Image source @ Visual China
Text | VCPE Reference (vcpecankao), author | Li Zixuan, Editor | Mario
The middle-aged and elderly interest community "Red Pine" recently won a financing of 100 million yuan, which should be good news for this track.
After 2015, square dance APP took the lead, and a number of Internet products for the interest of middle-aged and elderly people emerged, but each one did not explore a long-term stable business model, and the track soon fell silent.
In recent years, changes in demographics and the Internet environment have provided a more suitable soil for such products.
After 2020, in order to solve the problem of "suitable aging" of Internet products, the state has introduced a series of measures to put forward more requirements for service principles and technical requirements, which has greatly reduced the difficulty of using Internet products for middle-aged and elderly people.
This presses the acceleration button for the growth of the number of middle-aged and elderly netizens. According to CNNIC's latest statistics, as of June 2021, the proportion of internet users aged 50 and above was 28.0%, an increase of 5.2 percentage points over June 2020, making it the fastest growing group among internet users of all ages.
In stark contrast, according to the statistics of Analysys Qianfan, as of August 2021, among the more than 10,000 apps on the whole network, the number of products with 41 years old and over accounting for 10% of the population is only 1531. There is still more room for development of Internet products for middle-aged and elderly people.
Zhou Wei, founding partner of CCV, who has invested in Red Pine for two consecutive rounds, said that China is facing systemic demographic changes, and the "new generation of retirees" has put forward higher demand for quality of life and content entertainment, and also has a strong willingness and spending power, but the quality supply in the market is very scarce.
In the last wave of entrepreneurial boom of middle-aged and elderly interest platforms, apps such as jelly beans and small rice cakes have survived, and now there are new entrants. What are the core needs of middle-aged and elderly users they capture? What is the ability to stand on this track? For the platform, what is the top priority to do well?
01
Middle-aged and elderly people go online, not to kill time
"Solving loneliness is only the bottom line of the silver-haired community", Zhou Wei believes, not only the elderly, but also middle-aged people with a slower pace of life and work, they have a more active pursuit - to make their lives richer and better.
Different from our imagination of the living conditions of middle-aged and elderly people, they are pursuing the excitement and fulfillment of life with a very proactive mentality. In fact, in the early stage of the development of this subdivision of the middle-aged and elderly community, it is not the entrepreneurs who choose the users, but the uncles and aunts who choose the products.
In 2010, Jelly Bean founder Zhang Yuan founded the life video website "Jelly Bean Network", and square dance is just one of the channels. However, without deliberate promotion, square dance has become the most played and fastest growing content category on the website.
Coinciding with the rise of vertical e-commerce, Jelly Bean founder Zhang Yuan was inspired by it: integrated portals always lack vertical crowd attributes, and only people with similar interests can form communities and explore more business models. So Zhang Yuan decisively cut off the other channels of the Jelly Bean Network and only did square dance.
The activity of the middle-aged and elderly population has also attracted the attention of the K song application singing bar. Around 2018, the singing bar team found that there were middle-aged and elderly people in the high-interaction crowd of the online community, and at the same time, more and more middle-aged and elderly consumers walked into the Maisong KTV chain store of the singing bar. In the end, after the Spring Festival last year, Sing Bar decided to lay out the business of middle-aged and elderly people, and launched the "Peanut Classroom" to provide vocal music courses for middle-aged and elderly people.
The small rice cake is the influx of middle-aged and elderly people who have changed the tone of the platform. Xiao Mochi was originally a production tool for audio albums, in 2015, the Xiao Mochi public account launched a video content commemorating the flood fight in 1998, which was wildly rotated in the various old comrades-in-arms of WeChat, and the number of clicks on this video reached more than 16 million, while the fans of the public account at that time were only 40,000 or 50,000 people.
These users have produced more UGC content with the mark of the times, attracting more people with the same experience to join, forming a chain effect, and the proportion of middle-aged and elderly people in small rice cake users once exceeded 80%.
Xu Jing, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Peking University, said in an interview with the media that different social groups have the need for identity, and people will have certain identity anxiety when they reach retirement age, and in the process of seeking identity, they must seek the same memory.
It can be seen that the elderly have two anchor points to achieve their inner needs - interest and circle layer, so interest courses and UGC content are the mainstream content forms of middle-aged and elderly community products, and at the same time have a certain social entrance.
Founded at the end of 2019, Red Pines positions itself as a social interest in entertainment. Its predecessor is the WeChat live broadcast mini program "Red Pine Learning Academy" for retired groups, providing live streaming classes of vocal music, digital and other interests for middle-aged and elderly people, and Li Qiao, founder of Red Pine, said that the reason for choosing live broadcast instead of short videos is to increase interactivity and avoid one-way content consumption.
On the Red Pine platform, users can not only communicate with the anchor, but also upload jobs, interactive reviews, morning and evening punch cards, etc. in the Mini Program to achieve interactive communication with other users. XiaoYi cake also set up a live broadcast section in the interest channel to teach health care, shooting, editing videos, WeChat use skills and other small knowledge.
02
The platform has three axes to retain the enthusiasm of users
Zhou Wei believes that for platforms such as Red Pine, the most important thing at present is to pursue richer content and higher activity, so that the middle-aged and elderly people on the platform can form a cohesive community. In fact, this is also the development trend of several platforms that have attracted attention, with a more "lively" community atmosphere, to retain more users.
1. Cover the interest needs of uncles and aunts
In August last year, the "Red Pine Learning Academy" launched an APP away from the WeChat ecosystem and changed its name to "Red Pine". Originally, there were only a dozen types of mini programs, but now the live classes of the Red Pine APP have covered hundreds of interest areas such as vocal music, musical instruments, calligraphy, painting, dance, recitation, health, digital, English, and tourism.
Rich content ecology is the common pursuit of interest communities. Bai Fan, the founder of Sing Bar, also said that the vocal music class is only an entry point, and the purpose of the peanut class is to start from the service and cut into the spiritual and cultural consumption of the middle-aged and elderly people. "The malleability of this direction is relatively broad, and the classroom may only be an early form of our middle-aged and elderly business," Bai Fan said.
Jelly beans, which cut from single-interest courses, are also exploring new forms. Jelly Bean APP is still based on square dance, the team also launched a number of jelly bean daily smile, jelly bean love life and other small programs, expanding life, funny, health, health and other different content. In addition, Jelly Bean also laid out OTT (Internet TV) into the family living room content consumption scene.
Xiao Mochi refines and classifies the video content on the platform, and differentiates 14 interest plates such as health and wellness, magic tricks, painting, and tourism.
2. Open up the online + offline social closed loop
Zhou Wei believes that in response to the needs of middle-aged and elderly people with a sense of loneliness and value, the existing solutions are mainly based on tools, and users do not have identities or social relationships based on products. This problem has also been paid attention to by entrepreneurs and has become the focus of improvement.
In fact, it is not as difficult to drive the elderly to do social interaction. After BaiFan's investigation, it was found that on the sing bar platform, the sharing rate of middle-aged and elderly people will be more than 5 times higher than the average, and the activity rate is also very high, when others pay attention to them and give them likes, they will feel particularly embarrassed, must pay attention to go back, and give each other likes. Therefore, compared with the Z generation of social fear, the middle-aged and elderly groups show a more open and enthusiastic attitude towards the community.
Li Qiao put social networking in a more important position, "The product upgrade process is that the relationship chain is in the front and the interaction is in the back." In Li Qiao's view, the product logic of Red Pine is not live broadcasting, but "small station".
The small station is similar to the Douban group, gathering a group of friends, but the form of interaction is more diverse, with live broadcasts, spatial dynamics, and chat groups with different themes. On the Red Pine APP, small stations are displayed on the home page, and at present, Red Pine Classroom has developed thousands of vertical small stations.
Image source: Screenshot of the Red Pine APP
Several platforms have also extended social channels to offline, which can go through the social habits of middle-aged and elderly people. Li Qiao observed that young people socialize more strangers and prefer one-on-one socialization, which is largely driven by hormones, but the elderly are more socialized by semi-acquaintances, and collective interaction and one-to-many social interaction are regarded as important needs by them.
The Way red pines are based on a combination of interest and location to achieve localization. For example, according to local characteristics, the Red Pine Will set up Sichuan opera projects in Sichuan and ice and snow sports projects in the northeast region. Li Qiao believes that the integration of online and offline will provide better service extension, "through the online localization community, the probability of communication and interaction forming a relationship chain will be greatly improved."
Jelly Beans also value this ability. Jelly Bean helps dance teams establish connections within and between cities through the tools provided online, and helps them organize public welfare performances, sorority and other activities offline, according to reports in 2019, Jelly Bean has set up more than 20,000 "Jelly Bean Home" sites offline.
3. KOL - leverage the core strength of the middle-aged and elderly population
Relying on the platform alone, it is difficult to move the vast number of middle-aged and elderly groups and large and small circles. The role of kols is crucial in the operation of platform policies. Take the two most watched platforms as an example, the role of Red Pine is the webmaster, and in Jelly Bean is the leader.
Some of the "webmasters" of the Red Pine Station come from the signed live class teachers, and some are platform users, and their common points are interested in strengths, active expression, and willingness to share, thus forming a certain appeal on the platform.
As "webmasters", they take on more organizational work, in addition to providing live broadcasts, interactive chats on the site, they are also the organizers of gatherings, study tours and other activities. Li Qiao gave an example, "There is a Tianjin aunt in the station manager of the Red Pine Station, who insists on sharing her tai chi exercises with other members every day. Auntie now has more than 100,000 fans and will organize offline parties in the local area from time to time."
The team leader is the key to the amount of jelly beans and the enhancement of user stickiness. The team leader needs fresh dance content to teach the dance team members, Jelly Bean cut in the early days with "learning to dance tools", taking the lead in grasping this part of the core population, and the leader entered the platform and then produced and released UGC content, attracting ordinary users to spontaneously follow and learn, forming a flywheel effect. With this, Jelly Bean has become the head product of the square dance APP category, and in 2019, it has received investment from well-known institutions such as Tencent Investment, GGV Jiyuan Capital, Shunwei Capital, and IDG Capital.
Image source: Jelly Bean APP screenshot
Therefore, the team leader has the ability to link online and offline resources from the beginning, which is an important force for the platform to unite users and maintain stickiness. Around 2018, when the square dance APP was the most popular, the team leader also became the object of competition on various platforms. "In the first two years, many young people came to me and asked me to recommend a unified square dance APP to the team, some offered to give me coupons, which could be used to buy dance costumes, and some sent some small gifts," said one of the team leaders' aunts.
03
Where are the pain points in the industry?
Although after 2019, the epidemic has accelerated the speed of adapting middle-aged and elderly people to Internet products, and products such as social networking and education for middle-aged and elderly people have also gained a lot of exposure opportunities, investors are extremely cautious. In Zhou Wei's view, this is because a better business model has not yet been explored.
Apps for middle-aged and elderly people first broke out around 2015. At that time, a number of vertical APP providing square dance services was born, in addition to jelly beans, there were 99 square dances, national square dances, etc., and soon obtained financing. However, around 2017, a large number of square dance APP was suspended, and Qin Xiaoxiao, the founder of "Star Dance", said in an interview at the time that there were more than a dozen peers who had withdrawn from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai alone, and most of the living people had obtained financing before, and their peers were all tripped up in liquidation.
The platform's exploration of commercialization is diversified, mainly including advertising, e-commerce, tourism, paid activities and other categories, but it is affected by the consumption habits of middle-aged and elderly people, the tone of platform content, etc., and the conversion rate is not high. In the process of commercial exploration, the remaining platforms have gradually differentiated into two "factions" of heavy e-commerce and heavy paid services.
Rice cakes and jelly beans are the former. Jelly Bean opened the "Jelly Bean Mall" entrance in 2017, and by the end of this year, some industry sources revealed that the Jelly Bean App covered tens of millions of people, and only more than 300 users purchased mall services, with a conversion rate of less than one in ten thousand.
Zhang Yuan, the founder of Jelly Bean, reflected on it and believed that the effect of e-commerce monetization was not good because the platform did not establish a sense of trust with users.
The team leader is one of the bonds to establish trust, Jelly Bean tries to test the e-commerce part in a small range with a small program, and distributes the return points through the team leader, which can be used for the purchase of equipment such as team equipment. The reason why there is no direct return of money is also that the trust between the team members and the team leader cannot be broken. Zhang Yuan hopes to directly cooperate with mature supply chains to establish his own channel new brand in the future.
The goal of Xiaoyi Cake is to do silver live e-commerce, and its partner Li Hui explained that the team's idea is to use the content session to carry out "soft belt goods" before starting to officially carry out goods, which is used to collect demand and verify new products. For example, a photography blogger shares his daily experience of going out to shoot, in the live broadcast interval, pop-up window pops up to replenish the strength of beef jerky, this product sold thousands, tens of thousands of sales, after a period of time will be sold in the live broadcast room.
Red Pine belongs to the latter, and paid services include course payment, offline learning, etc. Many of the webmasters of the Red Pine Station are teachers of live classes, and Xu Rongbing, the vocal anchor of the Red Pines, said that in the small station, everyone will compare the courses. But Li Qiao does not want the future business path of the platform to sell lessons.
Li Qiao explained, "We have calculated that if middle-aged and elderly users simply pay for education, it is a market of 200 million US dollars. The market size of two hundred million US dollars may only accommodate two giants. As long as there are three giants competing at the same time, then everyone will not make money, only those who engage in traffic can make money."
What Hongsong hopes to solve is a wider range of user needs, such as study tour products are an important consumption type for retirement groups: the webmaster mobilizes the students in the station to travel offline and learn and communicate, and the platform side provides a series of services such as tickets and hotels. Li Qiao revealed that the current revenue of Red Pine Academy has exceeded 10 million. At the same time, he also admitted that the industry is still in the early stage of development, and we still need to explore new business models.
In the eyes of investors, the value of content and platform still occupies a higher priority than monetization.
Zhou Wei believes that as long as it provides good enough services, this enterprise is valuable. He invested in Himalaya as the first institutional investor in 2015, one of the largest audio content platforms in China, and after the investment, Zhou Wei did not ask the founders when they would start to make a profit, because "as long as enough value is provided, there will definitely be income in the end".
As for why to invest in Jelly Bean, Li Haojun, a partner at GGV Jiyuan Capital, also explained, "We feel that there should be corresponding brand products to systematically tell them what is good content, what is a good online social way, and even reconstruct their online social behavior."
Li Qiao also said that he will not take commercialization as the core goal of Red Pine at this stage, he believes that the business of middle-aged and elderly people needs to do a high average LTV (Life Time Value user life cycle total value) of users, rather than pursuing ROI and GMV, "If LT (user life cycle) is long, V (total value) will be high."
Fundamentally, the investors and entrepreneurs who remain on the track see huge opportunities from demographic shifts. Hongsong this round of financing of the lead investor for BAI Capital, the founding and managing partner of the institution Long Yu said that in the next 5-10 years there will be a large number of people retired, the new generation of middle-aged and elderly people for content entertainment and quality of life have higher requirements, there are stronger consumption capacity and ample time, behind the demographic changes will brew a systematic opportunity.
CCV also began to lay out the silver hair track early, Zhou Wei said that has been optimistic about the potential of the middle-aged and elderly population, red pine is a link in their investment chain in this field, in addition, they are also mining other high-quality targets of the silver hair track, such as intelligent products that assist and accompany the elderly, helping them to live more independently and better.
Key References:
Tencent blessed Jelly Bean to complete the C round of financing, square dance aunt's money is really good to earn?
Small rice cake: 500 million users live every day, silver content community commercialization exploration road
Sing bar into the middle-aged and elderly education: vocal music / calligraphy and painting single category repurchase of nearly 30%, online K songs have become a silver hair traffic pool!
A hundred people talk about | The essence of education for the elderly is entertainment interest and social interaction
Retired elderly people, in the "small station" to kill time Tencent layout of the middle-aged and elderly market, silver economy to be exploded
Capital racing into the square dance app looking for a profit model
Li Hui: After the advertising revenue exceeds 10 million, how to achieve the scale of Silver Live E-commerce?