Tips for shooting and attracting traffic with short videos!

A few days ago, when a business friend was chatting with me, I took the opportunity to browse the short videos they shot.

As for why businesses must pay attention to content production and shooting (traffic-generating) short videos, I have also thought about a few points in the past few days and would like to share them with you. They may not be comprehensive and only represent my personal opinions.

Let me first state my conclusion:

I think the short videos shot by merchants should be able to directly promote products, or enable the use of shared bikes to bring goods or direct traffic to the live broadcast room, and serve the ultimate GMV conversion.

Expand based on this logic.

1. Is the traffic accurate?

I looked through the short videos shot by this merchant. Most of them implant their products into jokes and plots.

It is true that shooting jokes is relatively easier to increase volume, it is easy to produce hits, and it can effectively reach more users, but the general traffic is more, and more users are attracted by the jokes and plots, rather than the products themselves.

Friends may question, isn’t it good to have traffic?

I am not saying that this method is bad, but the traffic it brings is not very accurate, which will naturally affect the final conversion of goods.

1. Scene Substitution

The most critical problem is that the hard implantation of "products" in the filmed jokes or plots is a bit too abrupt.

If you really want to shoot a short video, that’s not impossible, but you must pay attention to the scene placement.

No matter what product, when it is used, there are corresponding demand scenarios and usage scenarios.

For example, everyone must have seen the "Snickers" advertisement. Snickers will contextualize the need for hunger, such as the mountain climbing scene that appears in the advertisement. The next time we go out hiking, we will naturally want to buy "Snickers". This is the result of a high degree of match with the scene.

Let me briefly explain Tik Tok’s tag recommendation mechanism.

Everyone should know that Douyin's recommendation logic is based on "labels". Users will have labels, such as male, loser, likes to watch dramas, and likes to watch live shows.

Short video works will also have labels, such as plot, rich second generation, counterattack, long legs, shaqima, etc., and the recommendation algorithm is to match user labels and work labels as effectively as possible.

This is also why I said that if you want to understand a person, go and watch his Douyin.

According to this recommendation logic, joke-type works will be deeply labeled as jokes rather than snacks or delicacies, and then pushed to user groups who like to read jokes more. There may be sporadic users with delicacies or snacks labels mixed in, but they will definitely not be the majority.

This ultimately results in inaccurate traffic, leading to high traffic and low conversions.

This is also why business owners are still wondering: the short videos are shot very well, and even become popular, so why don’t they ultimately convert into a few orders?

Ultimately, it is due to inaccurate traffic.

2. No way to quickly copy in bulk

The second problem is: there is no way to quickly copy in bulk.

Users need constant stimulation from new things, and of course the platform also needs that (the platform will not allow too many similar works to cause users to become aesthetically fatigued) so that new themes and traffic will have the opportunity to emerge.

As a business, the same joke or plot can only be filmed once. A script that has become popular once cannot be quickly copied in batches. It is too difficult to constantly innovate. Even if there is a new script, can you shoot ten in a day? Can you guarantee that these ten will explode? Doesn’t it cost money to keep trying and failing? What to do if the material for jokes runs out in the future?

For businesses, the cost of making short videos is actually quite high. This cost includes time cost, labor cost, capital cost, trial and error cost, etc.

In the end, the GMV of the goods sold is not enough to support a short video team.

More importantly, if there is no positive feedback, the morale of the entire team will become very low, entering a vicious cycle or even giving up.

The reason is not because the jokes are bad, but because the traffic is not accurate.

3. Putting the cart before the horse

The third problem is: putting the cart before the horse.

In order to make their jokes popular, businesses will strictly follow the so-called golden three-second rule in the short video industry when editing videos, and are always trying to find ways to get users to watch for a few more seconds.

But in fact, my friends, the first three seconds of a short video are meant to attract users to stay, but they also serve to discourage non-precise target users. Not only that, even if the clip is too good, the first factor mentioned above will still affect algorithm learning, causing the content to be labeled inaccurately.

This is a bit like the Internet entrepreneurship boom in the past few years. In order to solve the problem of content carrying and dissemination, companies did not directly use WeChat public accounts, but instead set up a development team to develop a website or a separate App.

Your goal is to drive traffic to the live broadcast room or use the shared cart to directly generate GMV conversions, not to produce jokes. Don't put the cart before the horse.

2. Make sure to create short video content

This part mainly shares why businesses must create short video content and the importance of content.

1. Short videos are product details pages

Products are content, and content is advertising.

Let’s review the example I gave in “What is Douyin’s interest e-commerce”:

Excuse me, is this short video a product promotion, an advertisement, or short video content?

I'm afraid it's difficult to define clearly.

This means that from now on, the boundaries between content, products, and advertising will become increasingly blurred, forming a relationship in which you are in me and I am in you.

There are two main reasons for this:

First, browsing Douyin is somewhat similar to offline shopping, where we are “wandering” aimlessly and unscrupulously in a colorful “world”.

The content of each merchant is like a store. When you are under the strong visual impact of the merchant's short video, it is easy to feel involved in the scene, and then engage in the behavior of planting and pulling out grass.

That is, "transactions" are generated through "consumption of content".

Second, for the user groups in lower-tier cities that Taobao has not yet reached but have already settled on Douyin and Kuaishou:

The first form of e-commerce they came into contact with was short videos, which were live broadcasts.

For them, short videos or live broadcast rooms are the product details pages.

I completed my first order in my life through the shared bike in the short video.

I experienced the joy of online shopping for the first time through the promotional activities in the live broadcast room.

2. Short videos promote the product and live broadcasts pull it out in one go

Let’s take the short video I shared in “What is Tik Tok’s Interest E-commerce” as an example:

Through a short video of just over ten seconds, merchants can clearly express the characteristics, selling points and usage scenarios of the products in a visual way, which is very immersive.

Attract users and realize the goal of buying something. Since users are attracted by the product itself, the users are very accurate. No matter whether it is the shared bike in the video or the merchant is live streaming, users will quickly complete the purchase, such as myself.

Short videos attract interest, and live broadcasts directly convert them into orders.

3. Cargo brings people

Everyone knows the importance of the " anchor " in the live broadcast room.

This is what is called people bringing goods. There is no product that the anchor cannot sell, but this is also an important reason why the anchors are not very stable now.

In order to avoid the situation where, for example, the anchor will refuse to cooperate or simply run away after exceeding a certain daily GMV.

Some businesses have no choice but to force anchors to not exceed a certain daily GMV to prevent them from running away too quickly, which is also a last resort.

Short videos have the property of accurately promoting products. Users enter the merchant’s live broadcast room because they are attracted by the products in the short videos, so the conversion rate will naturally be higher.

After all, the purpose of users going to the live broadcast room is to engage in transactions.

• Does this mean that the requirements for live broadcast hosts will not be that high?
• Does this mean that it has little to do with whether the host in the live broadcast room is a beautiful woman or whether there are lucky bags to be received in the live broadcast room?
• Does this mean that businesses no longer need to think too much about how to improve the host’s ability to control the situation?

Or to put it bluntly, your so-called live broadcast room optimization strategy, no matter how many times you refine and polish it, is not as effective as the immediate effect of attracting traffic through a short video .

By bringing goods to people, merchants can also, to some extent, get rid of the problem of heavy dependence on a certain anchor.

A magical live broadcast room, goods bring people, monthly sales of 4 million

4. Search traffic

Friends, search traffic is very accurate and high-quality passive traffic. The conversion rate of search traffic is even higher than that of short video traffic.

This means that when your short video copy or title keywords hit the corresponding keywords searched by users, you have the opportunity to be displayed and bring yourself traffic and conversions.

Because users have very clear transaction attributes.

Therefore, as a merchant, the first thing you need to do is to post more short videos.

Second, every short video you publish must include your industry, category, and even brand keywords, #tags, copywriting, etc. to increase the keyword hit rate, thereby increasing the corresponding weight and hitting better than your competitors, thereby maximizing the matrix-style acquisition of keyword search traffic.

The cost of doing so is just to post a few more free short videos, that's all.

On the other hand, search is one of the key business directions of the Douyin platform in the future, and it will be more deeply integrated with e-commerce business in the future.

Data shows that the number of monthly active users of Douyin video searches has exceeded 550 million, and the average daily video search volume exceeds 400 million times.

Moreover, the search index of certain keywords on Douyin has exceeded that of Baidu.

I would like to ask my friends, for the same keyword, which of the two platforms has stronger "transaction attributes"?

Third, and most importantly, Douyin and Kuaishou have now opened their indexes to Baidu. You can search for Douyin content live on Baidu. If you don’t have short videos, of course you won’t be able to search for them.

What convenience will this bring to businesses?

1. The merchant's works can obtain Douyin's off-site search traffic from Baidu, and reach more off-site traffic of Douyin or Kuaishou;
2. As a business, you must create short video content, let the content settle, and truly realize the flow of content in the channel. Otherwise, you will not be able to get this free and accurate traffic, which would be a loss. From now on, you should be ahead of your competitors in grabbing search traffic.
3. The characteristic of search traffic is long tail. Once you have it, you will benefit from it for life.
4. The most important thing is it’s free.

5. Free traffic

Next, let’s talk about free. Now on any platform, if you want to reach more users, traffic is becoming more and more expensive.

Today's traffic is always a little bit more expensive than yesterday's.

But if you release a short video on TikTok, it can be said that the traffic is (almost) free.

For example, the 7-second short video above that successfully inspired me to buy a product has received 875,000 likes, and it is estimated that this short video will generate 160,000 sales.

Even if merchants pay for Dou+ or Feed, the ROI is exciting enough, and such traffic is unimaginably cheap.

6. Accurate traffic and account tags promote each other

I have discussed in "What is Interest-based E-commerce" that Douyin connects content with a large number of users through algorithm recommendation to achieve accurate recommendations.

First of all, merchants can ensure that their works and accounts are labeled more and more accurately through short video content in one vertical category after another.

Yes, that's the account casting you've heard of.

After the account is successfully created, you can ensure that the work or live broadcast room is pushed to the target users you want, and the target users' interaction with the short video will in turn label the short video more accurately, so that it can be pushed to more accurate users, forming a virtuous circle.

Accurate traffic means higher conversions and twice the result with half the effort.

7. Interest e-commerce products and people

The importance of content production is defined in the white paper of Interest E-commerce as follows:

It can be seen that content is the foundation of interest e-commerce (of course, content is also Douyin’s core competitiveness).

The current proportion of traffic sources from live broadcast rooms of merchants doing well in interest e-commerce shows that short videos account for more than half of the traffic.

I have discussed in the article "What is Interest-based E-commerce" that the recommendation mechanism is goods finding people.

For merchants, the goods-find-people logic can effectively achieve a cold start that is difficult to achieve on traditional shelf e-commerce platforms, especially for new brands or new categories that users are not familiar with.

Because users may not even know the existence of these products or even categories.

And what is the importance of the recommendation mechanism of goods finding people for merchants?

Of course, you must first have a product video, so that Douyin can accurately recommend your product short video to target users.

As a merchant, if you don’t shoot short videos, how can Douyin recommend them to users?

If you don’t shoot short videos, Douyin can only recommend your competitors.

What?

You said you have a live broadcast room?

I can tell all my fellow business owners responsibly that in the interest-based e-commerce, for Douyin, it is not feasible and unsustainable if you only sell goods but do not produce content (for example, starting a broadcast with 0 works and 0 fans).

This consumes the platform's traffic. The platform will become less and less fond of you, and the traffic will only become less and less.

In the future, if you want to do live streaming and selling goods on Douyin, it will become a must for merchants to make short video content, not an option;

Because all businesses or individuals must help Douyin achieve its goal - retain users, let users spend time, and generate transactions.

And [content] is the most important and fundamental part, whether it is a short video or a live broadcast room.

Let me say it again. The content of short videos is easy to understand, but what is the content of the live broadcast room?

Let me share with you a live streaming room that has become quite popular recently: Herborist.

Some people may question that this is not content.

But what I want to say is:

Creativity itself is content, form itself is content, and scene itself is also content.

There are similar ones, do you remember the previous beautiful girl snack shop?

Do you remember selling down jackets on the snowy mountains before?

8. The most important point: on the importance of content

Some people say that the future competition will be about traffic.

Dawei believes that future competition will be a competition for traffic on the surface, but a competition for content in essence.

Why?

Friends, can you imagine where the current Internet traffic is?

Traffic has never been as dispersed as it is today. They are scattered in the top social platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou short video platforms, WeChat, and Weibo, and in the middle and lower parts of the community platforms such as Zhihu, Xiaohongshu and even Bilibili.

And they are all content platforms at the end of the day.

I remember a while ago, there was a paragraph in a report by Tencent and BCG (Boston Consulting Group) that read:

Ten years ago, if we were doing e-commerce, we might only need Taobao as one touchpoint to establish connections with users.

However, today, the single-touchpoint model is clearly unable to meet our needs for rapid growth.

Nowadays, brands/merchants need to establish an average of 5.2 touchpoints with consumers, including WeChat, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, etc., otherwise users will easily "lose connection".

Therefore, we should not and cannot rely on the exposure and conversion of a single channel. Instead, we should build a strong omni-channel and multi-touchpoint content operation capability, regardless of public/private domain, online/offline, and produce a large number of videos, live broadcasts, graphics and other rich content and forms to form a three-dimensional and comprehensive content reach and surround for users.

In the past, all merchants needed to do was to sell things; later, all they needed to do was to pay for traffic.

So now and in the future, all brands and businesses will have to face and even accept new challenges. You must learn to produce [content] in order to make it work.

The [content] mentioned here will not be limited to short videos, pictures and texts and other forms of expression.

Do you still remember the five marketing tips for building a new consumer brand?

Have you produced 20,000 Xiaohongshu articles, 8,000 short videos, 2,000 medium and long videos, and 2,000 Zhihu articles?

Don’t think this is a joke, my friends, it is actually true.

Through [content], we occupy users’ time, invade users’ consumption time, invade users’ minds, and ultimately convert them into purchasing power.

After all, whoever owns the content owns the world.

3. What should I shoot?

1. Photograph products or specific usage scenarios

All the photography is centered around the product itself or through specific usage scenarios of the product to create a sense of immersion and achieve the goal of planting seeds.

If you are the source factory, it will be even better. You can directly shoot the factory's operation videos, production workshops, etc. These can even be used as scenes for the live broadcast room.

2. Share knowledge and deliver value

For example, if you are in the car film business, you can create a boss or expert persona, and use short videos every day to talk about the benefits of film, what types of film there are, what kind of car is suitable for what kind of film, etc.

Directly drive traffic to the live broadcast room and directly drive traffic to offline stores.

Even for knowledge payment, it is the same. For example, if you are selling English courses, then the short videos will talk about English or even the essential content of the English courses you sell, such as grammar, exams, pronunciation, etc. (even each one can be treated as a vertical category to be further developed).

The only difference is that paid knowledge services may highlight personality more, and the teacher himself will become part of the commodity.

3. Copy

If you really don’t know what to shoot, find high-quality short videos from your peers and copy them.

Including BGM, title, copy, duration, background, etc.

You can shoot the same way he does, after all, he has verified for you which ones will bring in volume.

So where can you find these materials?

There are many platforms, such as ByteDance, Douchacha, Chanmama, etc.

‍4. Conclusion

Finally, let’s summarize:

Whether it is Douyin’s interest e-commerce or Kuaishou’s trust e-commerce, the underlying logic is the same. They are all based on interesting "content" to generate transactions, allowing users to consume content while purchasing things.

From this perspective, whether it is Douyin's interest e-commerce or Kuaishou's trust e-commerce, the (product) content distributed by the short video platform is the same as that of traditional e-commerce platforms Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo.

So, based on this logic, if short video content becomes more and more abundant and the content e-commerce pie becomes bigger and bigger, then traditional e-commerce will inevitably be severely squeezed .

As the saying goes:

Whoever controls the content controls the world!

Author: Meng Dawei

Source: Meng Dawei