Understand Douyin e-commerce marketing methodology in one article

Chinese Internet companies generally do not set clear boundaries for themselves, and their current appearance is always different from their initial appearance. For example, NetEase started out as an email company and now covers games, music, and dictionaries. For example, TikTok has expanded from short videos to e-commerce and has built up a diversified business model.

More than four years ago, no one believed that live streaming could create sparks with e-commerce.

But during the Douyin New Year Goods Festival last week, the Guangdong couple's GMV exceeded 10 million in 8 minutes after the start of the broadcast, exceeded 80 million in 2 hours, and exceeded 100 million in 3 hours, and finally set a historical record of 300 million yuan for a single transaction in the Douyin live broadcast room.

In the past, people’s views on Douyin e-commerce tended to be conservative. The general view was that public domain traffic platforms like Douyin were not suitable for e-commerce. However, Douyin e-commerce took less than a year to prove that all roads lead to Rome and there are always higher mountains than other ones.

Douyin e-commerce entered the market in a low-key manner, and then overtook its competitors at a very steady pace. Less than a year after its establishment, Douyin E-commerce has broken into the first-tier live streaming e-commerce market with its traffic distribution advantages.

With the right time, right place and right people, what opportunities has Douyin e-commerce tapped into? This article will take the New Year’s Goods Festival as an example to describe how Douyin e-commerce has overcome difficulties in the era of inventory.

1. Momentum

What about live streaming e-commerce?

In 2019, this figure was still 433.8 billion. It is preliminarily estimated that it will exceed one trillion in 2020. This year's scale will soar further to 2 trillion. "Live streaming" has begun to become a standard feature of e-commerce, and the process of people looking for goods has shifted to goods looking for people.

For the platform, as the scale of live streaming e-commerce exceeds 300 million (as of June 2020), the market is bound to change from a blue ocean to a red ocean. The competition in the second half will mainly be the transformation of "people, goods and places". That is, the competition among anchors, supply chain and traffic.

Although Douyin e-commerce has the advantage of traffic, it also faces obvious competitive pressure.

2. New

Following the strong wind, Douyin e-commerce pressed the accelerator. In April 2020, Luo Yonghao's first live broadcast achieved a GMV of more than 100 million yuan, bringing the performance of Douyin live streaming to a new level. Afterwards, Douyin launched its first platform-level e-commerce promotion, the "Douyin Wonderful Goods Festival in August". Official data showed that the total transaction amount of the Wonderful Goods Festival exceeded 8 billion yuan.

During the "11.11 Douyin Fan Festival", Douyin's e-commerce live broadcasts totaled 27 million hours, with a cumulative number of viewers reaching 12.6 billion, and the final transaction volume exceeded 18.7 billion.

In the past year, Douyin e-commerce has frequently made moves in live streaming e-commerce, not only getting involved in traditional major promotional events, but also frequently creating festivals. Douyin’s confidence in creating e-commerce festivals comes from the platform’s abundant traffic resources. With the help of the recommendation mechanism, this traffic will be transformed into live broadcast potential, realizing a virtuous cycle of “short video retention and live broadcast room monetization.”

"Douyin New Year Goods Festival" is the latest work of Douyin e-commerce. As the first New Year’s Goods Festival of 2021, it has been a battleground since ancient times. Not only are there online players, but there are also offline players, and even the entire retail industry wants to get a piece of the pie.

Traditional players in the New Year’s Goods Festival include online giants such as Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, as well as offline retail giants such as RT-Mart. The rise of live streaming e-commerce has given Douyin e-commerce a New Year flavor.

Unlike traditional players, the advantage of Douyin e-commerce is that it dilutes the "Matthew effect".

Under the premise that people are looking for goods, leading brands can easily gain the bonus of the Matthew effect, forming a situation where the strong will always be strong. But in the Douyin ecosystem, there is no such shackles. For example, there is a live broadcast mode on Douyin called "zero-fan live broadcast", which means that you can start live broadcast even if you don't have any fans. At this time, the anchor can look for traffic in the public domain, and then combine it with the platform’s own supply chain to allow small and medium-sized brands to rise rapidly.

A healthy system must be diverse. From anchors to merchants, from users to platforms, each has its own ecological niche. That is, every individual has the opportunity to enjoy the sunshine.

3.

Compared with the traditional offline promotion of 1.0, the total amount of SKUs has been greatly optimized with the support of window display and recommendation logic. The result of optimization is the reduction of shopping time and the improvement of consumer experience.

Compared with the promotions on e-commerce platforms in the 2.0 era, the consumer experience has also been optimized, making "see and buy" possible, and allowing consumer behaviors from planting grass to pulling grass to be completed quickly in the same live broadcast room, thus greatly shortening the link between marketing and transaction.

The "TikTok New Year Goods Festival" has taken the gameplay of Big Promotion 3.0 a big step further. The traditional “people, goods and venues” have been re-delineated:

1. People

Today, users do not necessarily need CCTV’s endorsement to trust a brand. An IP that is recognized by an individual can endorse a newly launched product and can also create its own independent brand.

In the Douyin e-commerce matrix, what is most lacking is people with "influence" to sell goods. Fans are attracted by their talents in certain aspects (singing, dancing, and good looks), character, and credibility. This is a social relationship between social interaction among acquaintances and social interaction among strangers. This attraction gives them a sense of trust when they promote products.

Here is a typical new business sample called Lola Code.

During the Douyin New Year Goods Festival, the Chinese original clothing brand LOORAPWD achieved sales of over 66 million in 11 hours. That night, the best-selling item was the 799-yuan Lola Code fashion brand women's original design coat, which contributed nearly 2 million yuan in sales.

Why mention Lola's code? Because she has a distinct personality.

In the view of brand founder Lola, women should not only be beautiful but also be brave enough to fight. Therefore, the positioning of Lola Code is not only fashionable, but also clearly aims to create a battle robe for the "Queen".

Lola herself is a very capable woman. The combination of short hair + suit + high heels makes her exude a strong feminine aura. So as soon as Lola appeared, the brand image was immediately concretized.

Today, as women's voice is increasingly valued, clothing that highlights women's independent beauty has become a new fashion trend, and Lola Code has undoubtedly hit the cusp of this trend.

2. Goods

Goods are the lifeline that determines the life and death of anchors, platforms and brands. The target population, average order value and quality of the goods directly affect the performance of selling goods. And live streaming e-commerce often fails because of the “goods”.

Since it is called the New Year Goods Festival, we must sell goods that have a New Year flavor.

On the one hand, Douyin e-commerce customized lanterns, spring couplets, and blind boxes to help merchants’ live broadcast rooms create a Chinese New Year atmosphere;

On the other hand, we need to put more effort into product selection. The joint product of Be & Cheery x National Treasure is the epitome of the refined display of “goods”.

By collaborating with Be & Cheery, the brand power is extended. It can turn the known into the unknown and create a different kind of beauty. This kind of aesthetic can help brands create incremental information and strengthen the selling points of their products.

If the brand carries the public's yearning for a better life, then the products are the concrete expression of a better life.

3. Field

Unlike traditional venues, I prefer to call the "Tik Tok New Year Goods Festival" a "retention venue."

The biggest feature of live streaming e-commerce is shopping recommendations. The biggest feature of recommended shopping is “non-purposefulness”. Sometimes you may enter the live broadcast room because of SK-II or Moutai, but often when you come out you find that you have been recommended a lot of things.

For brands, live streaming can increase sales in a short period of time, but the retention rate is pitifully low. The situation of high sales volume and low retention volume is tantamount to "chronic suicide" for brand assets.

Thus, the brand-specific model came into being.

For example, during the Douyin New Year Goods Festival, LG Household & Health Care Super Brand Special not only sold nearly 200,000 sets of Whoo seven-piece sets with a unit price of more than 1,400 yuan, setting a historical record of over 280 million yuan in sales for a single product in the Douyin live broadcast room, but also a Guangdong couple brought 32,000 new followers to the official account after interacting online with Whoo's official Douyin live broadcast room. Achieve high sales and high retention.

For merchants, a clear enough growth path and a broad enough space for business growth afterwards are undoubtedly the most attractive aspects of this platform. It can also be the reason why merchants of different sizes and verticals are willing to continue to deeply deploy live e-commerce on Douyin in the future.

As for consumers, no matter what their purchasing needs or curiosities are, they can find suitable product content and a suitable live streaming room on Douyin.

4. The next day

The model of using short videos to increase breadth, live streaming to build trust, and a cycle of building brand assets and traffic has been successfully implemented. Therefore, live streaming e-commerce is no longer a secondary battlefield, but a main battlefield.

What is certain is that the brand-effect synergy of the past is no longer easy to achieve. However, through the combination of short videos + live broadcasts + text on Douyin e-commerce, the brand can quickly break through.

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Therefore, we can move forward infinitely.

The same is true for e-commerce. Without the obstruction of mountains and rivers, the branches of this Internet tree are particularly stretched. From B2C websites such as 8848 that established China’s earliest shopping model, to the widespread popularity of live streaming e-commerce. China's e-commerce has found a new path that cannot be defined.

Whether it is civilization or live streaming e-commerce, once you are on board the giant ship of China, you can only move forward and forward.