Detailed explanation of the new rules for huge amount of Qianchuan investment

I believe everyone is no stranger to the saying "thousands of rivers flow into the stream". For Douyin merchants, the importance of Qianchuan traffic flow is becoming more and more important; it can be said that if you want to play Douyin e-commerce, traffic flow is a necessary skill. When investing in Qianchuan, the indicator that everyone pays most attention to is undoubtedly ECPM (revenue per thousand impressions). The quality of ECPM determines the display opportunities of the advertising materials invested by "us". The ECPM indicator is affected by eCTR (estimated click-through rate), eCVR (estimated conversion rate) and bid. Generally speaking, the higher the ECPM means better the sales effect.

But this rule has changed fundamentally in recent times. On May 25, Bytedance officially released an announcement, announcing the launch of a "new traffic collaboration strategy" (*referred to as "new strategy" in the following text). This means that the previously widely circulated "traffic investment secrets" may not still work, and merchants' operating strategies need to be updated in a timely manner.

Let’s first take a look at how the official announcement states the “traffic collaboration strategy”.

According to the official introduction: Under the new strategy, the interactions brought by high-quality content, such as live broadcast room interactions, short video playback, etc., as well as the important indicator for measuring the transaction ability of merchants - the conversion value (GPM) brought by thousand exposures, will have an important impact on marketing results.

It can be seen that ECPM, delivery GPM and content interaction indicators (live broadcast room interaction, short video playback) jointly determine the marketing effect.

The combined effect of these three indicators also brings two direct changes to merchants’ optimization of their advertising campaigns.

First of all, the most direct change is that merchants can no longer only look at ECPM when placing advertisements in the future.

Secondly, the importance of GPM and content interaction indicators has been enhanced again. High-quality content interactions such as live broadcast room interactions and short video playback will affect advertising effectiveness. At the same time, the conversion value brought by thousands of advertising exposures has also become an important reference for measuring the transaction capabilities of merchants.

Why did Juliang Qianchuan launch the "new strategy" at this point in time? Mother Cicada has two guesses about this.

First, it is based on the consideration of the overall operation of the platform.

We all know that the core of massive Qianchuan advertising is to display advertisements to users, and the product is ultimately to serve users. Therefore, the experience and satisfaction of users, that is, potential consumers, are particularly important.

Although merchants who pay for traffic can be regarded as Douyin's Party A, it is not difficult to understand that the platform certainly also hopes to strictly control content quality within the rules and maintain the platform atmosphere and user experience. The official subtext may be: "Flow casting" must also consider user experience, and ads that disturb users are not good ads!

From a long-term perspective, from limiting the number of plans to this rule adjustment. Douyin e-commerce’s general direction of improving the quality of platform content and serving as a connector between users and merchants has not changed.

Secondly, in a short while, June 18, 2022 will be here. June 18th every year is an important node for e-commerce marketing, and Douyin e-commerce is no exception. The new "new strategy" launched by Juliang Qianchuan during this period will also help merchants to familiarize themselves with the rules in advance, so that they can get a more satisfactory answer in this year's 6.18 exam.

▲Pictures from the Internet

It can be said that the launch of the "new traffic collaboration strategy" marks that the "single ECPM model" is a thing of the past. E-commerce practitioners in the huge market need to enter the era of refined operations.

So, what impact will the introduction of the “new strategy” have on businesses? We have the following judgments:

1. Massive advertising is a technical job that requires refined operations. The extensive strategy of "flooding" is no longer feasible.

As mentioned above, after the launch of the "new strategy", investment flow should not only look at the investment-output ratio, but also require an overall business mindset, continuous optimization of people, goods, and venues, and use content to leverage quality growth. All aspects need to be considered, including product categories, pricing logic, target groups, short video materials, live broadcast scripts, etc. Therefore, higher capabilities are required of merchants and pitchers, just like the barrel effect, and there cannot be obvious shortcomings.

2. Pure paid advertising players will be limited, and low-quality creatives may need to increase their bids if they want to increase sales

Previously, some businesses did not select products, but only copied them; they did not create ideas, but only imitated the materials, and then “invested as much as possible”. Guarantee the highest bid, and keep investing heavily as long as you don’t lose money. It is obvious that the "new strategy" will have a greater impact on this type of players, and the cycle from running the plan (creating a new planning process) to producing volume may be significantly extended.

3. Favorable to brands with good content capabilities and pursuing long-term stable operations

The "new strategy" will be a major benefit to content-based merchants. If your content interaction indicators perform well, there will already be a certain amount of natural traffic brought by short videos and live broadcasts. So after this change, you might as well rely on your own relatively excellent advertising GPM and content interaction indicators to invest in traffic. It is possible to reduce the cost of placing a huge amount of ads, and also provide a chance to achieve synergy and complementarity between advertising traffic and natural traffic, thus helping the business to grow continuously and steadily.

Among the many merchants on Douyin, we found a cloth doll merchant. The boss shot a large number of short videos every day, introducing the products with interesting jokes, for example: horse + shark = shark riding a horse, cow + beer = cow beer... This form of playing with homophonic puns is loved by fans, who have expressed: "Is there really no creative bottleneck?", "Boss, please come up with xxx", "Isn't it okay for me to buy it?", "xx big enemies have placed an order", etc.

▲Picture from TikTok

This model has also significantly increased the merchant's sales. According to Chanmama, the merchant's videos starting in June last year were all in the "good stuff" recommendation model, but the data was relatively average, with an average of only 720,000 views in the past 360 days. After it was adjusted to a "homophonic pun" in March this year to keep up with Internet hot spots, it instantly caught the attention of young consumer groups. The average video playback volume in the past 30 days has reached nearly 1.78 million. The live broadcast sales also cooperated with short videos. The average viewership in the past 30 days reached 55,000, and the average daily sales volume was 2,000+. This also proves that high-quality content stimulates consumers' interest and increases their willingness to place orders.

▲Analysis of Cicada Mama’s live broadcast

When rule changes are inevitable, smart people will always be able to make adjustments based on changes in platform rules as soon as possible. For large businesses that have a relatively complete operating system and professional advertising or marketing teams, they must have been prepared in advance. But how should the large number of medium and small businesses, which have the largest base, deal with this situation?

Through communication with familiar insiders of Juliang Qianchuan, we also have a few suggestions for your reference:

1. Build a solid foundation for Douyin e-commerce business and increase the emphasis on products, content and post-sales services

Although it may sound a bit old-fashioned, this is indeed particularly important for e-commerce operations at the current stage after the change of the "new strategy". We have met many friends who work for Qianchuan. Previously, they only considered one "principle" when optimizing their advertising plans: "adjust the price if there is a disagreement, and change the material if the price adjustment is ineffective." This single-minded thinking needs to be abandoned. The basis of advertising is people, goods and place. It is better to get the people, goods and places ready first, and then consider the launch plan. While striving for sales volume, we must also pay attention to products, content and post-sales services to ensure product quality, content quality and user consumption experience.

2. The underlying logic remains unchanged: Find a balance between "bid" and "quality"

After the launch of the "new strategy", Qianchuan's launch logic is still clear: execute the plan → produce volume and stabilize production (look at the data and optimize the effect) → provide good after-sales service and strive for profitability. However, you need to find a balance between "bid" and "quality" based on your own situation.

For example, we all know that the Asian record holder for the men's 100 meters, "Asian Flying Man" Su Bingtian, previously broke the Asian record with a time of 9.83 seconds at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, making history. His achievement was based on a series of "scientific training" methods provided by the Chinese track and field team during the preparation period for the Olympics, including training arrangements, method selection, technical improvements and specific requirements.

If we regard Su Bingtian's already strong physical fitness as the ECPM of traffic investment, then scientific training is undoubtedly the projection of advertising GPM and content interaction indicators. Under the "new strategy", without basic physical fitness, no matter how good the training method is, it will not produce results; but if you only rely on good physical fitness and ignore the improvement that scientific training can bring, then it will be more difficult to achieve good results.

3. Reserve multi-capable marketing talents

From the newly added measurement indicators of the "New Strategy", it is not difficult to find that content power is a key factor in measuring the business performance of merchants. But this may not be a change that is only happening in Douyin e-commerce, but a key point of business growth that applies to other online platforms.

Therefore, we recommend that businesses should pay attention to their own talent reserves, and may even need to set up corresponding positions, or arrange for further coordination between the content marketing team and the bidding team. As a strategist, the person in charge of brand placement not only needs to have placement experience, but also needs to have a perspective on material optimization and the ability to optimize content. It is foreseeable that the "new strategy" will cause "pure pitchers" to no longer be popular.

summary

Another year's 6.18 promotion is coming, and everyone must have started intensive preparations, just to achieve a surge in sales during the 6.18 promotion. After reading this article, I hope that everyone can achieve their own small goals during the 6.18 promotion!