会), reported by Xinhua (新华社), January 2026. https://www.news.cn/fortune/20260114/cbbd861081c349d8ae238167ca418fa3/c.html

New energy vehicles reached 47.9% of new vehicle sales in 2025, up 7 percentage points in a year. Source: China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, reported by National Business Daily (每日经济新闻), January 2026. https://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/2026-01-15/doc-inhhiusf6561699.shtml

This year the share passed half.

New energy vehicles took 61.6% of new vehicle sales in September 2026, the third month in a row above 60%. From January to September, the share was 53.6%. Source: China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, reported by Xinhua on People’s Daily Online (人民网), October 2026. http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2026/1012/c1004-40813068.html

Counting only passenger cars sold to buyers in China, the September share hit a record 67.0%. Source: China Passenger Car Association (乘联会), reported by China News Service (中新网), October 2026. https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cj/2026/10-12/10712022.shtml

The home market isn’t growing much, though.

China exported 7.098 million vehicles in 2025, up 21.1%. Without exports, domestic sales were 27.302 million, about level with 2017. Source: China Economic Net (中国经济网), January 2026. http://auto.ce.cn/auto/gundong/202601/t20260115_2703088.shtml

So more brands chase the same buyers, and those buyers are changing.

McKinsey’s 2026 report on Chinese car consumers found that trading in an existing car now drives demand. For the first time, buyers are considering fewer brands. Source: China Securities Journal (中国证券报), May 2026. https://www.cs.com.cn/ssgs/01/2026/05/13/detail_2026051310011332.html

That’s the starting point for EV marketing in China, and a warning for brands that sell mostly gasoline cars there. Most buyers already own a car. They know what they like, and their shortlist is getting shorter. If your brand isn’t on it before they start, a showroom discount won’t put it there.

Discounts are under pressure anyway.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (工业和信息化部) said in May 2025 that price wars have “no winners” and promised tougher action against them. Source: Xinhua (新华社), May 2025. http://www.news.cn/fortune/20250531/890321bef3b34359a59a84f141c637ff/c.html

Our two automotive clients show both sides of this. Jaguar Land Rover had a famous name and the wrong age profile.

“In China, the problem was age.” Source: TheRedScroll, Jaguar Land Rover case study, October 2026. https://www.theredscroll.com/work/jaguar-land-rover/

JAC Motors had the opposite problem: “over 10 million vehicles sold worldwide”, says its case study, and a feed nobody answered.

“Low comments, low shares, no real sense of community.” Source: TheRedScroll, JAC Motors case study, October 2026. https://www.theredscroll.com/work/jac-motors/

Where Chinese buyers actually research a car

By the time a buyer reaches the showroom, the choice is mostly made.

In 2025, 76.4% of car shoppers in China already had a clear brand or model in mind when shopping, up 7 percentage points from 2024. Source: J.D. Power China, 2025 China Sales Satisfaction Index study, July 2025. https://china.jdpower.com/press-releases/2025-china-sales-satisfaction-index-ssi-study

Douyin (抖音) says most of that choice now happens online.

About 75% of car buyers in 2025 picked the brand, model, and store through short video, live streams, and search before visiting. Source: Douyin Life Services (抖音生活服务) white paper, reported by IT Home (IT之家), April 2026. https://www.ithome.com/0/943/223.htm

The decision is quick once it starts.

In J.D. Power’s 2026 study of 9,093 new car owners, the largest group of new energy vehicle buyers decided within one to two weeks. The largest group of gasoline car buyers decided within a week. Source: J.D. Power China (君迪), 2026 China car buyer experience study, June 2026. https://china.jdpower.com/zh-hans/press-releases/2026nianzhongguogouchekehutiyanzhishuyanjiu

A week or two is too short to build a reputation from nothing.

Two car apps sit beside the social feeds. Buyers use them to compare specs, prices, and dealers.

Autohome (汽车之家) averaged 76.5 million mobile daily users in June 2026, according to QuestMobile. Source: Xinhua (新华网), August 2026. http://www.news.cn/tech/20260821/882cec1424c84a2c8a74cf683ac1799e/c.html

Dongchedi (懂车帝) passed 10 million mobile daily users and says 6 in 10 serious car shoppers use it. Source: Securities Times (证券时报), July 2025. https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/2545107.html

A foreign brand needs complete Chinese model pages on both. Start by checking them. Prices and specs there should match what its own accounts say, and so should the dealer list.

Douyin and Xiaohongshu do different jobs for car brands

On Douyin (抖音), the car moves and the dealer sells.

Douyin reaches 510 million car-interest users among its 700 million daily users, according to Judongche (巨懂车). Source: Eastday (东方网), on China Daily (中国日报网), February 2026. https://caijing.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202602/02/WS69807502a310942cc499de73.html

Judongche, Jiemian reports, combines Dongchedi (懂车帝) with Douyin’s car business. It serves carmakers and dealers from the first online contact to the sale.

On Douyin, live streams sell far more cars than short videos.

About 35% of Douyin car orders in 2025 came from live streams, 34% from in-app search, and 6% from short video. About 670,000 car orders were redeemed through Douyin’s local services that year. Source: Douyin Life Services (抖音生活服务) white paper, reported by IT Home (IT之家), April 2026. https://www.ithome.com/0/943/223.htm

Car advertisers are moving money there.

Car brands raised their share of Douyin creator spend by 3.6 percentage points in 2025. Source: Topklout (克劳锐), reported by TopMarketing, June 2026. https://www.itopmarketing.com/info22850

Xiaohongshu (小红书) is where owners say what a car is like to live with.

Xiaohongshu says more than 200 million of its users are interested in cars. It had 350 million monthly active users in July 2025, half of them born after 1995. Source: China Business Journal (中国经营报), August 2025. https://finance.sina.com.cn/jjxw/2025-08-04/doc-infiuumz0399380.shtml

Users run about 400 million car-related searches a month on Xiaohongshu. Source: LatePost (晚点LatePost), April 2025. https://www.163.com/dy/article/JU8EPNCN0531M1CO.html

Jaguar Land Rover’s content was made in China, for both feeds.

“All shot and edited in China for the Chinese market. Not adapted global campaigns.” Source: TheRedScroll, Jaguar Land Rover case study, October 2026. https://www.theredscroll.com/work/jaguar-land-rover/

The mistake we see most often is a brand running Xiaohongshu like Douyin. It posts showroom clips where readers came for an owner’s honest review. Side by side, the split looks like this.

	Douyin (抖音)	Xiaohongshu (小红书)
The buyer’s question	Which car, which store, what deal	What is it like to own
Who posts	The brand, dealers, car creators	Owners, lifestyle creators
Formats that work	Showroom live streams, test drive videos	Owner notes, comparisons, road trip photos
The next step	A lead card or deposit with a store	A search for the model, a save
What to measure	Leads by store, test drives booked	Model searches, saves, owner posts

Test drive leads: the handoff from social to the dealer

Douyin (抖音) turns out leads in bulk.

Douyin had more than 30,200 active car stores in 2025 and produced more than 810,000 car sales leads a day, according to Judongche (巨懂车). Stores stream and collect buyer details through Dongche Cloud Store (懂车云店), a back-end tool. Source: Jiemian (界面新闻), September 2026. https://www.jiemian.com/article/15098787.html

Not all of them were real, Douyin says. It changed the rules this autumn.

From September 1, 2026, brands and dealers can no longer add WeChat (微信) IDs to Douyin leads by hand. Buyers who leave a number on a live stream lead card must also enter a text message code. The store cannot turn that step off. The notice blamed large numbers of fake leads from WeChat IDs entered by stores. Source: Jiemian (界面新闻), September 2026. https://www.jiemian.com/article/15098787.html

Expect fewer leads and more real ones. That puts more weight on what happens next.

And the dealer on the other end is under strain.

55.7% of China’s car dealers lost money in 2025, and only 23.5% made a profit. New car sales contributed -25.5% of dealer gross profit. Source: China Automobile Dealers Association (中国汽车流通协会) survey, reported by China Economic Net (中国经济网), March 2026. http://m.ce.cn/qc/gd/202603/t20260325_2856106.shtml

The same association’s inventory warning index stood at 63.2% in September 2026, above its 50% boom-bust line. Dealers reported falling foot traffic and leads, and longer times to close. Source: China Automobile Dealers Association (中国汽车流通协会), September 2026. https://www.cada.cn/Data/info_85_10576.html

Who gets the lead also depends on how the brand sells.

China had 32,432 4S dealerships at the end of 2025, down 1.4%. Separate new energy sales outlets grew about 21% to 26,260. More than half of their sales outlets now sell direct, through agency or company-owned stores. Source: China Automobile Dealers Association survey, reported by China Economic Net (中国经济网), March 2026. http://m.ce.cn/qc/gd/202603/t20260325_2856106.shtml

A 4S store (4S店) is China’s full-service franchised dealership: sales, service, spare parts, and feedback under one roof. A franchised brand hands the lead to one. Brands that sell direct keep it in-house, with their own stores or sales team. Either way, someone has to call back the same day, and the brand has to see what happened. Agree in the dealer contract who holds the lead data. That’s our working rule. No platform sets one.

Already live, and lead counts fell in September? Check the date before you blame the content or the agency. The new rule alone removes every lead that existed only as a WeChat ID typed in by the store. The notice says many of those were fake. Jiemian adds that the extra text code may lose some buyers halfway. So compare test drives booked across the change, not raw leads. If test drives held steady while leads fell, nothing broke.

Douyin’s ad platform has a tool for tracking the rest.

Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), Douyin’s ad platform, describes its Feiyu tool as a sales-lead tool that assigns and tags leads and connects to other CRM systems. A July 2022 update added one-tap adding of a lead in WeCom (企业微信). Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), Feiyu CRM App Store listing, confirmed October 2026. https://apps.apple.com/cn/app/id1428346102

The whole path, from first video to the keys:

Stage	What the buyer does	Content that works	Platform	The handoff
Awareness	Notices a model	Reveal film, creator first drives	Douyin, Weibo (微博)	Follow, search
Research	Compares specs and owners	Owner notes, spec comparisons	Xiaohongshu (小红书), Autohome (汽车之家), Dongchedi (懂车帝)	Save, compare
Shortlist	Picks a model and a store	Dealer live stream, local offer	Douyin	Lead card, deposit
Test drive	Books and visits	Reminder, route, rep intro	WeCom	Rep adds the buyer
Purchase and after	Signs, takes delivery, gets service	Owner group, service tips	WeChat, WeCom	Referral, trade-in

Owner communities and the private domain layer

Once the keys change hands, the conversation moves to WeChat (微信) and WeCom (企业微信).

“Private domain” is the Chinese marketing term for the audience a brand can reach directly: WeChat followers, WeCom contacts, groups, and app users. The brand doesn’t have to buy reach to talk to them again.

Carmakers are building it in apps.

Carmakers keep building their own direct channels through official apps and WeChat Mini Programs. In June 2026, BYD’s official app had 15.835 million monthly active users, Great Wall’s 4.325 million, and Geely Galaxy’s 2.764 million. Source: QuestMobile, reported by DoNews, August 2026. https://www.donews.com/news/detail/1/6666159.html

An imported brand with fewer owners in China can start on WeChat instead. A service account serves owners, and each buyer gets a rep in WeCom. Its video channel already carries the carmakers.

By late 2024, every carmaker had a WeChat Channels (视频号) account, and more than 70% had streamed live on it. Dealer accounts had grown 735% in a year. Source: China Auto News (中国汽车报), November 2024. https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20241108A0796C00

The rep and the owner keep talking in WeCom (企业微信). Sales staff change jobs, but in WeCom the owner’s chat stays with the store.

A company can move an active employee’s customers and customer groups to a colleague, and they become contacts automatically after 24 hours. Source: WeCom help center (企业微信帮助中心), September 2026. https://open.work.weixin.qq.com/help2/pc/14704

Owners post about their cars anyway, and it’s worth asking them to. Jaguar Land Rover’s program did.

“We set up hashtag challenges and contests to get real owners and fans making their own JLR content.” Source: TheRedScroll, Jaguar Land Rover case study, October 2026. https://www.theredscroll.com/work/jaguar-land-rover/

JAC’s content put owners on screen as well, with “owner spotlights showing what JAC vehicles look like in daily life”. Our CRM and Private Domain Traffic service page covers the WeCom setup, the groups, and the CRM link behind this.

Launch campaigns versus always-on content

Launch week is what car brands plan around, from the reveal to the first creator drives.

Weibo (微博) still earns its place on that week.

Weibo’s ad revenue fell 1% in the second quarter of 2026, but car brands and internet services spent more. Source: The Paper (澎湃新闻), on 21st Century Business Herald (21财经), August 2026. https://m.21jingji.com/article/20260819/herald/aa73a001934288af9e21e49f5b527807.html

But a buyer who decides in one to two weeks may start looking in any week of the year. Always-on content is what they find then. JAC’s turnaround came from the slow work.

“It took a few months. But eventually the shift was obvious. Comments got longer.” Source: TheRedScroll, JAC Motors case study, October 2026. https://www.theredscroll.com/work/jac-motors/

Then a campaign landed on a community that was already listening. It wasn’t a model launch. JAC’s J-Bot mascot went up in six Olympic designs, and the brand’s own teams abroad picked it up.

“JAC’s international teams saw the J-Bot content and started reposting it on Facebook and Instagram on their own.” Source: TheRedScroll, JAC Motors case study, October 2026. https://www.theredscroll.com/work/jac-motors/

	Launch campaign	Always-on
Goal	Make a new model known fast	Be there when a buyer starts looking
Length	The weeks around the reveal	Every week, all year
Platforms	Weibo, Douyin (抖音), creator test drives	Xiaohongshu (小红书), Douyin, WeChat (微信)
Content	Reveal film, first drives, live launch	Owner stories, how-tos, dealer streams
What to measure	Reach, searches for the model	Leads, test drives, owner posts

Run both. Plan the always-on calendar first (it’s the one buyers meet in most weeks), then drop the launch into it.

What automotive marketing in China includes and costs

So much for the plan. The practical question is what it takes to run it.

Our pricing page lists every package, what each one includes, and what it costs.

0 out of 37 agencies analyzed offer fixed-price packages. Source: TheRedScroll competitive analysis, April 2026.

A car brand’s program maps onto that page like this:

• Each package includes a weekly WeChat (微信) article and weekly posts on Weibo (微博), Xiaohongshu (小红书), and Douyin (抖音). It also includes a monthly report and strategy calls.
• Creator test drives run through our Influencer Marketing service: sourcing, vetting, negotiation, briefs, and reporting. Creator fees sit outside the package.
• WeCom (企业微信) setup, WeChat CRM integration, and owner groups are quoted to scope.
• Ad spend on Douyin and every other platform is paid directly to the platform, not through us.
• Every package has a six-month minimum, and the first content goes live within two weeks of signing.

Scope grows with the platforms you run and the number of dealers whose leads need routing. Post volume is the easy part to buy. Plan the dealer handoff and the owner groups first.

Book a call

Tell us what you sell, how you sell it, and who your dealers are. We’ll tell you which platform to open first, and how a Douyin (抖音) lead should reach the store.