Analyzing the positioning logic of Douyin corporate accounts

In the early years, the external windows of enterprises were official websites and Taobao stores, followed by blogs and Weibo channels, and later self-media such as WeChat public accounts and Weibo short videos. With the advent of the short video era, Douyin Enterprise Account has become a very important new window for enterprises and an indispensable ecological niche.

But nowadays, for companies to make TikTok, the comprehensive learning costs including capital investment, team investment, time investment, etc. are not low. If you take the wrong path, you will have to pay a lot of tuition fees. So today I will share with you the positioning logic of enterprise accounts.

1. Common Problems with Enterprise Account Positioning

After serving a large number of brands, I found that there are five common problems for brands to open Douyin corporate accounts:

1. Lack of brand and product positioning

What are the specific “symptoms” of this problem?

First, there is a lack of platform thinking and layout thinking. Some people say that with so many users, TikTok must be omnipotent and suitable for any brand or enterprise. But in fact, some products may be very suitable for Douyin, but some may not. In addition, we often talk about the "three magic weapons for content marketing for new brands", which are Douyin, Zhihu, and Xiaohongshu. However, Douyin may not be the first step in the layout of a new brand. Some people may first market on Xiaohongshu, then go to Zhihu, and finally end up on Douyin, because Douyin is relatively more suitable for fermentation.

The second point is to make TikTok just for the sake of making TikTok. Many brands use TikTok because they see everyone else is doing it and they feel they can’t fall behind, so they follow suit and get anxious if they can’t keep up. Especially when I see some cases of overnight fame, such as Erke, I feel panicked and have to catch up quickly, but I will feel disappointed if I can't.

The third point is that the users are not accurate. For example, I am obviously a company that serves B-side users and is more suitable for operating some accounts on the B-side, but I went to Douyin to become a C-side fan.

Fourthly, over-emphasis on the brand itself leads to low conversion rates. Douyin is a content platform, but many bosses just run advertisements and promote their brands in a rigid way, which results in a failure to attract traffic. Even if they buy DOU+, the conversion effect is very poor.

So, how can brand companies find their own positioning on Douyin? The 2021 Douyin Private Domain Operation White Paper divides the Douyin e-commerce industry into four categories. You can check which category you belong to and what operation strategy is suitable for you:

Industry 1: high consumption frequency and high degree of onlineization. For example, beauty products, daily chemical products, clothing, food, etc. They are the basic foundation of e-commerce and are suitable for quick promotion and direct conversion.

Industry 2: High consumption frequency and low online level. For example, catering, fitness, photography, and hairdressing are suitable for quick promotion and in-store conversion.

Industry 3: Low consumption frequency and high degree of onlineization. For example, 3C and small household appliances, home department stores, financial services, etc., they are suitable for cultivating grass + online conversion.

Industry 4: Low consumption frequency and low online degree, but high customer orders. For example, real estate, automobiles, and home appliances are suitable for cultivating retention and in-store conversions.

Finding your positioning is very important, as it can help you avoid many detours.

The industry classification of Tmall brands is different from that of Douyin. The recently released "Tmall Enterprise Management Methodology - Dual-Wheel Drive, All-Around Growth" divides industries into four categories according to whether they are driven by consumer demand or supply chain, and whether they have a high proportion of direct sales or distribution. Therefore, many companies that originally operated on Tmall may have some difficulty adapting when they move to Douyin.

But I think that Douyin will grow bigger and bigger in the future, and when it becomes bigger, the supply chain will become very critical. Therefore, in two or three years, Douyin may gradually classify industries in the same way as Tmall. Everyone can prepare for the future and familiarize themselves with Tmall's classification in advance.

To sum up, if you want to create a corporate account on Douyin, you need to find your own positioning first. Knowing which of the four categories of Douyin your industry belongs to and which of Tmall's categories your products belong to can help you quickly find the basic positioning of your brand.

2. The effect demand indicators are vague

Once you find your positioning, you can determine your strategic goals and indicators. But at this time, many businesses will have the second problem: the indicators of effect requirements are vague.

Symptoms include:

Some businesses blindly pursue GMV, but end up losing money to gain publicity. When I was working for a skin care brand, I found that its return on investment (ROI) was only 0.9. In other words, if you invest ten dollars, you will only get nine dollars out. The more you invest, the more you lose.

Some businesses have learned their lesson and have started to pursue ROI blindly, which results in wasting time by frequently changing service providers. I know a company that may have changed more than four or five service providers because it felt that they could never achieve the ROI it wanted.

But partners also need to be adjusted, and changing them too frequently will delay opportunities.

So how should businesses set specific indicators? My personal suggestion is that first you need to be clear about how many indicators of effect demand there are. Common effect requirements include: exposure, customer acquisition, payment, activity, and retention. The conversion indicators include: activation, registration, information retention, ordering, and store visits.

The key indicators of different brands and products are also different. For example, if someone runs an offline piano class, then his key indicator is store visits. Brands like KFC and McDonald's need sufficient exposure when launching new products. Some decoration companies or car 4S shops need to retain capital.

So starting from today, you need to study carefully what is the positioning of your brand and products on Douyin? If you run a business account, what indicators should you focus on?

The following is a most basic classification of the basic operating model of the enterprise account and its corresponding basic indicators, for reference only.

3. Douyin operation and overall division

Many people operate TikTok as an independent department, handing it over to one or two employees directly, or finding an agency to operate it, setting their own targets, and then not taking care of anything else. This is actually bad and will lead to three problems:

First, there is team redundancy and duplication of resources. On Douyin, you have to do two operations, one is content operation, the other is user operation, among which content operation accounts for the majority. So why can’t the content produced on TikTok be distributed on other platforms? For example, Video Account, Kuaishou, and Taobao? Otherwise, if Taobao creates Taobao content and Douyin creates Douyin content, your team will be redundant and resources will be duplicated.

Then, due to the lack of private domain sedimentation, the long-tail effect is not obvious. Douyin has now launched some methodologies and tools for private domain operations, and private domain functions have been improved. After your traffic comes in, it must be deposited in the private domain for long-term operation. This requires considering the operation of Douyin and the company's overall business as a whole.

Because of the above two reasons, your benefits cannot be maximized.

Another problem for some businesses is that FACT resources are unevenly distributed, resulting in a lot of wasted money. FACT is the operating matrix proposed by Douyin e-commerce. F (Field) represents the merchant’s self-broadcasting, A (Alliance) represents the expert matrix, C (Campaign) refers to marketing activities, and T (Top-KOL) refers to the top V.

My suggestions for these three issues are:

(1) Establish a middle platform to optimize efficiency. To give a good example, there is a brand that has been cooperating with us for a long time. They regard all departments of the entire group company as part of the new retail. There is a middle platform, data support, logistics, and customer service support. Everything is connected, instead of setting up customer service separately on Douyin. At the same time, their FACT allocation layout is also methodical and coordinated, and the execution effect is better.

(2) Global content operation + CRM private domain. If I operate content on a global basis, I may obtain traffic from major platforms, but all this traffic is managed by an independent CRM (customer relationship management system).

(3) Consumer life cycle management. Consumers can be divided into potential customers, first-time new customers, and loyal old customers according to their life cycle. For different people, we need to activate them at different stages.

4. Partner Expectation Mismatch

Many brand owners will hand over their short video/live streaming accounts to agents for operation. However, they encounter many problems:

First, there is no clear distinction between distributors, agency delivery, live broadcast operation, and expert cooperation. Some brands are looking for collaborations but find that there are no suitable people to take on the role. This may be because they don’t understand the role and have found the wrong person.

There is another situation where the brand owner actually knows the situation, but hopes to only spend the cost of live streaming operation, and requires the service provider to reach the level of a distributor. Because many agency operators and brands are in a state of internal competition, they will do this. This practice is actually unethical and unsustainable. Because distributors or general agents all have to maintain inventory, they are actually under pressure.

The second point is that without a clear budget, nothing else matters except ROI.

For example, a brand hopes to achieve sales of 2 million within 3 months. Then, we will investigate how big its market is and whether the new brand can succeed within three months. In fact, many people don’t know that many popular cases on Douyin were created with money. The shorter the time it takes to build up the volume, the higher the requirement for initial capital investment. We did some calculations and found that this could not be done, so we refused.

Different brands have different marketing goals at different stages. We will talk about what new brands should do later.

The third point is that they only treat live broadcast operations as labor and do not cooperate.

For example, after finding an agent to operate, they just let go and don't tell you how to prepare the goods, what the main products are, which ones sell well, or other information such as delivery time and shipping time. These will actually affect the final conversion effect of the live broadcast. If the brand wants good results, it must respect its partners and communicate well in advance.

5. Lack of rhythm in marketing promotion

What are the “symptoms” of lack of rhythm in marketing promotion?

(1) The marketing rhythm throughout the year is unclear.

Some products, such as mosquito repellent or hand warmers, are seasonal. If you don’t have a clear marketing rhythm, it will be difficult for you to implement them.

For example, suppose you are an OEM factory in Guangdong that specializes in hand warmers. If you promote products in the summer, no one will buy them, but you can create content that will plant seeds and accumulate water in the summer.

(2) The budget and pace for entering new channels are unclear.

People who are unclear about their budget and pace are more likely to lack patience and feel that the platform is not working after just a short while.

(3) The initial expansion was too rapid.

Some clients said, I have a lot of money and I can definitely achieve results. However, if you expand the scale too quickly in the early stage, it may lead to budget overruns, or even no traffic if you do not invest in it later.

Therefore, before you launch the campaign, you must ensure that the backend is capable of handling the traffic, allowing the traffic to circulate on its own and achieve a certain amount of natural growth.

(4) Being indecisive when planning investment.

This way it is easy to miss the best opportunity.

So, how do we develop the right marketing rhythm? This part is very important, please remember it.

Generally speaking, the launch of a new product needs to go through three stages: testing period, large-scale period, and stabilization period.

Do not spend extra money during the testing period, and focus on testing on a small scale with controlled variables.

For example:

• Which product is the most popular?
• How to combine different products for better effect?
• Why do some products have such a high return rate?
• Can the “traffic-generating model” we set up really increase the integrated sales of the profit model?

To solve these problems, you need to test them through live broadcasts one by one, review the data every day, and adjust your inventory.

The testing period is very important. If your product cannot pass the testing period, then it should always stay in the first stage. Do not rush into the second stage, otherwise the more you sell, the more you will lose.

We did a case in March this year, serving Semir’s live broadcast room.

At the beginning, its average number of viewers was only over 1,700 per game, and the average viewing time per person was only 20 seconds.

Before we take over a store, we analyze competing stores, competing products, traffic, and crowd portraits, etc. We use massive delivery and Doujia and other delivery tools to target precise groups of people for local and small-scale promotion.

We invest about three to five thousand yuan every day to test which products are good and which are not, perform visual optimization, and slowly collect the data.

Two weeks later, we invested a total of about 50,000 yuan, and the average number of viewers in the live broadcast room increased to 75,000, and the average GMV also increased to more than 50,000.

We review every day, test which products sell well, and then negotiate with the brands for more supply. Then we increased the volume step by step, verified the goods, the overall brand space creation, the status of the models, and the ROI of the campaign.

At the beginning of Semir’s live broadcast room, paid traffic accounted for 89%, and natural traffic was only about 2%. In the later stage, natural traffic accounted for 90% and paid traffic was only 3%. When there is a self-circulation of traffic in the live broadcast room, we can enter the period of large-scale growth.

2. Interpretation of the functions of enterprise account authentication

Douyin's official announcement stated, "Enterprise accounts can help users convey business information and establish interactions with users."

There are two key points: 1. Delivering business information; 2. User interaction.

In other words, all the functions of enterprise account certification, such as marketing tools, data monitoring, and fan management, are actually to serve these two basic aspects.

Then I would like to ask you to think about a few important questions:

（1）What is your business information?

If you want fans and traffic, you must have a core business message to convey to users and help them understand you.

For example, if I am a paper products company, I might tell you that my paper towels are more resilient than those of my competitors. Or if I launch a new product and make XX revisions and innovations, I want this information to be deeply rooted in people's hearts.

For example, if I am in the catering business, my business information is the store decoration, dining environment, and delicious food. There must be a core message that I want to convey, such as fresh ingredients and exclusive secret recipes.

（2）Who are your users? When are they active? What are your interests in content?

Different groups of people have different active times and interests. Some companies have more middle-aged and elderly customers, while others may have more children, so the youth mode will be a bit restrictive for you. You need to understand it yourself and let your partners understand it.

For example, a certain brand performs eye surgery, and its business information is that its surgical technology is advanced and its instruments are particularly good, so its target users may be office workers who use their eyes frequently.

(3) Why should users follow your business information on Douyin?

It should be noted that some products with high entry barriers may not be suitable for promotion on Douyin from the beginning. For example, medical products are a sensitive category and may not be available on the Douyin platform, but some general health knowledge can be done.

If your product is suitable for Douyin, then you need to think clearly about what content your account will produce and give users a reason to follow you.

3. Three ways to open the enterprise account

There are three correct ways to open the Douyin corporate account: video version official website, video version store, and video version customer service number.

1. Video version of the official website

Some people may think that no one visits the “official website” now. However, everyone's desire to understand the "business card or storefront" of a brand company remains unchanged. If I want to apply for a job, cooperate, or understand the company's qualifications, I need to check the company information. In order to enhance trust, companies can solve these problems by creating a video version of their official website on Douyin, and in a more vivid way.

Next, I will share with you two cases of using corporate accounts as official websites.

The first is GoodWe, a power technology company that makes photovoltaic materials. Its users are mainly B-end users, namely governments, enterprises, and institutions.

How is its corporate “official website” created? The content of his homepage is very clear, introducing photovoltaic panels. Then he made a collection of some of his client cases. We click on the forward button in the upper right corner of the collection to generate a QR code. He put this QR code directly on the employee's business card.

In the past, when people exchanged business cards, they would include the website address, which had to be entered into the computer to find the official website. Just scan the QR code now and all the company’s cases are here.

Vanke does the same thing. Users can clearly see the company's cases by simply scanning its Douyin video collection. Please note that you are not scanning the official Douyin account, but the video collection.

Many brands have come to me for advice on how to create a corporate account. This method is very practical. Especially for To B companies, you can make a collection of video cases and put it on a business card and hand it to others to formally and effectively showcase your company's business.

Another case is "Tianyancha", which is mainly aimed at C-end users.

The content of "Tianyancha" on Douyin is very good and worth learning from. In addition, there is a shopping cart on his corporate account, which contains two products, one is a VIP quarterly card and the other is a weekly card.

But I would like to give a suggestion to the "Tianyancha" APP. It can try to launch a "one-time card", which is similar to searching for one cent per time. This can activate a registered user or cultivate the user's payment habit. If users only have to pay one cent to check once, they will definitely be at a loss. However, if there are some restrictions, such as setting a "one-time card" limit to one purchase per person per month, that is, a user is only allowed to check once a month, this light user group brought in by small payments may be the main payment force in the future.

2. Video version store

The second is the video version of the store, which is the e-commerce sales (or group purchase coupons) we are very familiar with.

Here I would like to share with you a case of "Yili". We are now also Yili's agent supplier. Yili sold more than 45 million on Douyin in September this year, ranking first in the monthly list of instant beverages.

It has opened 4 accounts on Douyin, and there are many associated live broadcasts. The main strategy is to attract customers through cooperation with influencers, and then use brand self-broadcasting to take over the traffic.

We collaborated with Yili in March to help it launch a product. How to do it specifically? First of all, it’s about collaboration with experts. The body etiquette teacher is very popular this year. She has traffic, so we go and buy traffic. The show started at 9 a.m. and sold 6,300 orders in a single show. We held another sale in the evening and sold 4,000 orders, making a total of 10,300 orders in one day. After the traffic comes in, the brand’s own broadcast must also take over the traffic.

Douyin e-commerce has a FACT business matrix. Among them, F (merchant self-broadcasting) and A (expert matrix) are our basic foundation, which needs to be continued on a daily basis. Then T (top V) and C (marketing activities) are our explosive plates.

At different stages of the account, the weight ratio of F, A, C, and T is also different. For example, the Yili account we cooperated with had an average of only 20 people online when it first started broadcasting in March, but now it has an average of more than 5,000 people online. In cases like this, we need to receive information from the influencer matrix in the early stages, be familiar with your tags, and then match appropriate influencers based on the tags. Therefore, you need to answer the three soul-searching questions of the enterprise account mentioned above: What is your business information? Who are your users? Why should they follow you on TikTok?

3. Video version customer service number

The third one is the video version of the customer service number.

At the end of July this year, Douyin Enterprise Account updated to version 2.0 and launched the "fan management" function. Fan management can also be called customer management. Enterprise accounts currently support multi-tag management within 5 tags, so you can accurately segment users and push accurate information.

You can use the enterprise account as a video version of the customer service account to obtain and serve your private domain traffic, thereby connecting users, building relationships, and improving conversions.

When running a video version of customer service, you must retain one group: key users. Who are your key users? We can use six action tags to judge: fans, fan groups, private messages, homepage visits, component information retention, and shopping. Users who meet any of the above tags are the key users you want to retain.

The different user action tags above have different levels of relationship with your account, so we can reach and re-stimulate them through different means.

4. Enterprise account division method and application

As mentioned earlier, the three correct ways to open an enterprise account are the video version of the official website (brand promotion business card), the video version of the store (sales promotion) and the video version of the customer service account (customer service consultation).

Enterprise account classification

After the three major categories, they can be further subdivided:

(1) For private brands and products, enterprise accounts can be divided into brand groups, sales groups, and member groups;

(2) For non-own brands, since there is no product promotion part, they can be set up as distribution groups or private domain operation groups. For example, many community group purchases can be done in this way.

(3) If you are an individual or institutional IP, your account can be divided into IP group/expert group, expert/anchor group, and offline service agency.

Finally, I would like to leave you with a word of advice: Success is difficult to replicate, but failure can be learned from.

Knowing the pitfalls others have encountered can help you avoid taking detours in the future. There are so many pitfalls in the industry. If you can take fewer detours, you will have made a lot of progress compared to others, because many people have fallen into these pitfalls.

Author: New List

Source: New List