A new e-commerce war is taking place.
Text | Zhang Yuxin Qiao Qian
Interview | Zhang Yuxin Qiao Qian Peng Qian
Edit | Yang Xuan
Big Five Fight
“These big platforms are fighting, it’s about to kill our small business.” A Tmall mother and baby business complained, “I can’t sleep in recent days “.
A few days ago, he collaborated with a Douyin expert on a live broadcast, and within half an hour, about 3,000 people flowed to him from the Douyin live broadcast room Tmall store, for such a shop with a unit price of about 1,000 yuan, this data makes him satisfied. But what was unexpected was that as soon as the diversion users exceeded 3,000, the live broadcast room encountered a current limit, and since then no new users have entered his Tmall store.
“Fresh and tea can only be sold in Douyin shops.” An industry source told me that Douyin is also gradually restricting current flows in certain categories. In some business groups, more and more people are saying: The products from the Tao department suddenly cannot be hung on the Douyin shopping cart, and the links that have been hung are suddenly removed…
A series of secret games between Douyin and Taobao at 618’s upcoming knots have caused many people who originally wanted to do a lot of panning in Douyin Live The merchants panicked, and opening a shop on Douyin suddenly became a must-have option.
Compared to the secret contest between Douyin and Taobao, just a few months ago, there was a more blatant confrontation between Kuaishou and Taobao.
In December 2019, Kuaishou and Ali had just completed the in-depth cooperation on the Double Eleven, but Kuaishou’s little yellow car suddenly couldn’t add Taobao merchandise links. “Only a few big anchors can go to Kuaishou to open the whitelist and continue to make new listings on Taobao. There is no way for a large number of small anchors. Many merchants who have prepared good goods and contacted the anchors have suffered heavy losses.” The supplier told.
The official account of Kuaishou is because of “product upgrades”, but more people believe that Kuaishou is increasingly dissatisfied with Ali: Taobao refused to provide Kuaishou with diversion transaction data, and began secretly digging corners for Kuaishou. span>
On the other hand, Kuaishou’s demands for getting rid of Taobao’s constraints and speeding up the establishment of closed stores are becoming more urgent, and the “broken chain storm” has indeed accelerated this process. Kuaishou top stream The Simba family originally put the entire plate on Taobao. Since the link was broken, some products have been moved to the store. Simba also did a welfare spike at the end of a live broadcast, saying it was to test the Kuaishou store. “Stability under high concurrent transactions”.
Although the interface between the two sides was restored again in March this year, according to people close to Kuaishou, as the strategic position of Kuaishou shops continued to improve, the honeymoon period between Kuaishou and Taobao It has been declared over. “Quick hands don’t want to feed Taobao all the time.”
But Kuaishou did not move closer to Ali’s fight on the frontal battlefield. On the contrary, the cooperative relationship with Pinduoduo has always been distracting. In this brief joint hands, everyone is equally divided.
In May 2019, Kuaishou and Pinduoduo launched a strategic cooperation. However, it is close to the symmetry of people in Pinduoduo. This cooperation was quickly terminated in October last year. “Pinduoduo believes that Kuaishou did not give enough resources to promote the cooperation, whether in the multiple store guide pages of Kuaishou e-commerce, or in the official In teaching, there is no content related to Pinduoduo.”
For fast players, cooperation with Pinduoduo is indeed not a “perfect mode”. On the one hand, the profit of the goods on Pinduoduo is too thin, which makes the anchor almost have no money to make; on the other hand, the users of the two platforms are very similar, and the quick hands are also worried that the users who go to Pinduoduo may not return to the quick hand shopping. . Soon, Pinduoduo launched its own live broadcast service in November 2019, and the competition with Kuaishou became more direct and direct.
The collaboration between Kuaishou and JD.com came on the eve of this 618, but based on the complex and entangled competitive relationship right now, Kuaishou and JD.com are indeed one of the few choices for each other. Too. “JD.com needs the sinking traffic of quick hands. The old iron users of fast hands and Jingdong’s small home appliance categories match very well. Both parties hit it off.”A person close to Jingdong told.
Quick hand and JD.com signed a strategic cooperation contract
Since 2019, with the rapid growth of live broadcast e-commerce, Douyin and Kuaishou, who were originally in the content platform camp, and Ali and JD.com in the e-commerce platform camp There was a complex intersection between Pinduoduo and the companies in the two camps.
On the e-commerce side, Ali, JD.com and Pinduoduo all hope to make new allies and grow stronger between Douyin and Kuaishou, but they are always vigilant Restricted by the trembling of upstream traffic; on the traffic side, both Douyin and Kuaishou want to use the powerful supply chain capabilities of the e-commerce platform, and they are not willing to be only traffickers, and do not want to give up their ambitions to create a closed loop for e-commerce.
This ambition became more and more unabashed on the eve of 618.
In mid-May, Douyin launched a large-scale brand recruitment for 618, “All the Douyin sales that can reach the brand end have been fully sold out to convince the brand Come to Douyin to open a small shop, and open the shop to send Blue V.” A person in charge of Douyin’s e-commerce service provider told, “This is the most important KPI for the recent sales of Douyin.”
And, Douyin is guiding merchants to enter the Douyin e-commerce system through a series of operational strategies. Opening a centralized entrance diversion in the live broadcast square, linking the store to the flow subsidy, the transaction commission for the transaction of the store is only 1%, etc… This is a dividend that is difficult for the brand to refuse.
According to people close to Douyin, the merchants currently in Douyin Store have reached millions of levels, and the back-end software provided to Douyin Stores’ merchants” “Shake shop” has also begun internal testing. Although vibratoStart late, but the speed of action is much higher than the fast hand.
Putting aside the competition between Douyin and Kuaishou, these two traffic empires simultaneously put Ali into a dilemma: if you cut off the traffic channel, you will lose a strong Growth momentum; if the cooperation continues, it may be reduced to the shelves and tools of the upstream flow platform. One of Ali’s most taboo things is to let “Taobaoke” form a monopoly upstream, thus giving life to others.
But Ali also has his own weapon: exert control at the end of the supply chain.
A person in charge of a live broadcast base told Taobao that it will put pressure on the supply chain through the deployment of traffic: On the eve of Double Eleven in 2019, a live broadcast base in Hurry up and hung up the license of the industrial belt. As a result, a month later, the Double Twelve Taobao suddenly “closed their little black house” and canceled all their live broadcast resource positions. The traffic of several “Double Hundred” anchors in the base was affected. Greatly affected, the final sales lost tens of millions of yuan.
It’s familiar to Taobao, such as Douyin and Kuaishou, and it has also won many battles in the past. But this time, it encountered unprecedented trouble. And the vibrato and quick hands of the giant ambitions will not give up the continuous breakthrough of Taobao’s blockade line. In the process, JD.com and Pinduoduo are both enemies and friends.
A scuffle is inevitable.
Flowing Bonus
“Out Tao” is becoming more and more popular in the anchor circle. Because standing at this time in 2020, it is almost impossible to climb into a head anchor in Taobao ecology.
“The two super heads of Weiya and Li Jiaqi sucked up most of the traffic, and the traffic of all the anchors behind them may not add up to them. Many.” One person in charge of the MCN agency so estimated. The basis of its argument is that according to a Taobao data service provider, Taobao live broadcast DAU is about 28 million, and Wei YaOn average, Li Jiaqi has about 10 million people online.
Left: Li Jiaqi, right: Wei Ya
This is directly related to Taobao’s traffic distribution logic. “The logic of Taobao is GMV fairness. Give the same traffic first, see who has a high conversion rate, and follow-up Taobao will pour more traffic to whom.” Zhang Shuai, the founder of the online cat, told. In addition, factors such as the opening rate of the live broadcast room, the length of stay, and the rate of powder transfer will also affect where Taobao’s traffic continues to flow, and this will lead to the situation of the strong and constant.
Moreover, the traffic of Taobao live broadcast is also far less abundant than the vibrato. According to a Taobao data service provider, the current DAU of Taobao’s live broadcast is about 28 million, and there are more than a million broadcasters and more than 200,000 stores every month; and the live DAU of Douyin and Kuaishou are close to 150 million. But the sales anchor is not as strong as Taobao. On one side is a crowded pond, on the other side is a turbulent river.
Celebrities don’t get traffic, and naturally don’t attract merchants and brands. “Cooperate with Weiya and Li Jiaqi, a live broadcast can complete millions of sales, but if you cooperate with the waist anchor of about 1 million fans, a live broadcast can sell more than one hundred and two hundred thousand.” A Tmall food The merchant tells.
But working with the head anchor is not a panacea. Due to Wei Ya Li Jiaqi’s obsession with “the lowest price in the entire network”, merchants often only choose to cooperate when they are in big promotion, new listing, and inventory sales. The purpose is to rush sales and increase the search weight of goods in Taobao. It is almost impossible to make money. . Therefore, for most merchants, there is no way to make a normalized and effective live broadcast.
“Taobao saw the problem of its live broadcast ecological structure and wanted to adjust it, but we can’t wait for it to be effectiveThat day. A person in charge of an MCN agency told. He represents the judgment of many MCNs: Taobao’s live broadcast bonus period has passed and it is necessary to find new traffic depressions.
“Douyin is the outlet of this year.” Zheng Lei, founder of Pinliang.com, judged this way. “Since June 2019, we have monitored that about 12.5% of Douyin users will click on the small yellow car link in the short video or enter the e-commerce live room, which is nearly 50 million users.” And enter In 2020, this number is still growing rapidly.
“For anchors that have less traffic and more uncomfortable live broadcasting on Taobao, we will recommend them to vibrate.” The person in charge of the above MCN told. A Douyin account with hundreds of thousands of fans can achieve a monthly sales of one or two million. This number is already equivalent to the level of Taobao’s belt influencers. The internet celebrities with particularly strong ability to carry goods can even achieve sales of around 50 million per month by relying on their early 1 million fans.
Zhang Shuai’s calculations, the anchor of about 1 million fans in the pool of Douyin has about 30,000 people, and 20 of them can find goods with strong ability to carry goods. A month’s sales can exceed 1 billion. This made him put down the fast-handed business in 2020 and invested almost all of his resources in Douyin.
“Any platform for live broadcast e-commerce will go through four stages: small-scale testing, setting benchmarks, brutal growth and normative management.” Analysis, “And the biggest stage of dividends is the stage of setting a benchmark.”
The reason is that in order to make a benchmark case, the platform will spare no effort to infuse traffic or other resources onto capable anchors. This is the case for Weiya and Li Jiaqi in 2017-2018, the same for Sanda and Simba in 2018-2019, and the same for Luo Yonghao and Chen He in 2020. After that, there will be a large number of followers who will grow up with the barbaric growth period of the platform.
Douyin is at this stage. In April 2020, as Luo Yonghao’s strategy of selling goods on Douyin’s first show and Douyin’s e-commerce gradually became clear, its bonus period was officially announced. A person in charge of MCN told us that starting from April, in addition to Taobao, many fast-hand anchors also turned around and investedDouyin embrace. Does this mean that the dividend period for fast-hand e-commerce is fading?
“2019 is a big year for fast-handed e-commerce.” Zhang Shuai said with emotion. After double eleven in 2018, the Sanda Brothers brought 160 million in delivery results. In June 2019, the fast-handed e-commerce department was officially established and began to invest in manpower to operate e-commerce content in August. Operational reliance means that traffic will gather here, which is exactly the opportunity for e-commerce celebrities.
A large number of native selling celebrities started pouring into quick hands at this time. They started doing content from scratch, talking about beauty or dressing up, creating account number. On the other hand, the big influencers who already have millions or even tens of millions of fans on the fast hands have also begun to transform their sales. They have gradually brought the “e-commerce fans” in their huge fan group through live broadcasts. “Wash out” to continuously improve the conversion rate.
“Many big anchors were originally reluctant to sell, because they earn a lot by rewarding.” The head of a fast-hand guild told, “but see The head anchor can sell tens of billions of billions in one game, and can’t sit still.” This is the pulling effect that the benchmark case on the platform can play.
“It takes about 3 months for an e-commerce account to reach hundreds of thousands of fans. Kuaishou is not a place that can achieve explosive growth, but if it is a big net The red transition is much faster.” The above-mentioned guild leaders have managed many of their anchor transitions. Normally, the big anchor transformation only needs to do continuous live broadcasting with goods within one to two weeks to learn to “routine” and be “reformed”.
So, some of the e-commerce traffic dividends of Quick Start were quickly divided between several major families and head anchors on the platform between 2018 and 2019. The anchors with goods that arrived in the middle of last year are now fully mature at this time, most of them have made an account of one or two million fans, and the smaller anchors can only continue to raise their numbers, and explosive growth is not fast. What algorithm logic can support.
This means that the flow ladder of fast-hand e-commerce has basically been formed. If the overall flow plate of the platform does not increase significantly, the bonus period will be over half.
The vibrato is fierce, and fast hands can’t give way
On April 20, Li Xiaolu made a live broadcast on Douyin, and the transaction amount rushed to 47.91 million, second only to Luo Yonghao. In the following days, the brand side swarmed to seek cooperation, as many as nearly 200 every day.
What is happening now exceeds Chen Pengbo’s expectations. His Vision Entertainment has always been the largest guild on Douyin. The live streaming rewards have been growing steadily every month, and by April this year it had exceeded 300 million. But since this year, he has been able to sit firmly in the first place on the show live broadcast, because the operator of Douyin has given a clear signal: to be an e-commerce.
Not only gave the business direction, Douyin officially planned an intensive e-commerce live training since April. “Three or four training sessions a week, teach us how to choose products, how to set up goods, how to design scripts during live broadcast, what words to use, etc.” Chen Pengbo will participate in almost every training.
Signing Li Xiaolu is one of his bold attempts: in the large flow pool of Douyin, use top-stream stars to make high transaction scale and use scale to attract brand parties , Quickly open up the supply chain end, so as to reuse it to other e-commerce experts. Under the huge traffic dividend of Douyin Live, this logic quickly ran through: the number of people who began to bring goods under the Vision quickly increased to more than 100, and the GMV in April reached 900 million. And they plan to sign another 100 stars this year, and expand the size of the e-commerce team from the single digits at the beginning of the year to about 1,000.
In fact, as early as 2018, the Douyin shop was already online, but at that time, the talent organization and the brand side were far from attracting attention.
In 2018, Xiao Xiao, the person in charge of a clothing supply chain, received Chen Yan’s invitation to cooperate, and now has more than 13 million fans and monthly shipments in Douyin Internet celebrities with a GMV of more than 40 million yuan had only about 800,000 followers at that time and were seeking a stable supply chain to sell together.
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The limitation of this model is that the reproducibility is not high: if the anchor can’t drop so much money, it is impossible to grow so quickly in a short time. The platform is also facing the risk of “raising tigers”-the live broadcast rooms of major families have recently been sealed as the platform’s management method.
So, at the end of 2019, with the MCN mass settlement, quick hands also began to emphasize e-commerce content operations, hoping to make a healthier outside of the “old force camp” E-commerce ecosystem: do content, raise accounts, establish people, set up accounts, gradually start selling goods, the platform provides a way to obtain traffic in this process. And this part of the gameplay is closer to vibrato.
Douyin is similar to Taobao, the logic is to rely on the platform to control the distribution of public domain traffic to regulate the growth rate of the anchors in the entire ecosystem. In other words, the strong control flow distribution mechanism on Douyin can make the anchor from zero to one faster and more fierce, but it can also control the formation speed of the super head.
“The live broadcast business is still in its infancy, and Douyin will not make a big company with 10 100 million revenue companies and 100 10 million revenue companies. In the meantime, Douyin hopes to be the latter.” Liu Siyi, founder of Qunxiang, so judged.
Douyin’s control over traffic is reflected in its operations and marketing tools. In both respects, Douyin’s steps are not small. “Once you want to understand that you want to do e-commerce yourself, Douyin will not hesitate to invest resources.” Many industry professionals have made such a judgment.
“As long as an anchor can sell 100 pieces a day, Douyin will issue him an S-level popularity card.” A guild is responsible