Brand Promotion Guide on Station B!

Bilibili, a video content community that started with barrage and two-dimensional themes, has become an important traffic platform on the Internet that cannot be ignored. Where there is traffic, there is marketing value, and Bilibili is increasingly becoming a battlefield for brand owners' marketing.

Many of the screen-sweeping events we have experienced were spread from Bilibili to the entire network, such as Jackie Chan's "DUANG" in Bawang shampoo a few years ago, Durex's 3-hour live broadcast, and Lei Jun's brainwashing video "Are you ok"...

Three distinctive features of Station B

From the perspective of communication and cultural influence, Bilibili is no longer inferior to any other content community. Bilibili is in the process of growing from a "niche community" to a "mass community". Although the growth has slowed down in the past year, the growth rate is still far higher than that of traditional video websites and content communities. Overall, we can find that Station B has three obvious characteristics:

1. Generation Z

Unlike other traditional mass content communities, Bilibili's main users are the "Generation Z". According to statistics from QuestMobile, as of the end of last year, nearly 82% of Bilibili's users were Generation Z users, that is, the generation born between 1990 and 2009, most of whom are middle school and college students, a generation born entirely on the Internet.

What's even more rare is that Bilibili's users are concentrated in first- and second-tier cities and have a strong willingness to pay. According to Bilibili's statistics, college students and middle school students in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou account for more than half of Bilibili's users.

The young and energetic Generation Z and those in first- and second-tier cities with high consumption potential and high willingness to pay are all must-win target groups in mass brand promotion strategies, especially for the younger promotion of traditional brands, which will be more substantial.

2. Internet-born youth culture

Bilibili was originally a barrage website for streaming anime videos. It was deeply influenced by Japanese anime culture and otaku culture, and its content mainly covers the two-dimensional field.

Although Bilibili originated from the two-dimensional field, with the expansion of users and the diversification of content, the content on Bilibili has become more popular, and Bilibili itself is slowly removing the "subculture" label. According to Bilibili, traditional two-dimensional content currently only accounts for 30% of the total visits to Bilibili. Games, music and other general two-dimensional content, as well as diverse interest content such as life, entertainment, and fashion have become the main content of Bilibili.

On Bilibili, you can find a large amount of content and discussion, whether it is traditional two-dimensional content such as anime, mainstream Internet content such as fashion, beauty, and movie reviews, or very niche content such as musical instrument teaching, ASMR, or quantum physics. The content of Bilibili is already very comprehensive and diverse. It can be said that it covers all aspects of the interests of Generation Z. It is an important origin and amplifier of the new generation of online culture.

3. High activity and high viscosity

As a content community, Bilibili's core users have always been relatively stable and have always maintained high activity and stickiness. Nowadays, almost all video websites have comments and barrages, but neither the number of barrages nor the number of video comments can surpass Bilibili.

The high activity of users not only refers to being active in the internal community of Bilibili. Bilibili's active users are often extremely active on various platforms and forums across the entire network. It is precisely for this reason that Bilibili's culture can often influence the online culture of the Internet. An obvious example is that many of today’s Internet buzzwords (such as high energy ahead, welfare, old driver, etc.) all relied heavily on B station barrage in their early dissemination.

Even some high-quality content may not receive a good response when it is released in mass media, but when it is released on Bilibili, it can be spread by word of mouth among users and become popular on the entire network. For example, the documentary "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City", a collaboration between CCTV and Bilibili, did not receive much response after it was broadcast on CCTV in January last year. However, after it was broadcast on Bilibili in February, it immediately became popular and the topic ignited the entire Internet.

Due to the three characteristics of Bilibili: users, content, and activity, there are several obvious benefits for brand marketing: it is suitable for marketing to young people, can easily drive brand topics, and has a higher acceptance of high-quality content-based advertising.

How do brands market on Bilibili?

Do you need to operate a brand account on Bilibili?

Whether or not to create an official account depends mainly on two points: 1. Whether the characteristics of the brand are closely related to the theme section of Bilibili; 2. Whether there can be continuous video content output (or content copyright).

The official brand accounts of Bilibili are mainly concentrated in the fields of film and television, entertainment, music, and the Internet. Among them, Xiaomi’s official account has been operating quite well, with video playback volumes in the 5-6 digits, while some of the more miserable official accounts have an average playback volume of only around one thousand.

In fact, it is not recommended that all brands open an official account on Bilibili and promote their products by uploading self-made videos. A more efficient approach would be to directly collaborate with top up-hosts to promote content, while brands on Bilibili play a more important role in guiding content and initiating dissemination.

The following are the keywords of common B station marketing routines:

1. Live broadcast

Barrage + live broadcast can create a strong sense of atmosphere and has always been the mainstream method of brand marketing. Brands such as Durex, Xiaomi, and Zhihu have all done live broadcasts on Bilibili, such as Durex’s “300 people in 3 hours” live broadcast and Lei Jun’s press conference live broadcast…

In addition, e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and popular consumer brands such as KFC, Crest, and Maybelline are all promoting their products through live broadcasts by internet celebrities or stars on Bilibili.

2. Barrage Interaction

Barrage is usually used as a user comment video. Brands can use barrage to effectively guide the user's comment atmosphere and create a strong interaction between brand content and users.

In fact, barrage can also be used as a means of brand exposure. Users are usually willing to accept high-quality soft advertising information implanted in barrage messages. However, if hard advertising is forced in the barrage, it will be complained and deleted. Therefore, in the early stages of promotion, brands can actually write interesting barrage messages in advance and then place them invisibly during playback.

3. UP Master + High-quality Content

As a content community, the core of Bilibili is high-quality content. Due to the prominent entertainment and viral properties of ghost videos, many brands will work with UP hosts in the ghost area to produce ghost videos and put them on Bilibili.

After the launch, what the brand needs to do is to unite a group of small Vs, conduct secondary processing based on the launched videos, and guide UGC works. When the videos you put out become the creative material for others, brand exposure will increase exponentially. For example, the weird fertilizer advertisement "Jin Ke La" in the early years is still an important material for UGC. I'm afraid everyone on Bilibili knows it.

In addition, for technical showmanship, nostalgia, literature and art, public welfare, and even less popular military video content , if it is of high quality, it can gain good influence. It depends on how the brand combines it with the characteristics of its own products. There is no need to stick to the tree of ghost animals and spoofs. If you force ghost animals, it will usually only make the situation embarrassing.

In addition to the above points, there are of course various official advertising cooperation methods of Bilibili, such as holding video competitions, sponsoring events, and purchasing advertising resources, etc., so I won’t go into details. But if you really want to achieve a small-scale marketing effect, high-quality content produced jointly by the brand and the UP host is the top priority.

Suggestions for brand marketing at Station B

1. Less marketing tricks

Bilibili is content-oriented and is actually quite averse to various marketing techniques. If there is even a little bit of hard marketing information in the content, it is likely to cause disgust. It is for this reason that Bilibili promotion is more used to expose the brand image, usually to create momentum before key brand nodes (such as press conferences and new product launches).

If a live broadcast or video asks users to follow a public account and scan a QR code, but does not provide users with real benefits in the end, this type of content has no room to survive.

2. More content tolerance

For traditional brands, if the content they publish is too serious, they usually cannot communicate effectively with Bilibili users. If a brand wants to integrate with young users, it needs to have a certain spirit of self-deprecation. When users use official materials to create spoof secondary creations, brands should go with the flow and leverage the momentum to promote the products rather than declaring a boycott.

summary

As an online cultural base for young people, Bilibili is bound to become a battleground for brand marketing in the future. For brands, how to work with UP to produce high-quality content, guide user comments and produce relevant UGC content will be the key to B station's marketing.

Author: Zheng Zhuoran

Source: Spread Gymnastics