5000 words to analyze the philosophy of planting grass when browsing Taobao!

It’s Double Eleven again this year.

At 0:00 on November 12, 2021, Tmall’s Double 11 total transaction volume was capped at 540.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 8%. Data from JD.com showed that as of 23:59 on November 11, JD.com’s cumulative order amount reached 349.1 billion yuan, setting a new record.

Although Double Eleven has been held for 13 years, it still generates huge transaction volume and attracts the largest number of merchants to participate in history.

But we also found that behind the continued growth in transactions, some new changes have emerged. For example, Double Eleven is no longer concentrated on a one-day "carnival", but the grass-planting cycle is lengthened to give consumers more time to choose.

This year, I also discovered an interesting trend. Taobao is placing high-quality content and "shopping" in an unprecedentedly important position and is betting heavily on content seeding.

In December last year, Taobao made a bold attempt to upgrade the original "Buyer Show" to "Shopping".

In March of this year, Taobao's "Guangguang" function was officially launched, and an image of a little man holding a mobile phone and "looking left and right" occupied an excellent position in the second column of the bottom menu bar. In September this year, Taobao’s opening slogan was changed from “Find what you like” to “It’s such a fun shopping experience”.

Image source: Taobao APP interface

These actions all reflect Taobao's emphasis on content value.

Before Double 11 this year, Taobao's "Guangguang" app launched a new function - the grass-planting machine. Its main goal is to help users solve the worry of not knowing what to buy before Double 11 and obtain relevant content efficiently with one click.

During the Double Eleven period, Taobao's "shopping" and "seeking" content had a huge impact on consumption. According to official data, 250 million users browsed the content.

In addition to the effect of content seeding on improving business efficiency, how is Taobao, as a trading platform, different from other native content platforms and seeding platforms by focusing on content seeding? Which platform do you think is more promising in terms of its ability to attract consumers and commercialize products? How should brands and businesses choose platforms to invest in to create grass-growing content? You may find answers to these questions in this article, so please read on.

The scene itself has mental potential

Our lives are divided and shaped by scenes.

In different scenarios, we have different states, such as travel state, solitude state, work state, entertainment state, consumption state and social state. In different states, we have different psychological expectations. For example, when we go to a yoga studio to practice yoga, we pursue a balance and relaxation of body and mind; when we go to a restaurant to eat delicious food, we enjoy the delicious food and the time spent with family and friends; when we go to a mall to shop, we satisfy our desire to enjoy and consume things.

The Internet breaks the boundaries of time and scenes, and we seem to be able to enter another world at any time.

According to data from CCTV's "China's Better Life Survey", the top three mobile entertainment activities for Chinese netizens in 2020 are: watching short videos, playing games, and watching TV series and movies. The average usage time of short videos has exceeded that of instant messaging, and Chinese netizens watch short videos for nearly two hours a day on average.

Data from iiMedia Research shows that the scale of short video users in China has shown a clear growth momentum, exceeding 700 million in 2020, and is expected to increase to 809 million in 2021.

Content is becoming more and more important, especially video content which takes up a lot of users' time.

Economist Philip Kotler once predicted future consumption patterns: "If a consumer uses social media during the shopping process, the likelihood of him buying the product will increase by 29%, and consumers who use social media will spend more money than those who do not."

Under this wave, major Internet platforms have gathered in the arena of grass-planting. Compared with the past, consumers have gradually developed completely different consumption habits, and more and more consumer demands and purchasing behaviors are triggered by "grass-planting" content.

Grass-planting platforms can be roughly divided into the following three types: the first is the grass-planting native type, represented by Xiaohongshu; the second is the content native type, represented by Douyin and Kuaishou; the third is the transaction native type, represented by Taobao's "Guangguang". The starting points of the three types of platforms are different. The reason why I am optimistic about Taobao's "Browse" is that it is more in line with the scene potential in the minds of users.

Those who are good at war seek advantage in situation.

When people open different platforms, the content they expect to see is still relatively fixed in their minds. When people's minds and the energy of the field are in harmony, it brings reinforcement and gain.

Commercialization in a scenario that does not match mental potential is, to a certain extent, a loss of energy for all parties involved, and usually encounters the following three dilemmas:

• Weaken user experience and cause user resistance

When you open a social, content, or entertainment platform, you want to check out some interesting videos, recent news, or your friends' updates, etc. At this time, your main needs are content and social needs, and you would rather block some product information. At this point, the implantation of "commodities" in the video or plot is abrupt, disruptive, and inefficient, and it destroys the viewing experience.

• Difficult to plan creative ideas and high production costs

If you want users to not reject implanted brands and advertisements, you need a unique level of creative production so that the audience can ultimately turn a blind eye to soft advertisements. The entire content creation cycle is longer, with higher requirements for creativity, and may also require the addition of post-production special effects, which increases the overall production cost. Especially for start-up companies, supporting a content team is a considerable expense.

• Inaccurate traffic and low conversion

The platform's recommendation logic is based on "labels". Users have labels, content also has labels, and the recommendation algorithm is to match user labels and content labels as effectively as possible. If the content is labeled as humorous or funny, it will be pushed to this group of people by big data, but it will be difficult to reach the target consumers of the product, ultimately resulting in inaccurate traffic and low conversions.

These are the various problems that users may encounter when browsing content and when their scene mentality does not match commercial information and consumer needs. Many content platforms are treading on thin ice on the road to commercialization. Any carelessness will lead to a decline in the quality of the entire content community and will be criticized and complained by users.

Scenario mentality is closely related to consumption willingness

In 1999, marketing expert Seth Godin put forward a point of view in his book "Permission Marketing": successful marketing activities all have a pattern, and their content obtains the permission and approval of users.

In other words, constantly harassing consumers without permission and forcing people to divert their attention to advertisements is interference marketing. Only when consumers enter a field where they actively receive product information can content marketing deliver valuable information and make consumers feel "helpful" and "interesting".

When users come to Taobao, in the Taobao transaction scenario, users have very clear transaction attributes. Scenarios are often closely linked to users’ consumption behaviors and willingness. Planting seeds in transaction scenarios does not consume users’ mental assets, but rather consolidates and diversifies them.

It is understood that it has been less than a year since the revamped Taobao "Guangguang" function was launched. Currently, one-third of Taobao's orders come from content seeding. This is the result of the mutual reinforcement of transaction scenarios and shopping purposes. During this process, what changes have actually taken place in marketing efficiency, consumption paths, and transaction structure? I summarized the following three points:

1. "Search and push integration" establishes the shortest closed-loop link between content and consumption, improving the efficiency of seeding and weeding;

2. The "real" background of the content ecology builds a community trust relationship;

3. The overall data closed loop facilitates rapid analysis and adjustment, effectively improving transaction and conversion rates.

I will explain them one by one below.

"Search and push integration" to establish the shortest closed-loop link

Let’s first look at the entire shopping process. There is a saying that men buy things mostly with a purpose. They already know what they need to buy and what brand to buy before buying. They don’t waste too much time and make quick decisions. This is "search shopping." Women buy things in a gathering way. They have no purpose. They just go wherever they go and buy anything they see that looks good, they like, or they like it. This is "discovery shopping."

On the one hand, this reflects the difference in thinking between men and women. On the other hand, it reflects the two main shopping behaviors of consumers: one is to buy directly, and the other is to shop slowly. Corresponding to the e-commerce platform, it has evolved into two functions: "search" and "discovery".

Search is the link that is closer to the transaction and has the highest conversion rate. Judging from the development trajectory of Taobao, for quite a long time, due to the great abundance of product categories and quantities, in the dimension of "search", Taobao, as a veteran e-commerce player, has achieved a leading position in the industry and has very powerful functions.

There are traces of Taobao's comprehensive information flow and contentization. After 2014, Taobao began to embrace information flow and content, emphasizing "discover and then buy". In 2018, the traffic brought by Taobao based on personalized recommendations has exceeded the traffic brought by search. In 2020, Taobao will move the product information flow that is tailored to each individual to the front screen. This year's revision added a "Shop Now" entrance to the bottom bar of the homepage that emphasizes a sense of discovery, making it Taobao's content center.

During this gradual revision process that lasted for 7 to 8 years, the decision-making chain of online shopping for many consumers has changed. Today, tens of millions of users "browse" on Taobao every day. At the same time, Taobao has accumulated a large amount of data over the years to train recommendation algorithm models, making recommendations based on two levels of logic: user consumption tags and content interest tags, to help users find good products and content more accurately.

Image source: Taobao APP interface

From text to pictures to videos, "grass-planting videos" can intuitively display product features and how to use them. The capacity for information dissemination is constantly increasing, and the way of information dissemination is becoming more and more efficient. From "goods looking for people" to "people looking for goods", Taobao is expanding its boundaries from shelf-based e-commerce to content-based e-commerce model.

Statistics show that more than half of Taobao users browse content on the platform every month, and more than one-third of orders come from content consumption.

As Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, and Bilibili are all testing the waters for commercialization and investing heavily in e-commerce, the boundaries between e-commerce platforms and content platforms are becoming blurred and gradually merging. This is actually testing the platform's basic capabilities in "goods" and "transactions."

Compared with traditional grass-seeking platforms, "Guangguang" is backed by billions of products and numerous platform merchants in the Taobao ecosystem. It has a rich product pool and a strong and stable transaction foundation. After users have planted the grass, they can buy it after seeing it, without having to search and switch back and forth between different software, realizing a closed-loop experience of "planting and buying in one", and completing an efficient consumption chain among massive products.

In this content "grass-planting" war, whoever can help consumers establish the shortest closed-loop link will occupy the most advantageous position. After all, every frequent switching of software means a possible pop-up and loss of potential users.

Real content ecology, building community trust relationship

In the content community platform, everyone is a content producer, disseminator and consumer.

Users share consumption information and explore lifestyles here; experts share knowledge and conduct professional reviews here; brands create topics here to showcase their brand personality and tell their brand stories; and the interaction triggered by the content further narrows the distance between brands, experts and users.

What is good content?

High-quality content includes at least two elements: real sharing and diverse content.

As an e-commerce platform, authenticity is the bottom line of content. Because trust is one of the most important basis for consumer decision-making. Without truth, there is no trust. False and overly beautified product information can only deceive consumers temporarily and eventually cause a crisis of trust in the entire platform.

In Taobao's closed-loop chain, from the "shopping" recommendations to product information, the transparency of evaluations and post-purchase sharing is extremely high, and the authenticity of the content ecosystem has built a trust relationship for the entire community, thus forming a virtuous cycle of content dissemination.

The real lifestyle sharing content and product recommendations have allowed "Guangguang" to quickly gather a large number of high-quality content creators. From April this year to date, the scale of content creators on "Guangguang" has increased 14 times, and the number of ordinary users who publish content through Guangguang has also increased during the same period. The number of monthly active users exceeds 250 million, exceeding many content communities that started out by promoting content.

Image source: Taobao APP interface

The evaluation search function has also been opened in Taobao's "Guangguang" Double 11 recommendation machine. In the "Guangguang" search "Already Purchased" category, hundreds of millions of public real buyer show content are collected. By entering keywords, you can see the real usage experience of consumers, and even open cross-store evaluation searches for a certain product. The true presentation of buyer content is different from the recommendations of influencers on traditional social platforms. It is closer to people’s real consumption demands and provides effective assistance for shopping decisions.

As a centralized platform for Taobao content, Taobao's "Guangguang" has now formed a real and diverse content-seeking community. A positive content ecology provides experts and amateurs with the motivation to continue creating, achieves a stable output of grass-growing content, and thus provides users with more practical and valuable content.

Overall data closed loop, efficient conversion improvement

Next, let’s talk about the biggest advantage of Taobao’s “Browse” for merchants, compared to doing content e-commerce on other platforms, is that the ROI is extremely visual, achieving a closed loop of data.

In the past, merchants would promote their products on other content platforms and eventually go to Taobao to convert sales. However, the marketing and sales data were not connected to each other, which would lead to problems such as loss of marketing resources and difficulty in calculating the input-output ratio.

In the digital age, thinking about how to acquire incremental customers and how to better operate existing customers will become the key to the future success or failure of a company. Only after connecting the data and establishing an overall data closed loop can we match user identity, browsing behavior and order records together, build a clear customer portrait for individual consumers, and ultimately have the ability to manage consumers throughout their life cycle and provide personalized services for each individual.

We have seen that in recent years, many emerging new brands have attached great importance to the collection and application of data to guide product iteration and operation optimization. A complete data system will undoubtedly help the company gain a "God's perspective" and see farther and more clearly.

It is understood that more than 2,500 merchants participated in the "Guangguang" Double 11 good product recommendation campaign this time, and more than 1,200 high-quality creators produced more than 5,000 good product reviews/unboxing content, providing users with the most authentic good product recommendation content.

The Xiaomi brand entered the "Guangguang" app as soon as it was opened to the public. During the Double 11 period, it launched the topic #中国青年天生好#, which gained more than 48 million exposures through content, with a peak of more than 11 million on the activity day, and a cumulative transaction amount of more than 60 million. Xiaomi's new mobile phone attracted nearly 3.6 million new customers through content deployment.

In addition, for merchants, "Guangguang" has opened up customized solutions for new products and brands across Taobao, lowering barriers, improving efficiency, providing resources, and making it intelligent. During the new product planning period, we can co-create with users, leverage the power of Taobao's content ecosystem, and obtain feedback from real Taobao users to achieve early seeding and word-of-mouth accumulation. At the same time, business data realizes a one-stop closed loop, allowing brands and merchants to deliver content more targeted.

end

"Scene" does not directly correspond to human behavior, but the minds of people in the scene. The user's mental state will directly determine the preference category or degree of avoidance of commercial information at this time. Only by establishing an effective link between the user's mental state and the scenario can the value of the "scenario" be maximized.

According to the latest data, Taobao's "Guangguang" app has over 250 million monthly active users and over 50 million daily active users, making it one of the three major content platforms alongside Tik Tok and Xiaohongshu. "Guangguang" combines the two attributes of transaction and content. It can determine the user's mind from the beginning, greatly improve their acceptance of grass-planting content, and improve the efficiency of content conversion. This is an advantage that other platforms are difficult to catch up with.

In an era when the boundaries between content and e-commerce are becoming increasingly blurred, this "grass-planting" war between platforms is increasingly evolving into a test of comprehensive capabilities. It tests the platform's content ecology, its ability to match people and goods, its ability to connect with users' minds, the experience of the entire shopping process, and the data capabilities hidden behind it.

In past wars, perhaps a “new trick” could be used.

The future war between platforms will definitely be a contest of comprehensive strength.

Author: Attack Wave Finance

Source: Attack Wave Finance