How did Douyin develop its super strong ability to sell goods?

During the Double 11 celebration a month ago, Zhengshan Niurou Ge defeated the celebrity "Beibeitu" with a live broadcast popularity of up to 130 million, and won the top spot on the Double 11 Douyin live broadcast ranking list. On Double 11 alone, Niuruge’s self-operated e-commerce had a total online transaction volume of 34.5 million yuan and a GMV of 65 million yuan.

During Taobao's 618 event, Brother Niurou sold 1 million bottles of wine, 100,000 boxes of beer, and 200,000 slices of steak. His sales on Douyin surpassed those of Li Jiaqi and Sanda Ge, ranking first on Douyin and third on the entire Internet (Douyin, Weibo, Kuaishou, and other non-Taobao platforms).

"Find the source and get me a lower price for XX!"

This is a well-known iconic saying of Brother Niurou. In the TikTok videos he posted, Brother Niurou, wearing a hat, always shouts this sentence with a look of righteous indignation and almost roaring. Even those who have not watched his videos will inexplicably feel a sense of familiarity.

In August 2018, Chen Qi, the Beef Brother who once sold steaks on Taobao and ranked first in the fresh beef category in C store on Double Eleven in 2014, officially joined Douyin at the suggestion of his partner Li Rongxin. Although Brother Niurou has been committed to lowering the price of his products, his account on Douyin has been blocked several times and he has been under a lot of doubts from all walks of life.

But one thing is beyond doubt: Brother Niurou’s team has indeed grown step by step in Douyin, and has become the short video sales tycoon it is today, and has delivered a brilliant report card.

So how did Brother Niurou rise on Douyin? What is the logic behind selling products?

Putting aside those doubts and controversies, Kas Data will explore and study Brother Niurou’s path to selling products.

1. Use “quantity” to accumulate attention and create an e-commerce shopping guide account

In August 2018, Brother Niurou, who had just joined Douyin, did not make a big hit. On the contrary, their journey to TikTok has been somewhat bumpy.

It is reported that when Brother Niurou released the first 100 videos, there were no followers, no likes, no comments, and no reposts, and the overall data performance was very bleak; when he released about 500 videos, the data improved slightly; and it was not until he released more than a thousand videos that he finally created a stir on the platform.

Persistent "increasing volume" seems to be the secret of Brother Niurou's gradual growth in Douyin. The method is not sophisticated, but it works. After all, for most ordinary people, achieving success overnight is a low-probability event that can be encountered but not sought after.

As of now, Brother Niurou’s number of fans on Douyin has reached 568.7W. According to relevant information, when the number of its fans reached 20,000, it began to sell goods on the platform; when the number of fans accumulated to 50,000, the monthly revenue was already 2 million. For Niurou Ge, e-commerce is undoubtedly the most stable means of monetization in short videos.

When we enter Niurou Ge’s Douyin homepage, we will find that the daily update frequency is also very frequent. In addition to the accumulated total amount, the daily portion is also very considerable.

According to statistics, Niurou Ge releases an average of 40 to 50 videos every day, of which about 30 are replays of old products and about 20 are recommendations of new products. Since March this year, the content format of the videos has basically been fixed in a scenario-based manner, which concisely recommends various products with extremely high cost-effectiveness to users, and guides users to leave messages at the end of the video to meet consumers' demand for products.

Judging from the presentation format of the videos, the content published by Niurou Ge is more in the form of TV shopping-style oral broadcasts; and from the overall data performance, the videos he publishes are not like those of other types of celebrities, which can easily get tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of likes and hundreds of thousands of comments.

But as Li Rongxin, the operator behind the scenes, once said: Niuruge’s strategy is not essentially based on content as the core driving force, but rather hopes that when users enter their account homepage, it will be like shopping in a grocery store, so that they can see the products on sale at any time. Through repeated high-frequency, large-scale mass-produced short videos, a large amount of long-tail sales can be generated.

2. Choose the right category and build consumer demand

In 2018, thanks to the popularity of controversial videos such as "Seal the edges when frying steak" and "Don't wash steak because tap water is dirty", Beef Brother broke the traditional market dominated by processed steaks, introduced imported original cut steaks, and created very impressive sales results. It is reported that on November 11, 2018, Niurou Ge’s Zhengshan Food Online Store became the sales champion of beef and mutton, with sales of more than 27 million yuan on that day and nearly 50 million yuan that month.

After the steak business stabilized, Brother Beef turned his attention to red wine that goes well with steak. He came up with slogans such as "Let the Chinese drink Spanish wine for one cent cheaper than the Spaniards", and started the "Ideal Journey of Equal Wine".

Users in the existing market already have further consumption needs. Therefore, whether it is beef or red wine, Brother Beef mainly targets users in the incremental market.

For these users, steak and red wine are not essential items in their lives, so the team will create consumption scenarios in the video and add guiding words to trigger certain psychological and emotional needs of consumers, reduce their guilt about shopping, and thus stimulate their desire to shop.

Now, the categories that Beef Brother is involved in are no longer limited to beef and red wine.

Categories such as clothes, pants, watches, jewelry, beauty products, and even luxury goods have gradually appeared in Brother Niurou’s “grocery store” and are sold with his usual “brainwashing-style hawking.” On August 5th before this year's Chinese Valentine's Day, Niurou Ge sold 25,000 Swarovski necklaces for Koala at a price of 30% to 40% off through a video, with sales reaching 40 million.

3. Small profits but quick turnover: the essence behind “bringing down prices”

In Niurou Ge’s opinion, “finding the source and making small profits but quick turnover” is the essence of his marketing. For consumers, cost-effectiveness is what attracts them to buy, and the phrase "lower the price" itself is extremely inflammatory.

So how did Brother Niurou bring down the price?

In an interview with other media, Niurou Ge once revealed his three ways to achieve low prices:

1. Skip the middlemen, purchase from the source in person, reduce traffic costs through self-media such as TikTok, and then lower the price;
2. Bring traffic to the platform and let the platform lower product prices;
3. Brand subsidies and service promotion needs.

Among these three paths, the first path of "going deep into the source" can be called the biggest feature of Niurou Ge.

"The purchase price of red wine is 12 yuan, but Brother Niu is only selling it for 12.5 yuan." Can the price of red wine be reduced to such a low level?

Faced with doubts from all walks of life, Brother Niurou posted pictures on his account of himself going to the place of origin and negotiating prices directly with the supply chain.

At the same time, in order to further dispel consumers' doubts and concerns about prices and products, Niurou Ge has restored the ins and outs of their prices to consumers:

For example, there is a type of wine that sells for 1.98 euros in European supermarkets. Brother Niurou ordered 50 containers totaling 900,000 bottles at a time, which cost 88 euros. Then, with tariffs, value-added tax, consumption tax, and a comprehensive tax rate of 46.2%, plus about 7 cents of euro, all costs come to 1.5 euros. Even if you sell it at the same price in Europe, you can still make a profit of 50 cents.

This practice, which is similar to "stripping the industry's underwear", has created Brother Niurou's "supply chain" persona, that is, he has abundant supply chain resources, can purchase at the source, and "drive down the price." Although this practice has caused a lot of dissatisfaction and doubts within the relevant industry, it can easily build trust among consumers.

In addition, Brother Niurou’s repeated “I am Brother Niurou, no matter how many doubts and slanders I receive, they cannot stop me from fighting on price” and “Value for money is the only basis for your vote” and other “inflammatory” guiding words further hit the core needs of the target consumer groups.

In addition, when selling, Niurugeo will sell the products in bundled packages. For example, all categories of imported red wine are almost all bundled and sold in multiple bottles at one time. While giving profits to consumers, it also achieves the goal of small profits but quick turnover. After more sales, Brother Niurou’s personal brand influence will expand accordingly, which in turn will attract new consumer groups to buy products, thereby driving a cyclical growth in sales.

4. Using “conflict” to expand one’s influence

Since September 2019, Brother Niurou has filmed nearly 100 videos related to "AJ", threatening to lower the price of AJ and "let all sneaker lovers wear real sneakers without having to pay more." Among them, the video with the highest number of views exceeded 20 million and received 300,000 likes. This move caused an uproar in the "shoe circle", and various doubts and criticisms followed.

This AJ incident helped Brother Niurou gain 1 million followers.

"Seeing some hot spots in a specific period of time, and then doing something to cause conflict" is another way for the Niurou Ge team to expand their influence. In their view, the essence of marketing is conflict.

For example, in 2018, Niurou Ge and Du Zijian, who was a very popular celebrity on Douyin at the time, started a war of words with each other, which was watched by many netizens. The two had several verbal battles due to their different opinions, and the debate eventually turned into an argument over the price and authenticity of the wine.

A similar incident happened when Niurou Ge and another celebrity who also focuses on the red wine category, "Zui'e Niang", argued with each other on Douyin over a dispute over supply chain prices.

It is difficult to determine what is right and wrong, true and false behind these events. But in these "conflicts" that attracted a large number of onlookers, Brother Niurou, who is well versed in marketing, has increased his popularity and online influence, and this influence has helped to further enhance his ability to sell goods.

Brother Niurou, who positions himself as an "e-commerce shopping guide", is currently training new e-commerce shopping guides. In his opinion, "Internet celebrities require talent, but e-commerce shopping guides can be trained in batches."

In the future, what other products’ prices will be “beaten down” by Brother Niurou, and what kind of sales miracles can Brother Niurou create? Everything is still unknown.

Author: Kas Data

Source: caasdata, public account (ID: caasdata6)