Is there any hope for Douyin brand to broadcast its own content?

The opportunity has arrived, but not everyone can fly even if they stand on it.

After experiencing a series of almost crazy evolutions, including brutal expansion, grabbing the live broadcast rooms of top anchors, and brands gritting their teeth and making concessions, live streaming e-commerce is moving in a new direction.

Brands active on Douyin have begun to re-examine the market, reduce their reliance on top anchors, and join the battle to build their own live broadcast rooms.

So, have they regained their absolute voice?

1. Is there any hope for Douyin brand self-broadcasting ?

Live streaming e-commerce is in full swing, and one wealth-making myth after another is born with the sound of “Countdown 3! 2! 1! Go to the link.”

On the one hand, major platforms continue to increase their investment in their own live-streaming e-commerce; on the other hand, whether it is experts, institutions or the brands themselves, they have all plunged headfirst into the turbulent current of live-streaming sales.

This situation of fierce competition has, to a certain extent, created a bustling live streaming e-commerce market.

According to CNNIC data, as of June 2021, the scale of online shopping users in China reached 812 million, accounting for 80.3% of the total netizens, and the scale of online live streaming users also increased by more than 3% compared with December 2020.

In the meantime, we have also noticed that more and more brands have begun to set up their own live broadcast rooms.

Taking Douyin as an example, according to the "2021 Douyin E-commerce Analysis Report" by Chanmama, in the fourth quarter of 2021, the number of brand self-broadcasting accounts increased by 463% year-on-year, and with 5.1% of the accounts, it accounted for half of the market share.

At the same time, the sales growth of top influencers is significantly higher than that of influencers in other tiers.

Source: Chan Mama 2021 Douyin Live E-commerce Analysis Report

Therefore, 2021 is also known as the first year of brand self-broadcasting. Looking back at the past year, most of the live streaming rooms that we are familiar with for selling products also came from brands.

Hongxing Erke became the focus of public opinion in a short period of time because of a Weibo post about donating 50 million yuan worth of supplies to Henan, and netizens rushed to the live broadcast room to place orders enthusiastically.

After several live broadcasts, its Douyin account "Hongxing Erke Brand Official Flagship" gained 12.684 million followers in 7 days. The live broadcast on July 22, 2021 alone achieved over 200 million viewers and sales of over 100 million.

The Douyin live broadcast room of "The Story of Yanxi Palace" which once attracted operators from all over the country to watch has become a model in the industry and its reputation has soared.

Within 7 days of its launch, sales had already reached 6 times that of the official live broadcast room next door.

But when the heat wave subsided, the number of fans of the Douyin live broadcast room of "Erke Brand Official Flagship" has dropped from over 15 million at its peak to 13.679 million, and the loss of fans may continue. The number of people online in the live broadcast room has also dropped to more than 100. The average sales volume in the past 30 days is 145,500, and the data has dropped drastically.

Looking at the Douyin live broadcast room of "Herboretum: The Legend of Yanxi Palace", the average sales in the past 30 days was 38,000.

As of press time, the number of fans was 225,000, and the number of fans increased by nearly 20,000 in 4 months.

If "Erke" is returning to normal levels, then "Herbore" may be a different situation.

You know, the scene layout and makeup and hair styling of the Douyin live broadcast room of "The Legend of Yanxi Palace" are even comparable to some TV dramas. Add to that the costs of the anchors' manpower and other factors, and "spending more than earning" may be the norm.

"Taihuo Liangyi" wrote in "Douyin brand self-broadcasting has been a lonely job this year! 》 mentioned:

After interacting with the brands, the feedback I got from the brand owners is that they are basically losing money now. As you can see, many brands have high GMV on Douyin every month, and the growth rate is also very encouraging. But when you add up the manpower invested in the whole thing, the commissions paid out, the marketing costs, etc., it turns out that we are losing money.

Since it “doesn’t make money”, why do brands continue to flock to Douyin and start broadcasting their own videos?

2. Is the only way out for brands to broadcast themselves?

From Li Jiaqi, Wei Ya to Luo Yonghao and the "Big Wolf Dog Zheng Jianpeng & Yan Zhen Couple", after entering the top echelon, the anchors began to expand their business empire in various ways, covering categories ranging from wine and food, beauty and daily chemicals, clothing and jewelry, sports and outdoor, parent-child life, etc.

The top anchors control most of the traffic, and with traffic comes the right to speak.

According to a survey by Soochow Securities, the slot fees + commissions of top anchors in some categories can reach 30% to 50% of sales. That is to say, for a live broadcast with a GMV of 2 million, the top anchor will score 600,000 to 1 million.

This can easily lead to a situation where the brand spends money and sells goods, but still finds it difficult to make a profit. Especially big brands, if they are not careful, they may become marketing tools for top anchors, providing them with a steady stream of traffic.

On the pre-sale day of Double Eleven last year, the prices sold in the live broadcast rooms of Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, which claimed to have "the biggest promotion of the year", were actually higher than those in the official live broadcast room of L'Oreal.

After the incident broke out, Li Jiaqi and Viya attacked L'Oreal, directly accusing L'Oreal Paris of unfairly treating consumers in the live broadcast room, and declared that all cooperation with the L'Oreal Paris official flagship store would be suspended until the incident was resolved.

The final result of the incident was that L'Oréal Paris issued an apology statement and took the initiative to provide a solution to calm the anger of consumers.

But after this incident, the contradiction between the top anchors and brands gradually emerged. The top anchors are above the brands and have more bargaining power. The brands may have suffered from "Li Jiaqi, Viya and others for a long time."

It is not difficult to understand why brands choose to build their own live broadcast rooms, use their own live broadcast teams, sell goods through live broadcast rooms, and take a gamble on the public domain traffic of live broadcasts.

In addition, if brands choose to broadcast themselves, they may be able to get rid of the dilemma of relying on people for live streaming sales, eliminate the "middlemen making a profit from the price difference", focus on the goods, and make it easier to create popular items. But it is not easy to do a good job of brand self-broadcasting.

First of all, strong content is needed to support it . There are brands whose daily GMV exceeds one million, but they are more likely to be big brands.

On the one hand, the form of live streaming sales is nothing more than leveraging the product strength and reputation accumulated by big brands over the years; on the other hand, these brands are more focused on creating popular products through content.

Huaxizi, which has been established for four years, fired the first shot in live streaming with the help of Li Jiaqi, and then relied on traditional Chinese style marketing, cross-border joint cooperation on the left hand to expand the consumer group, and explored national style with the right hand to break the consumer circle. From brand to product and marketing, Huaxizi completed the content upgrade in one fell swoop. The direct result of this content upgrade is that revenue exceeded 3 billion yuan.

The peak number of people in Douyin’s live broadcast room was just over a thousand, but the average sales volume was over 2.3 million.

Secondly, refined operations are needed as support.

Although it is said that "whoever gets the traffic gets the world," for brands' self-broadcasting, there are thousands of live broadcast routines, and the detailed operations reflected in the live broadcast process are the key to success, which includes the host's words, product power, investment and traffic generation, etc.

Taking the Douyin brand’s self-broadcasting account “YaYa Down Clothing Flagship Store” as an example, the entire live broadcast process weakened the host’s personal characteristics, and the focus returned to the products.

Different from expert anchors who use low-price promotions as a selling point, brands’ own broadcasts mostly focus on product combinations.

According to Jam Girl’s observation, in a live broadcast of the “YaYa Down Clothing Flagship Store”, the goods are usually classified and sold in the combination of “welfare items + traffic-generating items (i.e. main items) + profit items”.

In simple terms:

• The welfare funds can be used to attract traffic to the live broadcast room, increasing user retention and interaction rates;
• As the core element of sales volume, traffic-generating items require the anchor to explain in more detail to highlight the cost-effectiveness of the goods;
• The profit model is prepared for users who pursue quality and its price is relatively high.

This combination of goods meets the needs of various consumer groups to a certain extent.

In addition, perhaps due to the weak social attributes of Douyin, although the Douyin brand attaches importance to accumulating its own private domain traffic, most of the space it can play is concentrated in fan clubs and fan groups.

"YaYa Down Clothing Flagship Store" often pushes videos promoting related products in real time in conjunction with live broadcasts among its fan groups on Douyin, or releases live broadcast previews. Apart from this, the brand does not have many operational traces on the Douyin fan group.

Live video of the same product

The model can certainly be copied, but there are natural barriers to brand self-broadcasting. What is ultimately being competed on is the professional team and content product strength. Otherwise, dull atmosphere and awkward conversations will become the norm in brand live broadcast rooms.

Author: Huang Xiaoman

Source public account: Weiguojiang (ID: wjam123456)