Wang Yumei, President of the Business Intelligence and Analytics Division of Seconds System: From grabbing traffic to grabbing content, what are social platforms fighting for?

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Economic Observation Network reporter Li Xiaodan Despite the impact of the epidemic, social marketing is growing at a high speed, nearly 80% of mature advertisers increase social marketing investment, new advertisers are more aggressive, nearly 40% of the increase is more than 30%, short videos and KOLs are the focus of advertisers' social marketing.

Wang Yumei, president of the Business Intelligence and Analysis Division of Seconds System, said that social marketing is undergoing tremendous changes, social platforms are emerging rapidly, platforms have begun to compete fiercely for content, and the platform produces its own content and stars, more like a brokerage company. Similarly, content will be more platform-dependent in the future.

The second hand system "2021 China Social and Content Marketing Trends" shows: On the user side, the mainstream social platform continues to penetrate, and with the circle content of Jigkuai, B Station, and Xiaohongshu, it has effectively boosted user stickiness and achieved the growth of user scale and usage time; on the main advertising side, "double micro-shake" has become the standard for KOL marketing, and douyin has increased by more than 1 times; in addition to the super-head KOL stars like Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, KOC has risen strongly, accounting for nearly 50% of the total.

"When brands realize the role of social marketing, platforms, celebrities and anchors, vertical content are deeply bundled, and the social platforms that are currently doing well are changing to knowledge platforms, attracting audiences with professional content, which can be sustained, rather than simply doing commercial conversion." Wang Yumei said.

Social platforms are rapidly fissioning

Economic Observer Network: Has the epidemic had an impact on social media marketing?

Wang Yumei: Our data shows that the growth rate of social marketing has now basically returned to the pre-epidemic state, faster than the recovery of the overall advertising industry, and this recovery is closely related to digitalization.

The pandemic has indeed accelerated digital transformation, and the social platform itself can also be seen as a digital platform, which will make communication on the platform not limited by geography.

Another reason is related to the nature of social media, social media is mainly a platform for everyone to communicate with each other. During the epidemic, fans or users will go to social platforms to socialize, and such demand will be amplified during the epidemic and become a spiritual demand.

In this process, there is also a booster factor is the change in the form of content dissemination, and the fastest growing vibrato and Kuaishou in social media in 2020 are relying on the content on the platform to attract consumers. There is also live broadcasting, and a considerable part of offline consumer demand has shifted to online.

Economic Watch Network: What changes have taken place in social platforms and social marketing?

Wang Yumei: The first change is that social platforms are rapidly emerging, basically every year a new platform will appear, and there will also be new ways to play. The rapid development of the platform is precisely a manifestation of the recognition and attention of social marketing. Of course, China's social environment is different from foreign countries, and China's innovation will be faster.

The second change is formal innovation. In the past, social communication was mainly graphic, and now it is more short videos, which puts forward new requirements for the presentation of multimedia. In terms of content, the social industry has also changed a lot, and the changes have been very significant. Correspondingly, KOL (Key Opinion Leader) and KOC (Key Opinion Consumer) are more widely used, and three or four years ago social content was mainly contributed by KOLs, the so-called social big V, but recently, KOC has begun to be used more. One of the reasons is that the number of existing KOLs can no longer meet the needs of the market. This year, there have been many brands that use social networking to do word-of-mouth marketing, and the number of KOLs that do well in the market is limited, so at this time, brands also need more KOCs for word-of-mouth marketing.

The third change is that consumers have changed, and in the past social media was mainly played by young people, and older people rarely used it. However, the rapid rise of short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou in the past two years has made more and more elderly people like to search for content on short video platforms.

Brands and advertisers have also made adjustments to advertising delivery under such changes. In terms of social marketing, the most obvious change is that some of the larger companies' kol and social operations have reached 30%-40% of the overall cost, and small brands have higher investment in social operations. However, just 4 years ago, when I communicated with a certain head brand, their social marketing investment was almost zero.

Economic Observer Network: Why is KOC rising so fast?

Wang Yumei: An important factor in the recognition of social marketing is the application of KOLs, and a very important part of social marketing is word-of-mouth marketing. Real big V or particularly influential accounts are actually limited. At the same time, this market is uneven, there are a lot of fake accounts, it seems that the number of fans is very high, but this is not the case. Therefore, this has also become one of the main functions of the evaluation KOL, that is, to screen out those false traffic.

Wherever there is traffic, there is fake traffic. In this case, fake traffic can make advertisers find themselves casting a message that has no effect or is ineffective. Brands and advertisers have had to retreat to a relatively small but genuine account, which is one reason why KOC is valued.

Another reason is that a typical model of social marketing is to "plant grass" and attract you with content first, rather than directly "mowing the grass". For example, one of the commonalities between Little Red Book and B Station is that the number of fans on the platform is not the highest, and they all attach importance to the real experience. From the user feedback, the KOC of these platforms can output a real experience, so there will be brands to communicate with KOC and cultivate consumers by "planting grass" on the platform.

Economic Observer Network: How do social platforms capture young users and consumers?

Wang Yumei: In fact, the early social platforms took the route of doing knowledge sharing platforms and did not attach great importance to traffic. For example, Zhihu's sharing content focuses more on text knowledge, and Station B is more of an original video. But now, we're seeing a clear trend among younger users to form different tribes and come together on social platforms based on their interests and hobbies; at the same time, they're also more susceptible to influenced by opinion leaders like KOLs and big Vs. Social platforms have also begun to make new layouts based on these changes, such as adding the introduction of different types of KOLs and content sharing. Station B can be continuously favored by young users and has a high user viscosity, also because of these two points.

Short video marketing is the real "outlet"

Economic Observation Network: The epidemic has made live broadcasting an "outlet", do you think live broadcasting will continue to be hot in the future? Between celebrities and traffic, which one do you think the live streaming platform will be more inclined to?

Wang Yumei: Live broadcasting is a channel, not a real business model innovation, but live broadcasting is still a sales means and way to increase recognition. The reason why live broadcasting in 2020 is hot is largely due to the outbreak of the epidemic. The most important thing about live selling goods is that the goods are cheap and the quality must be guaranteed. But in recent times, there have been a lot of negative news about live broadcasts selling fakes, if live broadcasts are not cheap, but also sell fakes, then live broadcasts will lose their attractiveness.

Of course, from a marketing point of view, the reason why many new brands choose to sell through live broadcasting is because it can save advertising costs, and indeed some brands are fired through live broadcasting. Live shopping will also become increasingly standardized, and the first "Code of Conduct for Online Live BroadcastIng Marketing" released by the China Advertising Association has been implemented from July 1, 2020, and more targeted laws and regulations will be introduced in the future.

Live streaming will become the norm, but it won't be as hot as it is now. It can already be seen that many stores are doing "store broadcasting", you will find that the store anchor and the offline salesman are the same person, with the popularity of 5G, such real-time consumption will be more common.

When it comes to celebrities bringing goods, live broadcasting is a feasible way to use celebrity traffic, but celebrities directly do live broadcasting themselves, but it is not necessarily done well.

Economic Observation Network: These two years have been talking about digital marketing, how should the "data middle office" be understood?

Wang Yumei: For brands, digital transformation will eventually involve "data middle office". To put it simply, this is somewhat similar to the software used during the epidemic to online conferencing, which is a digital tool, except that for brands, the data center is more complex than a conference software. Brand data middle office is to integrate data through data means, the core is to better store data, better operation, and ultimately help brands make decisions, which is the data middle office.

Economic Observer Network: What advice do you have for social marketing for brands in 2021?

Wang Yumei: We must seize the short video outlet, although this outlet is already very hot, but there is still great potential. At present, the proportion of short video marketing in overall marketing is still relatively low, but with the popularity of 5G, short videos will continue to explode.

In addition, the rise of content, now many platforms have begun to carry out fierce competition in content, the platform itself out of the content, to create stars, more like a brokerage company. Similarly, content will be more platform-dependent in the future.

There is a phenomenon worth noting, many brands in the public welfare, brand output and marketing advertising is very meaningful. So back to content marketing itself, from the perspective of purpose marketing, the line between public welfare and advertising is more blurred. Public welfare and brand complement each other, but it is necessary to control the scale, whether it is really doing public welfare, or doing public welfare for the sake of show, which is different. Public welfare marketing is the current development trend, and more brands will try this in the future.

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