Tik Tok, Kuaishou or Bilibili? How do brands choose short videos?

Recently, Bilibili has become popular because of the "Houlang" marketing event. This website, which became popular for positioning itself as a two-dimensional anime video platform, has successfully entered the "2019 Hurun China Top 500 Private Enterprises" due to two successful marketing events. Its annual revenue was 6.78 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 64%, and the market soared by 2.2 billion yuan.

The popularity of Bilibili is a microcosm of the current unique phenomenon of China's Internet. Similar to it are other short video platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, content shopping guide platform Xiaohongshu, and the recently popular WeChat Video Account. All these platforms constitute the Internet culture with "Chinese characteristics".

What does this bring to marketers’ minds?

Why are so many people so keen on video platforms?

Among them are many large-scale Internet platforms and Internet celebrities such as Zhihu, Viya, etc.

At the same time, I have noticed that many consumers and even B-side brands have been eager to try various new marketing methods and have been actively engaged in marketing innovation, such as opening video accounts on Kuaishou, Douyin, and Bilibili in the name of the brand.

There are so many different types of social platforms and short video platforms that it’s really dizzying. How can companies choose the right platform to enter in marketing activities aimed at dissemination and lead conversion?

In recent years, I have been working in marketing, and my biggest feeling is that there are many theoretical terms, they all make sense, there are many things that can be done, and there are endless tactical plays. However, the biggest challenge is how to set priorities.

Outsiders may just watch the fun, but only you know whether the shoes fit you or not.

Marketers need to be clear-headed and think about what your purpose is. Do you want to boost your reputation and create an image project, or do you really want to engage in value marketing and drive business growth?

Given the severe economic situation in recent years, coupled with the COVID-19 epidemic in 2019, I believe that fewer and fewer brands still have the budget to build their image. What I have heard is a large-scale budget cut, staff reduction, and collective salary cuts.

So, the first step is to understand the essential problem.

• Should we choose social platforms as the main battlefield for marketing?
• How much effort and budget is worth spending on maintaining the operations of these social platforms?
• How to choose social and short video platforms suitable for brand activation for effective communication and sales empowerment?

There is no fixed standard, and the answer is not an absolute yes or no.

In the second step, if you have made the choice to allocate part of your budget to innovative marketing activities, you should further ask yourself:

• How to retain traffic and convert it into stock? Flow is a process, stock is the purpose and the result.
• How to establish an efficient conversion link?
• How to manage a community?

To answer the above core questions, I suggest starting from the following aspects to constitute the key factors that influence market people's decision-making.

1. Marketing objectives

The essence of marketing is storytelling.

This story is Why, What, How

Why do this? What is the purpose of doing this? How to do it? How to measure success?

That’s the whole story of marketing.

Many people spend more time thinking and reporting on how to do things, but they have not considered the most fundamental question of why. This is a problem of thinking and direction. If one thing is wrong, everything is wrong.

Are you aiming for short-term activation and stimulating sales through a wave of promotion, or do you have the patience to carry out long-term branding efforts?

How important is your brand in the consumer and customer decision-making process? Is the average order value high?

Over a period of time, customer sales contribution = traffic * conversion * average order value * repurchase rate.

The brand determines traffic, conversion, and the ability to attract new customers.

The average order value and repurchase rate determine the actual customer value generated.

It is difficult for social platforms to promote the sales of a product in large quantities through a wave of popular videos. The promotion of the brand tone itself and the immediate sales conversion are two extremes of marketing. The fundamental purpose of the former is to empower the latter, but there is a certain time difference from planting grass, growing grass to harvesting, and it is also affected by other factors besides marketing, such as customer service capabilities, product continuous value-added capabilities, and customer experience. Sustainability is key.

2. Customer Group

Are your customer communications targets decision makers? What is the age group of decision makers?

Generally speaking, brands whose target customers are of a younger age group are relatively more suitable for social platforms. This is one situation targeting the existing consumer groups.

The other is to target future potential consumers .

For many leading brands, they are more forward-looking. One of their marketing goals is to satisfy Generation Z, the younger generation of consumers, as they grow up. The purpose is to meet the upgrading needs of the new generation of younger users. They may not be fans and consumers of the brand yet, but they have hope and potential. Then the purpose of social platform communication exists as a long-term investment.

For example: a certain sports brand is relatively expensive and is a brand with a higher positioning in the category. It targets people with higher status and purchasing power. However, they usually still target high school students who are currently consuming brands that are one level lower than them. This is because they are targeting the consumption upgrade needs of future high school students after they enter the society.

3. Possibility of content creation allowed by brands

It is undeniable that content marketing is a key part of digital marketing and is crucial for any brand. However, the content dissemination rate of some products is very low, especially in the B2B industry, which is very professional and oriented towards the pure benefit and function dissemination of products. The possibility of differentiated content marketing on social platforms is relatively small, and it is also difficult to fit in with the entertainment and fun tone of many video accounts. Whether the content created can synergize the platform attributes is a key issue that needs to be considered.

4. Measuring Success Factors

If you are lucky and your short video gets good market feedback, then congratulations. The first step is right.

However, none of us wants to just do something for a while, build momentum, and then end it.

We want sustainable success.

The creation of brand assets must be the result of long-term accumulation and polishing.

How to measure the creation and operation of content on social platforms is crucial to the positive impact on brand assets.

First, consider the feasibility of outcome measurement

The data transparency of many platforms is not high. How much exposure is real, effective and accurate? Can leads be converted into customers, and how long will it take?

Social platforms fundamentally rely on industry KOLs to drive traffic, but it is difficult to measure how strong these KOLs' industry influence is, unless they can directly sell products. However, in the B2B industry, whether online celebrities can directly sell products remains to be verified.

Second, the input-output ratio

Maintaining a community requires a lot of energy, which involves real-time monitoring of public opinion, crisis management, positive public opinion guidance, and maintaining word-of-mouth.

If the users of these platforms are just there to watch the fun, are you still willing to invest your energy and resources for a long time?

If the effective content created and guided by the community can also directly bring goods and divert traffic to e-commerce platforms, and form end-to-end data docking, from the exposure of short videos to the conversion of traffic, and then from traffic to stock, becoming loyal fans of the brand, and finally forming actual purchases, satisfying customer needs and ensuring that all data is measurable, it can also be stored as a brand asset in the brand database as part of the traffic market, helping to establish user portraits and labeling systems, and re-reaching similar users. This is the value-added part of big data business insights. This is the ideal situation.

In the B2B field, if you use these social platforms, on the one hand, it is innovative, but on the other hand, you may inevitably be criticized for "not doing your job properly". My suggestion is that since it is a rational choice after weighing the pros and cons, then stick to it and operate it carefully. Maybe one day a short video will suddenly become a hit.

Why is this the best era? Because this is an era where "nothing is impossible".

If a person wants to be successful and realize their full potential, they must choose the areas in which they have the greatest advantage and maximize them. They should not choose areas of weakness to improve and gain the upper hand.

The same goes for brands. They should choose the position that best suits them, continuously exert influence, find the marketing platform and means that best suit them as the core elements of differentiation, persistently optimize user experience, build word-of-mouth and cultivate leads to break through.

Author: Jade

Source: Jade Digital Marketing (Jade_Digital)