Deep Sound Original · The author | Lü Yue
Following the vertical screen Spring Festival Gala, Xicheng Boys, Mayday and Zhang Guorong's concert, the video number doubled the screen again.
At 9 p.m. on April 15, the rock godfather Cui Jian sang on the video number, less than half an hour attracted more than 20 million people to watch, the circle of friends was shared by friends of various generations, circles of friends to share the screen, after the 60s and 70s sighed "memories of the times" "Ye Qing hui", after the 80s and 90s followed by shouting "Lao Tzu has not changed at all" "Rock spirit is always there", after 00 even joined the forwarding team, marveling at "Chinese rock pioneers turned out to be so powerful".
More than 46 million people watched the concert, with more than 1.2 billion exposures in the WeChat ecosystem and more than 100 million Weibo topics read. From the constantly updated comment area news, it can be seen that the audience covers all over the world, men and women, young and old, the flame in everyone's heart is ignited, and the interaction of a few lines of words is frank, and even the audience spontaneously pulls up the "Cui Jian concert discussion group", using Cui Jian's "light" to chat with three or five friends from the lyrics to the philosophy of life.
In today's fragmented information, user circles, and distractions, it is difficult for us to find a platform that has both high-quality content, high-quality social relationships, and perfect commercialization paths - this is the "top stream" value of video numbers.
Less than two years after its launch, the active users of the video number have grown rapidly. After a whole year of exploration and adjustment, the strategy and tactics of the video number have gradually become clear. On the one hand, the prosperity of content and the improvement of content quality; on the other hand, the continuous improvement and strengthening of commercialization capabilities.
With the help of Cui Jian concert, the exclusive title brand Jihu Automobile completed a wonderful event marketing, and the video number concert completed its commercial debut. This also further releases a positive signal: the video number is increasingly becoming a position that brands cannot ignore to promote global operations with the advantages of their super connection and public-private domain linkage.
Leverage the fulcrum of influence
First of all, the conclusion - this concert can be said to be "four wins": Cui Jian wins, Ji Fox wins, users win, and video numbers win.
"Content producer" Cui Jian has gained attention and aroused people's enthusiasm; Jihu has innovated the game of event marketing, strengthened the tone of "born to break the boundary, why not", so that the brand voice volume has been improved, and the user assets have been further precipitated; users have enjoyed the top audio-visual feast, and also found an opportunity to express their chests; the video number has used this proofing to show the industry many possibilities of commercialization.
Why is this effect? The unique soil of the WeChat ecosystem is probably the most important constant.
In fact, event marketing is not a new way of playing. Popular events have always been "organic traffic aggregators", with strong and fast communication, so that brands can quickly amplify their influence and popularity. But nowadays, the difficulty of doing event marketing is also increasing.
In the daily environment, super events such as the Winter Olympics are inherently "scarce", and brands must not only wait for the opportunity, but also spend a lot of money to compete with many big brands. And some sudden hot spots that suddenly burst into popularity, brands can only "touch", marketing can not be planned in advance, hasty action is also easy to have the risk of "rubbing hot spots overturned".
In order to have stronger control, brands are also creating their own big events, such as promotional festivals, CREATING IP and so on. However, this kind of marketing must use commercial paid traffic to make up for the lack of organic traffic in order to raise the heat of self-made events. Coupled with the fact that the threshold of public attention is getting higher and higher today, it is difficult for brands to cause any waves without buying, so the cost is also very high.
In contrast, the video number relies on the live broadcast of concerts to create big events, which is actually a collection of high-quality content, social genes, traffic resources and a huge ecology to give a new idea for event marketing.
This new approach is reflected in:
First, the superposition effect of high-quality content and social fission allows big events to quickly and efficiently "go out of the circle", so brands have the opportunity to become issuers of social currencies through event marketing of video numbers.
Premium head content comes with traffic and topics. From the Xicheng Boys and Mayday who brushed the screen before, to the "rock pioneer" Cui Jian this time, these stars themselves are representatives of the field, have a huge fan base, and their works are also widely sung. Holding these celebrity online concerts is already "happy" at the public level.
Of course, the aroma of wine is also afraid of the deep alley. Nowadays, the explosion of information, the limited attention of users, a concert to be upgraded to a big event, and the brand can get more in addition to the one-time exposure, which requires more efforts in the communication link to make the content "out of the circle".
At this time, the social fission ability of the WeChat ecosystem plays an important role.
The communication classic "Crazy" once proposed the value of social currency: "Just as people can buy goods or services with money, the use of social currency can get more praise and more positive impressions from family, friends and colleagues." "In order to obtain group ownership and social currency, groups will collectively pay attention to and favor something that appears in the social circle for a certain period of time.
In the user's high-frequency "brush circle of friends" action, an online star concert can quickly break through the small circle of fans and be known by more people; the live link goes straight to more users as the user shares in the social circle, and its emotional resonance is awakened; under the impetus of empathy, the forward sharing continues in waves...
It's a process of unlimited news spreading and the rapid expansion of the "emotional connection network." The brands involved in it will naturally and quickly break through the circle layer with the spread of hot events, pass on brand and product information, amplify their influence, and attract more target users.
We see that the interactive gameplay such as brand customization likes, customized gifts, and lucky bag lottery in Cui Jian's concert has upgraded the user's experience of watching the concert from "you broadcast me to see" to "immersion in it", fully mobilizing the user's enthusiasm for interactive participation.
Once actions such as users' forwarding and sharing have gained stronger incentives, the speed of communication by brands with the help of social fission capabilities will be further improved, and more users will also be involved in activities to do "tap water" marketing.
Second, superimpose platform traffic resources to increase the brand's voice.
The operation of smashing hundreds of millions of traffic resources and comprehensively laying out advertisements on the site is not too new for major platforms and brands. But even if it is such a general operation, the results of brand event marketing may vary widely, some hot events have been pushed onto the list, but they have not stayed in the memory of users, and the brand voice has come and gone faster, and it is difficult to say that there is a real sense of "improvement".
From the emergence to the outbreak of hot events, it is always in line with the law of media communication; the brand's event marketing investment resources is by no means a short-term release of the brain.
In this concert, the brand Jihu Automobile integrated and used the resources of weChat's whole platform. Importantly, these resources began to be put into preparation from the moment Cui Jian moved in:
Through WeChat official tweets and topic activities, the popularity of the concert is placed in front of the accumulation period; then, the concert information appears in the circle of friends, take a look, search and search and other traffic entrances, and the user is smoothly led to the live broadcast with a very short link jump; until the day of the live broadcast, the heat completely reaches the peak and is detonated, and the brand also realizes the rapid aggregation of traffic.
Brand and product information can be more completely transmitted and interpreted in this process, and the brand also uses the topic fermentation in the later stage of the content to obtain more long-tail exposure and superimpose more content marketing play opportunities.
Third, open up WeChat global contacts and continue to precipitate brand equity.
Nowadays, marketing is linked to growth, marketing has long been not just a rough "advertisement", and the ultimate goal of brand marketing is not just to get simple exposure. And the cost of doing event marketing is not low, the brand pursues growth, efficiency, need to attract a huge amount of traffic to the brand's business position, to prepare for the business, rather than just trying to be lively.
Brands will also care about how to accumulate and retain traffic, from doing marketing activities to really "camping" and "selling", all need to connect different scenarios, build and open up links, and use various products to do bearing operations.
Within the WeChat ecosystem, the importance of public-private domain linkage to open up global contacts is also highlighted.
In this concert, its relevant content will be widely disseminated in social scenes such as circle of friends and communities; due to the exposure of channels such as public accounts, search and take a look, the content also appears in multiple scenarios such as subscription, recommendation and search, guiding users to participate in marketing activities or enter the brand's private domain at any time.
At the same time, the brand advertisement that appears at the bottom of the song list during the live concert is linked to the brand retention page, which can directly precipitate high-value user clues; the concert warm-up video released by the brand in the public account is also indirectly carrying the amount of its public account and video number, precipitating the private domain. This is also to build a channel from the public domain to the private domain, to help brands continue to precipitate brand assets such as users and data, and their value will act on the brand's business longer.
Video number commercial acceleration
Of course, live online concerts are not all video numbers exploring commercialization channels. From the perspective of the industry, the platform that has entered the mature stage of commercialization must have two basic elements: a prosperous and healthy content ecology and a perfect and mature commercial product.
The content ecology is the basis for commercialization. Internet platforms can support marketing, e-commerce and other businesses by attracting content creators and merchants to produce and distribute content, and then continue to accumulate public domain traffic. Commercial products are necessary tools, for example, the platform must have both brand and effect advertising products to meet the different marketing needs of brands.
Does the video number already have these two major factors and truly enter the stage of commercial acceleration? Through official and third-party reported data, we have found some indications.
On the one hand, the content ecology of the video number is gradually enriching.
According to Tencent's financial report, in 2021, the per capita usage time and total video playback of video accounts will more than double that of the same period last year.
Users have always "voted with their feet", and only enough good content can retain them. Therefore, the growth of usage time and playback volume also directly confirms the growth of the video number content ecology.
Crowley's "2021 WeChat Video Number Ecological Insight Report" shows that the number of video number creators will grow rapidly in 2021, and the vertical categories of various content will gradually enrich, the information categories will be updated quickly, and the vertical categories such as knowledge and life will perform prominently. At the same time, according to the statistics of the Sight Lamp Research Institute, the number of video head creation groups will expand rapidly in 2021, and the proportion of institutions and enterprises settled in is also increasing. The rich vertical category and the participation of professional creators are all reflecting the growth of the video number content ecology.
At present, many head anchors such as Liu Xiao and other head cargo anchors have emerged on the video number, and many consumer brands such as Bubble Mart, Perfect Diary, and Luckin Coffee have also begun to do live broadcasts from last year and have gradually normalized. The continuous addition of anchors and brands has gradually improved the live broadcast ecology of video numbers.
At the same time, backed by the WeChat ecology, the video account and the public account, enterprise WeChat, mini programs, payment and other product tools can be fully connected, which provides creators and brands with a more convenient and systematic operation position. Compared with simply staying in the content ecology that can only do exposure and raise the volume, the video number is bound to attract and retain more brands as the "source of living water" of the content ecology.
Clarey "2021 WeChat Video Number Ecological Insight Report"
On the other hand, the commercialization path of video numbers has gradually matured.
With the content ecological foundation, the current video number has also formed a number of mature commercialization paths including live broadcast rewards, e-commerce live broadcasts, advertising and marketing.
In terms of live broadcast tipping, the maturity of related functions, the introduction of MCN institutions and the incentive of live broadcast tasks have all promoted the acceleration of commercialization. This year, the video number also explored the paid live broadcast model with the NBA regular season, further enriching the live broadcast monetization channel.
In terms of e-commerce live broadcasting, the video number has a complete live streaming ability, which can be advertised as live streaming diversion to guide transaction conversion. The data can already directly prove the initial formation of the closed loop of live e-commerce - according to weChat official data, the GMV of video number live streaming with goods in 2021 has increased by more than 15 times compared with the beginning of the year.
In terms of advertising and marketing, the product matrix of video numbers is also becoming more and more perfect.
This year, Weilai's community knowledge sharing platform seeds joint video number live knowledge column, invited Yang Lan, Wu Xiaobo and other 10 big coffee guests to be guests in the live broadcast room, 9 live broadcasts reached 2.54 million; during the Winter Olympics, ANTA brand and video bloggers launched the "ANTA × Winter Olympic Cold Knowledge Contest". It can be seen that the mutual selection of talents, video number question and answer products, and video number knowledge column cooperation have all taken the lead in the entry of the runner running through mode.
With the preparation of various tools, the commercialization path of video numbers that match their own characteristics has also been clarified. The "foundation" has been laid, and then the video number has to do is to accumulate strength with more brands and build a "high-rise building" that can carry more new growth and new possibilities.
Why is the video number different?
The unique commercial value of the video number is reminiscent of Israel's drip irrigation technology.
Israel is half desert and has very little rainfall throughout the year, but with the integrated drip irrigation technology of water and fertilizer, it opens up isolated farmland and accurately delivers water and fertilizer to the corresponding soil and crops. The current traffic ecology is like the natural environment in which Israel is located - "traffic depletion" and "dividends disappear" the rhetoric is very loud, the brand has water and fertilizer but it is difficult to cultivate good users, either "flood irrigation" wastes a huge amount of resources, or the flow is compacted, and watering is like filling a bottomless well.
The commercial solution method of the video number is to realize the release of global energy.
In the traditional commercial funnel, the content attracts traffic, and the commercial product is responsible for the layer of "transformation", which is actually very fragmented here, from contacting the user to the final commercial purpose, the process is very lengthy, a large amount of loss, and finally reduced to a ROI game. There are fewer and fewer conversion myths, and the more common situation is that only a huge amount of investment can test a reliable conversion path, and only a huge budget can have a slight effect.
But the special feature of the video number is that backed by WeChat's 1 billion monthly life, the initial traffic pool of the "funnel" far exceeds other ecology; the continuous enrichment of the content ecology also allows commercialization to have more choices and exports; more importantly, the commercial product ideas of the video number have been very clear - not to exhaust the fish, but to fully let the social genes, content ecology, user direct and other characteristics of the "chemical reaction" occur, shorten the commercialization chain, thereby helping the brand to break the circle and accumulate influence. As well as achieving global business growth and other goals.
For a long time, some voices simply understood video numbers as short videos, and video numbers were underestimated or even misestimated.
We should not understand the video number in isolation, but need to stand on the basis of the WeChat ecology, and contact the superposition effect of the video number itself with the mature public account, enterprise WeChat, Mini Program, community and other products. Under the logical framework of Tencent's unique "public domain + private domain" large connection network, the video number has become an atomized component that connects everything and becomes a new infrastructure for the WeChat ecosystem.
It is foreseeable that with the "one stone stirring up a thousand waves" of national video number events, the video number is changing from an optional topic for content creation and brand commercialization to a mandatory topic.