Analysis of Douyin AARRR Traffic Funnel Model

Before formally analyzing the traffic funnel model, relevant data of Douyin since its release was collected through some channels (WeChat official accounts, Weibo, official, etc.). We compiled the major events in the development of Tik Tok, as well as the download trends of Tik Tok in major third-party markets on the Android side and the main version iteration map of the product.

The purpose is to observe the entire growth system of Douyin at different stages of development, because throughout the life cycle, the growth strategies emphasized at different stages are different.

Major events in the development of TikTok:

(1) Products

2016-09-26 A.me was officially launched.

2016-12-13 A.me was renamed Douyin Short Video.

2017-01-09 Received millions of seed investment from Toutiao.

2017-05-04 The product manager revealed that the product's DAU has reached millions, and the average daily VV (video playback volume) has exceeded 100 million.

2017-08-11 The product manager revealed that the average daily VV has exceeded 1 billion.

2017-09-02 It has been a full year since Douyin was launched, and the first Douyin idou night was held offline.

2017-11-10 Toutiao acquired Musical.ly for US$1 billion and merged it with TikTok.

2018-01 The number of daily active users of Douyin short video exceeded 30 million.

2018-03 The number of daily active users of Douyin short video exceeded 70 million.

2018-03-10 The TikTok link shared on Weibo is only visible to yourself.

2018-03-25 There is news that the Douyin link shared to WeChat Moments and QQ Space is only visible to oneself.

2018-03-27 Douyin has links related to Taobao sales. (Start exploring e-commerce business?)

2018-04-02 The risk warning system was officially launched.

2018-04-10 The anti-addiction system was officially launched.

2018-04-11 The live broadcast and comment functions were officially closed and rectification began. At the same time, the Douyin link cannot be opened normally in WeChat.

2018-05-15 The self-owned store function was launched to accelerate the e-commerce layout.

2018-06-01 Official Blue V certification was opened.

2018-06-06 The content marketing tool “DOU+” was launched.

2018-06-12 The number of daily active users of Douyin short video exceeds 150 million, and the number of monthly active users exceeds 300 million.

(2) Operation and business cooperation

2016-11-02 "The Coming One" Li Mingyuan released a short video on A.me.

2016-11-10 “A.me Zhao Liying’s Strongest Support Campaign” event.

2017-03-13 Zhu Yuanbing released a short video on Douyin.

2017-03-13 Yue Yunpeng reposted his own Douyin short video, which eventually received 5083 reposts and 83175 likes.

2017-04-12 Hu Yanbin released a new single "No Choice" on Douyin.

2017-04-15 Deng Chao released a short video on Tik Tok.

2017-04-19 Joined forces with many celebrities to launch the “Ohmy Idol” campaign.

2017-04 Tik Tok and NetEase Cloud Music exchanged user resources.

2017-04-30 Jointly launched the "ListenUp Hip-Hop for All" campaign with Hip-Hop Fusion, and released a new 3D video shaking special effect.

2017-06-12 Advertising was launched in offline cinemas.

2017-06-16 Log in to "High Energy Youth League", even celebrities will get addicted.

2017-07-07 WeChat official account launched "Adopt an Idol H5".

2017-07-12 The WeChat official account launched the “World Famous Paintings H5” which swept the circle of friends.

2017-07-31 Popular contestants PG_ONE and Xiaobai from “The Rap of China” officially joined TikTok.

2017-08-16 Collaborated with Da Zhangwei to release the single "If You Don't Accept, Come to Douyin".

2017-08-19 Logged in to "Happy Camp".

2017-08-26 Logged on "The Rap of China".

2017-09-05 Mobike and TikTok collaborated to launch a hip-hop themed car.

2017-09-14 Cross-border cooperation with Burger King.

2017-09-15 Strong appearance on Hunan Satellite TV's "Day Day Up".

2017-09-22 Cooperated with Airbnb, Chevrolet and Harbin Beer on brand video advertising for the first time.

2017-10-16 Tik Tok and Toutiao jointly launched the “New Campus Singer” event.

2017-10-23 Cross-border cooperation with Pizza Hut.

2017-12-20 Collaborated with PepsiCo to launch a customized short video challenge.

2017-12-30 Simultaneously sponsored the New Year's Eve concerts of Jiangsu Satellite TV, Zhejiang Satellite TV and Hunan Satellite TV.

2018-01-25 Tik Tok launched the “See Music” program.

2018-02-01 Wu Yifan officially took office as the Chief Operating Officer of Douyin.

2018-02-13 Douyin launched the "Spring Festival Red Packet" activity.

2018-03-15 Launched the “Street Dance Championship” event.

2018-03-19 Douyin launched the "Better Life" plan and changed its product slogan to: Record a better life.

2018-04-27 Jay Chou appeared on TikTok for the first time and interacted with Jeremy Lin.

2018-05-14 Officially launched the "Better Life" plan in collaboration with many brands.

2018-06-26 Cooperated with China Telecom to launch unlimited data card.

(PS The above development events about Douyin are all accurate news from WeChat public accounts, Weibo, 36kr, Huxiu and other media channels. Other vague news are not included)

The development history of Douyin APP:

It can be seen that the data of historical comments are abnormal. In May 2017, the user scale of Douyin had reached millions, and the number of comments could not be so small. We will not make a detailed analysis here.

From the above data, we can see that the number of Douyin users has increased rapidly since April 2017. It took just over a year for the company to grow from a million-level user base in May 2017 to 150 million daily active users and 300 million monthly active users as announced on June 12, 2018. From the perspective of product life cycle theory, TikTok is still a very young product, having been around for less than two years. In an environment of increasingly stringent content regulation, it will certainly face huge challenges in the future. After all, even the Neihan Duanzi app, which was valued at nearly 5 billion US dollars, was shut down, and TikTok must not repeat the same mistake.

According to the product characteristics of Douyin in different periods, I divide it into the following 4 stages:

● Cold start (September 2016 ~ November 2016): v1.0.0 ~ v1.1.0

Before starting the analysis, I put the picture above, which is why I listed this period as the cold start period.

From the data, we can see that on October 10, 2016, the number of downloads of Huawei App Market suddenly surged by nearly 1,000. This should be wrong data, because the number of downloads has remained unchanged since then. Until December 1, this data changed. The main time point of focus here is November 13, 2016. Next, we analyze the traffic funnel model of Douyin at this stage:

1. Acquisition

(1) Diverting traffic through online channels

Douyin has established its own official accounts on Meipai and Miaopai, and publishes popular videos with A.me watermark on its own platform on other video platforms to attract new users. They also forwarded the videos posted on Miaopai and Meipai to Weibo, and also began to try to sign influential internet celebrities on Meipai, such as Li Mingyuan.

(2) Attract new customers online through event operations

By browsing the official Weibo of Douyin, I found that Douyin officially launched a "Zhao Liying Strongest Support Event" on November 13, 2016. After that, the number of downloads began to climb. The event page is shown in the figure:

It can be seen that this event lasted for 4 days, and the topic #A.me Zhao Liying's Strongest Support Battle# had 430,000 readings and 30,000+ reposts. Through this event, Douyin successfully passed the cold start period at a very low cost (signatures, pillows, key chains, etc.) and accumulated the first batch of seed users. Of course, there are many details in this event, which will not be elaborated here. Douyin has also tasted the sweetness of using celebrities for promotion, which laid the groundwork for the rhythm of operations and attracting new users during the growth period.

(3) Lowering the threshold for product use

a. No registration or login is required to watch short videos on the homepage;

b. You need to log in to post a short video and enter the "Discover" and "Message" pages;

c. The first version of the product provided four registration and login methods: mobile phone number, WeChat, QQ, and Weibo, which lowered the threshold for product use;

2. User Activation and Retention

The purpose of user activation is to turn a new ordinary user into a valuable user. The purpose of user retention is to keep new users and turn them into old users, thereby generating greater value. For TikTok, a user with longer browsing time is a valuable user, which is very similar to Toutiao. Therefore, in terms of user activation and user retention, Douyin, like Toutiao, largely achieves this through recommendation algorithms.

(1) During the cold start period, the homepage only has two tags: "Follow" and "Popular".

The short videos under the “Follow” tag are definitely distributed based on the relationship chain, so what about the “Popular” tag? The author speculates that a group of high-quality content had already been gathered before the product was launched, and new users came in and distributed the content directly. (As for how Douyin completed its initial accumulation of content, it is unknown. The author speculates that the most likely possibility is that a batch of videos were selected from some online channels, and then manually edited by internal staff. After all, the expert list started late and the content was obviously insufficient).

(2) Operation Expert Ranking (starting from the end of October 2016)

The Talent List was launched at the end of October 2016, with one issue per week. Each issue has two lists (the most popular list and the most active list) and a special list (the weekly rookie list). By offering benefits, new users can be activated to post videos. During this period, a batch of high-quality content will be created, enriching the content library and improving user stickiness.

(3) Distribution strategy during the product cold start period

The author speculates that the strategy for a product in the early stages of its launch should be to not recommend repetitive or similar content. Divide the short videos in the content library into several major categories, and then further subdivide them into more tags, and distribute content according to tags. As for going a step further and making recommendations based on user preferences, this level is unlikely to be achieved in the early stages as the cost of implementation is too high.

(4) Users can freely initiate challenges

During the early product cold start period, in order to increase user activity and accumulate content library, Douyin opened a challenge entrance on the discovery page. Users can freely initiate challenges. At the same time, through data analysis, it can understand what kind of content users prefer, providing a data foundation for its subsequent content operations.

3. User dissemination (Referall)

(1) Short video sharing function

(2) Version 1.1.0 was released on October 31, 2016, and the function of inviting QQ and Weibo friends was officially launched.

During this stage, Douyin only launched the basic sharing function. Apart from that, no other actions of Douyin were found on the Internet.

4. Summary of the stage

During the product cold start period, the speed of version iteration is not fast, and the team mainly focuses on acquiring initial users.

In terms of acquiring new users, they set up accounts on other video platforms, published high-quality content on their own platforms, and left their logos on the videos to attract new users. In terms of operations, they also tried to use the influence of celebrities to carry out activities, and successfully acquired the first batch of seed users for the product through the "Zhao Liying Support Event". Because the effect of this event was too significant, it also provided direction for celebrity operations during the growth period.

Judging from the Weibo content during this period, the operation team also mainly learned from music.ly in terms of content guidance, mostly focusing on "dance" and "camera movement".

● Exploration period (November 2016 ~ April 2017): v1.2.0 ~ v1.3.3

After successfully transitioning from the cold start period to the development period, the pace of product iteration has significantly accelerated. At the same time, the sound quality, picture quality and beauty effects have been upgraded to increase the value of the product and lay the foundation for its subsequent development. In the version released on December 22, 2016, it was officially renamed Douyin Short Video, which is easier to spread than the original name. In addition to product iterations, we also began to actively operate some challenge competitions during this stage. Next, we analyze the traffic funnel model of Douyin at this stage:

1. Acquisition

(1) Diverting traffic through online channels

During this stage, Douyin has not given up on directing traffic from channels such as Meipai, Miaopai, and Weibo.

(2) Expand new users through KOL resources

By browsing the Weibo information in detail, it was found that during this period, some Internet celebrities appeared on Douyin one after another, such as @喵大仙带你停药带你菲 (1.7 million Weibo fans), @楚琰大小姐 (a small-time show expert), etc. This has brought a large number of new users to Douyin, and is also a further test of whether the method of acquiring new users by signing internet celebrities is feasible. Judging from the download volume in the figure below, although the download volume is steadily increasing, the increase is not very large.

(3) Diverting traffic through celebrity resources

Baidu Index Changes of Douyin APP (September 2016~March 2017)

Both pictures above are specially marked with two time points, one on March 2, 2017, and the other on March 13, 2017. Regarding the second time point, we all know that it was because Yue Yunpeng reposted a video on Weibo with the Douyin logo at this time point. At the same time, another person also posted a Douyin video on the same day, that is, Zhu Yuanbing (Weibo ID: @朱元冰Ryan, Weibo fans: 196W), as shown in the picture:

As for the first time point, I found that on March 2, the official Douyin posted a Weibo, and the actor of the TV series "Fantasy City" Julaiti Kutilai (Weibo ID: @居来_JURAI, number of fans: 96W) posted a Douyin video, as shown in the picture:

2. User Activation and Retention

(1) Add a "Fresh" label to the homepage during the development period

In the v1.2.0 version released at the end of November 2016, a "Fresh" label was added to the homepage. The author believes that a considerable amount of new content was generated during the operation of the "Expert List". At this time, it was no longer possible to manually review all the new content , so a new "Fresh" label was added to distribute the content.

(2) Operation Expert List

During the product's development, the benefits were further improved, from the original large snack to a higher-value wide-angle mobile phone camera. Looking through the "Expert List" of each issue, it can be clearly observed that the threshold for the first place has been significantly increased, indicating that the number of participants has been increasing. It seems that during the development period, the user scale of Douyin has been steadily increasing.

(3) Operation Challenge

After entering the development stage, Douyin revised the "Discover" page and cancelled the entrance for initiating challenges. Users need to initiate challenges when posting videos. At this time, the operation team began to actively guide content production. Some challenges are released through the Douyin assistant. Judging from Weibo, the early challenges have not yet formed a systematic methodology and are probably still in the exploratory stage, with not many people participating.

Then on March 20, 2017, PS quickly seized on the popularity of Xie Tengfei and launched the #谢腾飞Thug Life# challenge. In less than a week, more than 10,000 users participated in the challenge (disclosed by the PS product manager in an interview). I believe the growth team must have reviewed this challenge and started to form some systematic methodologies. I speculate that the reason why the subsequent growth team was sensitive and quick to growth points was due to the influence of this operation.

(4) Enhanced product interactivity

In version 1.3.0 released on January 10, 2017, the @friend function was launched, which enhanced the interactivity of the product, further improved the stickiness of the product, and increased retention.

(5) Added “hot” color mark to videos

According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, everyone has the need to be noticed. The "popular" color marking function launched based on this need can greatly enhance the satisfaction of content producers, improve user loyalty, and also increase the cost for core users to leave. (The more popular you are, the more fans you have, the stickier you are, and the harder it is to leave)

(6) Distribution strategy during the development phase

The author believes that the distribution strategy during the development phase should be more complex. After receiving investment from Toutiao in January 2017, it should also begin to fully integrate Toutiao's recommendation algorithm to lay the foundation for rapid development during the growth phase.

3. User dissemination (Referall)

(1) Your own videos can be saved locally with one click

The function of saving videos locally further improves the spread of videos, because it is more intuitive for people to open a video directly than to open a link. It is equivalent to the difference between giving a file or a file download address.

(2) Music and challenge games support one-click sharing

Since there is no data, we don’t know how this feature is used. For music short video applications, I think music and challenges have the value of sharing, and further enrich the types of shares that can be shared.

4. Summary of the stage

During this period, product function iterations focused on creating product value, including beauty, improvements in sound quality and picture quality, a new shooting process, a smoother viewing experience, new filters and stickers, etc.

We are also constantly experimenting in operations, expanding new users through more internet celebrities and star resources, and have also put a lot of effort into content guidance. During this period, in addition to dance, music and complex camera movements (such as: Xue Laoshi), Douyin also began to have some content that was different from music.ly. Tik Tok has begun to slowly break away from the influence of musical.ly, taking a crucial step in the process of localization.

At the same time, the growth team also summed up some methodologies in the operation of the challenge and continued to improve them in the following time. I believe that this methodology has played an indispensable role in the remarkable overseas development of TikTok.

● Growth period (April 2017~February 2018): v1.4.0~v1.7.3

After entering the product growth period, Douyin began to access the celebrity resources of Toutiao. Through continuous operations, the user scale began to grow rapidly. Next, we analyze the traffic funnel model of Douyin at this stage:

1. Acquisition

(1) Diverting traffic through online channels

This has been analyzed before. The Miaopai channel has never been abandoned. The last video posted on Meipai was in December 2017. It should have been abandoned now.

(2) Expand new users through KOL resources

There are reports that Tik Tok is seeking guild resources to sign more internet celebrities, but I haven’t found any relevant news online. I think the news should be credible. Judging from Weibo, Douyin has been signing more internet celebrities.

(3) Expand new users through celebrity resources

The product functions at this stage are basically complete. Starting from April 2017, Douyin officially connected to Toutiao's celebrity resources, promoted products through celebrity influence, and tried to carry out various operational activities with the help of celebrity resources.

(4) Expand new user base through popular variety shows

Since June 2017, Douyin has sponsored some of the popular variety shows based on user matching, which are summarized as follows:

"High Energy Youth League" (June 2017)

I Want to Sing with You (July 2017)

Happy Camp (August 2017)

The Rap of China (August 2017)

College Students Are Coming (August 2017)

Chinese Restaurant (September 2017)

Day Day Up (September 2017)

Happy Club (September 2017)

Hunan Satellite TV Mid-Autumn Festival Gala (October 2017)

"The Great Detective" (November 2017)

Here We Come (December 2017)

Title sponsor of Jiangsu Satellite TV, Zhejiang Satellite TV and Hunan Satellite TV's "New Year's Eve Concert" (December 2017)

(5) Exchange user resources through cross-border cooperation

Since April 2017, we have been exchanging resources across borders through active or passive means, and the following is a summary:

Exchanged resources with NetEase Cloud Music (April 2017)

Collaborated with Mobike to launch hip-hop themed bikes (September 2017)

Collaborated with Burger King to open a co-branded custom store (September 2017)

Cross-border cooperation with Pizza Hut (October 2017)

(6) Acquire new users by designing interesting H5s in WeChat Moments

a. "Adopt an Idol" (July 2017)

b. World Famous Paintings in Motion (July 2017)

c. "Qixi Festival: Confession of Money" (August 2017)

As shown in the figure:

(7) Through offline activities

a. Organize “TikTok IDOU Night” (September 2017)

b. Held the national tour party “Chengdu Station” (September 2017)

c. Held the national tour party "Guangzhou Station" (September 2017)

d. Held the national tour party "Hangzhou Station" (September 2017)

e. Held the national tour party "Fuzhou Station" (September 2017)

f. Held the national tour party "Xi'an Station" (November 2017)

(8) Offline advertising to promote products

On June 12, 2017, during the summer vacation, Douyin placed advertisements in nearly 210 cinemas in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. This advertisement brings together many experts from the Douyin community and is completed entirely using Douyin's short video shooting techniques, which can be regarded as a Douyin user tutorial.

(9) Launch of “Millionaire Heroes”

The trend gradually emerged at the end of December 2017. By the beginning of 2018, a number of "live quiz" products were launched on the market. Toutiao products also took advantage of the trend and jointly launched "Million Heroes". At the same time, in the "Million Heroes" event hosted by Toutiao, Xigua Video and Douyin were mentioned more than a dozen times, and it is obvious that they are using answering questions to increase the volume of products in their own ecosystem.

2. User Activation and Retention

(1) Added user ID for short videos and launched the unique ID function

Since the beginning of March 2017, the short videos shared on the official Weibo of Douyin have not only the watermark of the Douyin logo, but also the ID of the video user. At the same time, the unique ID function was also launched. This sends a positive signal for content producers' creations. Videos shared by users can help content producers increase their fans and increase their enthusiasm.

(2) The "Fresh" tab on the homepage is changed to the "Nearby" tab

In version v1.4.5, released on June 16, 2017, the "Fresh" tab was changed to the "Nearby" tab. The "Nearby" label is easy to understand. It is nothing more than distributing content based on examples. After experiencing the storm of celebrity hype, the user scale of Douyin has increased rapidly. I believe that the amount of content generated every day has also increased dramatically. At this time, Douyin must have a more efficient and complete strategy, which also means more complexity.

(2) Operation Challenge

If we say that TikTok started to break away from the influence of musical.ly during its development phase, then during its growth phase, it completed its localization process by running bolder, more fun challenges that were closer to life and hot topics. The author speculates that at this stage, the Douyin growth team should have formed a complete set of methodologies, which is also the reason why the team chose to go overseas during this period.

(3) New topics launched on official Weibo

During the growth period, Douyin’s official Weibo account began to operate several new topics: #Popular Challenge Recommendations#, #Douyin Video Tutorials#, #Douyin Music Chart#, etc. The threshold for new users is further lowered through video tutorials, and some challenges and popular videos are recommended to stimulate user activity.

3. Increase Revenue

(1) Start exploring advertising business

On September 22, 2017, Tik Tok collaborated with Airbnb, Chevrolet and Harbin Beer on brand video advertising for the first time. As shown in the figure:

This cooperation is also the beginning of Douyin’s advertising business. Although the specific data is unclear, judging from the news circulating on the Internet, users are highly receptive to this type of advertising. After this, Douyin should have accelerated the advancement of its advertising business.

(2) Start exploring commercialization challenges

Collaborate with PepsiCo to launch a customized short video challenge, as shown in the picture:

At the end of 2017, Douyin began to experiment with the commercialization of challenges. By launching challenges planned by relevant brands and combining them with related benefits, it attracted users to actively produce videos with brand implantation. At the same time, Douyin has allocated corresponding traffic resources. As mentioned before, users are not too resistant to brand advertisements embedded in short videos. There were 30,000 participants in this event, and the number of likes exceeded millions. Since there is no data, the author estimates that the number of users reached is nearly 10 million.

(3) Start exploring live streaming business

In the released version v1.6.0, Douyin added a live broadcast function. In the early stage of the launch, there were no large-scale signed internet celebrities, so it should still be in the testing stage.

4. Referall

(1) Personal homepage supports sharing

(2) Bind your Weibo account and display it on the homepage

Since the collected information is not very complete, Douyin has not used any operational means to attract users to spread the content, except for adding more sharing mechanisms in product iteration. It only relies on the quality of the content itself to attract users to spread the content.

5. Summary of the stage

After the product entered the growth stage, Douyin began to invest heavily, including popular variety shows, offline activities, cross-border cooperation with other organizations, and at the same time taking advantage of hot spots to launch fun activities, H5, etc. The number of Douyin users also began to grow significantly.

Driven by the acceleration of capital power, Douyin has also accelerated its commercialization pace, including advertising business, live broadcast business, and commercial challenge business.

● Explosive growth period (February 2018 ~ July 2018): v1.7.4 to present

1. Acquisition

(1) Diverting traffic through online channels

At this stage, Douyin has basically not released any new videos on Miaopai, but Miaopai is still in use. It is estimated that the role of Miaopai is to provide a channel for sharing to Weibo. The videos posted on Weibo basically come from Miaopai.

(2) Expand new users through celebrity resources

From the information provided by major media, we can find that after entering the explosive period, Douyin has signed fewer and fewer celebrities and began to seek other growth points.

(3) Acquire new users through online activities

From the above data, it can be clearly seen that since February 2018, Douyin's online advertising has become more aggressive. Yuan Ye, advertising business manager at Mobivista (a mobile marketing advertising company that counts Kuaishou and Toutiao as its clients), revealed in an interview with Jiemian News that during the Spring Festival, Douyin has been frantically buying traffic from various channels: "Basically, the top traffic on iOS in China is pushing their ads, such as Candy Crush Saga, Ledou Games, etc."

During the Spring Festival, Douyin invited 12 popular stars, including He Jiong, Li Yuchun, Dilraba Dilmurat, Zhou Dongyu, and Angelababy, to carry out two rounds of red envelope distribution activities on February 8th to 9th and February 13th to 19th respectively.

By March 2018, the number of Douyin users had increased from 40 million daily active users at the beginning of February to 70 million daily active users.

2. User Activation and Retention

(1) Distribution strategy during the explosive growth period

The content distribution strategy during this period should have been basically perfected, but it is still far from mature. The author speculates that the TikTok growth team should still be conducting small-scale tests to test the bottom line of users. For example: testing users' acceptance of the number of advertisements, testing users' acceptance of advertising content (providing advertisers with optimization directions), testing users' acceptance of homogeneous content, making more detailed user portraits, etc.

From a psychological perspective: people tend to follow the crowd, and the phenomenon of imitation among Chinese people is also quite serious. A popular video may attract a considerable number of followers, generate dozens or hundreds of challenges, and millions of homogeneous content. After being distributed to multiple different groups of people, these contents can generate dozens of popular videos, some of which even have more likes than the original creator of the video.

Based on my own experience and feedback from some colleagues, the homogeneity of Douyin's content has reached a considerable level (the higher the frequency of use and the longer the use time, the more homogeneous content you will encounter). For example: breaking wine bowls, challenging doors, etc., these contents appear quite frequently over a period of time. The key is that these contents may be under different categories, under different challenges, and even distributed to different groups of people through algorithms, resulting in homogeneous popular content.

How to identify and reduce homogeneous content through algorithms is a problem faced by the TikTok team.

(2) Develop strategies to retain old users

During the development process of Douyin, due to various problems, such as product bugs, content homogeneity, and user disgust during testing, a large number of users were lost. At this time, Douyin began to formulate a more comprehensive user recall strategy:

a. Client PUSH recall;

b. Launch the "Better Life" plan to attract users through core values;

c. Recall users through celebrity operations (Jay Chou and Jeremy Lin released a Douyin interactive video);

d. Develop corresponding content distribution strategies for lost users (e.g., reduce advertising, reduce the distribution of new content, etc.);

e. Recall users through new product functions and features (e.g. AR camera, dance machine, etc.);

(3) Operation Challenge

Although commercial challenge business has been launched, the Douyin team strictly controls the number of customized challenges (8 released per month) at this stage. While constantly chasing hot topics, it is also constantly trying new content. At present, the Douyin platform already has more than a dozen content formats, including music, dance, emotion, technology, beauty, etc. However, for a fast-growing platform, this number is far from enough.

3. Increase Revenue

Let’s first take a look at the price of Douyin’s promotional resources in the second quarter of 2018 (the price will probably increase after July):

(1) Developing a mature advertising business

From the picture above, we can see that there are several types of advertising on Tik Tok. In addition to these advertisements, there are actually sticker advertisements. Because it is a non-standard product, the basic selling price is RMB 300,000/7 days and needs to be negotiated. The advantage of this form is that users actively use it and have a high degree of acceptance. The following picture shows a cooperation case of Pizza Hut stickers:

(2) Carry out the operation of commercial challenge competition

For example, the Douyin Haidilao Fancy Eating Challenge attracted a total of 15,000 participants as of March 20, with more than 2,000 related videos and a cumulative playback volume of more than 50 million. As a result, the order volume of Haidilao bean puff increased by 17%.

A marketing manager of a consumer goods giant revealed in an interview with Caixin that the entry fee for the Douyin Challenge is as high as more than 3.5 million yuan. Although sometimes the feedback received is far lower than expected, because Douyin’s gameplay is very popular and there are many post-90s people who are wanted by brands, many brands will still line up to try it. "

This type of customized challenge is a non-standard product and is generally used in combination with stickers, experts, and other means, and is equipped with corresponding traffic resources. However, after June this year, Douyin cancelled the configured traffic resources and changed them to require purchase. The final effect also depends largely on the energy of the brand itself. The following picture is an example of the OPPO Challenge "So You Are Like This":

(3) Sign a contract with influencers on the platform and start engaging in their advertising business

Douyin has previously tried to establish its own MCN (Multi-Channel Network) and sign exclusive agreements with influencers. However, according to a reporter from Caixin, this business was stopped in April because the input-output ratio of incubating celebrities was not high for Douyin and it took too much sales energy.

Currently, Douyin is preparing to enter into exclusive cooperation with MCN. The first-level MCN needs more than 25 original accounts and a total monthly playback volume of 80 million. In addition, there are multiple cooperation levels, which means that Douyin’s revenue will be shared with them.

(4) Start to deepen the live broadcast business

There is news on the Internet that in February 2018, Douyin sought cooperation with the guild and signed more Internet celebrities to carry out live broadcast business. Since there is no media coverage, it is unknown whether the source of the news is true. The author believes that with regard to the issue of increasingly stringent regulation, Douyin will definitely accelerate the process of commercialization and monetization.

(5) Start expanding e-commerce business

On March 27, 2018, Douyin began to have links related to Taobao sales. It should be testing the content's ability to drive sales. Later on May 15, 2018, the shopping cart function was officially launched to accelerate the e-commerce layout.

(6) Launch of content marketing tool “DOU+”

After users spend a certain amount of money, their videos can be recommended to a more targeted group of people, increasing the number of video views. It looks like a variation of advertising, which is essentially spending money to buy traffic. This feature has been online for too short a time, and no other information has been found in the media. The official has not disclosed how this feature is different from advertising.

Summary suggestions:

By reviewing the development history of Douyin, we can find that the fact that Douyin has been able to reach its current scale in less than two years is inseparable from the efforts of everyone in the Douyin team behind it. The author believes that the limits of Douyin are far more than this. Relying on the methodology summarized in the process of product development, Douyin chose to go overseas to conquer cities and territories in September 2017, and its scale is still expanding.

Tik Tok is still in the growth stage, so here are some suggestions suitable for the current stage:

1. User acquisition (Acquisition):

At the current stage, Douyin has significantly reduced its marketing investment in celebrities and variety shows. It may be that through data statistics, it was found that ROI has dropped to a certain level, or it may be that the focus has shifted to overseas, so domestic investment has been reduced. Despite this, it is still possible to reuse previously accumulated celebrity content resources through some simple ways.

(1) Keep up with social and celebrity hot topics, integrate celebrity content (integration is a must, as individual celebrity content has already been consumed by most users) to conduct topic marketing, and cooperate with certain advertising to acquire new users;

2. User Retention

(1) Improve the product recall mechanism. Currently, there is a lack of SMS recall. At this stage, we can try to add SMS recall as a means to win back old users.

According to the collected information, no previous attempts in this regard were found. It may also be that the team’s content distribution mechanism for the current content is still immature, so more recall methods have not been established.

3. Increase Revenue

Recently, news broke that a third party helped Douyin produce and place advertisements involving insults to martyrs, and the regulatory authorities required Douyin's advertising business to be suspended for rectification.

(1) For Douyin, advertising business is its main source of income, so establishing a sound regulatory system is of utmost importance. There is already a preliminary framework for the regulatory system for product content, but there is no effective means of external supervision.

4. Referall

Maybe the product has not yet entered its mature stage, so the Douyin team has made relatively few attempts in this regard. However, there are actually many ways to encourage users to spread the word.

(1) Integrate celebrity content and design more interesting H5s to attract users to spread the word;

(2) Edit celebrity content to create different types of short videos with themes that showcase celebrities’ different past images to attract fans to spread the content;

Author: Jianshu , authorized to publish by Qinggua Media .

Source: Jianshu