5 core strategies for brand promotion at Station B

Nowadays, Bilibili has become one of the most popular mainstream social media platforms among young people. Bilibili's unique community of youth and creativity, diverse and vertical interest areas, and interesting and highly sticky user groups all make it a marketing position that brands cannot ignore. How can brands develop their own style and characteristics by joining Bilibili?

1. Brand accounts must follow local customs when entering the site

To enter Bilibili, brands must have attitude and sufficient creativity.

Bilibili attracted early users with its otaku culture, and became popular for its ghost-like and funny content. Bilibili users prefer novel, fun and creative content, so brands need to have big imaginations and interesting ideas. This kind of brand is suitable for Bilibili.

The Zhong Xue Gao brand account "Zhong Xue Gao", which topped the daily rankings on May 20, has been liked by Bilibili users many times for its quirky creativity, cake-making content that combines hot topics of otaku culture, and humorous expressions. According to FeiGua data, in April, the account "Zaixia Zhong Xuegao" added 75,000 new followers, 5.247 million new broadcasts, and 58,000 new coins.

Data source: Feigua Data B Station

In April, "Zaixia Zhong Xuegao" released a total of 4 works, including green spicy strips, "Attack on Titan" protagonist cookies, lava French fries, and chocolate cabbage. The average number of views per work is 767,000. Judging from the titles, none of them are related to ice cream. The account’s signature is “A worker at Zhong Xuegao who aspires to become a food blogger” instead of “A Zhong Xuegao who aspires to become an excellent brand account”. This is the cleverness of Zhong Xuegao: rejecting awkward advertising placements and making the content fun.

Operating an account and establishing a good brand image are the foundation.

Compared to the brand accounts that have emerged in recent years and have narrowed the distance between themselves and users by giving themselves nicknames, the establishment of brand account personalities on Bilibili is more complex. It is not just a nickname, and users require more from the videos: longer duration, better production, and more diverse content. By enriching the brand’s personality through high-quality video content, it creates a stronger sense of communication with users and is easier to gain their trust and following.

To integrate into Bilibili, you must be able to play with memes.

The most embarrassing thing is to force the use of memes. "Memes" are one of the most attractive cultural elements of Bilibili to users. If brands are still trying to understand Bilibili's "memes" through searches, or trying to create "memes" out of thin air, they will never be able to keep up with the users' psychology. The rich community content of Bilibili itself is the birthplace of "memes", and users are more willing to produce and sell their own content. If brands want to integrate into Bilibili, they should first become loyal users of Bilibili.

2. Four key points of brand placement

UP hosts are the link between brands and users. They use their personal charm to interpret the brand into the language of their respective circles and convey it to users, helping brands to expose their products and promote them. The cooperative relationship between brands and UP hosts is a mutually beneficial and win-win one. However, brands often encounter four problems when advertising on Bilibili: how to choose influencers, how to advertise, how to create, and how to control the rhythm of advertising?

1. Choose UP hosts with consistent attributes and suitable styles

The first step is to find and filter the UP host attributes. Taking food as an example, food UP hosts also include store exploration UP hosts, food review UP hosts, cooking UP hosts, eating broadcast UP hosts, etc. Brands can find delivery targets with consistent attributes through tag-related UP hosts under the big tag of the food industry.

However, a UP host may have multiple content labels on his account due to the diverse video content. Brands can view the verticality of the UP host's account from "Work Analysis". For example, the following two UP hosts both belong to the food category, but the content labels are obviously different.

The second step is to analyze the fan groups. The ultimate target of brand marketing is the UP host’s fans, so fan analysis is crucial. Through the FeiGua data UP master analysis page, you can get a detailed understanding of the UP master's fan attributes, including gender ratio, age ratio, active fan ratio, and fans' preference for UP master attributes and brands.

Taking the above-mentioned UP hosts as an example, they have similar total number of fans, Feigua index, and percentage of active fans, but the gender ratio of fans is opposite. The fans of UP host "Zhashu loves wine" have concentrated preferences; the fans of UP host "GinGerrale" are more general entertainment-oriented. The UP host "Zhashu loves wine" is more suitable for wine brands whose target consumer group is men.

The last step is to identify the creative ability of the UP host. Content creativity is the fundamental factor that affects the reach effect. Through work analysis, we can understand whether the UP master's works are mainly self-made videos, product promotion videos, event videos or team videos. For example, the UP host "GinGerrale" in the above example, all his works are transferred from YouTube, and he has no self-made videos. It is difficult for such a UP host to have commercial cooperation space.

2. Choose the target market and influencer structure based on product attributes

As mentioned earlier, Bilibili has become a marketing platform that brands cannot ignore due to its diverse and vertical interest areas. Therefore, brands must choose the interest circles to target based on different product attributes. For example, the "Chinese style" hobby circle is suitable for being launched as a vertical field by Hanfu brands and national style beauty brands, and can also be used as a pan-regional launch field for national comics and domestic fairy-tale mobile games. In the industry tag list, brands can use the popularity of tags and the number of related videos in each interest circle as a reference for choosing advertising areas.

Top UP hosts can help brands achieve rapid exposure and directly promote the brand’s core information. Mid-level and junior UP hosts can help shape the brand image and allow the brand to reach more users. Therefore, in the structure of influencers, we mainly select a small number of top UP hosts and most of the UP hosts with other attributes to achieve the dual effects of exposure and radiation.

The specific expert structure still needs to be adjusted according to product characteristics and marketing objectives. For example, for new product reviews, you can choose a large number of mid-level and junior UP hosts to build product reputation; for sufficiently distinctive products, you can choose top or mid-level UP hosts to serve as a fuse to ignite a hot spot.

Through the following four categories of UP hosts launched by well-known brands in different industries, we also found that the brands that have settled in Bilibili have similar attempts to go out of the circle. In addition to mainly launching UP hosts in their respective industry verticals, brands will also launch UP hosts from other circles to unlock different circles and expand brand influence. This also stems from the marketing value of Bilibili.

3. Be bold and unrestricted, and work with UP hosts to create high-quality promotional content

The preferences of Bilibili users are distinct and independent. They have their own circles. Advertisements with conservative content or stiff format will only cause users to feel repulsed, thus damaging the brand image. The UP hosts understand the preferences of Bilibili users better than the brands do. Therefore, brands should give UP hosts maximum creative space and create high-quality content together with them.

Take the recent popular collaboration video between Zhong Xue Gao and Geng Shougong on Bilibili, "Homemade Cough Reaction Kung Fu Stove", for example. The Zhong Xue Gao brand has done a good job of interpreting the "co-creation" content. At the beginning of the video, Zhong Xuegao's image appears in the form of a letter: crooked elementary school student font, down-to-earth blurred handwriting and a "square head" image. In the letter, Zhong Xuegao asked Geng Handicraft to "make a stove" as an introduction to the collaborative video.

In the entire video, Zhong Xuegao only appeared three times. The first time was in the letter of request at the beginning of the video, and the second time was in the middle of the video, when he was eating ice cream during the break of the handmade stove. The barrage of comments jokingly said "Skill is cooling down", "The ancestor of cake", "I know how to eat ice cream", and "Inspiration ice cream", while Zhong Xuegao's LOGO packaging did not appear, and the barrage of comments all said "I got the message".

The third time was at the end of the video. After finishing the handicraft, Geng invited Zhong Xuegao to appear in person, and together with Zhong Xuegao, he made a magical dish of scrambled eggs with tomatoes. The scene was weird and funny, turning the barrage into a question mark.

Even though some users still say in the barrage that Zhong Xue Gao is a bit expensive, such commercial cooperation has increased users' favorability towards the brand and made them willing to give the brand more attention and opportunities. After all, the price is something else, and we don’t know when there will be an event.

On Bilibili, brands and UP hosts have equal dialogues, communicate effectively, and even play together. The brand controls the core of publicity in marketing, and the UP host can provide some novel angles and forms of expression. Only the bold combination of the two can form high-quality promotional content and touch the "points" of Bilibili users.

4. Understand the delivery rhythm and conduct timely effect review

The overall user atmosphere on the Bilibili platform is one of contentment, and its popularity is more time-effective than that on other platforms. Most of the funny "memes" are layered, not replaced in real time. Therefore, brands should plan their campaigns on Bilibili in the long term and should not be impatient for quick results or hope to create a hit with just one campaign. Only by grasping the overall marketing direction and a steady pace of delivery, and relaxing and sincerely playing with Bilibili users, can you win the favor of users.

Finally, mastering the delivery rhythm requires timely review of the delivery results. Only by constantly correcting each investment in the review can the sustainable development of the investment be ensured.

Marketing summary:

1. Brand accounts should be integrated into Bilibili, reject blunt brand promotions, and become loyal users of Bilibili first.

2. For brand placement, you should choose UP hosts with consistent attributes, suitable styles, and great personal charm and creativity.

3. When launching a brand, the target areas and influencer structure should be selected based on product characteristics and marketing objectives.

4. Brand investment should give UP hosts the greatest creative space and boldly co-create content with them.

5. Brand launch should be carried out in a planned manner, grasp the overall launch rhythm, and conduct launch review in a timely manner.

Author: Feigua Data B Station Version

Source: Feigua Data B Station Version