How can the photography industry find the blue ocean of traffic on Douyin?

According to Guanyan Tianxia's "2020 China Photography Industry Analysis Report - Market Operation Situation and Development Trend Forecast", the scale of China's commercial photography market reached 317.4945 billion yuan in 2019. Commercial photography is mainly divided into five categories: wedding photography, children photography, comprehensive photography, product production, and imaging services, with market sizes accounting for 34.8%, 26.2%, 13.0%, 21.0%, and 5% respectively.

As the main force in the photography industry, wedding photography has long occupied a dominant position.

However, as the education level of Chinese residents increases, their perception of marriage is gradually changing, and the age of marriage is being pushed back. Especially for many highly educated and high-income women, because they are busy with their careers, they no longer regard marriage as the only way to gain a sense of security. According to data from the Civil Affairs Bureau, the number of marriage registrations in my country has continued to decline in recent years, falling from 11.4282 million couples in 2016 to 8.131 million in 2020. In five years, the number of marriages has dropped by nearly 30%, and in 2019 it fell below the 10 million mark.

The disappearance of the bonus of the growth of the married population has posed severe challenges to the wedding photography category. According to TouBao Research Institute’s “Wedding Industry: Research on Wedding Photography Studios, Breakthroughs in the Branding Era”: As the main customer group of wedding photography, the decline in the number of newlyweds has caused the market size of China’s wedding photography industry to continue to shrink, from 32.17 billion yuan in 2014 to 25.27 billion yuan in 2018, with a compound annual growth rate of -5.9%.

Although the number of marriages is decreasing, with the continuous improvement of consumption levels and the acceleration of urbanization, the demand for the quality of wedding photography products by newlyweds is increasing, and their sensitivity to price is decreasing. A wedding photography company with 12 chain stores in Guangzhou said that the company's average customer unit price has increased from 4,500 yuan five years ago to 6,800 yuan today. Consumers' requirements for every aspect of wedding photography are constantly increasing, from makeup and clothing to photography and scenes, and the requirements for quality are becoming more and more stringent.

1. Specialized market segments such as business photography and ancient style photography have emerged and ushered in growth points

The number of married people is declining year by year, and wedding photography companies are in urgent need of finding new growth points in the existing market.

In addition to the large category of wedding photography, photography categories with different characteristics, such as business photos, ancient style photography, and segmented markets for different groups, such as personal photos, children's photos, maternity photos, family photos, and girlfriends photos, are all emerging, giving birth to and cultivating new growth points.

Moreover, unlike wedding photography, which most people only take once in their lifetime, business photos, ancient style photography, personal portraits, family portraits, photos of girlfriends, etc. are often consumed multiple times according to the consumers' own needs, becoming a "high-frequency" category in the photography industry.

In recent years, with the rise of national trends and the prevalence of Hanfu, a "national trend fever" has also been set off in the photography industry. Ancient-style photography has quickly seized the market, led the growth of categories, and become the focus of the entire photography industry. Zuitangfeng Ancient Style Photography is an enterprise with ancient style art photography as its core business. It was founded in 2006 and has more than 300 directly-operated and cooperative stores across the country, with an annual turnover of 570 million yuan.

Yuan Baichuan, vice president of Laise Group (parent company of Zuitangfeng Ancient Style Photography), said: "Ancient style photography has experienced a blowout growth along with the national trend. At that time, I chose this track more because I wanted to promote China's national culture and inherit China's classical aesthetics. I hope to spread China's history through photos and hope that more Chinese women can show their oriental charm and classical beauty."

2. The industry is highly competitive, and accurate customer acquisition through marketing promotion has become a key factor in performance growth

According to Qichacha data (March 2021), there are 1.63 million photography-related companies in my country, and the industry competition is very fierce. Therefore, marketing and promotion plays a vital role in the photography industry.

Traditional offline promotional exhibitions are limited in reach and are unlikely to generate strong brand influence, while outdoor advertising makes it difficult to calculate actual conversion effects.

With the development of the Internet industry, the marketing and promotion methods of the photography industry have gradually evolved from offline store promotion to online media promotion, and online has become an important marketing and promotion battlefield for the photography industry. According to relevant data, about 90% of users obtain photography information on the Internet platform, and consumers' ordering behavior is gradually shifting from offline to online.

Compared with offline, online marketing has the characteristics of low cost and large traffic. It can provide more direct customer acquisition leads, help quickly seize customer resources, help open up local incremental markets and national potential markets that cannot be reached by stores, and has a high order conversion rate. However, online marketing also has problems such as limited traffic resources, fragmented information, and difficulty in reaching accurate customer groups. Building a marketing model unique to the brand and improving the ability to accurately acquire customers and reuse customer information have become difficulties for corporate marketing.

Therefore, understanding market demand preferences, efficiently reaching consumers, and acquiring accurate customer information will become the core for photography companies to seize the market.

3. Zuitangfeng uses "information flow + search" dual-engine advertising to generate about 50,000 leads per month

Zui Tang Feng specializes in ancient-style photography. Its customer base is mainly female, and its users cover a wide age range. Zui Tang Feng has customized different photography products and services for user groups of different age groups. For those aged 18 to 25, we mainly promote cost-effective products with an average customer price of around RMB 2,000; for those aged 25 to 35, we mainly promote high-end products with an average customer price of around RMB 3,500; there are also customized products with an average customer price of around RMB 10,000 to meet personalized needs.

Only by tailoring marketing strategies according to different segments of the population can we achieve focused and efficient communication, accurate conversion and customer value mining. Since 2017, Zui Tang Feng has been promoting advertisements on ByteDance's marketing service platform, Toutiao, by leveraging the traffic advantages of products such as TikTok and Toutiao, and using precise recommendation technology for marketing promotion, driving corporate marketing efficiency.

Today, Zui Tang Feng can obtain 20,000 to 50,000 customer leads every month on the Bytedance platform, accounting for 40% of the company's omni-channel lead recovery volume, and the growth rate of leads collected through Bytedance is around 30%.

At the end of 2020, Zui Tangfeng tried to place search ads on platforms such as Douyin and Toutiao. Based on Zuitangfeng’s experience in advertising, the search advertising targets of Bytedance are more precise. Zuitangfeng can analyze user needs and preferences based on background data and provide data guidance for product optimization and research and development.

Currently, 20% of the leads collected by Zuitangfeng on Bytedance come from search ads. At the same time, Zeng Fanna, brand director of Laise Group, said that search advertising also plays a role in enhancing the brand influence of Zui Tang Feng. The search display effect is exclusive, which can enhance users' perception of Zui Tang Feng and make it easier to gain users' favor.

The combination of "picture and text" + "short video" search content formats can make the search information more vivid and intuitive, create a convenient and smooth search experience, and allow user groups to deepen their brand memory and favorability while "watching and searching", thereby improving the efficiency of information transmission. "Search after reading" is also the mainstream search under the content ecology, which allows brand information to "reappear" anytime and anywhere and answer questions for potential users.

4. Douyin Enterprise Account + Photographer Internet Celebrity Account Matrix Operation, with more than 2 million fans

Through the delivery of information flow and search ads, we help companies quickly convert leads with the help of business domain traffic. Douyin Enterprise Account can help companies build their own private domain traffic. Through the business path of "potential fans-passerby fans-favorable fans-true fans", it can manage brands and accumulate users in private domain scenarios such as homepages, private messages, subscriptions, group chats, etc., improve the efficiency and effectiveness of private domain operations, and thus obtain continuous growth of commercial value such as brand and sales.

For Zui Tangfeng, it hopes to establish a long-term brand operating position through the operation of Douyin matrix accounts, gather platform traffic, enhance brand awareness, establish long-term communication with target customers, and achieve in-store conversion.

The operation of the Douyin account of Zui Tang Feng Ancient Style Photography has several inherent advantages:

1. The photography process, environment, and effects are very conducive to dissemination through short videos

2. It has more than 300 stores, each of which can operate its own Douyin account to attract traffic

3. It has many photographers, each of whom can serve as a KOL to help spread the brand

Therefore, Zui Tangfeng’s Douyin account operation has also achieved very good results - multiple Douyin accounts are operated in a matrix, with a total number of fans exceeding 2 million.

Among them, the official corporate account of Zuitangfeng has more than 300,000 followers, and the content published is mainly photographic effects. The photographer internet celebrity KOL account focuses on shooting skills, and teaches shooting techniques and photo poses in a humorous way. While making education entertaining, it also enhances the awareness of brand information, subtly creates demand for Zuitangfeng products and completes the brand word-of-mouth conversion.

5. Leverage the Qixi Festival marketing to enhance brand awareness and influence

After solving the problem of difficulty in obtaining customer leads, Zui Tangfeng turned its attention to brand building, striving to enhance brand awareness and influence, leveraging word-of-mouth fission to influence user decisions and achieve in-store conversions.

In August this year, Zuitangfeng participated in the [Slow Time Love Letter] Qixi Festival node marketing IP event initiated by the local direct sales center of Bytedance. This event brought together many celebrities and experts to serve as "romantic readers", calling on users across the Internet to share their own love stories and ignite the Qixi Festival.

Zui Tang Feng took advantage of the hot topics of the festival and invited users to participate in the topics #Slow Time Love Letter# #Will You Still Love Me Next Year#, upload videos to share love stories, and receive an artistic photo shooting card worth 777 yuan for 7.7 yuan.

6. The total sales of the live broadcast in 3 hours reached 113,200, and there is great potential for gold mining in the industry

Nanjing Huajianji Photography was established in Nanjing in May 2019, focusing on photography. In 3 years, it has 9 stores in Nanjing. Huajianji has pioneered a cooperation model with local scenic spots and hotels in Nanjing, providing customers with a one-stop, relaxing service experience for scenic spot visits and hotel leisure, while also avoiding the need for customers to take photos in the same old monotonous scenes.

In May 2020, Huajianji started its own exclusive Douyin corporate account. In just over a year, it has accumulated 700,000 followers, and some of its videos have been played over 50 million times. This year, Huajianji launched its discounted photography packages on its own Douyin store and started Douyin live broadcasts. In a live broadcast on June 25, the total sales in 3 hours reached 113,200.

The photography market is huge, and seizing the blue ocean of marketing and promotion traffic is the key to companies expanding their business. In this context, ByteDance looks forward to working with the photography industry to explore new directions and new ways of playing in digital marketing and tap into more value space in the digital age.

Author: Massive Engine

Source: ByteDance