B station nanny-level delivery tutorial

When a brand is starting up, it often struggles with one point: whether to bet on one platform or operate on multiple platforms to spread the risk. If you bet on one platform, you worry about missing out on the platform’s bonuses; if you try to work on several platforms at the same time, you will lack both people and money, and it will be difficult to get results. So for a new brand, Lao Zhao’s suggestion is to put in enough effort on one platform. As long as you find a brand that has succeeded on this platform, assign someone to study the platform thoroughly, and then start operating it until you encounter the platform ceiling, and then switch to another platform.

The skin care brand I’m going to share with you today is a skin care brand that was launched solely through Station B. Although this brand does not have such amazing monthly sales on Tmall, there are still many things that new brands can learn from, from a few hundred to over ten thousand. Especially starting through the B station platform still surprised Lao Zhao.

Lao Zhao plans to use this brand’s operating ideas to help everyone analyze how new brands can start up through Station B. If you need a mind map, please add 13810012365. The main topics covered in this article are as follows:

1. Do brands have a chance to start trading on Bilibili ?
2. What is the core logic behind Bilibili’s development?
3. How can brands use data analysis to start advertising on Bilibili?

1. Does a brand have a chance to start on Station B?

Let’s first take a look at the sales data of Guokr Skincare’s highest-selling product per month, [Guokr Color Correcting Essence].

Data source: Jieshu Consulting

Judging from the data, the product [Fruit Shell Color Repair Essence] was launched in November 2020. We need to look at the traffic structure data of this product and the off-site delivery situation to judge the launch strategy of this product. The figure below shows the traffic structure data of this product.

Data source: Jieshu Consulting (Note: The statistical caliber is different from the previous figure)

From the traffic structure data of [Fruit Shell Color Repair Essence], we can see that the main source of sales of this product comes from outside the site. Taobao customers are the most important source of sales during the launch of the product, accounting for more than 30%, and natural search accounts for about 10%. There is almost no on-site payment and on-site live broadcast, only a few points, so our analysis should focus on off-site delivery.

Lao Zhao checked the advertising situation of Guokr Skin Care on Douyin and Xiaohongshu through Chanmama. Guokr Skin Care only started to take some actions in June 2021. Before that, Guokr did not have many advertising activities on Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

The overall situation of Guokr Skin Care on Douyin

Sales of Guokr skin care products on Douyin in the last 90 days

The popularity of Guokr skin care products on Xiaohongshu

We also checked the promotion of Guokr Skin Care on Bilibili through Huoshaoyun and found that Guokr Skin Care has done a lot of promotion work on Bilibili. It can be confirmed that Guokr did start its promotion through Bilibili. The total exposure of Guokr Skin Care on Bilibili is 44 million+, with 1.8 million+ likes and 76 million+ collections, and it has received a lot of attention and interaction from Bilibili users.

Data source: Fire Cloud Data

What did Guokr do right to be able to gain popularity on B Station? Let’s do a detailed breakdown.

2. What is the core logic behind Guokr’s use of Bilibili to launch its business?

The starting logic of a brand relying on Bilibili is different from that of a brand relying on Douyin or Xiaohongshu.

The core logic of Douyin is that goods find people. If a brand wants to start a business through Douyin, it must not only create good content but also spend money on performance advertising.

The core logic of Xiaohongshu is to influence purchasing decisions through search results. If a brand wants to start a business through Xiaohongshu, it needs a large number of search results to be displayed or system content recommendations. The current mainstream way of playing is to achieve this through reporting notes and information flow.

Due to the characteristics of Generation Z users, Bilibili’s delivery logic is completely different. When a brand places an advertisement, it not only needs the UP host to endorse its credit, but also needs to convey the brand value through the UP host. The UP host needs to be regarded as a creative partner rather than an advertising tool. Only by maintaining the trust of Bilibili users can a brand gain favor and achieve the goal of bringing goods.

If a brand wants to start a business through Station B, it must first insist on its own identity and secondly give up its own identity. This statement should be understood from two aspects.

• A brand’s insistence on being itself requires that it be differentiated from other brands. It must not only have strong product power, but also give users a sense of value and emotional satisfaction. This is the core of making B station users abandon their inherent choices and choose your brand’s products.
• For a brand to give up its own identity , it must give up its own language and choose the communication language of Generation Z. To put it bluntly, it must be able to play with memes and respect the content of the UP host. This point is not simply about how the content is disseminated and how the conversion effect is, but it will gamble on the trust between the brand and the UP and the fans. If the brand does something bad, it will be wildly DISS by the fans, which is equivalent to the brand spending money to buy negative articles for itself, resulting in a complete loss.

Suggestions for brands that want to join Station B:

1. First, you need to catch up on the content of B station for two weeks to understand the content style of B station, user preferences, and the meaning of the memes in the barrage;
2. Secondly, we should pay attention to user cognition and emotional communication, ignore short-term ROI, and focus on the delivery of brand values.
3. Then combine your own brand with the UP host to co-create, confirm the brief with the UP host in advance, tell the UP host the points you want to convey to your fans, and leave the content creation to the UP host.

In fact, Guokr Skin Care has grasped this core logic. From brand values ​​to product design, it is building trust and goodwill with B station users in order to successfully start on B station.

3. How can brands use data analysis to accurately place ads on Bilibili?

3.1 It is very important for new brands to understand the strategies of competitors

Before new brands determine their own strategy on Bilibili, it is best to first study the strategies of their competitors. This step is very critical. The most direct demand is to see what UP hosts the competitors have used? What are their number selection criteria? What types of up masters are there? What is the ratio between KOL and KOC? What form of advertising is used? What is content strategy? How many are released each month? What tools are used to expand the model? To complete this step, you must use data tools to easily help brands find the answers they want.

Data source: Fire Cloud Data

3.2 Clarify your own delivery strategy and purpose

Another important task for brands before launching advertising on Bilibili is to consider their advertising goals. If the brand targets young people, then Bilibili is definitely a platform worth investing in. Another thing to think about clearly is ROI. If you rush to make ads on Bilibili for quick success and only consider short-term ROI and make some decisions that are not in line with Bilibili's logic, it will only backfire. If you put ROI in a secondary position and focus on the emotional resonance between the brand and users, you can generate some GMV.

Guokr Skin Care has done a relatively clear job at the strategic level, making it clear that the target audience of its products is students. Both its product design and pricing are very suitable for students.

3.3 What forms of advertising does Bilibili have? How should I choose?

There are three common forms of advertising on B Station:

1. UP main advertisement
2. Enterprise Accounts’ own content and live streaming
3. Information flow advertising.

Lao Zhao doesn’t want to talk much about B Station’s information flow ads , as it’s a bit hard to put into words. The form of Bilibili’s information flow ads is not much different from other content platforms. However , compared with other platforms, due to the special nature of Bilibili’s users and the low degree of overlap with users of other platforms, Bilibili’s information flow ads are not that easy to do. If a brand has not promoted products on Bilibili before and established user awareness, but instead directly created information flow content that promoted products and removed products, the effect will definitely not be good. For example, the beauty brand YeZi has a certain reputation outside of Bilibili, but their products are not well known to users on Bilibili, resulting in them skipping the promotion and going directly to information flow advertising, which has very poor results. On the other hand, even though Guokr has done a lot of content promotion on Bilibili, it is still cautious about Bilibili's information flow advertising and does not dare to increase its sales through information flow advertising.

The original content and live broadcasts of Bilibili’s corporate accounts are content formats dominated by brands. There is no limit on the content, but there are industry distinctions, and the main presentation formats of different industries are different. For example, the beauty industry is more conventional, and basically focuses on makeup demonstrations or new product releases. After all, users consume beauty products to improve their appearance and temperament, not to spend money to become a middle school student. Currently, the best cases are from large companies like Tencent and Alibaba, which are of little reference value for new brands. Corporate accounts also have another function, which is to establish a private traffic pool belonging to the brand on Bilibili. They usually deploy up hosts or hold small activities in the comment section of Tencent's Lao Gan Ma works to gain familiarity with the brand, obtain the most accurate target user groups, and accumulate their own traffic. Judging from the data from Huoshaoyun, except for the corporate accounts of gaming and leading Internet companies, which have refined content operations and a considerable number of fans, corporate accounts in other fields are still basically in the early stages before being put into operation. They have a lot of room for growth, and new brands can continue to wait and see.

B station’s corporate account self-broadcasting is also one of B station’s advertising forms. During the epidemic, many brands' new product launches were moved from offline to online. iQOO, McDonald's 5G new products and other brands launched new product promotions on Bilibili through big V previews, hard advertising, and hundreds of linkages. Self-broadcasting by corporate accounts on Bilibili is not the mainstream way of playing on Bilibili, so I will not introduce it in detail here.

The most important form of advertising on Bilibili is UP main advertising, which includes customized video ads, embedded video ads, video patches, columns, and graphic updates.

1. Customized video ads are suitable for more complex product reviews or multi-product brand placements. They are used to establish connections between brands and users and enhance user awareness. Customized videos are longer and more expensive, so new brands with limited budgets should consider choosing them.

2. The price of embedded video advertising is relatively low and is suitable for simple display of products. However, the unit price of the time leaked by the brand in the corresponding special format is relatively expensive. Lao Zhao thinks that several related brands can join together to get multiple advertising spaces in a video at the price of the special topic, such as loose powder + eye shadow + eyebrow pencil + blush + lipstick. Several brands can share the cost to reduce marketing costs. However, this type of cost is only suitable for soft planting and cannot pass the Fireworks business order.

3. The format of graphic and text updates is similar to that of Weibo, which includes graphic and text updates and reposts. The difference is that the updates on Bilibili are not exposed to public domain traffic and can only be received by the fans of the Bilibili.

4. Video patches and columns are two relatively unpopular forms. Video patches are suitable for wealthy players and will not be introduced in detail. Columns are traffic entrances that 99% of brands ignore. This traffic is very considerable. Some of the top up hosts I have talked to are also very happy to accept this form of advertising, and the cost is not high. One reason is that there are not many brands that put out this form, and the other is that the production cycle is short. For brands that do not need video presentations, dynamic and column formats are very good advertising formats. They are low-cost and the readers are all fans of the up-master, who have a higher degree of trust in the up-master.

3.4 What is content strategy?

In terms of content, brands must respect UP hosts and not be accused of being a freeloader by the UP hosts’ fans. This is what Lao Zhao has repeatedly emphasized. Only by respecting the style of the UP host can we better convey product or brand information to the audience in their way and make the audience accept it. Brands should develop a content strategy that:

1. Selling point strategy . Clarify the values ​​and selling points that the product should convey to fans of Bilibili. Only when the brand knows what it wants to convey can the UP host accurately convey this information to fans. During major promotions and in the mid-to-late stages of product launch, the product's "functional selling points" can be displayed in videos to guide users to try to buy it. In the early and mid-term stages of new product launch, brand concepts and brand stories can be used to convey the brand and establish the brand's positioning in the minds of consumers.
2. Aspect strategy . The video itself must have highlights. When the UP host does soft implantation, he can increase the highlights of the video through plot settings to attract more views; when the UP host does hard implantation, he can use reviews, unboxing, product displays and other methods to bring out the highlights of the product. To sum up, the video content should have both memorable points and information density to ensure that it is "both interesting and informative";
3. Hot spot strategy . Brand content must be combined with the native content of the B station platform to be more popular. If possible, try to take advantage of the hot spots on the site to increase interaction . In the barrage interaction, brands and UP hosts can estimate the concentrated outbreak points of the barrage and guide the barrage appropriately. Of course, brands and UP hosts can also use shopping links in the comment area, popular interactive comment guidance and appropriate node guidance to increase video traffic with one-click triple-click.

3.5 What kind of delivery rhythm should be maintained?

Another point that new brands will struggle with is the amount of investment, how much to invest each month . First of all, if you want to break through a platform, you have to continue to invest every month , just like boiling water, until it boils. If you have just entered the market, you will not invest in B Station. It is better to break down the competitors, such as looking at the investment data of Guokr.

Data source: Fire Cloud Data

From the above data, we can see the rhythm and amount of Guokr's delivery, and see if we can replicate it based on our own budget.

3.6 Should I choose a small UP host or a big UP host?

When new brands first enter Bilibili, they usually struggle with the issue of whether to choose a small UP or a big UP . They worry that a small UP may not have enough influence, while a big UP may have enough influence but be too expensive. In fact, Lao Zhao observed that small vertical content UP hosts have high fan accuracy, so their ROI may not be bad if the product is a good match. However, big bloggers have a large number of fans, so evaluating the cost-effectiveness purely from the ROI perspective may not be good , especially for new brands that choose big UP hosts with high investment. If there is not much timely output, it will be difficult to carry out follow-up work and there will not be much room for maneuver.

Therefore, it is recommended that brands, if they have sufficient budget , can consider the top 100 UP hosts, make customized creative videos, and find 5-6 other big UP hosts for joint promotion, which can increase brand awareness in a short period of time.

However, when the budget is insufficient , the operation becomes relatively complicated. If the monthly budget is less than 100,000 yuan, it is recommended to abandon this promotion channel directly. If you have a budget of more than 100,000 yuan per month to invest, you can start by screening multiple small UP hosts . The specific screening method will be discussed later.

We can think about it from two dimensions:

1. The user demands of Bilibili can be intercepted through the search optimization of Bilibili , which requires brands to produce more relevant content, or high-quality content, so that the search results will have more exposure. This is how Guokr's oil-control products work.
2. You can co-create content with small UP hosts , leverage the creativity of the UP hosts, and allow product reputation to ferment deeply on the platform and then form tap water.

We can take a look at the data of Guokr's advertising. Accounts with less than 100,000 fans account for 60%, and accounts with less than 500,000 fans account for 95%. The unit price of UP accounts with less than 500,000 fans is not that exaggerated, and the cost is controllable, which is very friendly to new brands. By using some KOC+ bounty programs to reduce traffic costs, the sales effect may be quite good.

3.7 What are the criteria for selecting UP hosts?

What kind of UP host is a qualified UP host? Lao Zhao suggests referring to the following dimensions:

The content creation ability of UP masters is measured from the following dimensions:

1. 1. Views
   2. Completion rate
   3. Spreading power: ratio of broadcast fans
   4. Interaction rate: comment-to-play ratio, like-to-play ratio, favorite-to-play ratio
   5. Coin rate: coin-operated play ratio
   6. Content synchronization data of other platforms: Douyin, Xiaohongshu, etc.

The business performance of UP masters is measured from the following dimensions:

1. 1. Business order playback volume
   2. Commercial order completion rate
   3. Business order communication power: playback fans ratio
   4. Business order interaction rate: comment play ratio, like play ratio, favorite play ratio
   5. Business order coin rate: coin play ratio

Cost-effectiveness of UP

1. 1. CPM: Cost per thousand views
   2. CPV: Average cost per store visit

Account growth potential

1. 1. Fan growth
   2. Interactive Growth
   3. Price changes

However, the above data may not be available to new brands. We need to use another method to verify the UP host, which is the launch list of competing products. For example, I got the list of investments made by Guokr, and then looked at their reinvestment situation. I paid special attention to the UP hosts with more reinvestment. The delivery list can be easily obtained through data tools.

Data source: Fire Cloud Data

Another concern for brands is whether vertical brands must find up-masters in the same vertical area to promote their products? Actually, it is not. If we look at the types of influencers selected by Guokr, there are bloggers in the fields of fashion, life, food, and domestic creation. What brands need to find are bloggers with the same tone to convey brand values, and they are not necessarily limited to their own categories.

Data source: Fire Cloud Data

3.8 Data Feedback and Model Scale-up

3.8.1 Data Feedback

Before releasing a video, the brand must first communicate with the UP host about the selection of the video cover and title. If the B station video has a good video cover and title, it will greatly increase the opening rate of the video.

After the launch, it is necessary to monitor the post-launch data, track the data changes of each UP master in a timely manner, and conduct commentary analysis. On the one hand, we need to understand the real situation of each UP master, and on the other hand, we need to find the direction of subsequent iterations. The most important point is to determine which video has the potential to be popular.

1) Make a preliminary judgment on the quality of the UP host by observing the video’s completion rate and the ratio of views to fans. The completion rate can be determined by the UP host taking a screenshot in the background.

The playback-to-fan ratio can be calculated. 11% of the UP hosts promoted by Guokr have a playback-to-fan ratio greater than 1, and 46% have a playback-to-fan ratio greater than 0.25. This is very worthy of reference in selecting UP hosts.

Another point to note is that the UP master's video traffic has a certain long tail nature. If it is a video with good interaction, it has a good chance of entering a large traffic pool in 3-15 days. If the data continues to improve, it has a chance to become popular. Therefore, brands should still pay attention to the data 3-15 days after releasing the video.

2) Observe whether the playback volume and interaction volume of the cooperative content are close to his usual daily video data. Before cooperation, you can ask UP to provide the latest 10 business order data to facilitate post-investment comparison;

3) Observe fan stickiness and spending power

• Observe the number of barrages: The number and quality of barrages can directly evaluate the quality of video content;
• The number of people who have charged and the percentage of fan medals: reflects the fans’ willingness to consume for the UP master;
• Fans’ attitude towards UP masters’ “eating food”: fans’ feedback can be seen based on the interaction of previous commercial cooperation videos;

We use the above indicators to judge the quality of UP videos and decide whether to increase the volume.

3.8.2 Model expansion

When it comes to increasing the volume of the model, Lao Zhao wants to emphasize two points. The first is that you can buy volume by spending money, and the second is not to increase the volume halfway and then be restricted by the platform. Therefore, when making models, brands should consider the following points:

1) When cooperating with UP hosts, it is best to use the Huohua platform. If you use Taobao passwords or secret codes in the comment area, you don’t have to use it, but there is a certain possibility that you will be restricted . In addition, I would like to emphasize invitation advertising here. This form of advertising can directly hang a third-party link and jump outside the site. When cooperating with UP hosts, invitation advertising must be done through Huohua, and a 7% platform service fee is required. For fans of Bilibili, invitation advertising provides a clear purchasing link and can improve ROI. However, UP hosts feel that this form of invitation advertising affects the fan experience and does not receive many orders , so brands need to do more public relations work.

A form of invitation advertising

2) Expand the model through the takeoff plan

What is the takeoff plan? If we look at the recommendation page of Bilibili, it is a double-column video list.

In the recommendation list, videos with the words "creation and promotion" are the videos displayed to users through the Takeoff Plan. The traffic of the Takeoff Plan is public domain traffic, which can be purchased through CPM bidding to help us increase the volume of video content that needs to be promoted. To put it simply, the Takeoff Plan is similar to dou+, and has very high requirements for video quality. High-quality content can obtain more public domain traffic exposure through the Takeoff Plan, while ordinary content can only purchase as much as it spends, and cannot obtain additional public domain traffic.

When it comes to model expansion, the logic is actually very simple. Based on the CPM and CTR of your own campaign, you can calculate the cost of directing traffic to the third-party e-commerce platform . Therefore, the core goal of brands investing in Bilibili should be brand promotion, rather than emphasizing short-term ROI.

There are three points to note when investing in the takeoff and volume model:

1. It is necessary to strictly review the content quality of the UP master, including: cover, pictures and the video itself. During the content review, the takeoff will be restricted because the content may have political issues or be prone to disputes.
2. If a brand wants to take off, it is generally recommended to release it on the day of release. This will help increase the weight of the video and gain more recommended traffic (the video weight score of the day is the highest).
3. If your GPM is qualified, you can invest as much as you can, which is the same as the logic of Dou+.

Finally, let’s summarize the core formula for a brand to start trading through Station B:

If these three points are achieved, the brand will have great potential on Bilibili.

Author: Marketing Lao Zhao

Source: Lao Zhao’s Marketing Notes (ID: mkttips)