2020 Short Video Content Marketing Trends

In 2020, due to the dual impact of economic downturn and the epidemic, it is foreseeable that the cold winter will continue and the momentum will increase.

According to CTR data, China's advertising market declined by 8.2% in the first three quarters of 2019, with traditional media falling by 11.4% year-on-year and Internet media also falling by 4.2%.

In the second half of the Internet, when the traffic dividend is gradually disappearing, the new traffic brought by short videos has become a new battlefield for all parties to compete and cultivate, and it has also become the only beam of light on the road of "innovation and transformation" in the advertising industry in 2019. Content marketing with short videos and live broadcasts as its core carriers has become popular and is integrated into every aspect of brand marketing, communication, sales, and operations; "content" has become a core variable, changing the time cost of traditional brand building and the budget structure of brand marketing and communication.

At the beginning of the new year, Kas Data brings you the "2020 Short Video Content Marketing Trend White Paper". This report was written by analysts from the Mars Marketing Institute in three months.

It not only summarizes the gains and regrets of all parties in the short video industry (including platforms, KOL/MCN, advertisers, etc.) in 2019 from an industry perspective, but also focuses on analyzing the Douyin and Kuaishou platforms under the G2 structure: KOL portraits, fan portraits, and fan interaction behavior preferences. From the perspective of content changes, it analyzes the KOL content types with the largest increase on the two platforms, as well as the KOL content types with the largest increase in fans, and commends the typical celebrities of the year.

Most importantly, the report focuses on the three major content marketing forms: KOL marketing, Blue V operations and challenge competitions. It analyzes the data performance of various industries in 2019, classic cases worthy of recommendation, and compiles practical methodologies for brands at different stages of development to learn and refer to. At the end of the report, KasData has compiled 9 major trends in short video content marketing in 2020 for you to guide you in practical marketing.

One point worth emphasizing: except for the cited third-party data and public information, the data in the report are all from Kas Data and do not represent the official data of the platform. Our original intention is to hope that in 2020: we can all live better in the cold winter; we also hope to exchange sincerity for sincerity, gain your recognition and attention, and become your desk book for practical short video content marketing in 2020.

Because there is too much content, I hope you have the time to read it all. We will publish more content interpretations of this report in subsequent articles, so stay tuned.

The following are some of the research results of the report (the report is 99 pages in total, the following is just a micro-excerpt, click on the image to enlarge it to see the data chart in the text more clearly):

Part.1 The “gains and regrets” of the development of the short video industry

01

In 2019, short videos stood out and became one of the fastest growing segments in terms of mobile Internet usage time and user scale. The number of daily active users of short videos was nearly twice that of online videos.

Although a large number of practitioners led by BAT have entered the market one after another, the G2 pattern of competition among comprehensive platforms has emerged. After the battle for traffic, deepening traffic cultivation and monetization has become the focus of competition between Douyin and Kuaishou platforms. Although the revenue structure of Douyin and Kuaishou did not change much in 2019 compared with 2018, the actions of enabling diversified commercial monetization through a series of products and policies are expected to "take root and blossom" in 2020, and the revenue structure of mainstream short video platforms will also undergo major adjustments.

▲Estimated advertising revenue of Tik Tok vs Kuaishou in 2019

02

The short video content creation echelon has further expanded. As competition intensifies, similar to the disappearance of the platform's demographic dividend cycle, the "knockout round" among content creators has begun, and the life cycle of creators and even MCN agencies is shortening.

It is gratifying that in one year, the number of KOLs with exactly similar nicknames on Douyin and Kuaishou has increased by 2.67 times, and the number of top creators with more than 3 million fans on both platforms has increased.

▲The number of accounts with exactly the same nicknames on Douyin and Kuaishou in one year, and the content categories. Data source: Kas Data

The rise of short videos/live streaming sales has also provided a new channel for mid- and low-end accounts (with less than 1 million followers) to monetize, contributing to the continued prosperity of the content ecosystem.

▲Distribution of fans of TOP sales experts from Douyin and Kuaishou in October 2019, data source: Kas Data

03

From a marketing perspective: the entire industry is accelerating its entry into short video marketing , with beauty and personal care and e-commerce platforms being the most prominent. Internet celebrity brands and products are no longer just created by UGC, but more are the result of brand integrated marketing. However, success is a path that only a few brands can take, and most platforms have failed in short video marketing in 2019.

At the same time, the practice of inflating traffic and likes continues despite repeated bans. Its characteristics of intelligence, scale, platformization and industrialization have also greatly affected advertisers' trust in cooperation and the healthy development of the content industry. Data drives the healthy development of short video marketing, and the significance of correct assessment of marketing value increases.

▲Industry distribution of short video ads from January to October 2019 & number of Douyin banned accounts in each month, data source: Kas Data & Douyin

04

Judging from the data change trends of KOLs (number of followers ≥ 10w) on the seven major short video platforms, KOLs on most platforms are in a state of growth. The growth of KOLs on Douyin was the most significant, increasing by 1.47 times in one year; followed by Bilibili, where the number of UP hosts with more than 100,000 fans increased by nearly 100%.

Considering that the original KOL hierarchical division is unreasonable: there are too many KOLs with 100,000-1 million fans, the difficulty of increasing fans for KOLs of different fan levels varies greatly (3 million fans is the most difficult threshold to increase fans), and the current situation of increasing fans in vertical categories (the more subdivided the category, the more difficult it is to increase fans to 3 million), Kas Data decided to redefine the head, shoulders, waist, and tail KOLs of mainstream short video platforms (except Bilibili), and believed that: accounts with 3 million to 10 million fans are head accounts (accounting for 2.51% of the total number of KOLs), 1 million to 3 million are shoulders (accounting for 10.88% of the total number of KOLs), and accounts with 300,000 to 1 million fans are waist accounts (accounting for 31.63%), and accounts with more than 10 million fans are super head accounts (accounting for only 0.38%).

▲ Short video platforms (except Bilibili) redefine the head, shoulders, waist and tail KOLs, data source: Kas Data

Part.2 Typical Platforms: Douyin VS Kuaishou Development

01

By analyzing the KOL portraits and fan portraits of Douyin and Kuaishou, we can see that Douyin has a larger proportion of female creators (KOLs) and female fans, while Kuaishou has more male creators and male fans.

From the perspective of the geographical distribution of creators: Douyin's first- and second-tier creators are highly concentrated (accounting for 74.92%), while Kuaishou's creators are relatively lower-tier, with third- and fourth-tier cities accounting for 49.02%, which is more in line with the user portrait of short videos. Judging from the geographical distribution of fans, Kuaishou has a deeper coverage of the fourth-tier and below markets (reaching 42.84%), and the "old irons" in the sinking market are more willing to be active around Kuaishou KOLs.

▲Douyin VS Kuaishou: KOL fan portrait, data source: Kas Data

02

Judging from the fans’ interactive activity, the ratio of likes to comments on Douyin KOL videos is 42:1, while that on Kuaishou is 13.05:1. This shows that the enthusiasm of Kuaishou fans to “speak their mind” has not diminished. Compared with Douyin, Kuaishou’s top KOLs perform more eye-catchingly, with 8 likes earning 1 comment. This also shows that the trust relationship established based on “live streaming” and “short videos” will not be weakened by the huge fan base.

▲Douyin VS Kuaishou: Distribution of video likes and reviews of KOLs of different fan levels. The smaller the ratio, the more interactive it is. Data source: Kas Data

Judging from the hot words in fan interaction: whether it is Douyin or Kuaishou, users will actively speak out about the content they like, but compared to Douyin users who prefer to gain recognition (sofa, first) and express gratitude, Kuaishou users are more willing to express "intimacy" and express their expectations.

▲Douyin VS Kuaishou: 2019 user annual comment word cloud, data source: Kas Data

03

Judging from the types of KOL content with the fastest annual growth: Douyin is explicitly vertical, and the "smaller" the vertical category, the greater the growth rate. Automobiles, emotions, food, and beauty are the most typical examples, and are in a period of content explosion. In addition, entertainment accounts chasing traffic also grew rapidly;

The increase in small categories on Kuaishou is smaller than that on Douyin, but the trend of content diversification is unstoppable: vertical accounts in the fields of food, games, pets, fashion, etc. are accelerating their layout on Kuaishou.

At the same time, we also specifically studied the content tags that Kas Data added in 2019 and found that: whether it is Douyin or Kuaishou, grass-growing/review accounts from various fields are growing rapidly on both platforms; and knowledge information, culture and art accounts are also growing rapidly.

▲Douyin vs Kuaishou: KOL content categories with the fastest growth in number from January to October 2019, data source: Kas Data

04

After an in-depth study of the 500 KOLs with the fastest annual increase in followers, Kas Data found that among the accounts with high follower growth, drama/funny accounts still account for the highest proportion. This is determined by the core motivation of users to watch short videos, and is also related to the active innovation of drama/funny content.

A specific analysis of the 10 celebrities (excluding celebrities, media and blue V accounts) who gained the fastest followers on Douyin and Kuaishou from October 2018 to October 2019, as collected by Kas Data, shows that congratulations to Langweixian and Dongche Tantian for winning the title of TOP 10 in terms of increasing followers on both platforms. It can also be clearly seen from the 10 celebrities with the most increased followers that both Douyin and Kuaishou show a strong verticalization trend.

▲October 2018-October 2019: KOLs with the fastest increase in followers (excluding celebrities, media and blue V accounts), data source: Kas Data

Part.3 Tik Tok & Kuaishou: KOL Marketing

01

According to the data collected by Kas Data in 2019 on the advertiser industries with the most KOLs: beauty and daily chemicals are most invested in Douyin; e-commerce platforms have the highest investment in Kuaishou. From the perspective of industry concentration, Douyin’s brand concentration is far lower than that of Kuaishou.

On Kuaishou, performance-oriented advertisers account for the vast majority, with e-commerce platforms, games, and IT/Internet services accounting for more than 70% of KOL placements. From the perspective of brands, the 20 brands with the most KOL placements only account for 37.2% of Douyin's KOL placements, while Kuaishou accounts for more than 60%.

From January to October 2019: The top 10 industries with the most KOLs on Douyin and Kuaishou. Data source: Kas Data. The data is collected by the "Brand Tracking" function of Kas Business Edition. It does not represent the official data of the platform.

02

Judging from the content types that KOLs like to invest in the most: drama/funny, young men and young women are still popular; beauty KOLs have outstanding performance in vertical monetization capabilities, followed by: food, grass-roots/reviews and mother-and-child parenting.

Compared with the brand's investment in 2018, the order acceptance rate of dance, music, and cute pet accounts has declined. It is recommended that KOLs in this category update/enrich their personalities and continue to innovate content.

03

Taking the beauty industry as an example, Kas Data has summarized three major strategies for brand KOL deployment. They are:

1. Pyramid type: spread through the head, shoulders, waist and tail KOL matrix, penetrating layer by layer;
2. IP binding type: binding head IP bundled marketing, centralized resources, ICON communication;
3. Collective screen-sweeping type: through the synchronization and resonance of mid- and low-level KOLs or even KOCs and amateur accounts, small wins big and makes a counterattack.

From the perspective of brand adaptability: Strategies one and two are more common, bringing about economies of scale through matrix seeding.

Strategy three is very friendly to innovative brands and brands that lack sufficient support from vertical top KOLs. It has better cost-effectiveness and is also the ultimate use of long-tail traffic. Kas Data provides detailed interpretations of each of the three major delivery strategies with cases.

▲ Common strategy 2 for brand KOL placement: IP binding

04

The report also uses the brand tracking function of Kas Data to analyze the user portraits of users who frequently discuss brand words and product words from four industries: beauty and personal care, maternal and child products, food and beverages, and e-commerce platforms. It also analyzes the KOL advertising preferences in each industry and the celebrities most popular with advertisers. Findings: Relatively speaking, vertical KOLs are more concentrated in the beauty and personal care, and maternal and infant products industries. KOLs of the "beauty + plot" and "maternal and infant parenting + plot" categories have become new favorites for investment.

Relatively speaking, e-commerce platforms and food and beverage have wider options for KOL placement, and can often combine scenes and situations to implant content.

Part.4 Douyin: Blue V Operation

01

Judging from the current development status of Douyin Blue V: the number of active Blue V (referring to those who have posted ≥1 video within 30 days) collected by the Kas Data platform has reached 158,000, an increase of 11.19 times compared with the same period last year.

Judging from the industry distribution of Blue V Enterprise Accounts: the cultural and entertainment industry still accounts for the highest proportion, followed by Blue V Enterprise Accounts from the fields of life services, clothing accessories, and catering and food. The fastest growth rate is that this type of account has a low brand concentration, is closely related to people's daily lives, and can often combine scenes and situations to produce content at a high frequency. Of course, it is also related to the sinking of Douyin Blue V partner merchants.

▲2019: Industry distribution of Douyin Blue V enterprise accounts (excluding media, government affairs, and institutional Blue Vs), data source: Kas Data, does not represent the official platform

02

Analyzing the top 2000 corporate accounts by number of followers, KasData found that they were developing in two "extreme" directions:

• On the one hand, the top blue Vs increased their followers at an accelerated rate, easily crossing the million-follower mark;
• On the other hand, corporate accounts with strong brand attributes are rarer among the TOP2000 accounts in terms of the number of followers: good content is mostly created by cultural entertainment, education and training institutions. With their inherent content advantages and celebrity/expert traffic, they have attracted countless fans and account for 42.74% of the TOP2000 blue V accounts in terms of the number of followers. Secondly, the IT/Internet industry, which is well versed in content marketing, performed outstandingly.

▲Industry distribution of the top 2000 Blue V enterprise accounts with the most followers, data source: Kas Data, does not represent the official platform

03

When studying the average number of Blue V fans and fan interaction performance of companies in various industries, it was found that the sports/exercise and culture/entertainment industries ranked high. Analysts believe that both industries have sufficient video materials and high-quality celebrity traffic, and their original fan circles are relatively stable, showing great advantages in terms of both increasing fans and interacting with others.

Secondly, more and more brand Blue Vs have learned to use the "Tik Tok style" to communicate with fans. Among them, Blue Vs in the food and beverage and automotive consumption (including automotive aftermarket services) industries performed the best, while e-commerce platforms showed a polarized state with good and bad mixed.

▲The top 2000 Blue V corporate accounts by number of fans: differences in average number of fans and fan interaction activity in each industry; data source: Kas Data, not the official website of the platform

04

Regarding the current development status of Blue V, Kas Data gave 5 suggestions for Blue V content marketing and sorted out the methodology for building the Blue V matrix account.

For Blue V corporate accounts with high brand awareness, it is recommended that brands choose: parent brand + sub-brand matrix, parent brand + store/clerk matrix and parent brand + influencer incubation matrix to build the Blue V matrix , speak out through the matrix, penetrate the circle, and expand brand awareness and reputation.

For Blue V enterprise accounts with insufficient brand power, it is recommended to layout the Blue V matrix starting from products/services/solutions, or professional employee incubation, and use the matrix accounts to create a voice for the public, ultimately leading to the brand and enhancing brand influence. In the report, Kas Data specially matched cases to interpret the matrix construction method.

Part.5 Tik Tok Challenge

01

In the "2020 Short Video Content Marketing Trend White Paper", we specially added a challenge section. The reason is: the challenge is essentially a high-quality topic exclusively customized by Douyin for brands. By deeply applying the fission mechanism in the content social system, it helps brands create phenomenal marketing cases on the Douyin platform! In addition to the budget, the topic name, interactive gameplay and the use of celebrities/KOLs will all affect the effectiveness of the challenge.

02

According to Kas Data statistics: From January to October 2019, Kas Data collected a total of 579 challenges (including super, brand and regional challenges) initiated by brands (excluding: ByteDance, tourism agencies, government, media, etc.).

▲The number of challenges launched by brands in each month from January to October 2019. Data source: Kas Data

Compared with the first half of the year, the popularity of challenges initiated by brands in the second half of the year has increased significantly. From the perspective of the initiating industry, the food and beverage industry has the largest number of initiators (accounting for 24.53%), taking the first place in the number of challenges launched in the 9 months from January to October. Not only is the investment strong, but there are also many brands involved. The most typical investment is from the brand lines of Yili and Mengniu. Most of the challenges are launched around the two core goals of conventional brand promotion and product launch/promotion. Secondly, there are many challenges initiated by the beauty and daily chemical industry and e-commerce platforms. In the third quarter, beauty and daily chemical brands became frequent initiators of challenges.

03

After analyzing 579 challenges, we found that there was no significant increase in either the number of views on the aggregation page or the number of participants compared to last year. However, more challenges with high-quality gameplay, creativity and resource investment have emerged, with over 10 billion exposures and over 1 million participations.

Among them, 4 of the 10 most entertaining and most viewed challenges in the 3C digital industry were created by the 3C digital industry. Mars Marketing recommends that brands pay more attention to the value of the challenge: either don’t invest, or invest and it will be profound!

▲2019: Interaction data performance of challenge competitions launched by various industries, data source: Kas Data

04

Judging from the marketing suggestions for the challenge, Kas Data believes that: as ByteDance strengthens the construction of the middle platform, the challenge, as the product with the highest authority, will trigger a traffic carnival in the ByteDance system under the link of the mini program.

At the same time, ByteDance's mini-program system has become increasingly complete. Introducing mini-programs into the challenge can not only enrich the gameplay but also increase the user interaction experience. For brand owners with effectiveness and customer service demands (such as games, e-commerce and financial services), they can also take advantage of the construction of mini programs to achieve lossless jumps and increase the chances of users registering/ordering/paying.

This means that the marketing value of the challenge is still fissioning, but the performance of the challenge is not only linked to the brand budget, but also tests the brand's content creativity and planning capabilities. It is recommended that brands pay more attention to the value of the challenge: either don't invest, or invest and pay attention.

It is worth mentioning that 2019 is the first year of short video e-commerce. Advertisers’ increasingly strong demand for results may give rise to a new challenge model with both brand and effect orientation in 2020 . More e-commerce/live streaming KOLs will be invited by brands to join the challenge marketing, which will not only provide exposure but also help brands reap big sales.

Final

At the end of the report, KasData also explained the nine trends of short video content marketing in 2020, which are:

1. The concept of short video "platform" is becoming blurred, and the value of short video traffic is expected to be redefined in 2020;
2. The imbalance in the supply and demand structure of influencers still exists: among the thousands of influencers, there always seems to be a lack of an ideal type;
3. From "people bring goods" to "goods bring goods": the field of live streaming goods is moving towards segmentation, and live streamers have entered the era of industrial production. Good goods have created a large number of mid-level and low-level live streamers;
4. The star participation in the challenge game has been upgraded, from participating in marketing to participating in sales, from customizing single content to customizing series dissemination, and short video series can also be titled and cooperated;
5. The cost of short video seeding continues to rise: matrix seeding becomes inevitable;
6. The marketing industry is undergoing a major change: 2020 is the first year for brands to build their own content and influencer matrix;
7. Say goodbye to anxiety: Strengthening "private domain" can build brand moat and other 9 trends.
8. Data empowers content marketing and content e-commerce to increase value;
9. Big brands are getting stronger and white-label brands are rising: KOLs are the backbone.

Author: Kas Data

Source: Kas Data