Kuaishou operation creates a "fast brand" from 0 to 1!

At the beginning of 2022, I became a Kuaishou e-commerce consumer. Many New Year goods for my family were bought in the Kuaishou live broadcast room. While shopping, I established some connections with many anchors out of professional habit. The story of one of them attracted me very much, so I wrote this article based on an in-depth conversation with the anchor team.

This is the story of a Kuaishou native brand called “Sheyeqi”. The anchor Sheye, the founder of Kuaishou's native brand "Sheyeqi", entered the e-commerce industry from Taobao in 2012. Like most shoe merchants in Wenling, Zhejiang, he sold shoes at "floor prices", with a unit price of only about 20 yuan. He might not even make 1 yuan from selling a pair, and his business was maintained entirely by sales volume.

Having been in the shoe business for many years, the company has accumulated a large amount of shoe supply chain resources and built the ability to integrate production and sales. Therefore, it joined Kuaishou in 2019. After two years of hard work and countless iterations, it finally settled on a Kuaishou account with more than 4 million fans, a live broadcast IP with a single live broadcast GMV of over 10 million, and the first shoe brand "Sheyeqi" to hold a catwalk show on the Kuaishou platform.

01 Entry: Entering the live e-commerce market from Kuaishou platform

When talking about the opportunity and reasons for joining Kuaishou, the Sheye team was particularly excited. They were both moved by the important choice they made at the crossroads and happy about sticking to their dreams and doing the right thing.

The reason for changing the path must be because the original path has irreversible problems. The Sheye team relies entirely on "industry opportunities" to make a living in Wenling shoe business on Taobao. Once there is a problem in the industry, the first to fall must be merchants like them, because the average customer price of 20 yuan is a one-time deal, and the supply chain belongs to the shoe factory, with uncontrollable products and unretainable users, this business is always fraught with crises.

The reason was that there was something wrong with the original idea, and the opportunity was just a coincidence.

At the beginning of the explosion of Kuaishou live streaming e-commerce in 2019, the Sheye team was inspired by friends. After some research, the Sheye team made a major decision: to shut down the shoe business in Wenling and embark on a new Kuaishou live streaming entrepreneurial journey.

It is easy to get into the game, but difficult to break out. More than half a year after starting Kuaishou Live, the Sheye team followed the old Wenling path and still sold products with a unit price of 19.9 yuan. Although they summarized the experience of Wenling business and started to develop, design and produce shoes on their own, they still could not break the dilemma of "the unit price is too low to capture the hearts of customers."

It was not until September 2020 that the Sheye team found a solution to the problem: to make high-quality shoes, they must leave room for costs, and they must try to increase the average order value and sell products with higher average order values.

Now it seems that this decision was undoubtedly the right one. As the average order value increased, customer reputation and repurchase rate improved, and the team's performance reached a new level.

At this time, competitors at the same level all have a customer unit price of around 100 yuan, but very few of them have integrated R&D, design, production and sales like the Sheye team. However, fans do not realize: How is Sheye different from other competitors?

This problem troubled the team for a long time until a fan suggested that the Sheye team create their own brand and they would support them like family.

02 Deep cultivation: Create a host personality and shoe brand that is both a product and a person

In fact, building a brand has always been the dream of the Sheye team, and it was a brand dream that was planted as early as when they were doing Taobao e-commerce. The Sheye team said: "The brand dream does not mean that we have to become a big brand. We just want to establish a cognitive relationship with fans so that fans can remember us better and trust us."

It is a road that no one has walked before for Kuaishou anchors to start their own shoe brands, but the Sheye team has still made a name for themselves. The annual sales of their brand "Sheyeqi" have exceeded hundreds of millions of yuan. The next goal is to reach the 1 billion level and become a top player in Kuaishou's native brands.

So how was the "Sheyeqi" brand created?

Specifically, brand building is divided into four levels:

• The first is brand positioning. At this time, the average customer spending is already between 100 and 200 yuan. With the quality controlled by completely self-developed products, the brand's products can be comparable to mid-to-high-end shoes. Therefore, the Sheye team found a benchmark brand for themselves: various brands under the Belle Group, which focus on high-quality women's shoes and provide high-quality and cost-effective products to women aged around 20 to 40.
• Secondly, the product system. The Sheye team mainly deals in footwear products, but live streaming e-commerce of footwear pays great attention to visual matching effects. Shoes must be matched with suitable clothing to look good, so the product system has expanded to clothing, and products have gradually become richer, but the product positioning is still "fashion design + high quality + high cost performance". There is no brand market premium cost. With the same material quality, Sheye can also achieve prices ranging from 30% to 70% cheaper than big brands.
• Then, good products are still afraid of being "hidden too deeply" and resulting in insufficient customer sources, so the Sheye team created a traffic system. Traffic structure is generally divided into "free traffic and paid traffic", and the principle is "on the premise of doing a good job of free traffic, then use paid traffic to increase volume".

Free traffic mainly relies on short video content + live broadcast output to attract the attention of new and old fans. The Sheye team believes that "the traffic brought by short video content is the best traffic", because fans can perceive the "anchor personality" more directly through multiple short videos. The content of fashion wear, material knowledge, daily life, and daily work has created a three-dimensional anchor personality, making it easier to establish trust between both parties.

• Finally, when fans come, we must ensure conversion, retention and repeat purchases. The Sheye team has built a mature customer conversion and service system. Customers who enter the live broadcast room can complete the conversion directly in the live broadcast room, so good live broadcast room script planning is very necessary. Every live broadcast by the Sheye team will be in line with the current hot topics and fan demands. The product selection must also be fully communicated with loyal fans, and different selling points will be emphasized for different products during the live broadcast.

Conventional selling points must be explained, such as materials, styles, and dressing suggestions. At the same time, products with price advantages must emphasize price advantages. High-priced and high-value products must fully meet the dressing demands of sophisticated people. We strive to ensure that every live broadcast and every product have its highlights and can bring fans a different experience.

The Sheye team is also a microcosm of the "group of anchors who have worked hard and learned through continuous diligence" in the Kuaishou live e-commerce system. The Kuaishou live e-commerce strategy they explored coincides with the official "STAGE" methodology. In addition, the official "STAGE live broadcast operation methodology" is more data-based, indicator-based, and interconnected, bringing certain growth to the explosion of Kuaishou anchors.

03 Leap: Take advantage of the platform's big promotion opportunity to surpass competitors

The Sheye team repeatedly expressed that they "very much approve of the 'STAGE live broadcast operation methodology' summarized by Kuaishou officials. It has helped the Sheye team find a definite growth path, and has made them understand the experience gained from previous trial and error more deeply, which has effectively improved the operation level of Kuaishou's live broadcast business."

• In the words of Liu Lang, head of Kuaishou's e-commerce products: "We look forward to using this operational methodology to help merchants successfully overcome development bottlenecks and grow from ordinary live streaming anchors in version 0 to live streaming e-commerce experts in version 2.0."

In addition to methodology, Kuaishou E-commerce also launched a traffic support plan to create a series of platform carnivals. Every big promotion on the platform is a good opportunity for anchors to achieve scale, leapfrog to a higher level and surpass their competitors.

Taking the New Year Goods Festival as an example, it is the end of the year and the beginning of the next year, and there is the festive atmosphere of the traditional Chinese Spring Festival. The main theme of the entire event revolves around "stockpiling New Year goods". The "2022 Kuaishou Quality New Year Goods Festival Consumption Trend Report" shows that users in Beijing and Shenzhen have the highest consumption of New Year goods. At the same time, women are the main force of New Year goods consumption, and categories such as beauty and skin care, clothing and jewelry remain hot-selling. How will the Sheyeqi brand respond to the high level of attention from female customers during big sales?

They achieved good results during the New Year Goods Festival with professional operations. Reviewing the strategy of the New Year Goods Festival, the Sheye team split it into five parts, which happens to be the essence of Kuaishou's STAGE live broadcast operation methodology.

• Inventory of products: Analyze your own categories and identify the main popular products and sales strategies for the event. There is no need to stock up on clothes and shoes, but fans will have the need to replace them with new ones and change seasons. The new product is themed "Winter Clearance Sale" so that you and your family can wear quality new clothes during the Spring Festival. Aiming at the needs of changing seasons, the "Spring Clothes Arrivals" are launched to meet the fans' pre-order needs to try new things.
• Create hot-selling products: design benefits in a layered manner and use live broadcast tools to increase conversions. For example, traffic-enhancing products can be used to increase traffic, and products with different selling points have different explanation ideas. The welfare selling points are explained using marketing language, with the underlying welfare logic remaining unchanged and interesting marketing presentation changing to meet the viewing and purchasing needs of new and old fans.
• Commercialization: For large-scale promotional activities on platforms such as the New Year’s Goods Festival, we must strive to obtain resource positions, and then retain new traffic through precise traffic allocation by service providers + high-frequency release of short video content + increasing the length and frequency of live broadcasts + private domain contact with old customers, which can not only activate and settle new traffic but also provide discounts to old fans.
• Pan Live Broadcast: Control the rhythm of live broadcast and create highlight moments in the live broadcast room. Every fan who enters the live broadcast room will stay for a period of time. During this period, the user experiences an "incubation period". As the overlap of the user incubation period accumulates, the number of people online at the same time in the live broadcast room will reach a peak. At this time, the anchor must seize the opportunity to sell popular products to achieve high GMV. A live broadcast does not have only one highlight moment. Through careful planning and optimization during the live broadcast, rich and continuous highlight moments can be created.
• Highlights: The official promotion has a big theme, and each anchor must create differentiated highlights for his or her own live broadcast room. After sorting out the live broadcast theme, live broadcast benefits, hot-selling products, etc., you need to plan how to warm up the New Year Festival live broadcast by releasing videos + planting grass during the live broadcast, so as to fully lock in the target fans in the public and private domains.

Since Kuaishou officially launched the strategy of "developing trust-based e-commerce, developing brands, and developing service providers", the Sheye team has come to understand more deeply that they have chosen the right platform. They have always wanted to build trust with fans to achieve success, and they have worked hard for ten years to build a brand. How did the Wenling shoe merchants, who were once trapped in a customer unit price of 20 yuan, finally realize their brand dream?

Looking back at 2021, the cumulative sales of the Sheyeqi brand exceeded hundreds of millions of yuan, achieving the "integration of product and people" product and personality creation, and creating a good native brand of Kuaishou. All this is inseparable from Kuaishou e-commerce's "STAGE live broadcast operation methodology". There are many such growth brands and team stories on Kuaishou, and most of them have promoted Kuaishou e-commerce to enter the second growth curve.

Author:Eric

Source: Eric