Why can’t Douyin influencer promotion be charged based on results?

Whether it is performance advertising or brand advertising, how to improve the conversion rate of advertising is what the students in charge of advertising should focus on solving. Why can others achieve results while you can’t? Just like some operators , who fail to operate the community well, they come to the conclusion that the community is useless. This is something that needs reflection.

When doing the Douyin influencer business, I received several questions: Why can't the Douyin influencer promotion be promoted according to the CPA settlement method? Is it because CPA is beneficial to the company but not to the internet celebrities, so this charging method is not adopted? Douyin influencers use videos to promote products and charge per video. If there is no conversion rate, wouldn’t it be a big loss for the company? If the effect of brand promotion is very weak, is it a problem with the product or the internet celebrity?

After reading these questions, I can roughly guess that this may be a question that many students who do product promotion will have. These questions were asked in the form of user messages. If I were to reply to them later, I guess there wouldn’t be enough space for so many words, so I’m starting a new article here to discuss these questions separately and help other students who have the same questions.

Question 1: Why can’t Douyin influencer promotion be based on the CPA settlement method?

From this question we can see that this must be a question raised by Party A. We make decisions based on maximizing our own interests when doing anything. As Party A, it is beneficial for you to spend 100 yuan and get back 100+ yuan. For Party B, if the advertising space is worth 100 yuan, they should try to sell it for no less than 100 yuan. There will be a game here. What Party A wants is to spend the least money and buy the best resources, while what Party B wants is to sell the resources at a reasonable price. One is to buy, the other is to sell, and the balance point in the middle is the effect.

Since the balance point is the effect, why can't it be charged according to the CPA performance advertising billing method? This starts with the history of CPA. The first time I came into contact with CPA was in 2012. In order to seize market share, some APP companies bought users at a price ranging from a few cents to a few dollars per A. The A here refers to activation, that is, the price of a new user. This billing method is simple and direct. For example, if a package is placed in channel A, and 10,000 new activations are made in a month, and each A is priced at RMB 1, the settlement amount will be RMB 10,000.

In the early days of the Internet , when the rules were not very complete, this billing method was more common. As the dividends of mobile Internet disappeared, the importance of channels became increasingly important, and the previous CPA settlement method was no longer feasible. Why doesn't it work? Because the CPA data is provided by CP (Party A), it is whatever Party A says. If the actual activations are 100, but Party A says there are only 20, there is nothing the channel can do about it. This behavior is called deduction in the industry.

As the channel’s voice becomes stronger and CP weakens, the channel begins to wonder how to put an end to the practice of deducting quantities. The idea is very simple, which is to play the game according to the rules you set. In this world, the strong make the rules and the weak abide by the rules. This is true between countries, let alone between companies. Therefore, now when looking for channels to buy traffic, they all follow the CPD method, which means settlement is based on the number of downloads. This data is provided by the channel, which can eliminate the situation of CP deduction.

Therefore, we can conclude from the above that if the settlement is based on CPA, Party A will deduct the amount because of distrust, which makes it impossible to charge according to the CPA method. This is one reason. By the way, if both parties trust each other, can they settle the bill according to the CPA method? The answer is still no, which brings us to the second reason, the technical reason.

CPA is settled according to the activation data of the package. For example, if there are 100 channels for promotion, 100 packages with different channel numbers will be generated. The activation of each package is counted separately to distinguish the data of each channel, and settlement is made according to this data. Assuming that there is only one package for these 100 channels, if there are 1,000 new activations, which channel brought them? If you don’t know, there is no way to settle it.

This is the problem with promoting Douyin influencers. For example, suppose the Douyin influencer is promoting an educational APP named "Tiger I Love You". After the Douyin influencer releases the video, the number of views is astonishing, forming a small hot spot. Users who have watched the video want to download "Tiger I Love You". At this time, it will be found that those users who have watched the video and converted are scattered. Some go to the Apple Store to download "Tiger I Love You", some go to App Store to download it, some go to Xiaomi Store to download it, and some download "Tiger I Love You" from an unknown app store on their mobile phones. So how many activations are brought by this video? Based on current technology, it is impossible to count the data, and it is impossible to settle according to CPA data.

Therefore, whether from a technical perspective or from a trust perspective, it is not feasible to settle the Tik Tok influencer promotion products based on the CPA method. As a result, this kind of charging by the piece was formed, which is equivalent to a package deal, with a flat price for all, regardless of the effect.

Question 2: If the conversion rate of products promoted by Douyin influencers is very poor, won’t the advertiser suffer a great loss?

This is an easy question to answer. Yes, if the advertisement has no effect, the advertiser will definitely lose money. So for this reason, will you stop advertising? It’s impossible. Advertising still needs to be placed. The only problem to be solved is how to place the advertisement and make it effective.

Whether it is Douyin influencer promotion or CPA buying, there will be times when the conversion rate is very poor. Let’s first talk about the situation where CPA conversion is very poor. From the data at first glance, for example, with a budget of 10,000 yuan, 1 yuan for each A, and 10,000 users purchased, from this perspective, CPA is a sure profit and the effect is great.

If we continue to analyze in depth, we will find that the quality of users is a little different and the retention rate is extremely low. Under normal circumstances, the retention rate is 30%, but the retention rate of this A is less than 1%? Is the user a robot? This involves the method of brushing fake traffic. In the mobile Internet industry, a promotion that does not buy fake CPA traffic is not a good promotion. We once had a situation where we gave out 300,000 yuan but not a single real user bought it. That was really tragic. In this case, aren’t advertisers losing out?

When Douyin influencers promote products, will the effect be the same as CPA, with poor conversion rates? Yes, the conversion of CPA promotion is implicit, while the conversion of Douyin influencer promotion is explicit. For example, if you spend 100,000 yuan to hire a Douyin influencer to promote a video, according to the CPA idea, if the video does not receive more than 10,000 activations on the same day, the video will be a loss. In fact, whether the promotion of Douyin internet celebrities can produce results also depends on the promotion strategy . This strategy is to create hot spots. Once the hot spots are created, they can bring obvious conversion effects. And to find a strategy, simply speaking, it is matrix promotion. The way of playing matrix promotion will not be elaborated here as that article takes up too much space.

In summary, no matter it is performance advertising or brand advertising, how to improve the conversion rate of advertising is what the students responsible for advertising should focus on solving. Why can others achieve results, but you can’t? Just like some operators, who fail to operate the community well, they come to the conclusion that the community is useless. This is something that needs reflection.

Question 3: If the effect of brand promotion is very weak, is it a problem with the product or the internet celebrity?

Seeing this question reminds me of a point of frequent conflict between the market and development: a game launched into the market, assuming that there are 100,000 users, but the payment is very poor. The market will say: What a crappy game you developed, it’s not worth paying for. The developers will say: You bought some crappy users who can’t pay. So if payment doesn’t work, is it a problem with user quality or a problem with the game itself? There is indeed no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The true answer must be derived from a specific analysis of the specific situation.

If the promotion method used by Douyin influencers is ineffective, it is generally a problem on the influencers' side and they cannot be blamed. The problems on the influencer side include poor video creativity, weak brand exposure, and unclear conversion guidance. The most likely thing that happens here is that the creativity is not ideal. It refers to how to impress users and generate conversions through a 15-second video. This is when creativity is tested. Fortunately, we have professional planning and our creativity is quite reliable.

Some videos, like the one that promoted iFlytek Voice Note, were creative in showing this high-tech in usage scenarios, which immediately captured the attention of users and put the product on the Apple list. Some videos fail to generate conversions no matter how many times they are shot, because the creativity fails to impress users.

Another type of product with a very low conversion rate is one with problems in the conversion path. Every time when I talk to new customers about TikTok business, the first question is: Does your product have a brand? Where can I buy it? Why do we ask this? It is to see whether the user's conversion path is smooth. For example, a private customized bread brand’s purchasing portal is Youzan. For clients like this, I would not recommend them to invest in Douyin influencers. Even if they do, the conversion rate will not be much better. It would be much better if there was a purchasing entrance on Taobao or Tmall .

To sum up, if the conversion rate of products promoted through branding is not high, my suggestion is to optimize the delivery rhythm and creativity. The rhythm of delivery is the key to whether a hot spot can be formed, creativity is the key to whether conversion can be achieved, and of course the product itself must have attributes that meet certain user needs. Brand promotion requires good products + good ideas + good promotion channels , and there will be good results.

The above is a simple explanation of these three questions. Of course, there may be other different answers. Just remember this: existence is reasonable, and the rules will also change according to market changes. Recently I have been thinking that Douyin influencers may be able to promote their products by using the method of per-post + profit-sharing, just like the monetization trend of public accounts . When CPM is no longer feasible, everyone starts to try CPS.

Author: Tiger, authorized to be published by Qinggua Media.

Source: Tiger Talk Operations