This article is from WeChat official account:White Whale sea (ID: baijingapp) , author: zhaolisa, the original title: “overseas each class down the track in the” Little red book “,” head Figure from: vision China < /span>
The hottest word in 2020 is the DTC brand. This year, it is a little more reliable to start a business in China, and a small team of several people can be valued at over 100 million. It’s hot enough to describe the DTC brand.
Of course, domestic competition is also very fierce. For some brands that can grow bigger, going overseas has become an inevitable choice for the next step, such as Yuanqi Forest, Bubble Mart, and some people directly focus on overseas, such as running in large numbers. Beauty manufacturer in Southeast Asia.
The popularity of DTC is mainly due to the fact that the platform business of cross-border e-commerce is still growing, but the competition is too fierce, and the dependence on the platform keeps sellers/brands in the cycle of “finding customers” forever. In the DTC model, users of the platform have become their own private domain traffic. From traffic thinking to user management, it is the transformation that all sellers want. But what is embarrassing overseas is that the media side is unfriendly to independent stations, and it is still bald to divert traffic from public domains to private domains.
From my recent observations in overseas markets, a type of platform that is growing rapidly overseas may provide soil for brand penetration among target user groups.
This has to mention another topic that is relatively hot overseas in 2020, the vertical community.
Sneakers and vertical community
The rapid development of the DTC brand has given some vertical communities the possibility of early success
The example cited here is SoleSavy, a sports shoe community reported by Beluga Whale going out for a week.
The two founders of SoleSavy, picture source: Tech Crunch
SoleSavy website interface
Sole Savy’s services mainly include a member-only Slack community, an app for pushing messages and podcasts. The main services are consumer content needs and shoe purchase needs(new shoe release information, direct shopping links for consumer shoe size items, weekly coupons, gifts, etc.).
For this kind of vertical community that directly connects consumers and many brands through content and services, Sole Savy has achieved profitability by using subscription services generally accepted in the European and American markets, with an ARR of 1.5 million US dollars, At the end, a new round of financing of USD 2 million was completed.
I have to say, Sole Savy Such a vertical community,The most imaginative space is the combination with vertical brands.
Domestic grass is planted on pan-platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin. Xiaohongshu will also start to be a brand incubator in 2020. In the European and American markets, vertical platforms are rising rapidly. On the one hand, social and community development will be refined to a certain extent. On the other hand, like Sole Savy, the large number of DTC brands and online marketing trends have given such communities a certain degree of commercialization at an early stage. . There are some vertical communities that have been on the line for a long time, and some founders see the opportunity to seize the opportunity to enter a certain subdivision track, such as Sole Savy.
The vertical communities connecting consumers and DTC brands, some overseas brands have begun to settle in
The importance of a beautiful picture-home improvement community
The founder of outdoor home furnishing brand Outer, whose sales increased by more than 10 times in 2019, said in an open class, “A set of pictures on the cover of Outer’s website cost about $5,000, which used up a large amount of available funds Part. But I later found out that the money was very worthwhile.“
When you open the apartment therapy website, you will discover how important a beautiful picture is for household products. Even a bucket of bleach must be photographed with a sense of ceremony. This is another community with blogs as the main content, but there is more than one form of community. Interior designer Maxwell Ryan established this website in 2001 to provide users with design inspiration and tips for home improvement.
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apartment therapy often pushes Amazon or Wayfair’s good things
The shop module of apartment therapy does not introduce products in the same way as the baby chick in the baby care community mentioned below. Apartment therapy still takes the form of articles + beautiful pictures. Although the title clearly points out discounts, discounts or clearance, the pictures of the articles are by no means sloppy, making people feel the sense of life rituals conveyed by this community.
Clicking on the product link will also jump to an external platform, which may be a brand independent station or a third-party platform. The threshold for home furnishing products is high. If you want products to sell at a premium, you must first let consumers have a good vision of the future house through pictures.
The consumption habits of consumer groups represented by Generation Z are changing, and “consumption of beauty” is an obvious trend. Home interactive communities like apartment therapy also open traffic portals to third-party platforms such as Amazon and give platform sellers more opportunities. Faced with consumers pursuing the quality of life, businesses also seem to need to provide a product map that can improve the happiness of life.
So what about the website conversion rate? According to SimilarWeb data, the most popular destination website for apartment therapy is Amazon. The author searched some Amazon high-quality products recommended on some websites and found that many brands are behind Chinese businesses. After all, Amazon’s Chinese merchants account for the majority.
The most popular destination website for apartment therapy is Amazon
For example, a blog post recommended an Amazon cushion based on ergonomic design. When I searched, this product was ranked first in the best-selling list of wheelchair and scooter cushions. Although this product does not have a brand independent station, the Amazon brand page is very gorgeous. The brand belongs to Huai’an Juyueran Household Products Co., Ltd. Its main products include pillows, mattresses, and children’s anti-roll cushions. Whether the enterprise side has direct cooperation with apartment therapy is hard to say, but it can be seen that the vertical community is helpful for consumers to recognize the brand and even make purchases.
The cushion recommended in the apartment therapy blog post is a Chinese brand. Image source: apartment therapy, Amazon webpage
Children are always the topic-baby care community
Living&loving is a South African community focusing on pregnancy and maternity knowledge. It was established in 2012 and has physical magazines and websites. The website has been built for nearly ten years and still maintains a high level of activity. About 4 blog posts are updated every day. The website has its own writing team as well as user contributions.
Contemporary parents’ views on childcare have undergone great changes compared to 10 years ago. The mother’s pregnancy, pregnancy, and children’s pre-school education are all highly valued. Living&loving may be confused about these The question provides reference information and suggestions.
The function of predicting the baby’s gender, using the traditional Chinese calendar, which is the lunar birthday of both parents, is used to predict. The website also details the source of this prediction chart under the function. It is said that the Qing Dynasty predicts the gender of the royal family.
In this community, the platform has a stronger sense of guiding users to purchase products. It has set up a “shop” section, and displays products according to categories. Users clicking “buy now” will automatically jump to the product page of Amazon or the brand website , I checked some products and found that there were no Chinese brands.
Users click to buy in the baby chick, and they will be redirected to the product details page of the product on Amazon or independent stations
Mother and infant communities often have stable traffic. As long as the quality of the content can be guaranteed, long-term development can often be achieved.For example, in the two communities introduced above, living&loving has been active for 9 years, and baby-chick is also the 6th year of its establishment.
The “Douban” of the beauty industry-UGC community that transforms user comments into content
Beauty has always been a track where competition is fierce but new brands are constantly pouring in. The impact of the epidemic and other factors has caused damage to the offline industry in the beauty industry, and many brands are moving online. This has made the online track more crowded, and some new brands based on online channels are facing greater pressure.
The main theme of MakeupAlley is a community that treats all brands equally, includes popular brands such as Mac, Chanel, Lancôme, and has not left behind small brands that have never been heard of. Brands with high reputation and complete product information will have a more detailed introduction, including brand introduction, product display, user evaluation and discussion areas. In the brand introduction, the brand’s URL and total score will be revealed.
Opening each product detail page is like integrating Taobao reviews and placing them on MakeupAlley’s website. The product packaging quality, price, repurchase rate, and the specific evaluation of each user are very detailed. Every user who fills in the comment will also inform his skin type, skin tone, hair color and eye color. The purpose of developing this function on the website is estimated to hope that readers will naturally understand the suitable population, cost performance and even the product by reading the product reviews. Time to shelf and frequency of production.
But MakeupAlley is not just an integrated machine. Popular products will be displayed on the homepage of the website. MakeupAlley will also select the best summer foundation, the best natural ingredients and beauty products according to its own standards. The best beauty products in a certain country, such as the best skin care products in Korea.
MakeupAlley popular products and rankings
In general, this is a relatively neutral evaluation community, and it is open to all users who want to comment. This mechanism has kept the MakeupAlley community high since its establishment in 1999 The activity has generated 2.7 million comments on 187,000 products so far. I searched for Chinese cosmetics brands such as perfect diary, girl cult, etc., and found that they are not on the list, but there are still Chinese brands, but not many.
On the one hand, this is related to the inclusion mechanism of the community itself. It can be seen that the products of well-known brands are updated faster, while some niche brands only include names. Lack of product introduction; in terms of user reviews, popular brands are updated quickly, while the latest reviews of niche brands were even a few years ago.
Chinese brands on MakeupAlley
How do Chinese brands enter the list and gain greater exposure?On the one hand, the official website of the website is obviously an important source of information for MakeupAlley, and on the other hand, if they can have a higher sense of presence on the community message board, perhaps Will get the attention of the community. In the website, there is a “message board” dedicated to users, Users can choose the corresponding topic according to the content they want to speak, and they can post and participate in the discussion under this topic. Topics that are highly discussed will be displayed on the homepage, and this trend is updated more frequently, almost every 5 minutes.
The topics that are generally listed on the trend list include user good things sharing and evaluation, as well as discussion posts for some common problems, such as: What brand of contact lenses should I use for sensitive eyes? Or users will find good things by posting. For example, is there a foundation similar to Nars Tinted Moisturizer but with better concealing effect?
MakeupAlley message board hot topics
In addition to communities similar to beauty products, there are many makeup teaching communities, there are various forms of activities in the community, such as video lessons, live broadcasts, etc. This type of community gathers more people interested in makeup and professional makeup, whether it is for product promotion or looking for KOL/KOC, this type of community should not be missed.
MakeupAlley’s most popular destination website is an influencer marketing company (rewardStyle), and the most popular destination website of this website is Amazon , The conversion rate is 33.63%. If you only look at the conversion rate of a vertical community to the website, it may not be high, but has the user learned through this vertical community that the brand cannot be reflected in the data? If the merchant only uses the website conversion rate, the community will be ignored Role, may lose some unexplored opportunities.
MakeupAlley popular destination website (top) and rewardStyle popular destination website (bottom), source: SimilarWeb
Conclusion
The three communities selected by the author above are either divided by subdivided groups or based on an aspect of life. Although this is called a vertical community, it is actually a larger category. As the consumer goods market With the increasing maturity and development of consumers, the needs of consumers have become more diverse. The prosperity of the DTC brand will promote the emergence of more and more down-hanging communities (starting). The communities that were not favored in the past few years may be under the brand’s bonus gained profit. On the other hand, these communities also provide more precise marketing channels (carrying goods and brands) for DTC brands.
In China, planting grass for consumers may be based on a small red book, but different fields overseas have their own “little red book”. To say something that is not relevant to this article, an article a few days ago roughly meant “I missed the perfect diary because I did not understand the Xiaohongshu”, and these vertical communities may be the ones where investment institutions found more “perfect diaries” local.
This article is from WeChat official account:White whale going to sea (ID: baijingapp) , author: zhaolisa