The marketing rules of Station B!

Since launching the New Year’s Eve Gala last year, Bilibili has become increasingly popular, with remarkable results. As Alibaba and Tencent became popular on Bilibili with their ghost videos and pitiful content, more and more technology companies, Internet brands and catering enterprises have begun to use Bilibili as a new marketing platform. A few days ago, even the international fast food giant McDonald's entered Bilibili.

The predecessor of Bilibili was a niche two-dimensional entertainment community, and Bilibili's journey out of the circle actually began in 2016. Over the years, Bilibili has made a kaleidoscope of efforts and attempts.

However, what Bilibili has always broken is the boundary between users and business. The nature of its circle group, namely young people of Generation Z, has not changed. Moreover, its core energy field is relatively strong, and this energy field gradually radiates to user groups, new marketing communications, and commercial monetization.

01. Bilibili: A gathering place for Generation Z, from a deserted island to a city

Bilibili has a history of more than 10 years. It was founded by a post-90s generation named Xu Yi based on his strong interest in the second dimension. Its initial prototype was a subculture community such as the second dimension with simple functions, including barrage, interactive comments and watching videos, but this is also its core difference.

Compared with other platforms, this community is more closed and has a high entry threshold. One has to pass 100 questions before being able to comment and post barrages. Therefore, the community brings together a small group of young people with the same interests. But for people outside the circle, Bilibili at that time was almost a deserted island, a new species, with only the people inside entertaining themselves.

Chen Rui, the first investor of Bilibili, once revealed, "In 2013, Bilibili's Baidu Index was over 200,000, but no mainstream media reported on Bilibili." It can be seen that the existence of Bilibili is insignificant in the eyes of the world.

However, this community that brings together Generation Z has great development potential in terms of both content and user base. By 2016, Bilibili had gradually developed into an inclusive community. Two-thirds of its traffic was no longer 2D content, and there were more than 1 million active UP hosts. There were tens of thousands of user-submitted videos every day, 90% of which were homemade or original videos.

By the third quarter of 2019, Bilibili's average monthly active users reached 128 million. As of the fourth quarter, the number of Bilibili's official members who had passed 100 Questions increased by 50% year-on-year to 68 million.

Moreover, the content ecology of Bilibili is becoming increasingly rich, covering areas such as animation, comics, audio, virtual idols, virtual anchors, etc. It has transformed from a deserted island into a city full of oases.

It is obvious that Bilibili has evolved from a niche community with an anti-commercial spirit to the most mainstream community for young people of Generation Z.

In the city of Bilibili, 81.7% of the platform's users are born after 1990, and those born after 1995 account for more than 50%, with the user base exceeding 100 million monthly active users. Those born after 1995 are becoming increasingly unstoppable in the Internet world. Their population base and consumption potential make them destined to become the next gold mine for Internet gold. This is undoubtedly a huge consumption energy field.

02. A variety of solutions to break the circle, from content scope to marketing rules

Initially, Bilibili targeted two-dimensional anime users with a relatively narrow coverage area. Therefore, the platform content and user groups were very concentrated. However, once the user base grows to a certain level, this model will inevitably encounter a growth ceiling. Especially after the business model is linked to capital, breaking the circle becomes an urgent demand for B Station's development.

To sum up, the B-side mainly achieves rapid breakthrough through content expansion and unique marketing methods.

1. Provide new UP hosts with traffic and cash support

Bilibili adopts multi-dimensional user incentive measures to provide the soil and environment for content growth. In other words, it drives new UP users to settle in through the platform ecological mechanism, thereby increasing the output of original high-quality content.

In terms of specific strategy, it is to attract new users by providing traffic and cash support to new UP hosts. On the other hand, it is to directly snatch people from Doudan and Kuaishou.

At the 2019 B Station Top 100 UP Master Awards Ceremony, half of the attendees were new faces. These new UP Masters have contributed a large amount of high-quality content to B Station. This shows that Bilibili’s measures to attract new users are effective.

2. Introduce popular content to expand boundaries

In terms of content production, Bilibili attempts to break boundaries by introducing popular content.

In 2016, the introduction of the CCTV documentary "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" broke everyone's inherent perception of Bilibili for the first time. In 2018, Bilibili launched the low-cost food documentary "A String of Life". In December 2019, Bilibili won the exclusive broadcasting rights for the "League of Legends" Global Finals in China for the next three years.

Now, in addition to investing heavily in domestic creations and animation series, Bilibili also imports, produces and co-produces variety shows and documentaries, as well as purchases long videos. These are undoubtedly content weapons for Bilibili to break out of its circle.

3. Unique new marketing strategy

In terms of marketing, Bilibili knows how to communicate with young people. For example, in 2019, the New Year's Eve party was different from the conventional parties. Bilibili used two-dimensional, animation, and game elements as the keynote, which not only catered to the trend of the core user group, but also on this basis, with the addition of many celebrities, industry leaders and top UP hosts, it can be said that it successfully brought young people outside the circle into the circle.

In addition, a few days ago, in order to promote the new game "Princess Connect Re:Dive" represented by Bilibili, B station placed a huge QR code marketing advertisement on the B station building. It was unique. The QR code did not have any copywriting and was not preheated in advance, but it became a hot search on Weibo. Behind the completely different marketing method is the unchanging sincerity towards young people.

In addition, the barrage and ghost animal editing of Bilibili are attracting more and more young people outside the circle, which is undoubtedly an innovative way of user growth marketing.

03. New marketing front: a win-win situation for Bilibili and brand owners

Affected by the epidemic, many companies have had to move their activities online. Since Bilibili became popular through the 2019 New Year's Eve Gala, it has become a new traffic pool that is different from the "two Weibo and one Douyin". Many technology companies have begun to move in as a new battlefield for brand marketing.

Brands choose Bilibili as a new marketing platform mainly based on two considerations:

First of all, Bilibili gathers the most active young people. According to official data, users aged 18 to 35 account for 78% of Bilibili. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the average monthly active users of Bilibili reached 130 million, a year-on-year increase of 40%.

In addition, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) pointed out in the 44th "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet" released in August 2019 that as of June 2019, the scale of Internet users in China reached 854 million, and Internet users under the age of 29 accounted for 45.5% of the total, of which Internet users under the age of 20 accounted for 23.9%.

It can be seen that Generation Z has risen and will become a consumer force that brands cannot ignore in the next decade.

As Bilibili continues to expand its circle and its content becomes more and more rich and diversified, the potential for Bilibili to increase its monthly user base is promising. These users are undoubtedly a natural user resource for brand communication.

At the same time, vertical field UP hosts on Bilibili are ready-made KOL resources for brands, and the “grass planting” function is also very important for brands.

Furthermore, Bilibili can help brands establish a younger image. Previously, the ghost videos released by DingTalk on Bilibili helped the platform gain hundreds of thousands of followers. It can be said that it was a classic demonstration for other brands and set a new benchmark for marketing.

In addition, in addition to content support, Bilibili's exploration in the fields of e-commerce and live streaming can also help more brands expand their marketing positions and realize traffic monetization.

In short, if brands want to attract young users, they need to play with young people, mingle with Generation Z in a way that young people like, and unconsciously reach the hearts of young consumers with brand value to achieve emotional resonance, thereby increasing fan stickiness.

04. The final form of Bilibili, exploring the path of commercialization and monetization

Exploring the commercialization of models and realizing the monetization of user traffic are issues that every company, especially Internet companies, will eventually face, and Bilibili is no exception.

In recent years, Bilibili has been preparing for both situations: trying to break out of its circle on the one hand and exploring commercial monetization on the other.

In terms of breaking the circle, Bilibili is building a more diverse and rich content ecosystem around the direction of "pan-youth cultural community" to cover more users. Today, in addition to ACG, Bilibili has introduced a large number of different types of content, including ancient style, Korean wave, celebrities, Japanese dramas, European and American movies, beauty, life, home, technology, etc.

From this point of view, Bilibili is becoming more and more like a popular pan-entertainment platform, and its ultimate form seems to be more like a small-scale Tencent.

However, how to balance the old 2D users and the new young people from outside the circle is a key point that Bilibili needs to consider in the future. After all, a while ago, the "Heart-beating Challenge Remix Contest" planned by Bilibili triggered an incident in which old users wanted to withdraw from Bilibili to AcFun, which caused a lot of uproar and had to be taken seriously.

In terms of exploring diversified business models, Bilibili has begun to open up UP hosts on a large scale to cooperate with brands for advertising placement, such as purchasing the copyright of "League of Legends" and signing the former "No. 1 Douyu anchor" Feng Timo with a large sum of money. Moreover, with the support of Alibaba Capital, it has begun to infiltrate the e-commerce field. These show Bilibili's ambitions in the commercialization of live streaming, advertising, games, and e-commerce.

Although Bilibili is still in a loss-making state and its marketing expenses are getting higher and higher, it has undoubtedly moved out of the stage of blindly burning money. What's more, most importantly, Bilibili already has revenue support from multiple business lines.

Currently, live streaming, advertising and e-commerce have become important growth points for the B-side. Judging from the financial statements, these businesses are growing rapidly, accounting for 57% of revenue. It is uncertain when it will become profitable, but as a video community for C-end consumers, Bilibili is still very successful.

It is worth mentioning that as its content and tone become increasingly mainstream, the "strong two-dimensional community culture" will obviously no longer constitute a core competitive barrier, and the competitive situation that Bilibili will face in the future will inevitably deteriorate significantly.

Author: Internet Brand Officer

Source: Internet Brand Official

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