Douyin is one of the short video platforms with the largest traffic in China. Many people hope to use the platform to sell products or realize cash. But how can this be achieved? In this article, Domatters will analyze this from four aspects, hoping to be helpful to your business in China.

01

What is TikTok in China?

The product positioning of TikTok (it is ‘抖音’ in Chinese language and Douyin’ in Chinese Pinyin)  is a platform for Chinese users to provide short video information services to meet entertainment needs.

Why is its scope for short videos? This relates to the overall product design. There are several obvious features in the product design of Douyin, which are vertical screen playback and rapid and continuous flipping selection.

If you do the following other content forms, it will lead to changes in the overall way of consumption and interaction.

We can distinguish the description from the following content forms:

• Add pictures and texts (short/long)—If you add pictures and texts, it must not be the option to flip the homepage directly when viewing. In terms of distribution, although it is also the category of algorithmic distribution, there will be obvious differences in content structure. For example, text can be tagged directly through semantic recognition, but video is difficult.

• Add sound (short/long)—If you add sound, because the sound is more of a non-immersive scene, that is, listening while doing other things. Then there will be obvious differences in the way of interaction, such as emphasis on continuous playback.

• Long videos—As long videos are longer, they are not so fast when selecting them. TikTok’s choice of flipping directly on the homepage does not meet the needs of looking for long videos. The more ways of Douyin are searching, filtering and so on.

02

Is there space for user growth?

According to the data of the spring in 2020 of Douyin, in terms of newly installed users, the number of newly installed users in March 2019 was 39.16 million, while in March 2020 it dropped to 37.62 million new users, which has declined compared with the same period in previous years.

According to the current age structure of Douyin users and comparing the TGI index obtained by the age structure of netizens, it can be seen that Douyin’s TGI index is lower than 100 in the age group of 36+ years old, which means that users in this age group are less likely to use Douyin in other age groups.

Note: TGI index = [proportion of groups with a certain characteristic in the target group/proportion of groups with the same characteristic in the whole] * standard number 100.

Because different content corresponds to different product forms. For the 36+ age group to pull new, promote, and retain, in terms of product functions, Douyin is still a short video.

In terms of categories, in order to meet the needs of the elderly, Douyin will add some content creation tools and interactive methods that are more suitable for the elderly. For example, the way to increase the electronic album. And the interactive way such as adding rich expressions.

03

How to do it on your products? How to realize cash on Douyin?

Every company needs to increase conversion. When there is rapid growth in the early stage, the market will be occupied first. But after the slowdown in growth, they need to think about conversion. Content conversion methods include content payment, advertising model, rewards and gifts, and content e-commerce. Let’s take a look at which method is suitable for Douyin.

1. Content-based conversion

1) Content payment

What kind of content users will pay? Users generally pay directly for good content. Such as movies, TV series, etc. Specific methods include single-episode payment, membership package and other variants.

Therefore, Domatters believes that users can only pay for products that can create value and have stable and predictable benefits. For example, some movies have at least some stars, stories, and a duration of more than 90 minutes. For example, paying for knowledge, it clearly knows that it will talk about some knowledge. The positioning of Douyin is a short video platform for pan-entertainment. Most of these videos cannot directly predict whether they are valuable. Therefore, the conversion model of content payment is not feasible on Douyin.

2) Traditional advertising conversion model: The current model of Douyin is close to the ceiling

This form of traditional advertising conversion is a business model that Douyin has been running for many years. The characteristic of this model is that buyers have no actual expenditures on the platform, but they actually paid attention, while some people paid for other goods. Because it is a traditional model, the ceiling is relatively low.

How high can the ceiling of traditional advertising be?

Chinese netizens spend an average of 4.28 hours a day, and the latest user time spent on Douyin is about 1.3 hours (about 80 minutes), which accounts for 30% of the total time. Calculated by normal netizens, 83.1% of netizens over the age of 14 accounted for 83.1%. According to the statistics of enterprise research platform, 18% of Douyin stock users will uninstall.

The picture below shows the usage time of Douyin in 2020

The time that can be covered is 83.1% (target user) * 82% (retention rate) * 30% = 20% of total national time.

The total amount of advertising in 2019 is 867.428 billion yuan, and the share of Internet advertising is 440 billion yuan. If Douyin occupies 20% of the total national time, assuming that the distribution of national time is consistent with the distribution of advertising revenue, then the advertising revenue of Douyin The ceiling is 88 billion yuan. According to anecdotal reports, Douyin’s advertising revenue in 2019 is close to 50 billion, and its 2020 target is expected to continue to increase. As a result, the Douyin advertising model is close to the current ceiling of Douyin.

The picture below shows the trend of the amount of Internet advertising in China

The current development trend of the advertising industry is to remove the middlemen, and the scale of enterprises’ independent advertising will be larger. One part is that the granularity of ad matching will be smaller and more accurate, and the other part is to lower the threshold to allow more companies to enter. This piece of ByteDance has been launched. A huge number of engines are continuously optimized. This part of DOMATTERS will not go into too much detail.

2. conversion based on interaction

1) Basics: the connection between creators and viewers

The underlying logic of rewarding gifts and content e-commerce is the same, that is, accumulating the relationship between creators and consumers through content to drive rewards and purchases.

• Reward and gift, that is, when in a recognized value space, users want to show off and give gifts.

Why is this connection based? Because the premise of showing off is approval. If users don’t agree with it, they don’t want to show it. For example, China has always had donation lists for temples and schools, but China has never had a donation list for prisons.

The premise of identification is that a user needs to know a person well, and they need to establish contact, so that the user can identify. Therefore, in terms of product function, giving gifts and rewards requires enough interaction to make it possible for a user to identify with a creator, and thus have the motivation to show off.

How high is the ceiling for rewards and gifts? The main income model of the live show is the sharing of rewards. The income of this piece will not be too high, because most users will not spend a lot of money for showing off. We should not be affected by the rewards of certain live broadcasts.

There is a data to look at, the distribution of users’ annual expenditures, culture and entertainment only 11.7%, more expenditures on other categories. Therefore, rewards and gifts are destined to be only a small part of realizing income on Douyin.

• Content e-commerce

The consumer process is roughly divided into these stages, interest-understanding of the product-comparison of the product-purchase. If the user is simply interested in the content, then you only need to solve the process from the user’s interest to understanding the product.

If trust is generated, the time for users to understand the comparison products can be reduced, and users will change their habit of shopping on e-commerce websites. Based on this deduction, content e-commerce will cover nearly 90% of user expenditures mentioned earlier, and even generate incremental expenditures.

So how does Douyin do in this regard? We can compare it and see that in Kuaishou, users prefer to scan the follow page. Why does this happen? Domatters believes that the reason behind this is that Kuaishou has a closer relationship between users and creators.

Because Douyin allows users to see more exciting content. In terms of distribution, it is more considered whether the video is good-looking or not, and the proportion of people is relatively low; while in distribution, Kuaishou will consider allowing users to precipitate their favorite creators. In the distribution algorithm, we may not be able to see the difference directly, but we can see the difference between the two products from the interaction.

Below is the homepage of Kuaishou on the left and the homepage of Douyin on the right.

There are two obvious differences in the homepage:

1. Kuaishou strengthened the exposure of comments. Kuaishou scrolls and reveals the comments on the playback interface, and clicks to enter the comment area directly.

2. TikTok’s release portal is more obvious. Douyin emphasizes the publishing portal at the bottom, and encourages users to publish videos together.

Douyin emphasizes video and encourages users to post videos. If they really don’t want to post videos, post comments. In the product model, Kuaishou essentially wants to connect people through video. Video is just a topic. You can get to know people through video, communicate through text comments, and then get to know him. This is just a presentation in an interactive way. In fact, it is estimated that there will be differences in the distribution strategy, but we can’t directly observe it.

Therefore, in order to achieve conversion growth, Douyin is expected to make a series of social adjustments. If it is not adjusted, it is likely to be disqualified on the conversion route of content e-commerce, rewards and gifts. This series of adjustments seems to be detailed, but the premise is the change of internal indicators-changing from playing volume as an indicator to connecting with the creator as an indicator (such as follow, like, comment).

04

Conversion efficiency can also be improved

Increase purchase conversion rate and make conversion more efficient. With traffic and enough goods, how to increase the conversion rate is the key.

• Reward mode:Rich ways to give gifts

On the basis of sufficient user contact, Douyin will derive many ways to reward. How to get more people who want to pay for rewards? How to continuously increase the sense of ostentation from the motivation level? How to make rewarders see more?

How to make people who want to act? This refers to continuous optimization from the product process and gameplay level. For example, novices try and the process is smoother.

• Content e-commerce:

a.  Live promotion, on-demand delivery;

b. Supply chain solution, cooperation as the main, self-development as a supplement;

c.  Improve purchase conversion rate, focus on data exchange, reduce pre-order steps.

According to the scene, it is divided into live promotion and on-demand earning money.

In the live broadcast scenario, due to the accumulation of traffic, lower prices can be obtained. In the live broadcast environment, users are also more likely to be guided by the herd mentality. Therefore, the live broadcast scene is a magic weapon to attract users to try. However, due to the conflict in the time distribution between creators and viewers, live broadcasts cannot carry more fragmented time for users. Therefore, the role of live broadcast is to promote early adopters, and the real long-tail fragments are in the video playback scene. To put it simply, live broadcast is a promotion of explosive products, while on-demand conversion is the norm.

However, the disadvantage of content platforms lies in the supply chain. Compared with e-commerce platforms, they cannot achieve a wide range of lower prices. Except for Luo Yonghao who has enough traffic to negotiate with merchants, most of them get a normal price. Therefore, live broadcast e-commerce can only do original merchants, that is, the sale of creators’ own products.

Based on this, the live broadcast e-commerce of the content platform can only achieve sufficient low-price promotion by pulling large-traffic IP with commercial negotiation capabilities through operational means to overcome the shortage of the supply chain. Then, what is more important in the product is the platform’s native live broadcast promotion and wider on-demand conversion. Even though live streaming is very popular at present, the focus of the content platform is still that on-demand broadcast is greater than live broadcast.

How to increase the conversion rate? This can be solved by splitting it into two pieces.

• More convenient to buy:

If the user is willing to buy, how can the user complete the purchase easily? In the whole process, including generating interest, understanding products, product decision-making, payment purchase, after-sales, logistics inspection, etc. How can it be as convenient as possible? There are many product functions in the middle. Since it can only support various e-commerce websites at the same time, the fluency is mainly reflected in two aspects: on the one hand, avoid jumping to App, on the other hand, avoid repeating input information.

Avoid jumping apps can only rely on cooperative games, depending on the strength of the partners. For big partners such as Taobao, they will definitely insist on jumping to the App, but there is also a way to integrate the SDK. In the e-commerce expansion stage, it may not be completely forbidden to jump, but try not to jump according to the entire process before placing an order.

In terms of re-entering information, the focus is on the user’s connection, whether the same mobile phone number can obtain information such as shipping address, historical orders, coupon discounts, etc., so that users can make a smoother transaction.

• More accurate matching:

For example, provide selection tools. A user who has been doing video for many years has cultivated a group of fans who like to watch his content. How to find suitable products to match among the massive products? This will be a problem encountered by a large number of creators who bring goods. It can help creators find their own products based on information such as product types, product discounts, and product reviews; in addition, they can also add transaction data on the site to provide corresponding recommendation mining.

• solve the supply chain and let more people participate in douyin

Because the content creators of Douyin have traffic, but they may not have goods that they can bring. There are two ways to solve this problem: cooperate more in the short term and do it yourself in the long term.

For cooperation, if there is a commodity supply chain that can solve the problems of supply and distribution, it is the fastest way. Competitor Kuaishou followed Youzan, Pinduoduo and JD.com in the supply chain. This helps to quickly occupy the user market. Although it may not be the best solution for the content platform, it can quickly solve the problem. If you do it yourself, you need to involve a huge system, such as merchant management, commodity management, promotion system, order management, logistics management, customer service management, etc. These fast systems will be built in a short time, but I believe it will take a long time to improve. After that, long-term training and operation are required. The key point is to do a good job in the supply chain before and after the order.

05

variable

The advent of 5G will also bring new fundamental changes.The spread of 5G will increase the speed of Internet transmission a hundredfold, and the way users meet their entertainment needs may change.

In terms of content forms, new presentation forms will become new trends, such as AR or panoramic video, among which panoramic video Douyin is also trying.

Under these changes, if there is a new and better way to meet the needs of entertainment and Douyin fails to grasp it, there may be user time loss or even user loss, which is another