David’s Bridal has spent the last year shifting its social strategy toward TikTok as its experienced lower returns on its investments on Meta.

“Several years ago, Meta was effective at delivering a story, and that story converting to a sale or appointment,” said Kelly Cook, chief marketing and IT officer for David’s Bridal. “But we’ve seen degradation of that with Meta.” 

And so David’s Bridal started listening to customers, who were showing up more on TikTok. The brand has spent the past few months experimenting with live shopping and tapping its sales associates to create content.

David's Bridal has increased its spend on TikTok fivefold in the last year, pulling dollars out of Meta to do so, Cook said, declining to share exact numbers. The brand is also finding success with Pinterest, she added. 

As brands navigate Apple’s iOS app-tracking changes, they've had to take a hard look at the returns on their ad dollars. During its second-quarter earnings call, Meta reported $28.15 billion in ad revenue—slightly lower year-over-year ad revenue and the first ad revenue decline since the company went public in 2012. Privately held TikTok doesn’t report earnings, but Insider Intelligence estimates the app could hit over $8.5 billion in ad revenues by 2023, and $11 billion in 2024. TikTok has been scoring ad dollars as brands pursue younger customers, and has partly been helped by users' recent frustration with other platforms trying to copy TikTok.

But when David's Bridal first started posting videos on TikTok, they weren’t initially translating to sales or appointments to try on dresses. Then it started asking its store associates to create content for the platform. Some stores even created their own TikTok accounts to target local customers. One video out of an Amarillo, Texas store focused on Quinceañeras dresses, set to the tune of "The Madrigal Family" from the movie "Encanto". The TikTok racked up almost 800,000 views, with comments asking for similar videos.

"Even to get a thousand views would have been a big deal because of geo-location," Cook said. "But to get almost a million was huge."

David’s Bridal has also been testing live shopping events, hosting its first in the spring with Bambuser, a live video shopping platform. Cook said the event “vastly exceeded our expectations,” doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales, but declined to share exact figures.

Taking what they had learned from the Bambuser event, David’s Bridal recently tested TikTok’s live shopping feature. The brand held an RSVP event for its new partnership with DanielxDiamond, a denim jacket retailer that made a bejeweled fringe jean jacket for the event. Cook said that about a thousand people RSVPed for the Friday night event, and almost everyone showed up. The brand sold half of the 1,000 jackets they had available, with each retailing for $375.

David’s Bridal is also planning to launch influencer storefronts on TikTok with affiliate links, which would allow creators to link to David's Bridal products, including wedding shoes or prom dresses.

It also plans to do more live shopping events in the future, possibly around the holidays and aimed at younger customers, in an effort to get shoppers to think of David's Bridal beyond wedding gowns. "We want to own every dress in her closet and event in her life," Cook said.