Kuaishou e-commerce grass-growing guide in 2021!

At the beginning of 2021 , Kuaishou E-commerce launched a massive "grass planting" mobilization for the platform's anchors to make up for the "video" shortcomings outside of live broadcasts and upgrade users' "shopping while shopping" content consumption experience.

This can be seen from the various operational activities recently released by Kuaishou E- commerce: as early as the Kuaishou New Year Festival Investment Promotion Conference on December 16, Kuaishou E-commerce launched the eponymous "super topic" with the theme #年货节, and announced that special public domain traffic support would be provided for high-quality content; and at the "Good Things Quickly Plant Grass" event that just ended, Kuaishou even invited the celebrity Li Chen as the event initiator to convey the event concept of "Good Things Quickly Plant Grass".

▲ The initiator of the "Good Things Quickly Promote" campaign - celebrity Li Chen ▲

According to Kas Data, using celebrities as initiators of operational activities is still very rare in Kuaishou e-commerce's past operations, which also shows the platform's emphasis on this event.

Gong Haoyuan, director of the beauty industry at Kuaishou, told KasData that Kuaishou hopes to build "Good Things Quickly Plant Grass" into a scene and an IP. In the following months, it will combine the social hot spots, marketing hot spots, and festival hot spots at the time to carry out regular operations and planning, and will expand and customize to other industries. "In the future, both the intensity and frequency will be strengthened."

As the first IP show, this event still focuses on the four major tracks that Kuaishou e-commerce is good at: fashion trends, department stores and digital products, foodie recommendations, and jewelry humanities. However, unlike previous shopping festivals, it has two major stages: short videos and live broadcasts. Only the TOP100 anchors who win through short video promotion can participate in the live broadcast competition in the second stage.

According to public data from Kuaishou E-commerce, this event attracted a total of 124,406 business influencers to participate, with a total of 400,000 grass-producing works released, a total playback volume of up to 4.34 billion times, and helped the influencers increase their fan base by more than 7.92 million.

▲ Good things quick promotion activity-Top 10 anchors in the fashion trend track ▲

In fact, these participating anchors are not the only ones who benefit from the content. Before the launch of the "Good Products Quick Planting" campaign, many anchors have accelerated their fan growth on Kuaishou by promoting content.

Among them are business anchor representatives, such as @雅雅乐, who strengthens her image as a "Korean skincare factory lady" by publishing diverse content and personally selling products. In the past two months, Ya雅乐 has gained more than 500,000 followers. Of course, there are also many institutional anchors emerging. The most representative one is Kuaishou's top beauty agency - May Beauty. In the past six months, it has incubated many high-potential talents, covering beauty evaluation, grass planting, makeup play, imitation makeup, makeup teaching and other sub-tracks. Representatives include: @内双sisi, @梁知晚Lois, @采媛欧尼, etc., all of whom have gained more than 200,000 fans in the past six months, and have started advertising and live streaming monetization.

What is certain is that in 2021, if you want to play Kuaishou e-commerce well, “planting grass” is something you have to do.

1. Why is Kuaishou focusing on “planting grass”? 

As a social method for the younger generation, the term "planting grass" has a long history and appeared as early as the forum era. Let’s not talk about what kind of marketing category “planting grass” belongs to, is it word-of-mouth marketing? Content marketing? Or experiential marketing? Its fundamental meaning is always to establish a connection between products and users, so as to gain their trust.

Compared with many content social platforms, doing a good job of promoting content on Kuaishou is often closer to conversion. The reasons for analysis are:

First of all, Kuaishou is a content platform. Before the anchor sells the goods, he has already fully demonstrated himself through videos and laid a foundation of trust. It is natural for him to complete the weeding through live broadcast. In one sentence: "Buy this person first, then buy the product he recommends";

Secondly, Kuaishou is an algorithm platform. The algorithm can recommend users’ favorite content and products based on their content interests and interaction preferences, thereby accelerating the closed-loop construction from seeding to conversion.

Finally, the overall user profile of short videos tends to be young, and analyzing their consumption preferences, it is not difficult to find that those born in the 1990s and even 1995s, who are characterized by being "homebodies", are more dependent on the recommendations and sharing of experts/anchors. For them, "planting grass" may not only be about function selection, but more like choosing the same lifestyle and personality attitude as the anchor. This is why a large number of anchors with a low number of fans can sell hundreds of thousands or even millions of products in a single game on Kuaishou. First, "people" create content, then form an "old iron" relationship, and then complete sales in social scenarios.

iResearch Consulting once released a report titled "The Grass-Planting Generation: Fashion Consumption Report of Post-95s". The data showed that those born after 1995 account for the largest proportion of the online shopping population. They are the "leaders of the grass-planting economy" - with the host's hard work in explaining, sharing of real experiences, and a little bit of price temptation, those born after 1995 can happily place orders with the sound of "buy it". According to the "Kuaishou E-commerce Marketing Value Report" released by Miaozhen, 97% of the users interviewed have developed purchasing interest after watching short videos mentioning products, and 84% of the users interviewed are willing to accept product recommendations from Kuaishou anchors.

The essence of Kuaishou's grass-growing is self-evident, but many anchors like @雅雅乐, who came from stalls and supply chains and grew rapidly by brushing the charts in the early stages, often ignore the importance and investment in grass-growing. However, with the increase in the number of broadcasters on Kuaishou, the richness of broadcast roles, and the disappearance of the demographic dividend of short videos, relying solely on "live streaming" to increase fans will obviously encounter bottlenecks.

Yayale told KasData that she started using Kuaishou in July 2019. With the supply backing and 16 years of experience in developing her flagship product, soft film, her fan growth and sales data on Kuaishou have been relatively ideal since she started broadcasting at the end of 2019. However, in October last year, she found that her fan base could no longer increase, and sales were sluggish as a result.

For this reason, the Kuaishou e-commerce operation team gave her suggestions on how to build her own persona. Based on her special identity as a skin care factory owner in South Korea, they suggested that she adjust her persona to "the young lady of a Korean skin care factory" and strengthen her persona by publishing diverse content, including her daily life with her Korean husband, real shots of factories and exhibition halls, and sharing of professional skin care knowledge. In this way, she got back on the fast track of increasing her followers. Currently, Yayale has more than 1.6 million fans on Kuaishou.

▲ Screenshot of @雅雅乐's Kuaishou homepage ▲

"At its core, Kuaishou is still a content community. Allowing merchants to return to content and improving their willingness and quality of content production truly caters to the underlying logic of Kuaishou's e-commerce, and is also the unique advantage that distinguishes Kuaishou from traditional e-commerce," Gong Haoyuan emphasized.

In order to allow merchants to more intuitively and strongly feel Kuaishou's concern for "planting grass", Gong Haoyuan told Kas Data that the high-quality content emerging from the "Good Things Quickly Plant Grass" activity will not only be recommended by the main site (such as: information flow), but will also appear in other non-standard resource positions, such as: opening screen, search, etc. At the same time, Kuaishou officials will also provide PR publicity for anchor cases that perform well. “The purpose is to make merchants/anchors feel that they have created good content and have abundant channels for display, so as to enhance their willingness to create good content.”

2. Short videos VS live broadcasts, what is the difference in the value of increasing fans?

When asked about the difference in fans brought by short videos and live broadcasts, @雅雅乐 replied to Kas Data that compared to live broadcasts, fans gained by short videos are not easy to lose. “Only those who recognize you and are curious about you will follow you, while the fans on live broadcasts may only follow you because of the benefits or products.”

In this regard, Wu Yue, the founder of Wu Yue Beauty, has a different view, "I personally feel that live streaming will increase fans' stickiness a little bit more."

May further stated that the increase in followers of short videos is more due to the content. Due to the density and usefulness of the information, users have a better information demand for the blogger; while the increase in live streaming is more due to the blogger's personality. Users are impressed by the blogger's sincerity, character, experience, etc., which generates trust, more interactions, and a stronger sense of following.

▲ May Beauty-Some Kuaishou experts▲

But no matter what the value difference is, in the eyes of Kuaishou's Gong Haoyuan: In 2021, in addition to live streaming, doing a good job of promoting short videos has become something that must be done.

"Compared to live streaming, short videos are a slow business. But the incremental traffic that live streaming can bring is limited after all. Especially for small and medium-sized businesses, it is more difficult to increase fans through live streaming. Therefore, we are relatively clear internally that more traffic will be allocated to small and medium-sized businesses that are trying to create content." In order to enable small and medium-sized businesses to grow faster, Kuaishou will also increase its training efforts. These trainings include universal online video courses and invitations to MCN organizations to provide targeted content empowerment for potential businesses.

In order to solve the current situation of the separation between "content" and "e-commerce" on the platform, Gong Haoyuan said that in 2021, Kuaishou e-commerce will also strengthen the support for live broadcast traffic for some MCN celebrities and amateur creators who can output good content, so that they can smoothly transform and sell goods. "This is exactly what we expect. We hope that Kuaishou can provide more traffic support for live streaming, especially for new accounts, or accounts that have not started broadcasting or have broadcasted less, to warm up the live broadcast room to promote the commonality of video and live streaming." May mentioned.

It is foreseeable that in 2021, anchors/institutions that have the ability to create high-quality content and can properly use the dual-engine model of "live streaming + short video" to sell goods are more likely to stand out among millions of active merchants and gain opportunities for rapid growth.

As Xiao Gu, senior vice president of Kuaishou, said at the New Year Goods Festival Investment Promotion Conference: Kuaishou e-commerce is a platform with parallel public and private domains, but relatively speaking, the private domain is more important. Only when merchants build up their personal image through short videos, gather fans, and establish warm connections, can they heat up the market through live streaming and sell their goods. Therefore, the core of Kuaishou e-commerce, or the core of the entire Kuaishou platform, is "short video + live broadcast".

3. How to create good grass-growing content on Kuaishou?

So, on Kuaishou, what exactly is considered good content? Are there any evaluation criteria?

May Beauty, a beauty agency that has regarded Kuaishou as its core platform since its establishment, has its own views. In the eyes of the founder May, good grass-planting content must meet four characteristics: useful, high-quality, authentic, and emphasized presentation.

Firstly, "useful" content that can provide buyers with practical guidance is a prerequisite; secondly, the products being promoted must be reliable, trustworthy, and endorsed by "quality", which is the foundation; thirdly, the content promotion method used by bloggers must be "real" and in line with the character's setting in terms of shooting, scenes, and video presentation, which is the key point; finally, the texture of the video presentation must be experienced, which includes the clarity of sound and picture, the high-level sense of the scene, the setting of BGM, and whether the blogger's tone and manner can form its own style.

Wu Yue told Kas Data that compared with 2018, her most direct feeling is that Kuaishou users' requirements for content are increasing, and gimmicky content has found it difficult to get high views. In addition, the Kuaishou platform is also changing. In addition to strengthening the guidance and support for MCNs, the threshold for content review has also been raised, especially for the introduction of product efficacy, there will be more stringent requirements.

Regarding the creation of grass-planting videos in 2021, May gave creators two suggestions. First, pay attention to the laying of keywords. For example, for a lipstick, you can indicate the brand name and color number in the title and description. This will bring some search-end traffic to the video and achieve long-term fan growth; second, in content design, more attention should be paid to the needs of the majority of people on Kuaishou. It is recommended to solve the problem in a simple, convenient and affordable way.

Regarding the evaluation of "good content", Kuaishou's Gong Haoyuan also told Kasi that they are currently formulating a set of standards with relatively low thresholds. Then, they will work with the industry to pass this standard to the industrial belt, and they will regularly carry out some content promotion and training for merchants to truly empower the content growth of merchants.

In the eyes of Mars Culture CEO Li Hao, " In the new live broadcast platform of the 'grass-planting economy', Kuaishou users are more tolerant and have higher trust in the anchors. This means that more new brands or less well-known brands can flourish on Kuaishou with the recommendation of anchors, achieving a comprehensive improvement in brand effectiveness and sales."

In this regard, Shi Jie, CEO of Tisu, expressed his affirmation and shared with us a case of Tisu:

In the second half of last year, a brand called "Dr. Aire" reached a cooperation with several Kuaishou influencers of Tisu, and the cooperation lasted for more than two months. Two months later, two anchor accounts of this brand (whose followers were 300,000 and 500,000 respectively) started live streaming and selling products on Kuaishou, and both of them sold more than 1 million yuan for the brand.

▲Screenshot of @黑心少夫人's Kuaishou homepage, from Tisu Agency▲

The PMPM case implemented by May Beauty also confirms this point of view. While major emerging brands have set their sights on other traffic platforms, PMPM has chosen a differentiated track - relying on the influence of Kuaishou influencers to achieve a ROI of 2-4.

"For new brands, Kuaishou is indeed a platform worth exploring. Brands and users use anchors/influencers as a medium to establish interactive connections, and conduct recognition processing in a subtle way during live broadcasts, making it easier for products to convey core information to users in the shortest possible time, laying a solid foundation for subsequent sales."

"In 2020, the connection model between short video seeding and live broadcast conversion has taken shape, and the user habit of shopping while browsing has basically taken shape." In the view of Li Hao, CEO of Mars Culture, Kuaishou's vitality and e-commerce stickiness are beyond the imagination of most people. If the user matches the overall user portrait of Kuaishou, it is recommended that the brand enter the market as early as possible, "but remember to make good use of the dual mode of 'short video + live broadcast'."

After tracking thousands of Kuaishou live broadcasts, we have come to an increasingly perceptual but definite conclusion: that is, before a live broadcast, the more deeply the host has planted the grass for a product, the higher the probability that the conversion efficiency will be in the live broadcast. The continuation of the brand's planting of grass on social platforms also largely determines the continuation of the weeding behavior.

During the interviews, the institutions all expressed that the focus in 2021 will be to accelerate investment in live streaming on Kuaishou. Rutisu will cultivate more pure live streaming talents for Kuaishou; while May Beauty will incorporate "live streaming performance" into the recruitment and assessment of talents. "I believe that live streaming e-commerce will eventually return to the product rather than a variety of gimmicks, so content-based MCN organizations like us still have a lot of room for growth," May said optimistically.

After participating in Kuaishou's "Good Things Quickly Plant Grass" event, @雅雅乐 has been busy participating in the Kuaishou New Year Festival event. She told Kas that the goal for 2021 is to reach 5 million fans through "short videos + live broadcasts". At the same time, more Korean products with high-quality reputation and cost-effectiveness will be introduced to Kuaishou for sale to increase the richness of goods and better meet user needs.

There is no doubt that as Kuaishou e-commerce strengthens its operation of high-quality content, supports small and medium-sized businesses/MCN organizations, and launches various marketing products that empower the growth of e-commerce anchors (core representative: Xiaodiantong), Kuaishou's broadcasting entities will be further enriched: more small and medium-sized players bound to "goods" and "high-quality content" will enter the user's field of vision and become an important increase in Kuaishou e-commerce in 2021.

Author: Kas Data

Source: caasdata6