After watching 100 Douyin game videos, I summarized 6 ideas for buying traffic for short videos

With the rapid rise of TikTok in a short period of time, more and more people have begun to turn their attention to the huge trend of " short videos ". If the previous Kuaishou craze was mainly concentrated in user groups with low purchasing power in third- and fourth-tier cities and rural areas, and failed to effectively capture the attention of mainstream users; then the Douyin that is now shining in first- and second-tier cities has made it impossible for manufacturers to ignore the appeal of short videos to users.

With the emergence of short videos as a new channel , how to use the channel more effectively has become a new round of headaches for manufacturers at all levels. In a previous article, Grape Jun mentioned that, unlike Kuaishou, Douyin users are mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, half of whom are under 24 years old, and the majority are women. Most of them have not been exposed to the traditional buying volume game routines, and the user quality is very high. This type of people have a strong resistance to hard advertising by game manufacturers and generally trust their own vision for product selection.

Judging from the data of game advertisements on Douyin, the number of likes for most game product advertisements did not exceed 30,000, and the comments were mostly jokes and ridicules unrelated to the products. Not only was user attention low, but the conversion rate was also difficult to guarantee. Traditional short video buying methods that can be implemented on Kuaishou may not work on Douyin.

A certain buying traffic platform once talked to Grape Jun about buying traffic and marketing on Douyin. They claimed that they were one of the earliest platforms to buy traffic on Douyin, and had invested in Douyin as early as December last year. However, in 2018, the price of Douyin advertising rose sharply, and its delivery system was not very perfect, so the manufacturer did not continue to invest in Douyin. However, he said that many platforms are now competing for the Douyin market.

In addition, in his opinion, the price of TikTok is also relatively expensive. "At the end of 2017, the unit price of users of Xianxia products on Douyin was 60 to 70 yuan. But compared with other channels, the quality of Douyin users is very good. Generally speaking, the 7-day retention rate of Xianxia products is about 30%, but Douyin can achieve 35% to 40%."

"However, in 2018, I felt that the quality of Douyin users had begun to decline, and the price had also been raised, making it difficult to make a profit, so I did not invest again. For example, after so many days of investment, the package price of Douyin in 2017 was probably 500,000, but it rose to 800,000 in 2018. The LTV did not change, so the return on investment was poor."

In order to further understand the product selection style of Douyin users, recently, Grape Jun surveyed 100 game video contents with more than 30,000 likes in Douyin's #游戏 tag and found that the types of game videos favored by users are nothing more than the following four situations.

1. Popular games with exciting gameplay

Judging from the current gaming videos on TikTok, the video categories with the highest number of likes include " League of Legends ", " Honor of Kings ", " PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds " and a number of "chicken-eating" mobile games with exciting operations and funny moments.

Compared with other game products, popular games mostly use combat as the main gameplay, have high player stickiness, low entry barriers, and short single game time. Various factors have led to these products having a very wide audience in China. Most TikTok users have come into contact with such products directly or indirectly, saving the cost of familiarizing themselves with the gameplay and being able to understand the highlights of the video while browsing it.

And because the product has a large audience, users will be more willing to participate in comments and share them on their social networks , further increasing the popularity of the video.

A video with 50,000 likes has more than 4,000 reposts, while other game videos with the same number of likes have less than 1,000 reposts.

But on the other hand, because most authors choose popular games as video materials, there is an oversupply of video content for these games. If you want to stand out, you need higher requirements for video creativity.

2. Exquisite graphics for stand-alone masterpieces

In contrast to the fact that everyone knows about popular games, the recognition of overseas single-player blockbusters is not high in China. However, most stand-alone blockbusters have exquisite graphics, which can attract the attention of users who have never been exposed to such products.

Among the Douyin users whose main content is games, Red Magic Standalone (formerly known as Large Standalone Games) is a typical Douyin creator who focuses on stand-alone game content. Most of the videos he contributes are stand-alone game masterpieces with gorgeous graphics and strong impact, including "Just Cause 3", "Rise of the Tomb Raider", "Battlefield 4", "Titanfall" and other works. The videos he created in the early days of his account often received tens of thousands of likes.

Game accounts generally have a short lifespan

However, after a period of glory at the beginning, among the more than 200 videos after the Red Magic game, only one had over 1,000 likes, and most of the others had around 300 likes. This may be because the operator of Douyin believed that users have become aesthetically fatigued with such content.

3. Special Art of Sketches and Games

Among the 100 Douyin game short videos surveyed by Grape Jun, small-scale games with simple gameplay and unique artistic style accounted for more than 40%, becoming a category that dominated the list.

Most of these products have distinct artistic styles, which create visual impact for users through high-contrast color blocks and simple polygons. On the other hand, the gameplay of most of these games is very simple, and the audience can quickly understand the meaning of the operations through the pictures.

The Douyin anchor "Unreliable Game Planner" mainly produces videos of games in this category. The number of likes for his content generally reaches more than 3,000, and popular products can have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of likes. Compared with popular games, the popularity of small-category games is generally more stable, and the difficulty of content creation is much lower than that of popular game videos, and the cost is mainly concentrated on product selection.

The picture is simple and the color contrast is strong

In addition to winning with visuals, some video producers will give meaning to game videos. The method is usually to add a monologue to the game video, allowing the audience to associate the sound with the video and generate new connotations. On TikTok, a short video with the game "Lost Tracks" as the video content and the monologue of "Big Fish and Begonia" as the audio content received more than 1.3 million likes and over 60,000 comments. The movie "Ex-Files 3: The Final Chapter" happened to be very popular at that time, and most of the comments on this short video were users' confessions to their past loved ones.

Compared with the first two types of content, the threshold for video production of small-scale game content is relatively low, so often a large number of follow-up videos will emerge after a hit product appears, which will also drive the download volume of the product on various channels. However, due to limitations of factors such as their gameplay, the direct profitability of such products is relatively weak, and most of their revenue is generated through pop-up ads or incentive ads.

4. Weird game with magical gameplay

Unlike small-scale games that win with their graphics, weird games win more with their magical content. Typical examples include "Hot-Blooded High School! Dogami Gebu" and "Don't Stop! "Eighth Note-chan" (休むな! 8th Note-chan), "The Most Embarrassing Game", "Katsura-chan" (カツラちゅるん), "Maiko Doliru" (舞題佈リル), etc.

The highlights of this type of game are partly focused on the funny gameplay of the game itself and partly on the interesting performance of the people playing the game.

Generally speaking, the graphics of magic games are not beautiful, but rather have a shoddy style. However, because their gameplay or content is relatively funny, they are easy to spread among the crowd and attract other users to download them.

Similarly, in order to ensure the fun of the game, most weird games do not include in-app purchases, but instead use advertising to generate revenue, mostly in the form of incentive-based advertising.

Most weird game videos will film the players together

Now that we understand the content preferences of Tik Tok users, let’s talk about how to use the above four game categories to buy traffic and market products.

1. Differentiation of mainstream gameplay

Earlier we mentioned that popular games are the game category with the most likes on Douyin, and users have been trained by these products and have a strong acceptance of such content. But this doesn’t mean that other games can’t stand out in this category. It is better to say that players who have been trained by products such as "Chicken Eating" and "Honor of Kings" will pay more attention to some differentiated products.

After users have begun to feel aesthetic fatigue with traditional chicken-eating content, it may be time for some products that use battle royale as the core content of the game but are differentiated in terms of operation, graphics, and gameplay to enter Douyin.

In Grape Jun’s opinion, there are still many new products in China with battle royale as the core gameplay. But unlike Tencent and NetEase's "Chicken Eating", most of them did not adopt the over-the-shoulder perspective of traditional chicken-eating games, and made many specific improvements in aspects such as graphics and details.

Judging from the product selection habits of Douyin users, these games are likely to gain good attention on Douyin. However, as of press time, we have not found any products of this type on Douyin.

Pixel style bird's-eye view chicken game

2. Beautiful self-produced images

As early as several years ago, many domestic manufacturers used CG videos and game screens of foreign blockbusters to promote their own products. This method was indeed very effective in the beginning, but as the vision of domestic target users gradually broadened, directly plagiarizing foreign game manufacturers has become increasingly unfeasible.

In order to continue to attract players, some manufacturers have begun to produce corresponding animations based on the tone of their own games. Although there is a certain gap between the graphics of the game itself and the highlights shown in the video are consistent with the selling points of the game itself, and it has indeed attracted some players. As shown in the picture below, although the Douyin video of this product also shows the framework of a fantasy world, the picture is completely inconsistent with the game itself.

On the other hand, some IP works can also gain the favor of original fans by showcasing the IP. For example, a hunter IP mobile game directly uploaded the animation clips of "Hunter×Hunter" on Douyin, which also received hundreds of thousands of likes.

3. Popular game advertising placement

The third and fourth categories of products can be discussed together.

These two types of products are the easiest video content to become popular on Douyin at a low cost, and together they occupy 73 positions out of 100 videos. If you want to take advantage of the high acceptance of these games on TikTok, currently internal product advertising is an effective way.

Take the examples of “Force Escape” which was very popular on TikTok before and “Fingertip Drift” which has been rising rapidly in recent days. Looking at the data on the App Store alone, the number of downloads of the former had been hovering around the thousand before it landed on Douyin, but it jumped by hundreds after becoming popular on Douyin. FingerDrift has jumped into the top five of the game download list thanks to the popularity of Douyin. And in the comment sections of both, users who come from TikTok often appear.

Therefore, advertising platforms that are interested in cooperating with short video apps such as Douyin can target new games that have the potential to become popular on Douyin, in order to optimize the platform's product reserves. In addition, the quality of Douyin users is relatively high, and they are a high-quality source of users.

However, these two types of products are mainly spread in the form of videos uploaded by users themselves, making it difficult to monitor the entrance and there is no way to obtain accurate data on their conversion rates.

In addition to working hard on video content, there is also something to be explored in terms of marketing.

4. Funny skins for buying games

Among all the popular works on Douyin, there is an absolute outlier. As a very traditional buying volume game, it relies on interesting scene action design and humorous dialogues to attract users to like it. Among the 100 videos surveyed by Grape Jun, this game appeared twice, and in its comment section, there were many comments saying "already downloaded" and "the skills are so funny".

Judging from the previous submissions of the users who uploaded the two videos, none of them are promoters of the game, and they both misspelled the name of the product in their comments. However, it is not difficult to see from the successful example of this product that even traditional paid-for games can attract users' attention by making improvements in picture performance and game details. From the current perspective, this is the only product that has taken this path and has been relatively successful, so other manufacturers still have a lot of opportunities.

5. Cooperation with famous celebrities as spokespersons

The rapid rise of TikTok began in March 2017 when crosstalk artist Yue Yunpeng reposted a TikTok video on Weibo. Since then, first-line stars including Hu Yanbin, Chen He, and Lu Han have gradually entered Douyin, bringing a large amount of popularity to Douyin. Moreover, most of Douyin users are young people in first- and second-tier cities, and they are the core audience of celebrities and idols.

Recently, some well-known manufacturers have begun to promote their products on TikTok by cooperating with well-known artists for marketing. For example, Tmall posted two dance videos of its spokesperson Yi Yang Qianxi on Douyin, which received a total of more than 500,000 likes and over 10,000 reposts. The collaborative marketing between Holic and Angelababy also received 213,000 likes on Douyin.

Just like the collaboration between "Legend of Blue Moon" and celebrities such as Zha Zha Hui and Louis Koo, collaborative marketing with celebrities is still effective on Douyin. But what is different from the past is that because the overall users of Douyin tend to be younger and more fashionable, when selecting spokespersons, choosing stars who are popular among young users will achieve better results.

For example, the spokesperson for "Angel Age" promoted on Tik Tok, Liu Yifei, is a star who is very popular among young users. Then manufacturers can completely invite Liu Yifei to conduct product marketing through short videos on Douyin. The cost is much lower than hiring another celebrity to promote it, and it can also directly reach Douyin's core users.

On the other hand, internet celebrities supported by Douyin itself are also partners that manufacturers can consider. However, according to the information currently available, the advertising fees of Douyin celebrities with millions of fans have exceeded one million yuan. Compared with celebrity endorsements, the price advantage of Douyin influencers is not obvious.

6. Create tags to enhance interaction

The so-called "launching a tag" refers to adding a tag challenge on Douyin to guide users to create marketing methods that are in line with the content of the tag. It can be regarded as an enhanced version of cooperation with celebrities. Currently, most of the tag content is initially disseminated on a large scale through celebrity participation in order to achieve the purpose of launching the event. The previous cooperation between Holic and Angelababy was a tag marketing, and currently 25,000 people have participated in the tag.

The core content of this cooperation is also in participating in the lucky draw.

The cooperation between Holic and Angelababy belongs to the relatively shallow "participation in lottery" model, and users participate mostly to get rewards. If game manufacturers cooperate with these stars, in addition to adding the element of "participating in the lottery", they can also use funny clips of stars playing games as the material for launching tags, guiding users to perform various interactive modes such as body imitation , game operation imitation, lip syncing, etc., so as to achieve the purpose of marketing the game.

Conclusion

After seeing so many ideas for buying traffic and marketing, it can be seen that short videos, as an emerging channel, still have many ways to explore.

Although at the beginning of the article, Grape Jun mentioned that the price of buying traffic on Douyin is rising, the quality of users has also slightly declined. But compared with other traditional channels, short videos still have their unique advantages.

In addition, short videos will replace pictures and texts to become the next hot spot in content distribution , which is already the default development trend of the Internet industry. Tencent’s revival of Weishi and its use of huge amounts of money for subsidies are the best endorsement of the short video trend.

Compared with other types of short videos, short videos with mobile games as the main content are less likely to involve areas such as pornography and vulgarity, and will be subject to fewer restrictions under the strong regulatory environment. There is still a lot of room for imagination waiting to be explored in short video apps.

The author of this article is @游戏葡萄. It is compiled and published by (青瓜传媒). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games