"In the beginning, marketing was more about boosting the sea and helping Chinese Internet companies acquire users overseas. And when the product already has a large number of users, we will help them monetize. Finally, the combination of product and effect, to acquire users while highlighting the brand value. Duan Wei, co-founder and CEO of Mobvista, said in a speech entitled "The Marketing Power Behind the Globalization of the Mobile Internet".
At the main venue of "Insight and Exploration" on the morning of December 6, Duan Wei, co-founder and CEO of Mobvista, launched a three-person dialogue with Sun Shuo, head of brand advertising and innovative products at TikTok, and Weibang Chen, general manager of Alibaba UC Ads, to discuss the mode of getting along with competitors and how to monetize overseas.
During the discussion, Sun Shuo, head of brand advertising and innovative products from TikTok, pointed out that "marketing power is equally important as product power and technical power, and they are complementary to each other." Because technology is the core, it can have global extensibility, but enterprises must create a local content ecology, and at the same time, there is also the landing of products and operations, and marketing will play a very important role in these layouts. After all, the globalization of enterprises is actually the localization of each region. ”
Chen Weibang, general manager of Alibaba UC Ads, excavated the status quo of branding and marketing from another perspective, he said, "In the past few years, in addition to the more famous hardware manufacturing companies in China, brand building is still in the early stages of mobile Internet circles, and the application of marketing is not perfect. But at present, there are more and more corporate platforms that build brands by serving overseas players, which may not be a large platform and may only serve a certain vertical field. And gradually some people have connected these platforms, and at the same time, the chief growth officers of each company have also taken advantage of different people to combine the brand part and user acquisition to play a combination of fists. ”
The following is a transcript of the discussion (compiled by Morketing):
The marketing power of the "Great Voyage" era
(Moderator) Duan Wei: It is a great honor to share the stage with the two of you to discuss the topic of China's Internet going to sea. The first question is, in the process of going to sea in this decade, how to evaluate the Internet in this decade, and the role of marketing power in it?
Sun Shuo, Head of Brand Advertising and Innovative Products at TikTok
Sun Shuo: The core of the past 10 years is opportunities, opportunities and breakthroughs, and Chinese enterprises have continuously opened up dimensions in many fields, and have explored more breadth and depth. Chinese companies are more fully involved in the evolution of a globalized economy.
I am honored to witness this era of "great navigation", our company was also born in the golden decade of global mobility, "globalization" is a core vision of ByteDance to build a global creation and content exchange platform. The power of The core of ByteDance is technology and products, and technology and products themselves are a globalization, and they are interconnected with each other.
In addition, user needs are becoming more and more interconnected, and the degree of globalization is becoming more and more interconnected, and we also hope that our products can provide services for users around the world. At the same time, once the configuration of globalization has begun, it is necessary to apply the scale effect, one is the synergy between the market and the market, and the other is that in the process of building a global team, talents, organizational structure, etc. are strongly extensible and reusable.
In addition, when it comes to marketing, I think that marketing power is equally important as product power and technical force, and the middle is complementary to each other. Because technology is the core, it can have global malleability, but enterprises must have a local strategy to create a local content ecology, as well as the landing of products and operations, in which marketing will play a very important role. After all, corporate globalization is actually the localization of each region. TikTok is maturing in various regions overseas, and we are also exploring to become a marketing partner of various companies, and work with various companies to help global marketing.
Chen Weibang: In fact, in the past few years, when going to sea, I often crossed the river by feeling the stones. Personally, I was one of the first people in Chinese mainland to start making the sea. There is a company called NetQin, and its globalization is what I do. The globalization of cheetahs is also what I do, and now the global commercialization of UC is also what I am doing.
In the past few years, when we talk about marketing, we think of using the power of overseas giants, or the power of several domestic network alliances, in the user acquisition part, in fact, we have achieved a certain scale. But in the part of brand building, in the past few years, in fact, everyone has not done enough, in addition to the more famous domestic hardware manufacturing companies, brand building in the mobile Internet circle is still in the early stage, the application of marketing is not so perfect.
But we're already seeing the beginning, that is, more and more people can say Chinese, and more and more companies that build brands based on serving overseas players, it may not be a big platform, it may only serve a certain vertical field. But gradually, some people have connected these platforms, and at the same time, the chief growth officers of various companies have begun to use the advantages of different people to combine the brand part with user acquisition to play a combination fist.
UC wants to serve half of the planet' people, and we're still on the way.
"Offensive and defensive" with competitors
Mobvista co-founder and CEO Duan Wei
Duan Wei: At present, there is a voice in the Internet industry: now all overseas companies will actually encounter Facebook and Google, and both the offensive and defensive ends, that is, promotion and monetization, will be subject to them.
I've been thinking about a question: Is it only possible for a Chinese company to become a great company if it jumps out of the limits of Facebook and Google? From the perspective of product form, at least TikTok has a chance, because social products inherently have a sense of jumping, unlike pure tool products that rely on lists.
Sun Shuo: With Facebook and Google, it is still a symbiotic, learning and cooperative relationship, and we have a lot of cooperation with them in our development. But you mentioned that a very interesting point is the product, it is true that everyone has the opportunity to launch different products, but the products that caught fire in the previous generation of communication methods may not be able to develop at a high level in the next generation of communication models.
For example, 5 or 6 years ago, social networking was still based on words, and quickly transformed into pictures, then to video, and then to today's short videos. Now, in addition to some developed countries, such as developing countries, its infrastructure, network and other factors have landed, in fact, the demand for video is very strong. TikTok is also following the trend, making efforts in the field of short videos and deriving them based on the underlying technology.
In addition, technical strength is still at the core of the TikTok gene. To achieve more accurate content distribution, in fact, after building the bottom layer, applying some local strategies, coupled with content operations, can achieve a community rhythm, into everyone on this platform to play together, together hi. It is also because we have such a highly interactive community, including talent ecology, etc., we can provide more different solutions in the future marketing value chain.
Chen Weibang: In fact, we can't get around Facebook and Google, and we have to cooperate with them for a win-win situation. Especially in terms of competition, it is necessary to differentiate products, technologies and operating models. If you do the same thing as Facebook and Google, and the other people's track is in front, you will not be able to catch up in the back.
When we choose the market, a global company like Facebook can open up various markets, so we need to do specialization, whether it is user growth or monetization of products. Google, Facebook has monetization for traffic, you can do different things, such as for videos or different layouts to do, the key is to differentiate, focus, symbiosis and integration.
The advertising industry is actually a state of coexistence of friends and enemies, no matter which company in the past, everyone is both a friend and a competitive relationship, so it is not unusual.
Duan Wei: What about being more specific? How can I not rely on Facebook and Google for monetization?
Weibang Chen, General Manager of Alibaba UC Ads
Chen Weibang: Let's go a little deeper. While everyone understands the domestic environment, they feel that the domestic mobile Internet relies heavily on performance advertising. For example, UC in Southeast Asia and India, performance advertising will be put aside first, we will do the brand first, do the big impact, do the big exposure. From the perspective of attention, we will pay more attention to the service of this wave of advertisers, using UC's unique various exposure layout resources, as well as video and short video related advertising placements to do. So, we really don't rely on Facebook to do this.
Sun Shuo: Every company should find its own differentiating methodology. Now looking at the spread of TikTok and Douyin, we have new ideas, such as traditionally speaking, we all know that the marketing industry is a whole funnel, starting with the establishment of cognition, favorability, interest, deep interaction and conversion, which is the whole link.
But now we've found that in a highly interactive community like TikTok, it actually has a fold called a curved surface, which folds the path, and you can resonate directly from cognition, and then produce deep interaction and transformation. For example, we launched some challenges, and it may become a crazy hit on the platform. Previously, a well-known clothing brand in the United States cooperated with the "Jeans" theme challenge, in 6 days, there were more than 5,000 videos uploaded, more than 10 million video playback, millions of comments and forwards.
Chen Weibang: Is there a challenge to light? What is the income?
Sun Shuo: This is a very good question, to serve international brand advertisers, only provide exposure and interaction data is only the most basic. Our goal is to build a more dimensional performance measurement system for brand advertising, and what we are doing now includes cooperating with third-party brand research companies, building a self-built brand research system, etc., and using technical means to continuously provide advertisers with more dimensions of data support and solutions.
How do you combine competitive advantage with profitability?
Duan Wei: Finally, ask one question each. The first one I want to ask TikTok, now short video is a particularly popular field, the competition is also very much, not only to face the competition of Chinese companies going to the sea, such as Kuaishou, but also a lot of local companies in the countries that go to sea, and to face international giants like Facebook also released similar products, how to look at such a competitive environment? Another question I would like to ask UC, internationalization has been done for 8 years, and so far it has been losing money, what is UC going to do next?
Sun Shuo: The core point of this question is more to return to the source, what is the competitive advantage of the source? For us, it's like a technical gene. This gene has the characteristics of globalization, since we can expand this gene to an application layer of products in China, overseas, in various markets, in fact, we can also use good genes to create good products. One of the biggest tests is that in the process of globalization, strategically considering the world to be the same, but tactically doing more refined localization of each market. Understand localization customs, really dive into some of the habits of your users, and then adjust your content and products to fit each community.
We've also just gotten the best entertainment app in google play 18 markets, which is a testament to our early localization efforts. The next step is to expand into the commercialization track, which may also return to the essence, focus on technology, more modestly understand the needs of partners and customers in the market, and create more targeted solutions in all regions of the world.
Chen Weibang: First of all, the investment in the big cultural entertainment is what Ali Group is willing to do, why? Because the entertainment industry itself is not what Alibaba is doing, it is a thing that we need to step up later, and if we want to occupy the land, we really have to invest.
UC itself is in a process of continuous optimization, and we have been in the past, feeling the stones across the river, finding places such as India and Indonesia that can exert a lot of power and easily obtain users.
But in reverse, for the input and output of India and Indonesia, we will not be so precise, but first invest, first grow users, reach a certain level and then calculate how to use a more effective way of operation in terms of products, whether it is human resources or content output, we will do a series of measures.
For a large number of local products like India and Indonesia, they will put the content originally written by their reporters on the website through traditional models, such as newspaper groups, and UC's route is to let self-media people contribute content, so that UC costs will definitely be reduced.
Again, for short videos, I call it the "new way of content production", which exists in the content production chain. If it is used by technical means, it can be used to produce interesting content more efficiently and be consumed by the public. In this production link, if the technology and operation are done well, it can be more efficient and more economical, because the server cost is flattened, the production cost is amortized, the more users are earned, and the traffic can be monetized.
Of course, this is the ideal state, we want to move forward to the ideal state, we need to make efforts in the product part, in fact, everyone is facing the same problem. In terms of products, operation is more efficient, and technical means are used to solve the efficiency of content production and distribution problems, production, distribution, and then monetization, all of which are better solved by technical means.
Duan Wei: Okay, thank you.
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This article was originally published by Morketing
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