Many friends, especially business friends, have been asking us, “How to make Douyin?”

This is a big question, just like asking how Internet marketing should be done. Usually when I hear this question, my first reaction is to help him break down the request:

What is your purpose in making Tik Tok?

How much effort are you going to put in?

How much budget have you prepared?

Do you have any phased goals?

…

Often after these questions are raised, the other party will remain silent for a period of time. Because they really can't answer some of the questions.

TikTok's iteration speed is surprisingly fast, and many people, including many people in the industry, find it difficult to keep up with TikTok's pace. Coupled with too many "getting rich" myths and too many so-called "experts", these already confused people become even more bewildered. On the one hand, they don't know where to start, and on the other hand, they always feel that they will be the next "miracle."

This article will analyze the marketing essence of Douyin and explain how players of different identities can enter Douyin.

What is the essence of the Douyin ecosystem?

Why do you say this?

Many friends will apply traditional marketing ideas or the marketing ideas of Taobao and Pinduoduo to Douyin, which is actually wrong.

Tik Tok is a content platform, and content is always the core. Content is created by creators and merchants, and users consume the content and then consume the products behind the content.

Based on this, let’s look at every product, policy, and activity related to Douyin.

Douyin launches various content support activities to accelerate the content richness of a certain vertical track;

Douyin launched Massive Engine and Massive Luban to enable merchants to output commercial content efficiently and accurately;

Douyin launched Star Map and Jihe in order to meet the merchants' desire for high-quality content and to leverage the influence of KOLs to improve word-of-mouth and realize conversion and monetization.

Douyin launched showcases and small shops to meet the creators' demands to sell goods and realize e-commerce monetization;

Douyin launched Jianying to lower the threshold for users to make videos and accelerate the transformation of ordinary users into "celebrity and expert";

Douyin launched Blue V and enterprise accounts to accelerate the growth of "individuals" with commercial needs into merchants.

…

Douyin continues to empower the three ends of "content" production through products, activities, and policies. On the one hand, it is to form a closed-loop content ecosystem; on the other hand, it is to continuously improve the efficiency of each link.

In this process, "traffic" is the most important link.

What is traffic?

Traffic refers to users' browsing of content. In the case of TikTok, it is also the distribution of content by the platform to a large extent.

For merchants or creators, traffic can most intuitively reflect the value produced by the content. Only when the content obtains traffic will subsequent conversion behavior be generated.

The content distribution of Douyin is determined partly by algorithms and partly by operational intervention .

The algorithm focuses more on content quality and user interest, which is a micro dimension. Operational intervention is more based on macro considerations, including business efficiency, platform direction, competitive and cooperative relationships, etc.

When we think about how to conduct marketing on Douyin, we must first start from the "micro" and "macro" perspectives, combine the direction of the platform, and find our own positioning.

At the micro level, we need to pay attention to the issue of content creation, that is, what content to create, how to create it and for whom to create it, in order to maximize the benefits of the content.

At the macro level, we take content creation as an established premise, study the overall operating strategy of the platform, think about the reasons behind the release of new platform policies and new products, and seize the platform dividends.

Secondly, you should recognize your own abilities and choose the tools provided by the platform in a targeted manner to improve your efficiency in acquiring traffic.

The current marketing situation of “merchants” on Douyin

Douyin has customized an "enterprise account" identity for business accounts, and endowed the enterprise account with functional components that guide conversions, such as POI, cards and coupons, CRM management, and customized replies.

But correspondingly, with the added functionality, there will be restrictions on traffic.

Most creators know that the content posted by personal accounts on Douyin has a "commercial rating". Douyin restricts personal accounts from posting overly "commercial" content to prevent excessive commercial content from affecting the user experience. However, corporate accounts have the right to be exempted from commercial ratings because Douyin believes that the content published by corporate accounts is commercial content.

Tik Tok will set separate label features for commercial content and regulate the exposure rate of commercial content during content distribution to ensure user experience. However, with the increase in corporate accounts, commercial content has gradually exploded, and the traffic that each piece of commercial content can get is getting less and less.

In 2018, the DAU of Tik Tok was 200 million. According to Kas Data statistics, as of October 31, 2018, the number of active (posted videos within 90 days) Blue V accounts was 12,900. Assuming that commercial content accounts for 15% of natural traffic, then 12,900 accounts are competing for this 15% share.

By May 2020, Douyin's DAU had grown from 200 million to 400 million, but the official number of corporate accounts exceeded 3 million. Compared with 2018, the number of corporate accounts has increased by more than 200 times. Not to mention how much natural traffic has been taken up by the live streaming content that emerged in 2020, assuming that the exposure rate of commercial content remains at 15%, the number of accounts participating in the competition has expanded by more than 100 times compared to 2018.

In addition, commercial content marked with commercial characteristics must also comply with the algorithm's recommendation rules during the competition process, that is, high-quality commercial content will be ranked higher and obtain more traffic . The survival of the fittest in content has made it increasingly difficult for commercial content to obtain natural traffic. “Hard” content is difficult to obtain traffic recommendations, and “soft” content is difficult to obtain user conversions.

Douyin is also very aware of these problems. In addition to continuously launching new features and strengthening the conversion of corporate accounts. In 2020, the booming live streaming also gave corporate accounts a shot in the arm.

For merchants, live streaming can greatly shorten the conversion chain; for Douyin, corporate live streaming can better guarantee product quality and thus protect users' e-commerce consumption experience. Therefore, in June, Douyin launched the exclusive component "Little Windmill" (corresponding to the shopping cart, connecting the enterprise account component) to enhance the conversion of the enterprise account live broadcast room, and launched the "Enterprise Live Broadcast Month Event" to support enterprise live broadcasts. As early as March, Douyin launched the test of live FEED stream advertising.

At this point, compared to 2019, merchants’ marketing paths on Douyin have undergone tremendous changes.

In the past, businesses mainly used content to promote products, but because the conversion efficiency was low, they were more looking for long-term marketing. Today, with the rise of small shops, the popularity of live streaming and the diversification of its functions, more and more businesses are seeking short-term marketing, and the strategies of different industries are also showing differences.

At the same time, Douyin has also intentionally divided merchants into two categories: small and medium-sized enterprises and brands by integrating its different resources and providing different products and services for the two major demands of "quality" and "efficiency" , resulting in differentiated strategies of small and medium-sized enterprises and brands.

Douyin marketing suggestions for small and medium-sized businesses:

Offline service industries should focus on short videos, while consumer goods industries should focus on live streaming

The information conveyed by small and medium-sized enterprises to the outside world will be more direct, more focused, and more aimed at achieving sales performance. For most small and medium-sized enterprises, Douyin’s main marketing path is to publish content through corporate accounts to guide conversions .

As shown in the above picture, the two major products provided by Douyin , "Small Shop" and "Enterprise Account Component", are responsible for the conversion layer. Among them, "small shop" can provide enterprises with online sales channels for products, and "enterprise account components" can realize the company's offline consumer traffic, sales lead collection, customer service and other needs. Looking back upwards, the converted users come from the content layer, namely short videos and live broadcasts.

Users link from the content layer to the conversion layer through functions such as shopping cart, link, and windmill . Among them, "windmill" is a function recently launched by Douyin specifically for the conversion of non-e-commerce live broadcasts of corporate accounts. This function can be used to directly connect with the corporate account components in the live broadcast room, and guide users to perform group purchases, receive coupons, and other operations in the live broadcast room, greatly shortening the conversion path.

Therefore, in the operation of enterprise accounts, we should first build a conversion layer and improve the construction of small stores and enterprise account components. The enterprise account components are set up in the enterprise account background (e.douyin.com). For offline service industries, claiming POIs and setting up coupons are particularly important and are key links in promoting consumers to shop in stores. For small and medium-sized e-commerce companies, opening small stores and putting goods on the shelves are also very important. On the one hand, this is because the conversion path of small stores is shorter. On the other hand, small stores have a rating policy. If the rating does not meet the standards, it may even affect the GMV of the small store.

After building the conversion layer, it is time to invest in the content layer. Neither short videos nor live broadcasts can be abandoned. Live broadcasts are closer to conversions, while short videos have a stronger ability to acquire traffic. However, different types of enterprises have different choices between the two forms.

For most offline service businesses, the most important thing is to satisfy consumers' consumption experience and scene perception when they come to the store. Therefore, the offline service industry should focus on short videos.

The biggest barrier for many companies to enter Douyin is the video content. In fact, there is no need to be afraid of "content creation" and don't be scared by those videos on Douyin that get millions of likes. They are not on the same track as you. According to Kas Data statistics, taking food content as an example, there are less than 80 blue V accounts with more than 1 million fans.

We only need to remember one thing during the creative process, which is to express the characteristics of the store in the form of "TikTok".

What is the format of Tik Tok? Beautiful "people" or "things".

Try not to just create content that displays products and services. You must express them through people or things. There is no need to rack your brains to write jokes or create plots. Content that can benefit users or trigger their emotions is excellent content.

For small and medium-sized enterprises that focus on selling consumer goods, live streaming is a key target.

I won’t talk much about live streaming. I would like to emphasize two points here. First, you must persist for a long time; second, don’t be impatient for quick results.

For example: The picture below is a blue V account of a zongzi shop in Shanghai. It has only 41,000 followers, and its products are handmade zongzi.

Clicking on the list of works, you can observe that since March, the merchant has maintained a rhythm of producing four videos per week. The video content is the production process of zongzi and the display of the finished product.

As the Dragon Boat Festival approached, the merchant took advantage of the Douyin hot spot and developed a unique "Internet celebrity rice dumpling". On April 24, he started live streaming in his store. In early May, he increased the live streaming duration to 12 hours per day. The entire live broadcast process is very simple. From 11:00 to 1:00 noon and from 15:00 to 19:00 in the evening, the process of making rice dumplings will be broadcast live to show the authentic ingredients of the product. The rest of the time is devoted to showing daily life in the store. According to Kas Data, the live broadcast had a maximum number of viewers of 128,000 in a single day, and a peak number of online users of 1,058.

Let’s see what the effect is.

Clicking on the window, the number one-ranked product is zongzi, with a unit price of 25 yuan and sales volume of 3,567. The single product contributed sales of 89,175 yuan, and the GMV of all the products on the shelves in the entire store was about 140,000 yuan. Moreover, this is only Douyin’s sales volume, and we cannot calculate the data on offline consumption directed through Douyin. The visible cost is just a mobile phone for live streaming and less than 40 videos since March.

To sum up, offline service industries should focus on short videos. They should establish connections with users through short videos, thus forming relationships and attracting users to shop in stores. Live streaming is a means of activities and promotions.

For the vast consumer goods industry, the focus should be on live streaming, and developing Douyin into an online sales channel through live streaming. However, unlike e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, on Douyin, the source of live streaming traffic comes more from short video content.

Of course, if you have enough budget, you can also purchase some traffic from the official as a supplement.

Both Bytedance and Luban belong to performance-based advertising and are the main platforms for purchasing commercial traffic.

Bytedance is more suitable for purchasing traffic for short video content, with increasing fans and exposure as the main delivery goals; Bytedance Luban is more suitable for purchasing traffic for live broadcasts or products, with transactions as the main delivery goal.

DOU+ and Star Map are the main channels for obtaining public domain traffic.

DOU+ is used to purchase public domain playback volume for its own content, but the ROI of purchasing DOU+ through an enterprise account is lower than that of an individual account. Therefore, the editor does not recommend that enterprise accounts invest too much budget in DOU+. The operation method of DOU+ has been written before. You can refer to this article "Don't waste your money anymore, this is how you should invest in DOU+! 》.

Star Chart invites KOLs to make videos or conduct live broadcasts for businesses in order to reach the KOL’s fan circle and achieve the purpose of attracting fans or converting customers. At present, the monetization efficiency of Star Map’s mid-level accounts is very low. On the one hand, this is because of the confusion in KOL quotations, and on the other hand, it is because small and medium-sized enterprises lack understanding of KOL marketing. At the end of June, Douyin was carrying out rectification and promotion for mid-level KOLs. There should be a bonus period in the future, and small and medium-sized enterprises can try to cooperate with KOLs .

But no matter what type of enterprise it is, don’t lose your composure because of placing too high hopes on Douyin, and be sure to invest resources reasonably.

Tik Tok can serve as a supplement to customer acquisition channels, but it is difficult to become the mainstay of business operations.

Brands’ marketing strategies on Douyin:

Take brand number as the core and make good use of traffic layer and conversion layer tools

For various reasons, it is difficult for brands to create "TikTok-style" content. With the explosive growth of corporate accounts, they are gradually losing ground in the "content" competition, and the efficiency of attracting fans based on content is getting lower and lower.

Taking the number of blue V fans of mobile phone brands as an example, on October 31, 2018, the number of fans of the top mobile phone brand Xiaomi was 1.062 million;

In March 2019, Xiaomi’s fans reached 2.109 million thanks to the Super Challenge “Battle Angel”;

In September 2019, Xiaomi had 2.249 million fans. After half a year, the number of fans increased by 140,000, but it still leads the 3C industry.

In March 2020, Xiaomi had 2.4 million fans, an increase of 160,000, falling to second place.

However, from March 2019 to March 2020, Xiaomi released a total of 10 topics/challenges and updated about 170 videos.

However, it is impossible for Douyin to give up its brand customers. Therefore, in 2020, Douyin aggregated resources and launched a series of functions for brands, trying to redefine the way brands play on Douyin, with the intention of separating brands from corporate accounts.

In May 2020, ByteDance proposed the concept of "brand account" in its new brand marketing plan. For brands, "brand account" is no longer a publishing vehicle for official content, but a "content marketing hub" in the Douyin and even ByteDance ecosystem.

Why do you say that? Let’s first take a look at the revised brand number page.

Compared with the enterprise account in 2019, the biggest change in the revised brand account is the customized TAB function on the brand homepage.

The forwarding function is a new feature in Douyin's 12.0.0 version in July (it may also be a test function). All users have it and it replaces the previous dynamic page. Douyin's purpose is to enhance users' sense of social participation based on content. The revision here may also have a certain impact on content distribution. I won't go into details in this article and will discuss it in detail in the next article. For brands, this function is more conducive to interaction with users, and brands can derive many "Weibo-type" interactive gameplays.

Mention function , brands can use this function to aggregate video content released by cooperating KOLs/celebrity for the brand. I have worked in an advertising company before, and I know very well how painful content creation is for big brands. It’s not that big brands lack creative capabilities, but that their decision-making process is too long and their awareness of risks is too strong. Behind every piece of content are countless compromises. Obviously, Douyin also understands brands very well. The Mention function can aggregate high-quality content created by KOLs in the brand account, which not only enriches the content of the entire account, but also increases the credibility of the brand through the endorsement of KOLs. Of course, it will also further promote the cooperation between brands and Douyin KOLs.

Brand function : Brand function is closer to the conversion end and is equivalent to an upgraded version of the "product" function of ordinary enterprise accounts. The product function is linked to the store through the form of shelves, and the brand function is linked to the mini program or outbound to Tmall through the form of banners.

In addition to the launch of the "brand account", Douyin also commercialized the "search" function in 2020 , and customized keyword search pages for cooperative brands to help brands occupy a long-term position and attract loyal user groups.

At this point, we can summarize the marketing path of the brand number, as shown in the figure.

The brand account will act as a hub to connect front-end traffic and back-end applications . The traffic layer is mainly composed of search, KOL marketing and hard advertising, while the application conversion layer is undertaken by mini programs, LINK and small stores.

From exposure to conversion, the entire business path is very clear. The launch of search and mention functions can also help brand accounts accumulate fans. Brand accounts no longer have to worry about whether to create "commercial" content or "entertainment" content.

In addition, for brands with short-term campaign needs, they can cooperate with the platform through brand accounts, hold challenges, participate in platform events, or cooperate with celebrities/film and television IPs through the platform. For brands with long-term PR needs, they can link their brand accounts with their matrix accounts and form interactions through mutual mentions and forwarding.

Please note that we have not mentioned the issue of short video or live broadcast format selection here. For brand accounts, it is not recommended that brands conduct 24-hour store broadcasts or high-frequency content output. These should be done by the matrix accounts under their umbrella. The content output of a brand account should be more integrated with the brand’s own marketing rhythm, such as live broadcasts of large-scale marketing nodes and the output of brand concepts.

Because the "brand account" is the "heart" of the brand in Douyin and even the ByteDance ecosystem. "The heart controls the blood in the body. The arteries transport blood to various parts of the body, and the veins then send the blood back to the heart." The matrix accounts under the brand account represent various parts of the body. They have different divisions of labor and their respective positioning is clearer. The output of normal content carried by them will be more targeted and more efficient. The role of a brand account is to provide resources to various matrix accounts, helping them to grow rapidly and thereby realizing value for the brand.

Summarize

This article mainly explains "Tik Tok Marketing" as understood by Kas Data from a business perspective.

At Douyin, content is always the core, and all of Douyin's products are born around the content ecosystem. Our marketing activities on Douyin must also be based on content. However, companies of different types and sizes play Douyin differently. We must recognize our own capabilities and choose the most appropriate way to enter Douyin rationally.

The iteration speed of Douyin is too fast. In just half a year, live streaming has grown into a towering tree. Many friends feel that marketing on Douyin is very weak. They don’t know whether the resource advantages established today can still maintain the leading position tomorrow. In fact, this is not only true for TikTok, but the entire Internet. On the contrary, we should be glad that we caught the early train so that we will not be left behind by the times.

Author: Kas Data

Source: caasdata6