8 directions to create Douyin catering influencers!

From Haidilao, McDonald's, to Coco, Naixue's Tea, and Answer Milk Tea, Douyin has long become a standard feature of internet celebrity restaurants. "Internet celebrity restaurants, internet celebrity people, and internet celebrity dishes" are the core output content of restaurants playing Douyin.

Now more and more restaurants, especially large chain brands and new start-up brands, have seen the marketing value of Douyin and have joined in and reserved seats. Want to become an Internet celebrity store? Want to gather a lot of offline popularity? If you want lower-cost brand exposure, then don’t miss Douyin. According to Douyin’s official white paper, catering, e-commerce platforms, and mobile phones and digital devices are the three giants in video playback volume, among which catering accounts for the majority.

Indeed, compared to posting pictures on Moments, closed WeChat social networking, and general entertainment Weibo, short videos have a natural temptation and spread soil for food. They have strong colors, a strong sense of immersion, and an all-round stimulation of sound, color, and objects. The content is fun and interesting enough to arouse people's appetite and desire to buy.

The core group of Douyin is very compatible with the catering industry because Douyin users are mostly young people who like food and travel. The age of users is mainly between 20 and 29 years old, accounting for 60.7%. People in first- and second-tier cities account for 38.8%, and most of them are women. This is a natural position for catering brand marketing.

Douyin is still in its bonus period. Whether it is a big brand or a small store, you can try to use Douyin to attract traffic. After all, it is almost zero cost, easy to use, interesting, and highly accepted by consumers. Douyin is relatively fair to catering brands. Most of those who are popular on Douyin are ordinary internet celebrities, not stars.

From a professional perspective, we divide Douyin users into three categories: content producers, content imitators, and spectators. From the perspective of the content dissemination process, first, internet celebrities create original works, and then a large number of followers imitate the content, so that the original content can be spread in a fission manner and reach more spectators. After being brainwashed, the spectators also begin to imitate and follow. The Douyin content in the catering industry is extremely in line with this dissemination mechanism. Therefore, at the planning level, it is very important to be creative, topical, differentiated, simple to imitate, and have a strong experience.

1. It is better to promote people than to promote brands and create personal IP internet celebrities.

Restaurant owners, beautiful and handsome employees, and chefs can all be the protagonists of the video, with their talent, appearance, and skills as the core points of the content, and various languages, jokes, music, and dance can be used to push them to become Internet celebrities. This is similar to the way new media build personal brands, and it also completes the closed loop through a series of processes including positioning, content, distribution, circle, nurturing, conversion, and fission.

On Douyin, ordinary people have the opportunity to become stars. Many internet celebrities in restaurants already earn a million yuan a year. This is an opportunity not only for unknown restaurant brands, but also for ordinary people.

For example, Xibei oat noodles. There was once a young man who showed how he made oat noodles on Douyin, which received more than 600,000 likes and brought many fans to Xibei. If a restaurant has this kind of cultural atmosphere and encourages talented employees to use Douyin to show their unique skills and talents, it will be hard not to be popular.

2. Product is king, and popular dishes are the main focus.

A restaurant must have a trump card product; after all, this is its specialty. Almost every specialty restaurant has its own popular dishes. Showing the production process of the dish, the ingenious story, the profound technology, the innovative service, etc. are all good creative points. For example, Haidilao's noodle dance and God's service can quickly help restaurants establish a unique and differentiated brand image and reputation.

The unique combination of CoCo milk tea - sugar-free caramel milk tea without ice + barley + pudding - has been sought after by netizens, making the offline stores packed with people, with people lining up to buy milk tea from one end of the street to the other.

Select one or several dishes with great spreadability, such as dishes that interact with customers, dishes that are good-looking and eye-catching, to attract traffic to the restaurant during the dissemination process, so that consumers can gain satisfaction from fans and likes when posting videos, and increase the fun of eating, thus achieving the dual goals of dissemination and customer acquisition.

High online attention leads to increased offline sales.

3. Interaction is the key, and program game challenges should be set up.

Interaction, interaction, interaction is the most important thing about new media. Restaurants can interact and turn customers into participants, inspiring them not only to eat but also to shoot Douyin videos. This will generate more users, enhance the experience and increase the fun. Restaurants can set up the environment to create more topics for communication and stimulate user participation with various rewards. For example, hot pot restaurants can offer a 10% discount as long as they shoot Douyin videos. This way the communication channels will be wider and faster.

For example, some businesses will ask their employees to regularly dance popular Douyin dances during the service process or at fixed times, and simultaneously upload them to the restaurant's Douyin account to expand publicity. Users can learn about the restaurant's characteristics through Douyin and then convert them into in-store consumption.

4. Tell stories and play with plot twists.

By telling stories and giving social attributes, you can let food say what you want to say.

For example, confession tea, divination tea, and anger tea are all of this style, allowing the products to speak for the users, express their inner thoughts, and pour out their inner feelings, and are very popular.

The requirements for drama-themed works are generally higher, and they are also easier to become popular. Because of the high professional threshold, it is best to have the participation of a professional team, with the character setting, story, props, actors, etc. working together. The plot + reversal, I believe you have also seen it, gives people a familiar + unexpected feeling, bringing them in layer by layer and arousing curiosity.

Let’s look at a case first.

Answer Divination Tea is a good example. The following data and information are from the Internet:

“Answer Fortune Telling Milk Tea, because of Douyin, 249 franchisees joined in two months.

On TikTok, Qiu Han, a girl born in the 1990s, asked a cup of milk tea: "Milk tea, do you think I have any other advantages besides my beauty?"

Then she opened the lid of the milk tea, and four words emerged: "Nothing." The video attracted the attention of Douyin users.

The comment section of her videos was flooded with requests for potential partners to join and open branches. The next day Qiuhan tried to post a similar video on TikTok, and it went viral again.

All kinds of people seeking to join and ask for advice made Daancha realize that they had to open a store immediately! Just like that, Answer Tea opened in Erqi Wanda Plaza in Zhengzhou, and was complained about as soon as it opened. See the picture.

An employee of Daancha said: "80% of users said they knew us from Douyin."

From January 2018 when the video was released to now, in just over two months, Answer Tea has identified 249 franchise stores and has had to suspend franchising as it can no longer open stores. And the initial marketing costs were almost zero.

"The popularity of TikTok is indeed an accident. It is the result of a high degree of match between the content, channels and target audiences," said Gu Tiefeng, founder of Answer Tea. They prepared for publicity and communication before opening the business, and posted short videos on major video platforms such as Tik Tok and Volcano.

Gu Tiefeng attributed the popularity of Douyin to three points:

First, the explosion of the TikTok platform, whose model and form match the current public focus;

Second, popular things are all related to young people, and the users are precise;

Third, short video platforms provide interesting and fun content that is easy to spread and become a social topic.

"The current popularity on Tik Tok is actually the result of secondary dissemination. We haven't updated for a long time, and the current attention is all converted from other channels." Gutiefeng said.

5. DIY food and record creative food life.

DIY Many restaurants have set up such an area where you can prepare your own food, such as Haidilao's Internet celebrity sauce, tomato beef rice, Jiang Xiaobai Douyin drinking method, dumpling restaurant allows users to make dumplings by themselves, pizza shop allows users to make pizza by themselves, dessert shop allows users to make desserts by themselves...

There is a lot of room for imagination, and it is easy to imitate. It is more popular among young people, interesting and tasty, and highly experiential. They are also more willing to participate in making a creative food and share it with everyone, so the offline conversion is completed.

6. You may not have anything, but you must be good-looking and be able to catch the attention of others.

As long as you are good-looking, it can also be a reason for young people to like you. Xiaohan recently helped a Hanfeng restaurant with planning. They have a web-famous proprietress. She did a few tests and shot some super beautiful videos with delicate presentation of dishes and moving music. They posted them on Tik Tok, and they received a lot of likes because they were so beautiful!

Beautiful things can easily become materials for dissemination, that is, social currency and topics of conversation.

Every once in a while, “divine songs”, popular scenes and videos will be released on Douyin. Restaurants simply follow whatever is popular on Douyin. This is a simple, crude and fastest way to get started. For example, the "Seaweed Dance", the divine song "Paper is Short but Love is Deep", Master Zhang's "Three Thousand Concubines", high school students singing English songs for money, etc. Restaurants can use these popular contents to obtain considerable traffic and fan users.

It takes certain skills to keep up with trendy selfies and direct your own Tik Tok videos. The entire process of learning and imitating requires relatively high costs, but it is worth it for businesses. After all, an excellent video is far more eye-catching than an ordinary one and can attract more potential users' attention.

7. Innovation and differentiation mean being different from others.

The core of building a brand is differentiation. Xiaohan often travels to various places and likes to pay attention to local specialties, especially the handmade delicacies that are almost lost and hidden in folk alleys. This kind of catering has the potential to become popular, such as Xi'an's bowl-breaking wine. Drinking, right? I have to break a bowl first! It is full of ritual sense and heroic spirit. There is a lot to explore in this form, isn't there?

For example, Pizza Hut launched a dark series of food - WOW BBQ Black Pizza, with the main concept of "Young people are not afraid of the dark", which attracted young people to check in and shoot videos, and successfully transformed black pizza from a delicacy into a fashion trend active among young people.

Wandefu Hotpot puts ink on the table and guides customers to destroy the leftover pot bottom to express their boycott of gutter oil. When netizens saw this novel practice, they posted it on Douyin, and as a result, this hotpot restaurant became popular on Douyin. Offline value-added services will flow back online.

8. Do live broadcasts, continuously output dynamics, link online and offline, and engage in consumption retreat.

Unlike other live streaming platforms such as Yizhibo, Yingke, and Huajiao, Douyin does not have a long-term live streaming channel for the time being, but restaurants can live stream by shooting short videos. The content of short video live broadcasts is real, simple and crude. Barbecue, hot pot, seafood and sweet food stores are particularly suitable for this bombardment-style gameplay.

For example, live broadcasts of "Stir-fried Crayfish", "Charcoal-grilled Fat Oysters", "Live Grilled Abalone" and so on. It is best to come up with a theme according to the festival. For example, on Women's Day, you can have a "Goddess Day" theme, and on Valentine's Day, you can have a "Double Flying Meal". Use Douyin to continuously output short video live broadcast products, and make the audience jealous!

Another benefit of short video live streaming is that it can show some of the restaurant’s special production techniques and training scenes in detail, so that their products and services can be better disseminated, including various marketing activities. This is especially useful for restaurants with some cultural heritage and historical background. By uploading it to Douyin, users can see it intuitively and easily. Not only will the brand awareness and exposure grow exponentially, but it will also attract a group of curious foodies to come for on-site inspection.

At this time, the restaurant should use a "chain routine" to remind the waiters to recommend Douyin's "Internet celebrity version" to those who come to the store to inspect, and gradually set up more hidden menus.

This offline-to-online feed-back strategy works very well. Most customers are willing to pay, and more importantly, they will help you spread the word repeatedly!

The above eight planning directions have been tried and tested, and are worth trying on Douyin for catering brands with ideas. According to big data analysis, some elements incorporated into the planning will be more likely to attract users, such as: characteristics; beautiful women and handsome men; cute pets that become spirits; funny; counterintuitive; novel and unique; potential current tasks; and fast pace.

To sum up, there is a very important principle for restaurants to create internet celebrities on Douyin, and that is to satisfy young people's curiosity and induce imitation.

Young people like to try new things, pursue fun, and are easily curious. By creating a creative collision between Douyin and restaurants for young people and based on the social attributes of the Douyin APP, it can cause spontaneous dissemination among young users in a short period of time, promoting the food while also promoting the brand.

The era of "good wine needs no bush" has passed. As short videos have become a new marketing trend in the catering industry, catering brands should take advantage of the opportunity to "get on board", seize hot spots online for promotion, and have store staff cooperate with offline operation training to meet the demand for "same as TikTok".

Short video marketing is a good way to attract customers and can break the natural communication barriers between companies and consumers. Catering brands can achieve direct and effective communication with consumers through short video marketing strategies such as keeping up with trends and producing creative and high-quality content, thereby establishing a deep emotional connection with consumers and promoting sales.

Author: Xiaohan Tang

Source: Xiaohan Tang