What will be the future of Douyin after shutting down comments and live broadcasts?

"For us, although we have to thank the TikTok platform, there is no absolute 'loyalty'. We will go to the platform that gives us more subsidies."

Pan Shuai, a TikTok celebrity born in the 90s, put it very frankly. The “Hilarious Emoji Package ” he runs on Douyin currently has nearly 900,000 followers, and the quote for a single advertisement is close to 20,000 yuan. Not long ago, he quit his job and devoted himself to operating this Douyin account full-time.

Unfortunately, TikTok has been in trouble recently. As Toutiao was rectified, "Neihan Duanzi" was permanently shut down, and Douyin also began to shut down its comment and live broadcast functions on April 11. This made Pan Shuai feel annoyed, because many of his "hilarious emoticons" video contents received feedback through the comment section. The closure of the comment section meant that the marketing of his content was discounted by half.

To make matters worse, WeChat Moments also began blocking video links from short video platforms such as Douyin, Weishi , and Kuaishou on April 12.

Pan Shuai is full of "anxiety" about his entrepreneurship on Douyin, and he is just a microcosm of the current situation of the big Vs on Douyin. At this time, the olive branches extended by other platforms seem quite "appropriate".

It is said that Tencent Weishi is trying to attract a large number of high-quality short video content creators through large subsidies, and the subsidy figure given by Tencent is also quite attractive - 3 billion yuan. This has caused many Douyin celebrities to begin to waver, and some have even begun to try it out.

Big Vs can look for opportunities on other platforms, but brand owners doing marketing on Douyin appear to be more passive. The inexplicable uncertainty of Douyin leaves them with no way out, and “wait and see” becomes their way of protecting themselves.

Originally, before the major overhaul of Toutiao, big Vs, brand owners, marketing service platforms, etc. had all found a new world to gain popularity, do marketing, and make money on Douyin, a rising new traffic platform. For them, this is a "business war" and a "gold rush". However, regulatory restructuring and competitors' "follow-up attacks" have made this carnival uncertain.

1. Brand owners: Find a new world of marketing

"This is definitely the most popular marketing summit I have ever seen." After passing four security checks and walking through the hotel corridors crowded with thousands of brand merchants, Han Yi finally sat down in his seat. As a representative of a well-known sports brand, he was invited to attend the Douyin Annual Marketing Summit held in early April 2018. There, he listened for the first time to the official explanation of Douyin on how to empower brand owners and play with new marketing.

This is undoubtedly a blessing for Han Yi and the brand behind him. Because outside the door, there was a large group of brand representatives from fast-moving consumer goods industries such as food and clothing, as well as technology, the Internet and other industries. They were stopped outside by security guards because they were not officially invited.

As the most popular short video platform at the moment, it is not surprising that Douyin can successfully attract the attention of brand owners. Especially after Douyin achieved huge success in cooperation with big brands such as adidas neo, thousands of brand owners are eager to catch this "traffic express" to boost their own marketing.

In the short video platform rankings for February 2018 given by iMedia Consulting, Kuaishou, Miaopai , and Douyin ranked the top three with 200 million, 100 million, and 96.53 million users respectively. But in terms of user growth , Douyin ranked first with a 76% increase, while Kuaishou's growth was only 10%, and Miaopai dropped to 5%.

What is more attractive to brand owners than the rapid growth in users is Tik Tok’s user base which is mainly composed of young people.

According to statistics from QuestMobile in January this year, 75.5% of Douyin users are under the age of 24, of which 66% are female.

Douyin was extremely low-key about the marketing summit held in Shanghai on April 3, and only invited about 10 media outlets to attend. There were only a few hundred brand owners invited, and most of them were big brands. But this did not dampen the enthusiasm of small and medium-sized brand owners who came from all over the country. In the halls and corridors outside the venue, they were all looking forward to valuable information coming out of the venue.

In March this year, Douyin selected several star brands including adidas neo, Audi and Casarte washing machines for internal testing of marketing cooperation.

As a brand for young people under Adidas , adidas neo officially entered the Douyin platform in January this year. In March, we officially started cooperation with Douyin on brand homepage and began refined operations.

According to the brand manager of adidas neo, "In just over a month, adidas neo's Douyin account has accumulated 1.215 million followers, 150 million video views, and 2.8 million interactions (follow + like + comment)."

adidas neo's TikTok homepage

A similar campaign was the “New Year’s Red Envelope” marketing campaign that Suning.com and actress Jiang Shuying launched on Douyin during this year’s Spring Festival. With the support of celebrities and highly creative video content, Suning.com gained a lot of new users through the Douyin platform during the Spring Festival.

Of course, it’s not only the big brands that are becoming popular. The milk tea brand “Answer Tea”, which once only had a few branches in Zhengzhou, Henan, suddenly became popular on Douyin by relying on “a cup of milk tea that can be used for fortune-telling”. From its opening in January to date, "Answer Tea" has signed more than 200 franchisees, and due to the media coverage, the stores are crowded almost every day. In the middle and late part of this month, Answer Tea will also cooperate with Douyin to launch its own pop-up brand store in the Hema Fresh stores in Beijing and Shanghai.

In the past few months, the spread of popular videos such as Answer Tea, Haidilao Hotpot’s new way of eating, and Turkish ice cream have brought an explosion of offline business for these brands.

Due to its huge traffic and conversion capabilities, well-known technology and Internet company brands including Alipay , Xiaomi, Airbnb, Mafengwo, IKEA, and Pizza Hut have already settled on the Douyin platform, using funny or creative video content to increase user stickiness and brand exposure.

In addition to entering the platform, these popular cases on Douyin are also stimulating some brand owners to place hard advertisements on Douyin. Despite some hesitation and wavering, the real success of others still stimulated their determination to "take another gamble", after all, the popularity of Douyin is really too high.

Brand owners’ enthusiasm for launching hard advertising has resulted in Douyin sales staff’s phones being flooded with calls every day, and they are overwhelmed with inquiries on WeChat . "Now I can get about 5 to 6 advertising orders every month, with the unit price ranging from 1 million to 5 million," said an advertising salesperson at Douyin.

However, some brands are currently taking a wait-and-see attitude towards TikTok. A brand owner who attended the Douyin Marketing Summit said: "Now we are worried about where to find users. Waves of video platforms emerge one after another, and to be honest, it is a bit difficult to be in charge. Douyin does have a lot of young users, but we are still waiting and watching."

As a clothing brand, the company has done marketing on almost all major short video platforms in recent years, from Meipai to Miaopai and Xiaokaxiu . "But the results were not very ideal, and the previous heavy investment was wasted in the end."

A brand manager in the food industry said: "Big brands have money, people and platform support, while small and medium-sized brands have inherent disadvantages in terms of funding and creativity. To be honest, we are very envious of Adidas, which has celebrities and creative advertising content."

2. Big Vs: Become famous overnight, reap the benefits as soon as possible

For Douyin, a short video platform that started out by relying on content, its efficient UGC content system has always been its advantage over other platforms. As content producers, Douyin's big Vs are also enjoying the favor of advertisers and reaping the benefits of this wave of traffic through their "talent and creativity".

The 28-year-old Lu Han is a professional photographer for a photography website. He officially joined the Douyin platform in March this year, and his main content is mobile phone photography tutorials.

What surprised Lu Han was that he created two hits within just one week, with more than 30 million views each. "The number of fans has increased very quickly, and we are also very surprised. We think Douyin is really awesome," Lu Han was a little excited when talking about this achievement. Currently, the number of fans of his Douyin account has reached 300,000, and is still growing rapidly every day.

Regarding how he accidentally became a Tik Tok celebrity, Lu Han admitted that it was due to the content, because there is very little purely technical content on the Tik Tok platform, "which provided me with opportunities." Because the content is highly professional, many fans in the background left messages saying that they "gained a lot".

Just last week, two advertisers approached Lu Han, hoping to place soft ads on his Douyin account for brand promotion.

Lu Han revealed: "The reason why we do soft advertising is determined by the operating mechanism of Douyin. The hits on other platforms are the behavior of fans (fans forwarding and liking), while on Douyin it is more about the platform behavior. Only when the content is pushed to the front page can it become a hit, not just relying on fans. For example, many accounts with 1 million fans only have about 100,000 views on their ads and just over 10,000 likes. For businesses, choosing KOLs is very important. The commercial value of only funny content will be reduced."

Pan Shuai, the operator of "Hilarious Emoji Package", agrees with this. He has taken over both soft advertising and hard advertising before, but judging from the actual results, soft advertising is obviously more effective. "Tik Tok has strict restrictions on advertising, and some people have been blocked for posting advertisements," Pan Shuai revealed, "Because the account I operate is dedicated to making funny emoticons, and they are all handmade and original, I am very adept at doing soft advertising."

You may be curious, how much money can a Douyin celebrity make from an advertisement?

In a quotation list of Douyin big Vs, big Vs with millions of fans such as Wu Jiayu, Zhang Xinyao, and Boogie93, the quotation for a single advertisement is around hundreds of thousands of RMB, and their income is very considerable.

Lu Han revealed: The popular saying now is 3 cents per follower, which means an account with 1 million followers charges 30,000 yuan for posting an advertisement. But Lu Han’s charges are even higher than this. Not long ago, he just received an advertising order, and the fee for Double V and Douyin (WeChat + Weibo + Douyin) was 40,000 yuan.

Pan Shuai’s offer is: “2 cents for every 10,000 fans.” Based on the current 900,000 fans, the offer for a single advertisement for the “Hilarious Emoji Package” is 18,000 yuan. Because the income was better, Pan Shuai, who had been making Douyin in his spare time, decided to quit his job and focus on Douyin.

3. Marketing service providers: eager to try and take advantage of the opportunity to make profits

"Tattoo Peppa Pig on your body, applause to the social people", this 15-second short video that went viral on TikTok made a Peppa Pig watch candy instantly become a hot item and was snapped up on the Taobao platform.

Now if you open Taobao and search for "Peppa Pig watch", you will find stores with sales exceeding 10,000 everywhere. Click on any store and you will see eye-catching red reminders such as a surge in orders and the need to extend delivery time.

The sudden hot sales of Peppa Pig watch candy left many Taobao merchants confused. A Taobao shop owner who sold Peppa Pig watch candy said that he didn’t know what happened at first. Later, after learning the reason, he also joined the Douyin platform and became a member of the short video production army to direct traffic to his Taobao store.

However, the reality is not as simple as Taobao shop owners think. After uploading the videos they shot with great effort to the TikTok platform, they received very few likes and comments, let alone traffic and conversions.

After suddenly becoming popular thanks to Douyin, Qiu Han, one of the founders of Answer Tea, summarized the reasons for the popularity of Answer Tea. "TikTok is a platform that values ​​content. The video content must be heartwarming and creative. The important thing is to output brand culture, not just marketing," he said. Currently, many behind-the-scenes marketing service providers are using Answer Tea as a successful case to export to other brands. "I have received several invitations to marketing courses."

Indeed, with the popularity of Douyin, a mature industrial chain is quietly emerging, and these marketing service providers behind the scenes are becoming an important link in this industrial chain, receiving consultations and paid membership from thousands of merchants every day.

The role of these marketing service providers is to serve those businesses that do not have the foundation for short video production and operation, and make profits from it.

A salesperson from a marketing service provider stated: We are currently mainly providing membership services in several areas: Douyin shooting skills; tracking of Douyin's popular recommendation rules; increasing sales through free traffic from Douyin; Douyin celebrity merchant docking; Douyin community celebrity merchant brokerage exchange platform, etc. In terms of price, the permanent membership fee is 365 yuan, which can be activated after registration; after becoming a member, there will be a member website to assist in learning, one-on-one guidance, and the courses will be kept updated at any time.

In just one month, the salesperson attracted more than 200 paying members, which means his organization could earn more than 70,000 yuan a month.

In addition to simple video shooting skills training, there are now many marketing courses similar to "Play TikTok" and you can see courses like this everywhere - "Teach you how to become a TikTok master in 15 minutes?", "Case analysis of those popular TikTok products". The single-person tuition fees for these courses range from tens to hundreds of yuan.

4. The “Business Crisis” on TikTok

The huge influx of traffic has allowed Douyin to see the great potential for its own commercial monetization. Merchants, influencers and marketing service providers around the Douyin platform are also sharpening their knives and preparing for a big fight, but the rectification by the regulatory authorities has made this carnival uncertain.

As Toutiao was rectified and Neihan Duanzi was permanently shut down, Douyin also shut down its comment and live broadcast functions starting April 11. Although no official reason was given by the authorities, to the outside world, this was worrying news. There is also bad news: WeChat Moments also began to block video links from short video platforms such as Douyin, Weishi, and Kuaishou on April 12.

Pan Shuai complained: "We get feedback on many of our videos through the comment section. Shutting down the comment section means we have cut our marketing in half. Before, we would forward it to our friends circle to ask them to help spread the word, but now the circle of friends has also been blocked. I feel a little annoyed."

Big brands reacted most strongly. After learning that Douyin had shut down the comment section and live streaming functions, one brand revealed: "We were planning to hold a live streaming event for a new product on Douyin, but with the shutdown, our event was also stopped."

Perhaps, for them, pausing and waiting is the best way to protect themselves.

However, what makes Douyin "tremble" is far more than the rectification by the regulators. The timely "follow-up attack" by competitors has made the battle for short videos confusing.

As early as the afternoon of April 9, a screenshot began to circulate in various WeChat groups and Moments - Tencent Weishi began to introduce a large number of high-quality short video content creators through large subsidies. It is said that the subsidy figure given by Tencent is 3 billion yuan.

The olive branch extended by Tencent has shaken many Douyin influencers, and some have even begun to try it out.

Lu Han and Pan Shuai are two of the big Vs who have "transferred their affection" to Tencent Weishi. Both of them have opened their own accounts on the Weishi platform. Although their current number of fans and comments is not ideal, the huge subsidy of 3 billion is a huge "temptation" for them.

If the big Vs choose to take action, what may follow is the brands and advertisers waiting for an opportunity to take action, which is the last thing Douyin wants to see.

Because TikTok has shut down its comment and live streaming functions, many netizens said on Weibo that “the time spent on TikTok is getting shorter and shorter.”

The "business war" surrounding the TikTok platform is still going on, and they are all worried about a common issue - what will happen tomorrow?

(Lu Han is a pseudonym in this article)

The author of this article @董洁 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games