Double 11 advertising strategy

On Double 11 in 2021, mainstream e-commerce platforms will still adopt the nunchaku sales rhythm of "two waves of pre-sales and two waves of detonation". Under the new promotion rhythm, the intervals between year-end promotions such as Double 11 and Double 12 have shortened, platforms and brands continue to release various promotion information, and the promotional works of content platform influencers continue to ignite consumers' desire to buy.

The nunchaku rhythm has extended the grass-planting cycle for the brand, and has won the opportunity to be chosen by more consumers, but at the same time, it is also a new test for whether the brand can continue to achieve grass-planting conversion under the rhythm of a long cycle and multiple trigger points. Under the new rhythm, what new trends and new opportunities will brands have in influencer marketing on this year's Double 11?

1. E-commerce platforms: new trends in marketing

Facing the double-stick promotion rhythm, e-commerce platforms have the following three new trends in marketing:

• Young, entertaining and IP-based marketing gain momentum

Taobao, JD.com, Suning and others have all chosen to use entertainment and cultural IP marketing promotions to reach the Generation Z population. Taobao uses the cartoon IP of Star Cat and small games to attract young users to check in and raise cats online every day; JD.com teamed up with a number of talk show hosts to hold a Double 11 press conference in the form of a talk show conference to promote Double 11 gameplay and preferential policies; Suning cooperated with League of Legends S10, leveraging the popularity of world-class game events to inspire spontaneous support from young game fans and seize the minds of Generation Z.

• The rapid growth of content e-commerce is expected to reverse the traditional e-commerce

Douyin and Kuaishou have locked in the early November time period to create festivals first, leveraging their own content advantages and the popularity of Double 11 to launch topic marketing with influencers + celebrities + brands, and then to form a one-stop conversion chain from short video dissemination to live streaming harvesting. In 2020, the GMV of Douyin e-commerce exceeded 500 billion, three times the previous year. Content e-commerce is growing rapidly and is poised to take on traditional e-commerce.

• Live streaming e-commerce boom is here

On Double 11 in 2020, the news that Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya sold 7 billion yuan overnight and earned 600 million yuan a day became a hot topic and sparked heated discussions across the Internet. The sales capabilities of content e-commerce platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have been recognized by the market. Douyin store live broadcasts have been making great strides, with brand stores’ self-broadcasts contributing more than 50% of sales. The two-way layout of anchors selling goods + stores broadcasting by themselves has become the trend.

2. Trends in influencer marketing during major promotions by advertisers

The direction of e-commerce platforms under the new rhythm of nunchaku also shows that the marketing form of "expert content marketing + live e-commerce sales" has become the mainstream communication form. Weiboyi focuses on the overall trend of advertisers' influencer marketing during the major promotion periods from 2019 to 2021, and finds that brand advertisers have the following trends in influencer marketing:

Under the nunchaku rhythm, Double 11 advertising presents three major characteristics: advancement, growth and extension. The end of September to the end of October will be the peak period for advertisers to deploy Double 11 expert marketing.

Judging from the growth trend of Weibo’s order numbers over the years, the first two months of e-commerce activities are the peak times for advertisers to deploy influencer marketing. Focusing on the daily advertising trends in the two months before Double 11, the end of September to the whole of October will be the peak period for advertisers. At the same time, along with the new rhythm of the nunchaku promotion, advertisers' delivery peaks generally showed three major trends: moving forward, increasing and extending.

Regular promotion is the mainstream, and only 40% of the orders explicitly mention the promotion keywords. In big promotion marketing, advertisers prefer list-type and list-type content.

During the peak periods of Double 11 and 618, the demand from advertisers emphasizing keywords at major promotional nodes only accounted for 30% to 40%. Mild, excessive and normalized content recommendation by experts is the mainstream. It can be seen that the explosion of Double 11 is not achieved overnight. The secret to detonating the node is the continuous promotion by influencers and repeated exposure to capture the minds of consumers.

During major promotional events, we found that the two key words “list” and “ranking” frequently appeared in advertisers’ demands. During major promotional events, collaborating with experts to create must-buy lists, must-stock lists, and other guides can more easily guide consumers in their consumption.

The release of commercial content for Double 11 was concentrated in the first wave of pre-sale and return period. Double 11 and Double 12 promotions were seamlessly connected.

In terms of the time period for releasing the commercial works of experts, we found that the number of works chosen to be released in October and after November 11 in 2020 increased significantly compared to 2019. The nunchaku rhythm not only lengthens the sales cycle and prompts influencer marketing to plan ahead, but also shortens the interval between Double 11 and Double 12. After Double 11, the trend of seamlessly connecting sales without stopping becomes prominent.

In terms of industry categories, beauty and daily chemicals accounted for the largest proportion. In terms of platform selection, Xiaohongshu grew significantly, with a 32% increase in share.

The number of advertisers participating in the node promotions in the beauty and daily chemicals and food and beverage categories has increased significantly, with the growth rate of beauty and daily chemicals reaching 18.8%. In terms of preferences for mainstream influencer marketing platforms, the demand for Xiaohongshu increased by as much as 32%. The combined share of the three emerging influencer marketing platforms, Douyin + Xiaohongshu + Bilibili, increased from 24% to 49%, and the share of Weibo and Weibo further decreased.

Advertisers have different marketing focuses on each platform, and show differentiated delivery tendencies in terms of influencer attributes and scale selection.

During Double 11 in 2020, advertisers invested more than 60% of their budgets in mid- and lower-tier influencers, while the proportion of top and tail influencers further decreased. At the same time, there is a trend of differentiation and segmentation in the scale of influencers and content attributes deployed on different platforms. Beauty, food, and entertainment and audio-visual have become the three content attributes with the most obvious increase in investment.

3. Insights into the advertising preferences of different categories of advertisers at major promotional events

In today's increasingly differentiated and segmented influencer marketing, what differentiated influencer marketing communication strategies do advertisers of different categories have in terms of influencer scale and content attribute selection on different self-media platforms?

From the promotion node service orders with an intended amount of over 5 billion, Weiboyi focused on the influencer marketing trends of advertisers in different industries during the promotion nodes from 2019 to 2021, and found that customers of different categories have the following common preference characteristics in the selection of influencers:

The strategy for launching the beauty and daily chemical product category portfolio is mature, with a strong reliance on beauty and fashion vertical influencers, and a clear tendency to move downward to the middle and tail ends.

The beauty and daily chemical categories have rich experience in self-media marketing, mature delivery strategies, and strong control over the global and cross-platform expert marketing layout. Douyin’s ability to create popular content and Xiaohongshu’s ability to create popular products are highly favored in this category.

In terms of influencer selection, the beauty and daily chemical categories are highly dependent on influencers with vertical attributes in the industry, with cooperation with vertical beauty influencers accounting for as high as 56%. Faced with the saturation of cooperation with top vertical influencers, advertisers have also increased the proportion of cooperation with mid- and low-end beauty and fashion influencers on mainstream platforms. At the same time, there has been a significant increase in the investment in emotional, plot-based, and life-based content, which is a new opportunity for breakthroughs in marketing by beauty and cosmetics influencers.

IT Internet, which excels in differentiated multi-circle expansion strategies, the two micro-platforms with a huge user base, and the influence of top influencers on each platform, are still the focus of investment.

When it comes to influencer marketing, IT internet advertisers focus on two main goals: topic creation and wide dissemination. Therefore, platforms and influencers that have the ability to spread information quickly and widely are their main needs. At the platform level, the huge user base of Weibo and WeChat is a must for advertising. Top-level entertainment, audio-visual, and joke experts who are good at leveraging key points and have a wide audience, as well as top-level beauty, fashion, food and beverage, and IT internet vertical experts are all strong cooperation types in this category.

In addition, with the segmentation trend of the mainstream online service product categories, the chances of content attributes such as maternal and child care, daily life, sports and fitness being selected are also growing rapidly.

In the digital home appliance category, there is a stronger willingness to cooperate with younger platforms, with Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili accounting for more than 60% of the investment. Differentiated expert selection is also the mainstream strategy of the category.

The digital home appliance industry dares to use younger platforms to reach potential users of Generation Z, and has a stronger intention to cooperate with Bilibili. Currently, the proportion of investment with Bilibili's top influencers has reached 44%.

When it comes to selecting influencers, we tend to adopt a multi-attribute layout and reach consumers by displaying multiple usage effects. Professional in-depth evaluations are concentrated on Weibo and Bilibili, which have a higher acceptance of medium-length video content; the dissemination of entertainment and joke topics is concentrated on Weibo and Tik Tok; and scenario-based cooperation opportunities such as fashion and sports reach different circles on multiple platforms.

Food and beverage products are more suitable for word-of-mouth communication, and the proportion of cooperation with tail KOCs is relatively high. Douyin and Xiaohongshu’s ability to create popular online products is more favored by advertisers.

Compared with other categories, food and beverage products have lower prices per item and the conversion barriers for potential consumers are relatively small. Therefore, the popular word-of-mouth communication strategy is more effective, so the willingness to invest in tail and KOC influencers is also stronger.

As consumers' demand for health, low calories, and sugar-free increases, people with good figures in sports and fitness, and fashion are also a new trend among food and beverage experts. In terms of platform preference, the food and beverage industry has increased its investment in Douyin and Bilibili. Douyin has many high-quality food experts and fast-paced and rapidly spreading short video content, which is suitable for the food and beverage industry's needs to quickly promote products.

The investment potential of maternal and child care products cannot be underestimated. The company has strong overall integrated communication capabilities. Bilibili’s commercialization potential is beginning to emerge, and it relies heavily on maternal and child verticals.

When it comes to maternal and infant industry advertising, the general model is to use high-quality mid- and low-end publicity advantages and the tail KOC to post orders and build word-of-mouth. Tik Tok has a strong communication capability and is popular among maternal and infant products. As Bilibili’s early users grow older, Bilibili’s commercial potential in maternal and infant products becomes more prominent, and brands are choosing to collaborate with mid-level influencers to test the waters.

In terms of expert selection, there is a high concentration of vertical categories, with the maternal and child vertical accounting for as much as 46%. At the same time, the growth rate of entertainment and audio-visual categories was significant, with investment increasing by 9% during the promotion period. Xiaohongshu platform has abundant maternal and infant vertical accounts and a high degree of commercial fit.

4. Two-way influencer selection and positioning strategy during major promotions

In response to the general need for expert marketing during major promotional events, Weibo has further established a strategy for selecting numbers during major promotional events based on its data-based precise number selection services. A resource pool of more than 300 high-quality talents for Double 11, 2021 has been selected for advertisers from the promotional node orders with an intended amount of more than 5 billion.

On the one hand, we use the cross-year re-investment influencers who have been continuously chosen by advertisers during major promotional events for many years as the screening criteria, and select high-quality influencer resources that have outstanding performance in multiple indicator evaluations of the two major standards of quantitative data performance and commercial cooperation capabilities. No matter how the pace of promotions changes, their high-quality content creation capabilities are the unchanging choice of advertisers and consumers.

On the other hand, based on the advertising tendencies of advertisers in different categories, we screen out the most commercially popular and cost-effective influencers with excellent content and data quality from the advertisers' high-frequency intended cooperation influencers in 2021, and provide them with certain advantageous cooperation policies for major promotion nodes to increase cooperation opportunities for major promotion nodes.

Author: weiboyi

Source: weiboyi