The e-commerce game of the short video platform is being staged.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “ Retail boss reference ” ( ID: lslb168), author: He Hanxiu.
The e-commerce game of the short video platform is being staged.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “ Retail boss reference ” ( ID: lslb168), author: He Hanxiu.
• What are the differences in the e-commerce development paths of the two short video platforms?
• Behind the frequent adjustment of short videos, what are the game of interests?
Near the Spring Festival, the two short video platforms, Douyin and Kuaishou, start to move. First, Douyin released DAU (members’ average daily activity) to exceed 400 million, and then fast hands were revealed to complete the 300 million DAU goal in advance. The continuously growing data shows that the short video content platform is still full of vitality.
For the whole year of 2019, although Taobao live broadcast has slightly covered the limelight, Douyin and Kuaishou’s exploration in the e-commerce sector is also interesting. Near the end of the year, the Quick Link closed the Taobao link and re-launched it. Douyin has adjusted the release frequency of the shopping cart since January this year, so that the business trends of the two platforms have received much attention.
There is a paradox of commercial realization between content and e-commerce. Users enter the short video platform with the goal of leisure and entertainment. Whenever an advertisement appears, it will interrupt the immersive experience.
The reason why many users buy Youku, Tencent, iQiyi video members is to skip tens of seconds of advertising. But for content creators, creation takes time and energy, and if it does not change, it is equal to free labor. You can only get paid by consuming data, placing ads in your videos, or bringing in goods.
Xiaohongshu also tried the video-carrying model before, and it has recently been criticized for over-advertising content. In contrast, Douyin and Kuaishou, since launching e-commerce in 2018, have been walking along this road more and more.
How did you break through this paradox?
Let’s look at an extreme case first.
I have watched the video of Chen Qi, the elder brother of Douyin, and some people have doubts about the video. Chen Qi ’s mantra in the short video is “put the price down.”The style is like the early TV commercials: don’t 999, don’t 99, as long as 59, send it to home, rush to buy it. Briefly and rudely introduce the selling points of products, and attract users to buy products with low-price strategies.
Since joining the Douyin platform in 2018, a 5-person short video team has shot a total of 17,000 short videos. From the beginning, they sold steak wine and expanded to light luxury products. The latest number of fans of the Douyin account has been opened. It reached 5.78 million.
Although the fan data is not high, the video is quite “brainwashing”, but the conversion is surprisingly good.
In an interview with “Retail Boss Internal Reference”, Chen Qi said, “Don’t look at the likes. There are not many comments. Fans buy them silently. For example, (value) 1800 watches, only more than 50 likes. More than 180. “Chen Qi said that among 5.78 million fans, 70% of the heavy fans (watched the video in 7 days). His strategy is to win by volume, and more than 20 short videos are put on the platform every day.
Just invested 100 million yuan in Yang Terminal and officially became a partner. He is honest that 100 million yuan is not all from the sale of goods, but he actually made a lot.
It’s amazing that such a naked advertisement has such a strong appeal on the content platform. From video content to e-commerce shopping, there has never been a complete similar model before. In contrast, the short video app launched by Taobao at the end of 2018 has long been silent.
Content platforms must balance conflicts between content and advertising. Once the balance is not good, it will roll over. It seems that Douyin Kuaishou did not encounter this problem. This unusual “harmony” is, on the one hand, related to the original design of the Douyin Express platform products. On the other hand, it is also related to the platform’s shopping guide attributes.
Diu Yin was first known as “Parody Show”. The way Kuaishou used to open was the footage of rural ironmen recording their lives. Starting from the short video air vent in 2015, only the vibrato and fast hand brought the gust to the ground.
Users are interested in flashing products in the video. Then went to the e-commerce platform to search for the same paragraph, and eventually made some products inexplicably new explosives. This is a traceable monetization path. The design of the e-commerce sector simplifies the purchase path for users.
It can be said that taking goods is a skill that is illuminated by Douyin and fast user behavior.
On the other hand, Chen Qi claims that the creators of Douyin Express have played the role of shopping guide for e-commerce, from an objective and neutral perspective, to help users choose products, reduce prices, and undertake follow-up services.
Shoppers introduce product functions, show product characteristics, and will not cause the pressure of face-to-face communication. This way can be recognized by users. A veteran Douyin user said that now, even when shopping online, he will give priority to Douyin search before deciding what to buy. “Sometimes you can buy something practical and creative.”
Since 2018, short video platforms have been invariably generating e-commerce., Douyin Kuai ’s way is not the same:
Douyin does three things:
In March, a shopping cart button began to appear in the Douyin numbers with more than one million levels that got through to Taobao. After clicking, a product recommendation information will appear, which can directly link to Taobao;
In May, Douyin opened a product window link for some Daren users, and users can enter Daren ’s personal store for shopping;
In December, the shopping cart function was officially opened. Since then, Douyin has officially entered the short video e-commerce path.
The two things fast do:
In June, reached a cooperation with Youzan to launch a solution for “short video e-commerce shopping guide”;
In December, the “Maize Field Plan” was announced, while announcing the upgrade and revision of the “Quick Hand Shop”, it also launched a new “e-commerce service market” for platform users.
Diu Yin chose to hug Ali’s thighs at the beginning, while Quick Hand chose to build his own platform. This has nothing to do with the business groups that Douyin and Kuaishou have formed in the past: Taobao Tmall merchants put advertisements on Douyin and hope to become popular overnight; and Kuaishou has gathered a large number of Weishang.
Although Douyin has launched e-commerce three months earlier, the development of fast players seems to be smoother. An e-commerce live broadcaster even said that the sales ability of the quick masters was even ten times that of the vibrato.
Quick grounding and the relatively closed old iron culture circle create a strong sense of trust in shopping. This one step difference between Douyin and Kuaishou, for example, is the difference between seller show and seller show: Douyin is a “Seller Show” (advertising); Kuaishou is a “Buyer Show” (user experience effect). However, judging from the current trend, the content of e-commerce shopping guides on Quick Hands and Douyin have begun to converge.
However, the rapid progress of the short video platform in the layout of e-commerce is also brewing conflicts. Mainly focused on the distribution of benefits.
Douyin and Kuai’s large number of short video recommendations for advertising, jump directly to the page of the built-in e-commerce platform, and then jump to open the e-commerce platform APP. This form of diversion of [Red Man + Content + Advertisement], the product is essentially a shopping guide website that has been available for more than 10 years, and the profit is mainly divided into the following single commission income.
In June 2019, Ali’s mother announced a new rule that 6% content service charges for content scenes, such as Douyin and Kuaishou, will be charged on the content platform through three-way sharing. All transactions need to be deducted from the content scene service fee.
The algorithm of this service fee is: assuming that the merchant sets a 20% commission, Taobao directly takes 6% from the 20% commission rate. In other words, the commission rate seen by Daren in the content channel is actually 14%.
The development of content e-commerce platforms such as Douyin Kuaishou has a certain impact on Ali’s mother’s marketing fees. Such a percentage is obviously reducing the income of the Daren, which may affect the motivation of Daren to continue to create on this platform. Previously, Daren had been asked to pay 10% of the commissionTo Taobao Alliance as a technical service fee.
Hurry back. On July 1, 2019, the fast flash e-commerce company announced that on July 20, it will increase 50% of the actual promotion commission for a number of third-party e-commerce platforms including Alibaba’s Taobao Alliance. And said that the fees charged by the platform will be used to encourage the growth of high-quality businesses.
At the end of August, Kuaishou also tried to broadcast live with Pinduoduo, but the effect was not good. The reason is that the unit price of fast-moving consumer goods on Pinduoduo is extremely low, and the commission rate is too high, which makes merchants unwilling to try more. It seems that after many fights, in December Kuaishou adopted the method of closing the Taobao link to counteract.
Compared to Kuaishou, Douyin and Ali have a much closer relationship. According to the Financial Magazine’s “LatePost” team report, on June 25, 2019, Douyin and Taobao signed an annual framework agreement of 7 billion yuan, including 6 billion yuan in advertising and 1 billion yuan in e-commerce commissions.
For Ali, fast hands are ambitious enemies, while Douyin is a close friend. However, there is no certainty whether the Tmall Double 11 in 2019, and the fast hand is an important partner of Tmall Double 11.
According to the development path, although Kuaishou re-launched the Taobao link on January 6th, it is difficult to predict whether the relationship with Taobao Tmall will be renewed. And vibrato and fast hand are now Sheng Yu He Shengliang.
Apart from Taobao Tmall, Douyin and Kuaiyin have access to a large number of third-party e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo, JD.com, Koala.com, and Ocean Terminal. Such multi-terminal cooperation is beneficial for the platform to resist risks.
Starting from the fast entry of e-commerce, it seems that a decision has been made to establish an independent ecology. Judging from the trends in 2019, this change is also more obvious. On the one hand, Kuaishou strengthened the management of merchants, strictly punished the mechanism, and launched “reliable goods” related activities, which were officially certified by a batch of high-quality goods to provide various support. On the other hand, through various methods such as poverty alleviation, we have proactively introduced more sources of goods, introduced good sources at source, created live sources of sources, and expanded the industrial belt.
This also means that quick hands begin to directly touch the core assets of e-commerce-a complete set of e-commerce resource construction (sellers, sources, product pages, payment, logistics, etc.). Especially at the two levels of seller and source.
Different from Kuaishou’s aggressive advancement in the e-commerce sector, Douyin seems to want to reform the content system. As the short video platform develops more and more towards a short video e-commerce platform, the conflict between content and e-commerce will become increasingly acute.
Jiuyin has just released the “Announcement on Frequency Adjustment of Douyin Shopping Cart Video Release”, and the notice shows that since January 2020, the frequency of release of videos with shopping carts has been adjusted. Accounts with less than 1,000 followers are limited to one video per week with shopping carts; Zhang Ha with 1,000-3000 followers is limited to two per day; accounts with 3000-10,000 followers are limited to 5 per day; For accounts with more than 10,000 followers, limit posting to 10 per day.
Although this announcement seems to limit the number of releases, it actually greatly reduces the threshold for publishing accounts. In the past, the official account standards for publishing videos with shopping carts were as follows: the number of fans exceeded 8000, the number of published videos exceeded 10, and they passed real-name authentication.
Lowering the threshold can encourage more creators to create content and get higher advertising revenue. Limiting the number of shopping carts can limit the frequency of similar brands of the same type and make the content on the platform richer.
Douyin still adheres to the line of short video content platform, and the development of fast hand in the e-commerce sector is getting closer to the closed-loop ecology of the full link. Once the boundary is crossed, the fast hand will face a stronger opponent.