Insights into Douyin’s maternal and infant users and content marketing for maternal and infant brands!

The author will start from four points: user portraits of maternal and child verticals, brand blue V gameplay, brand content marketing, and the development status of maternal and child vertical influencers, to help you understand the maternal and child circle ecology of the Douyin platform, and at the same time, give targeted brand marketing suggestions.

A few days ago, a dad born in the 1980s asked the author a question: Do moms and dads born in the 1990s still use Babytree?

Babytree, as the largest mother and baby community platform in China, has always maintained a very high level of user activity. It is also a communication platform for mothers and fathers to search for parenting knowledge, share their experiences, and share their baby's growth. However, with the rise of short video platforms, the maternal and infant industry is ushering in a new form of content, and user attention is being diverted.

In less than 100 days, the first batch of post-90s will be turning 30 years old. More and more people born in the 1990s and 1995s will become parents, and accordingly, the channels for obtaining maternal and child content have also changed according to the content preferences and viewing habits of the post-90s.

Today, the author will start from four points: user portraits of maternal and child verticals, brand blue V gameplay, brand content marketing, and the development status of maternal and child vertical influencers, to help you understand the maternal and child circle ecology of the Douyin platform, and at the same time, give targeted brand marketing suggestions.

Insights into maternal and infant user portraits: Moms take the lead and are also active on weekdays

Milk powder, diapers, wet wipes, etc. are key categories under the maternal and child vertical category and have extremely high weight on short video platforms. Based on the Kas Data-Brand Tracking function, the Mars Marketing Research Institute analyzed the user portraits of the top 10 brands that have actively mentioned milk powder, diapers, and wet wipes products on the Douyin platform to help brands accurately target the target audience.

The brands participating in this tracking are:

• Milk powder: Feihe, Mead Johnson, Nestle Nan Ultra, Yili, and Friso.
• Diapers: Careall, Pampers, Unicharm, Kao, and Phoebe.

The author found that the users who actively mentioned the top 10 brands were mainly female, accounting for 77.30%, and the age group was mainly middle-aged and young, with users aged 25-30 accounting for the largest proportion, at 32.45%.

(Data source: Kas Data)

From the perspective of provincial distribution: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong, Guangxi and other five provinces have the highest proportion; from the perspective of city distribution, the top 10 cities are Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Xi'an, Wuhan and Suzhou. Users in super first-tier and first-tier cities are active, with a large proportion in central and southern cities.

From the weekly activity, we can see that mothers and babies do not show obvious characteristics of high activity on weekends. On the contrary, they are more active on weekdays, especially on Thursday and Friday nights from 21:00 to 24:00, which is the most active time.

Maternal and Child Blue V Operational Insights: Vertical categories are widely covered, but overall performance is poor

By observing Kas Data-Douyin Blue V List-Maternal and Child Weekly List (September 16-September 22), we can see:

The top 50 blue V accounts are mostly maternal and infant PGCs: they mostly use specific IPs as the main body of the video to create an expert image, and the content revolves around knowledge popularization, such as Cui Yutao's Yuxueyuan and Dingxiang Mama; the second category is maternal and infant product brands, such as diapers, maternity clothes, baby products, etc., and typical accounts include Caredale and Pampers; secondly, the main sponsors of maternal and infant products - milk powder brands also have a place, such as Nestle Ultra-Start NAN 3, Mead Johnson, Beingmate, etc.

It is worth noting that offline brands of maternal and child products are also actively deploying short video blue V accounts, such as maternal and child services (October Diary Pregnant Mother Photography Official, Le Yin Maternity and Baby Life Center), maternity and postpartum care (Aidi Palace International Confinement Center, Blue Ribbon Official Account), and early education (Win at the Starting Point Ability Early Education).

(Data source: Kas Data)

The vertical categories of the mother and baby Blue V account are extremely broad, ranging from online APPs to offline entities, from specific products to meticulous services. But at the same time, we have to admit that the overall operation of Maternal and Infant Blue V is poor.

In the first half of this year, the author conducted a study on the top 2000 Blue V accounts with the most fans and found that in the Blue V system (excluding government affairs and media accounts) jointly created by 21 industries, mother and child accounts ranked 16th. The number of accounts and fans was far from that of the leading industries, and there was a lack of influential accounts. The account with the highest number of fans was the Parenting Guide Network (media attribute) with 2.633 million.

But there are also potential stocks, for example: the blue V account @凯儿德乐官方 in the maternal and infant products category ranks fourth in the maternal and infant vertical category, with an average of 66,000 likes and an increase of 150,000 followers in 30 days. The proportion of settled female fans is 74.45%, and users aged 25-30 account for 30.87%, which is in line with the brand's target users.

(Source of the official fan portrait data of Kaierdele: Kas Data)

The content of the Caredel account does not bluntly embed products into the plot, but rather conveys a positive attitude towards life through videos. Whether she is an all-round hot mom who is good at both work and parenting, or a passionate dad who takes care of his family and loves his parents, they can represent the parenting attitude of today's young parents and pass on their love to their fans.

For example: this video released by Caredel during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The delivery man who couldn't go home for the Mid-Autumn Festival forced himself to smile and told a white lie because he was afraid that his parents would worry. The young couple in the drama not only did not dislike the delivery man, but also warmly invited him to have dinner with them and spend the holiday together.

It is said that parents are the best teachers for their children. Children who grow up in such a loving family are also kind. The youngest daughter also warmly extended an invitation. During this Mid-Autumn Festival, these four people will warm you and me. The video eventually received 1.8 million likes and touched thousands of netizens, who couldn't help but comment, "May good people live a peaceful life."

Insights into content marketing for maternal and infant brands: Milk powder brands love to advertise on Douyin the most, but it is important to keep in mind the “user-centric” approach. Maternal and infant brands generally try a combination of marketing methods on Douyin, with milk powder brands having the most concentrated advertising.

In terms of marketing strategy, we often choose topic challenges as the main focus to gain a head start, and then cooperate with KOL scene implantation to deeply promote the brand. In terms of the pace of launch, it is not as frequent as other vertical categories. Most will choose to launch new products, formula iterations and marketing strategies in a concentrated manner every month.

For example, the #battle小敏刺激的抖音超挑战 launched by Nestlé Nan 3 in March this year incorporated its features of "moderately hydrolyzed protein and contained probiotics to defend against minor sensitivity" into the challenge, allowing parents to participate easily and convert based on the needs of their own babies.

As of the date, it has received 2.3 billion views and 213,000 people have participated.

This is already a commercial topic challenge with good results and interactive performance. It ranks second among Douyin's mother-and-child topic challenges in terms of both playback volume and interaction volume.

However, the "2019 Mother and Baby Group Analysis Report" released by ByteDance found that on Douyin, diaper and wipes videos received the most likes, but milk powder product videos ranked behind in terms of likes, only outperforming maternity clothing products.

Such an effect is obviously not proportional to the amount of milk powder brand launched. Therefore, the author suggests that milk powder brands should consider how to conduct content marketing based on user needs rather than brand needs, in order to fundamentally improve the effectiveness of delivery and the quality of interaction.

(2019 Maternal and Infant Group Analysis Report)

Insights from maternal and child creators: @我爸超帅 is on the list, and chicken soup for the soul content is popular

Among the Douyin mother and baby vertical accounts included in the Kas Data Platform, the accounts are mainly composed of four categories, namely cute babies, hot moms, dads, and experts. The content themes mainly include life records, knowledge sharing, inspirational stories, and plot interpretation.

KOL @我爸超帅, as the only maternal and child celebrity with a Cass Index score of over 700, ranked first in the maternal and child category with a score 41 points higher than the second place.

(Kas Index: A comprehensive index that represents the current market popularity of KOLs, covering multiple dimensions such as the number of KOL fans, fan quality, and fan activity. It is expressed in numerical form, with a full score of 1,000. The higher the Kas Index, the more attention the celebrity receives and the higher the commercialization potential)

(Data source of Douyin maternal and child celebrity list: Kas Data)

Why is this dad-type celebrity so popular?

From the content dimension: @我爸超帅's content is valuable because it is authentic, without too much fancy packaging. It is just a selfie shot and a personal feeling, told slowly and leisurely, but it is the most powerful force that triggers sincerity.

The author found that: @我爸超帅 currently has a total of 2.043 million fans, with an increase of 777,000 fans in 90 days, a fan quality score of 81, and an average of 188,000 likes per episode. Compared with the TOP10 influencers in the maternal and infant vertical category, the average like-to-review ratio is 55:1, and the like-to-review ratio of the videos posted by @我爸超帅 is 15.8:1.

It can also be seen that @我爸超帅’s fans have a very high level of interactive reading and are very willing to interact and comment below the video.

(Fans quality: represents the value of the celebrity’s fans, consisting of three parts: “fan contribution, interactive participation, and high-quality fans”, with a full score of 100 points; Like-to-comment ratio: the ratio of the average likes and average comments of a KOL. The smaller the ratio, the higher the user’s willingness to interact.)

(KOL: My dad is super handsome - fan number trend data source: Kas Data)

Judging from the rate of video hits: small hits are almost standard, and the chance of big hits is also very high. This shows that it has the ability to stably produce popular products, and the combination of advertising promotion and content is quite mature.

In this recent content produced for Pampers, he tells the story of his wife who doesn't know how to change diapers and calls him for help. The most touching thing is his profound understanding of the role of mother and his infinite tolerance for his wife. His sincerity and warmth touched countless fans. His videos received 200,000 likes and completed more than 3,000 transactions.

Two suggestions for content marketing for maternal and infant brands

1) Professional knowledge content has little practical significance and should be produced in line with the psychological needs of the crowd.

When the author studied the traditional maternal and infant vertical platforms and the maternal and infant content on short video platforms, he found that the possibility of the two types of platforms suppressing and replacing each other is very small, and they are more about complementary interests.

When most maternal and infant brands choose KOLs for promotion, they will definitely think that KOLs who share maternal and infant professional knowledge and KOLs who love cute babies are the most suitable vertical categories for investment. In fact, this is not the case.

First, let’s talk about knowledge sharing, which is different from other knowledge content: for example, in English training, users can learn a word or a grammar in fragmented time, while maternal and child content has a strong demand for randomness and requires strong retrieval.

Users do not need to understand knowledge points all the time, but to find answers quickly when needed. For example: A 7-month-old baby has a low-grade fever of 37.8°. Are there any physical ways to reduce the temperature? Professional vertical websites can meet such knowledge retrieval functions, but short video knowledge sharing content has a limited content coverage; secondly, the content is confusing and cannot be quickly retrieved, which is not practical enough.

However, the accuracy of fans accumulated by cute baby content is not high. Anyone who has given birth to a child knows that is there any baby in the world cuter than your own?

Therefore, some of the fans of cute baby accounts are young users who do not have children or are not even pregnant. They are not the target group for maternal and infant products.

Therefore, when brands are doing KOL advertising, they might as well open their minds and select accounts with different content types for testing, so as to achieve wide coverage while accurately promoting the brand .

2) Boldly choose chicken soup and parent-child drama content, with unexpected surprises

Without in-depth research on the maternal and child vertical, it is really hard to believe that chicken soup content is so popular.

The "2019 Douyin Mother and Baby Group Analysis Report" released by ByteDance pointed out that chicken soup, parent-child and food are the three most popular types of video content for mothers and babies, and people in the mid-pregnancy stage prefer chicken soup videos.

Why is this happening?

First, during pregnancy, the joy of being a mother is diluted. Seeing the body gradually changing shape, accompanied by hormone disorders in the body, the mood of the expectant mother will fluctuate greatly, and she urgently needs content to cheer herself up and encourage herself;

Secondly, after giving birth, relevant data show that the rate of postpartum depression in China is as high as 15.14%. Mothers feel neglected after giving birth, and the pressure of life and work is overwhelming, which makes them need a window of comfort. Chicken soup content is a good choice.

Therefore, starting from the "heart" and creating content that users need is the key point that should be kept in mind for content marketing of maternal and infant brands.

Author: Mars Marketing Research Institute

Source: Mars Marketing Research Institute