After Douyin e-commerce adjusts its strategy, can Kuaishou still stabilize the position of the second son?
Text | Zhang Yuxin
On the short video track, Douyin and Kuaishou have already thrown other opponents away, and the war between them has never ended.
In the past, Douyin Kuaishou has produced direct confrontations in many subdivided fields, and there were three wars that were most concerned about at one time: the battle of the scale of the main app, the battle of live broadcast business and the battle of overseas.
In these three battles, Douyin has been increasing the distance between the fast and fast hands after the daily and monthly data surpasses the fast hand, which can be said to be firmly in the position of the boss; on the overseas battlefield, TikTok also There are frequent reports of good news. On the contrary, quick hands are difficult to make breakthroughs overseas; live broadcasting has always been the base of fast hands, but since 2019, Douyin has almost caught up in monthly average daily work and running data.
Now, Luo Yonghao has sounded the horn of the two e-commerce live broadcast wars, which can be said to be the fourth war of much concern between Douyin quick hands.
In this track, Taobao lived on Li Jiaqi and Weiya, and their influence and sales ranked first; although the fast players with the Sanda and Simba families are grassroots, the big anchors have strong sales ability and are bored. Make a fortune; now, Luo Yonghao’s high-profile admission also announced that the vibe that had little sense of existence before will officially join the war.
Before entering 2020, Douyin has been tepid on live broadcasts. After trying several paths, it finally gave the answer with Taobao ’s 7 billion year box: continuation of byte beating. The “traffic business” game play guides e-commerce platforms such as Taobao through short videos and live broadcasts.
But in 2020, Douyin ’s thinking on the issue of bringing goods has changed. Increasing efforts to build small stores, the platform itself began to sign contracts with goods KOL, signing with the live broadcast base at the supply chain end, and other measures are secretly spread out.
And these actions are also almost all quick hands have tried in 2019. As the second-largest live-streaming e-commerce platform second only to Taobao Live, faced with the high-profile entry of Douyin, Kuaishou also felt the crisis: at least to hold onto this second position. In the face of the stronger traffic distribution and monetization ability of Douyin, can fast-handed e-commerce hold its position?
Douyin e-commerce transfers the bow
Douyin started to deploy e-commerce very early.
In March 2018, Douyin opened the shopping cart function for the Douyin number of millions of fans through the invitation system, and the shopping cart link directly jumped to Taobao. According to the official data of Douyin, more than 7,000 Douyin accounts participated in the sale on the Double Twelve, and the number of transactions on Taobao and Tmall exceeded 1.2 million. Among them, Top50 accounts completed 100 million GMV.
From May onwards, Douyin launched the store entrance and started to have a self-built e-commerce business closed loop. In April 2019, Douyin launched multiple e-commerce applets, including JD.com, Xiaomi, etc., with the intention of allowing other e-commerce platforms to also achieve a closed-loop shopping experience within Douyin. In addition, it also includes measures such as online merchandise windows, Blue V enterprise number, POI rights, the release of selected good things alliances, the launch of merchandise search functions and the continuous reduction of the threshold for the establishment of shopping carts and merchandise windows.
However, although both diversion and closed loop are being done, in the case of bringing goods, Douyin has been dominated by the former for more than a year, which is the idea of ”selling traffic”, so Taobao has become The biggest beneficiary.
Moreover, unlike the fast-handed “live selling” form, Douyin has always used short video as a main content form to bring goods, especially for categories such as clothing and beauty, and grow grass through short videos. , And jump to the off-site e-commerce to complete the transaction is a more common practice.
In 2019, a large number of MCNs flooded into Douyin, including the Amoy MCN in Hangzhou. They mass-produced “street beat numbers” and planted grass clothing by making street beat content, which became a vibrato. Than the biggest way to bring goods. Some fans only have street signs of hundreds of thousands, and the monthly sales can reach 10 million.
And some other suppliers who think of “explosives” choose to cooperate with a large number of mid-waist celebrities on Douyin to produce a large number of short videos for a SKU in a short time, and then look for high Like the high-traffic video, continue to supplement DOU +, and bring the goods it brought to fire by bursting a few short videos.
The gameplay of this traffic idea reached its climax in the fourth quarter of 2019. On the one hand, a large number of vertical category accounts other than clothing and beauty have entered the market, and various sub-sectors have gradually begun to scale; on the other hand, the news that Douyin and Taobao have signed a 7 billion year box comes out, of which 1 billion is a commission , 6 billion for advertising costs.
But by early 2020, the wind direction began to change.
From January 2020, Douyin began to limit the frequency of shopping cart video releases. The specific release frequency is linked to the number of fans. In late February, Douyin launched the “Commodity Sharing Author Rating Rules”, which only applies to productsThe author of the share permission. The four dimensions of content quality, content influence, fan influence, and business influence determine the level. The higher the level, the more platform functional rights and interests you enjoy.
Both of these rules raise the threshold of Douyin.com ’s red belted goods. The key target is the RMB players who use Douyin as a pure tool to bring goods, rely on DOU + to obtain traffic but do not pay attention to selection . From this point on, Douyin has revealed the meaning of restricting net red belts, especially those players who are good at using tools and rules.
What follows is that Douyin ’s e-commerce business logic is also changing: the self-built store plan that has been shelved for nearly a year has been restarted.
Some MCN told them that since 2020, in the process of communicating with Douyin’s operation, they feel that the platform is guiding them to transfer the transaction to the Douyin store. At the same time, Douyin is also communicating with a large number of brands, supply chains, and offline merchants, lobbying them to open their stores. To this end, Douyin has also introduced a series of encouraging policies:
1 billion live streaming support: offline merchants who have not used the live shopping cart function from January 1 to February 29, 2020, if they start shopping between March 4 and April 30 Car live broadcast, you can get 2 weeks of “newbie period flow support”; these live broadcast goods “newbie” will share 1 billion traffic.
Small stores settled in the green channel: in the past, the registration of the Douyin store required more than 300,000 fans on the main account. Now this threshold is cancelled. Each store can be bound to 5 Douyin numbers with zero fans to open the shopping cart. Newly-entered merchants will enjoy preferential technical service fees.
Official exclusive training: From March 9th to 14th, Douyin launched the official online open class, from introductory to advanced and other links, detailed guidance for merchants to play Douyin live and short video with goods.
As you can see, Douyin not only encourages everyone to open a store, but also encourages everyone to use live broadcasts to bring goods. With the rapid start of Douyin’s live broadcast business in 2019, it is a matter of course to graft goods with live broadcast business. An important significance of Luo Yonghao’s first show is that it allows a large number of users to complete the complete purchase process of Douyin Store for the first time, which is also a test of Douyin’s business with high concurrency.
The change of strategy will bring about the reshuffle of players under the vibrato e-commerce ecosystem. A large number of MCNs that were originally good at making short videos with goods or very good at using the flow logic of the platform to make explosive short videos The trader will face challenges. Zhang Likun, a partner of Huaxing Cool Entertainment, also mentioned in an interview with Tech Planet that the list of the top ten good thing recommendation officers of Douyin Live is gradually showing new faces, and it is obvious that the account invested in Douyin E-commerce LiveMore and more, and last year’s list was basically a few fixed accounts.
Quick-handed e-commerce crisis
The practice of Douyin’s self-built e-commerce closed-loop has once again led to direct competition with Kuaishou.
For Kuaishou, there always seems to be no good defense in the face of Douyin ’s aggressiveness, and being “chased by Douyin” has long been a constant sense of crisis.
As far as the live streaming business is concerned, it is understood that the monthly turnover of the live streaming business of Douyin at the end of 2019 has almost tied up with the quick hands. The DAU of the live streaming business has reached about 100 million, while the fast hands are slightly higher than 100 million. Compared with the quick hands that rely on live broadcast as the mainstay of revenue, Douyin has been catching up with live broadcasts for only a year.
In the business line of e-commerce, there was not much intersection between the two. The trading behavior of Kuaishou has always existed, but for a long time before, because the platform did not provide trading tools, a large number of anchors guided users to their own WeChat or Taobao stores to complete the transaction, of which the majority of WeChat-oriented.
In June 2018, Kuaishou Store was launched, and it has been connected with third-party platforms such as Taobao, Youzan, and Magic Chop Star Selection, including self-built stores. In 2019, in addition to maintaining a friendly relationship with SaaS platforms such as Youzan and Magic Chopsticks, Kuaishou has gradually moved away from other e-commerce platforms, and its intention to be a closed-loop e-commerce provider is obvious. This is a year earlier than Douyin, so in the past year, the two e-commerce businesses have been exploring in two different directions.
What Douyin e-commerce is doing now has been spread out as early as a year ago, and has advantages. Although they have not signed any anchors themselves, since June 2019, Kuaishou has signed multiple supply chain bases for each industrial belt. After all, as a content platform, one of the biggest shortcomings involved in e-commerce business is the supply chain, which is why content platforms must rely on Taobao in the beginning as e-commerce.
In terms of the ability to bring goods, Sanda, Simba and other fast-handed anchors have been called phenomenal: Sanda Brothers ’sales of goods brought on in the Double Eleven in 2018 were as high as 160 million yuan, and live broadcast in Luo Yonghao That night, Simba’s apprentices generated 480 million sales in the live broadcast room. There is no anchor of this magnitude on the vibrato.
In addition, big anchors such as Sanda and Simba have also established their own supply chains and brands. The three elements of live streaming on e-commerce-traffic, Internet celebrities (sales ability, personal settings, etc.), supply The chain is fully capable. And considerDue to their own positioning and the characteristics of the goods, it is also difficult for them to set themselves apart from Kuaishou. It can be said that a few big anchors are the foundation of Kuaishou e-commerce.
In the past year, Kuaishou ’s e-commerce business is considered to be in an ascending channel within the company. According to insiders, the data of the e-commerce business in 2019 reached the kpi set at the beginning of the year. But as the vibrato shifted its direction, the post-enter entered the same track as the fast hand again, and the fast hand inevitably felt the pressure.
On the one hand, the DAU of Douyin is still about 30% higher than that of Kuaishou. Although the flow advantage is not omnipotent, the huge flow potential is the key to Douyin’s repeated battles in the past. Moreover, under the temptation of traffic, it is also easier to capture the head KOL, the brand side, and the supply chain.
On the other hand, unlike Kuaishou who allows anchors to slowly establish and manage private domain traffic themselves, Douyin is more likely to rely on its consistent “efficient distribution + manual operation” capability, which is likely to bring The result is to quickly win a number of potential head anchors in a short time.
In addition, Kuaishou e-commerce has to face the inherent problems brought by its platform: Kuaishou ’s anchor is very sinking, and the trading behavior has existed for a long time, so there have been a lot of irregularities before the platform officially intervened, including Irregularity of goods and irregularity of selling behavior, etc. Therefore, fast-handed e-commerce has also spent a lot of effort in establishing ecological rules, and has even been listed as the most important goal of the e-commerce business at this stage.
But normative ecology means sacrificing GMV. For example, the recent list-breaking actions that the quick hands are cracking have already existed on the platform. Once cut off, it means that those who rely on the list anchors to maintain the sales business will be expelled from the e-commerce ecosystem, and this part of the GMV will inevitably be lost.
So, when faced with the high-profile entry of Douyin, is Kuaishou going to continue cultivating the ecology and focusing on stability, or is it going to let go of GMV? This will be a place worth paying attention to this year.
The practice of Douyin’s self-built e-commerce closed-loop has once again led to direct competition with Kuaishou.
For Kuaishou, there always seems to be no good defense in the face of Douyin ’s aggressiveness, and being “chased by Douyin” has long been a constant sense of crisis.
As far as the live streaming business is concerned, it is understood that the monthly turnover of the live streaming business of Douyin at the end of 2019 has almost tied up with the quick hands. The DAU of the live streaming business has reached about 100 million, while the fast hands are slightly higher than 100 million. Compared with the quick hands that rely on live broadcast as the mainstay of revenue, Douyin has been catching up with live broadcasts for only a year.
In the business line of e-commerce, there was not much intersection between the two. The trading behavior of Kuaishou has always existed, but for a long time before, because the platform did not provide trading tools, a large number of anchors guided users to their own WeChat or Taobao stores to complete the transaction, of which the majority of WeChat-oriented.
In June 2018, Kuaishou Store was launched, and it has been connected with third-party platforms such as Taobao, Youzan, and Magic Chop Star Selection, including self-built stores. In 2019, in addition to maintaining a friendly relationship with SaaS platforms such as Youzan and Magic Chopsticks, Kuaishou has gradually moved away from other e-commerce platforms, and its intention to be a closed-loop e-commerce provider is obvious. This is a year earlier than Douyin, so in the past year, the two e-commerce businesses have been exploring in two different directions.
What Douyin e-commerce is doing now has been spread out as early as a year ago, and has advantages. Although they have not signed any anchors themselves, since June 2019, Kuaishou has signed multiple supply chain bases for each industrial belt. After all, as a content platform, one of the biggest shortcomings involved in e-commerce business is the supply chain, which is why content platforms must rely on Taobao in the beginning as e-commerce.
In terms of the ability to bring goods, Sanda, Simba and other fast-handed anchors have been called phenomenal: Sanda Brothers ’sales of goods brought on in the Double Eleven in 2018 were as high as 160 million yuan, and live broadcast in Luo Yonghao That night, Simba’s apprentices generated 480 million sales in the live broadcast room. There is no anchor of this magnitude on the vibrato.
In addition, big anchors such as Sanda and Simba have also established their own supply chains and brands. The three elements of live streaming on e-commerce-traffic, Internet celebrities (sales ability, personal settings, etc.), supply The chain is fully capable. And considerDue to their own positioning and the characteristics of the goods, it is also difficult for them to set themselves apart from Kuaishou. It can be said that a few big anchors are the foundation of Kuaishou e-commerce.
In the past year, Kuaishou ’s e-commerce business is considered to be in an ascending channel within the company. According to insiders, the data of the e-commerce business in 2019 reached the kpi set at the beginning of the year. But as the vibrato shifted its direction, the post-enter entered the same track as the fast hand again, and the fast hand inevitably felt the pressure.
On the one hand, the DAU of Douyin is still about 30% higher than that of Kuaishou. Although the flow advantage is not omnipotent, the huge flow potential is the key to Douyin’s repeated battles in the past. Moreover, under the temptation of traffic, it is also easier to capture the head KOL, the brand side, and the supply chain.
On the other hand, unlike Kuaishou who allows anchors to slowly establish and manage private domain traffic themselves, Douyin is more likely to rely on its consistent “efficient distribution + manual operation” capability, which is likely to bring The result is to quickly win a number of potential head anchors in a short time.
In addition, Kuaishou e-commerce has to face the inherent problems brought by its platform: Kuaishou ’s anchor is very sinking, and the trading behavior has existed for a long time, so there have been a lot of irregularities before the platform officially intervened, including Irregularity of goods and irregularity of selling behavior, etc. Therefore, fast-handed e-commerce has also spent a lot of effort in establishing ecological rules, and has even been listed as the most important goal of the e-commerce business at this stage.
But normative ecology means sacrificing GMV. For example, the recent list-breaking actions that the quick hands are cracking have already existed on the platform. Once cut off, it means that those who rely on the list anchors to maintain the sales business will be expelled from the e-commerce ecosystem, and this part of the GMV will inevitably be lost.
So, when faced with the high-profile entry of Douyin, is Kuaishou going to continue cultivating the ecology and focusing on stability, or is it going to let go of GMV? This will be a place worth paying attention to this year.