Recently, Liu Qihong can be described as a fire all over the Internet.
The reason for the explosion is due to a set of live fat burning gymnastics launched by Liu Qihong and his wife five days a week.
Today, this set of aerobics has a large number of followers known as "Liu Qihong Girl" or "Liu Qihong Boy", and this "team" is still growing.
According to cicada mother data, as of the evening of April 22, the number of Liu Qihong Douyin fans has reached 36 million; in contrast, the number of fans of the account on April 12 is less than 6 million; that is to say, in just ten days, the account has added more than 30 million fans. At the same time, the Red Star Capital Bureau noted that on April 21 alone, the account rose by 9.674 million fans.
The growth rate of fans is so amazing, it is no wonder that many netizens joked: "Escaped Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, but failed to escape Liu Qihong's live broadcast room."
There are so many fitness anchors, why is it Liu Qihong who is on fire? What are the possible monetization paths for accounts in the future? Is the online fitness platform ushering in the spring?
Part I:
flow rate? It's not falling from the sky
Born in 1972, Liu Is a singer, host and actor. He once participated in a popular parent-child variety show with his daughter "Little Puffs" and was well known to many viewers. However, after the popularity of the show, Liu Ruihong's attention as an artist has gradually declined in recent years.
At the end of 2021, Liu Qihong signed a contract with Worry-free Media; the brokerage company has a head account with more than 50 million Douyin fans - "Big Wolf Dog Couple", which mainly takes the route of husband and wife with goods.
After signing a contract with Worry-free Media, Liu Qihong and his wife began to live stream the goods, perhaps wanting to copy the "husband and wife file" model.
However, the competition in the live streaming market is fierce, and even the "star couple" is not attractive, and Liu Qihong did not set off too many waves.
According to Feigua data statistics, from December 19, 2021 to February 17, 2022, Liu Qihong and his wife did a total of 9 live broadcasts with goods, with a total GMV of 7.236 million and about 1.4 million fans. In contrast, the "Big Wolf Dog Couple" created 320 million GMV with 18 live broadcasts at last year's 618 promotion.
The effect of live streaming is not good, and Liu Qihong chooses the main fitness content. Facts have proved that after the transformation of fitness live broadcasting, Liu Qihong's user attention is significantly higher than that of the past live broadcast with goods.
On February 18, 2022, Liu Qihong opened the first live fitness class; within 2 hours of the live broadcast, Liu Qihong received 247,300 views and 7,956 fans. By February 24, 2022, when Liu Ruihong's fifth fitness live broadcast, the number of viewers exceeded 1 million for the first time, and the live broadcast rose by 59,400 fans.
But compared with the recent daily increase of nearly 10 million fans, these are just "small fights".
How Liu Qihong thoroughly grasps the traffic password can think from the three perspectives of content, event and marketing.
First of all, in terms of content, the reason why Liu Qihong's fitness live broadcast content is recognized by users, on the one hand, the fitness action basically does not need auxiliary equipment, netizens can be completed at home, so the content threshold is relatively low; at the same time, Liu Qihong, as a fitness coach, will also actively encourage fans in front of the screen to drive the fitness atmosphere in the live broadcast room. On the other hand, Liu Qihong's wife in the live broadcast room is "forced to open" the "paddling" image, "one strong and one weak" the sense of contrast is very strong, netizens also said that there is a sense of substitution, saying that Liu Qihong's wife is like herself who is working out at this time, which makes the live broadcast room full of "joy".
Secondly, in terms of events, in Liu Qihong's live broadcast room, there have been many "oolong" incidents. On April 6, during the live broadcast, Liu Qihong was suddenly judged by the official to be "improperly dressed", and the system forcibly interrupted the live broadcast.
The next day, Liu Qihong and his wife simply wore down jackets to start live teaching.
This dramatic way of handling made Liu Qihong quickly appear on Weibo's hot search, and more and more melon-eating masses also shared relevant content in such nonsensical events, or directly rushed into Liu Qihong's live broadcast room to complete the first circle-breaking transmission.
Subsequently, as a good friend of Jay Chou, Liu Ruihong created the Materia Medica Gymnastics based on Jay Chou's classic song "Compendium of Materia Medica", and because of the simple and easy to use of melodic familiar movements, it reached the top of the Douyin Challenge list, once again triggering a new round of imitation boom on the whole network.
Whether it is the "embarrassing scene" of ridicule or the imitation trend of Brainwashing of Divine Comedy, these "hot events" began to spread and ferment on the Internet, and constantly rushed to the list of various platforms.
Finally, at the marketing level, Liu's explosion is inseparable from his team and the Douyin platform, of which the content distribution of the platform is crucial.
First of all, the algorithm mechanism of Douyin itself attaches importance to the creation of explosive content, which is why the head account of the Douyin platform is more concentrated. Secondly, in fact, Douyin and other video platforms have long been eyeing the cake of online fitness.
During the epidemic in 2020, Douyin launched the "Douyin Gym" activity, and Kuaishou launched the "Living Room Gym".
Therefore, for Douyin, Liu Qihong belongs to the high-quality content creators of the subdivision track that the platform attaches great importance to, which is of great significance for the platform to grab user time and open up the market space; this is also a reason for the "Zhang Classmate" who was once popular on the whole network.
In general, high-quality content + typical events + traffic tilt, interlocking, let Liu Qihong's fitness live class in the recent complete explosion out of the circle.
Part II:
Monetization? Let the bullets fly a little longer
After Liu Qihong thoroughly mastered the traffic password, he also had the ability to monetize, so many people speculated about his follow-up business route.
For head live fitness bloggers, there are many ways to monetize. For example, hanging product links, live streaming with goods, brand promotion, selling lessons, building their own brands, etc. are all their means of traffic monetization.
Taking Pamela, which has a high popularity in the world, as an example, she chose to sign a long-term contract with PUMA, launched an APP and a personal health food brand naturally PAM, and the long-term video traffic revenue brought by platform accounts such as YouTube and B station cannot be ignored.
Screenshot from Station B
Another well-known fitness blogger of B station, "Saturday Wild", in addition to launching cooperation with domestic underwear brand NEIWAI and outside, also announced at the end of 2021 to upgrade its original brand Wild Saturday, launching a new personal sports brand "She is spark SHE IS A SPARK", focusing on women's sports and fitness clothing.
The weight loss blogger "Mao Ning", who also originated in Douyin, set up a fire circle with "fattening and weight loss" and "shaving determination" and other people, and now has nearly 6.7 million Douyin fans.
"Maoning" is mainly realized through the form of "hanging links" and other forms, in the Douyin window of Maoning, covering 15 products such as fitness shoes, equipment, food and beverages, etc., and the cumulative sales volume has reached 100,000+, of which a flavored beverage with a unit price of 99 yuan has reached 43,000.
Screenshot from Douyin
However, according to the data of cicada mother, after the explosion out of the circle, Liu Qihong's Douyin account has not yet had commercial goods.
Liu Qihong's agent also said before: "Fitness live broadcasting is a good way, and the specific business model is still being explored." ”
In fact, in the entire online live fitness track, there are very few content creators who can go out of the circle like Liu Qihong. Although the national home fitness fever has been ignited, commercialization will come sooner or later, but it may be possible to "let the bullets fly a little longer".
Part III:
mode? What is the business dilemma of online fitness platforms
In recent years, as residents pay more and more attention to healthy living habits, more and more people have joined the fitness team. According to China Insight Consulting, by 2021, China's fitness population is about 303 million people, and it is expected to reach 416 million people in 2026, with a compound growth rate of 6.5% in the next five years;
The fitness market is divided by channel, which can be divided into online fitness market and offline fitness market. In recent years, online fitness has become the choice of more and more users. According to China Insight Consulting, 41 million offline gym members and 138 million online fitness members in 2021 are expected to further widen in the future.
The reason why more and more people choose online fitness is mainly because online fitness has the characteristics of flexible use and low threshold. Especially during the epidemic period, many offline gym stores have closed, which has also prompted online fitness to be accepted by more and more fitness enthusiasts.
At present, there are many domestic online fitness platforms, mainly including vertical fitness platforms such as Keep, comprehensive fitness platforms such as Douyin, B station, etc. However, the pace of commercialization of these platforms on the fitness track still faces many difficulties.
For each platform, the current commercialization path mainly revolves around three aspects, namely content payment, e-commerce and advertising.
The first is content payment, which is essentially to obtain member income and value-added service fees based on platform content, the core is user loyalty and content richness, and the tracking indicators are the number of content and member subscriptions.
However, due to the low threshold of fitness content, users can easily obtain free fitness resources on the Internet, which also leads to the user's payment rate will not be too high.
According to the Keep prospectus, the average number of monthly active users of Keep in 2021 is 34.4 million. At the same time, Keep's subscription membership reached 3.3 million, an increase of more than 3 times compared to 800,000 in 2019.
The increase in membership penetration may be related to keep's frequent launch of activities such as "joint membership" in recent years. However, it is worth noting that in the fourth quarter of 2021, Keep's membership subscriptions declined significantly from the previous quarter. In addition, we browsed the black cat complaint platform, keep the total number of complaints more than 6600, a large number of consumer complaints stem from keep automatic deduction, accidentally click the wrong member recharge and so on.
Keep prospectus
Vertical fitness content platform Keep is still so in the user's paid conversion, for multiple content platforms such as B station, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc., mainly user-produced content, such platforms want to rely on content payment to obtain income, it is more difficult to be accepted by users.
The second is e-commerce sales, around fitness, through e-commerce channels to sell health food, household equipment, sports equipment and other products, has become another way out of the platform.
According to public information, during the Double Eleven period in 2020 and 2021, Keep's series of sports consumer goods, including smart spinning bikes, widened yoga mats, yoga shafts and other fitness equipment, have achieved good results. Selling products has also become Keep's main source of revenue, accounting for more than 50% of total revenue.
However, according to the Keep prospectus, the gross profit of this part of the private label product is not very high. At the same time, in the first three quarters of 2021, the gross profit margin of private label goods has further declined, and the prospectus shows that the gross profit margin of private label goods in 2020 is 36.27%, and the gross profit margin of the first three quarters of 2021 has dropped to 29.26%.
The decline in gross margin may be related to fierce market competition. Taking smart hardware as an example, at present, Huawei, Xiaomi, Baidu's Xiaodu, FITURE Magic Mirror, YESOUL Wild Beast and other brands have also launched fitness mirrors, treadmills, spinning bikes, rowing machines and other products, and implanted the brand's own fitness content in the product, trying to cut into the entrance of smart fitness through hardware.
Therefore, whether it is for vertical fitness platforms or comprehensive fitness platforms, in the face of fierce market competition, they are also facing challenges such as declining profit margins.
Finally, advertising monetization, which is a common monetization model for platform-based enterprises, the core of which is traffic monetization.
Therefore, the advertising monetization ability of different platforms is different, and for comprehensive platforms with huge traffic such as Douyin and Kuaishou, its advertising monetization ability is strong, but for vertical platforms such as Keep, due to the small user base, the advertising monetization ability is relatively weak.
In general, although more and more users choose online fitness today, the platform wants users to "pay" and needs to cultivate user habits first. However, under the influence of fierce market competition, low cost of user acquisition of content, low cost of abandonment, lack of supervision, self-inertia and other factors, it is difficult to want users to maintain fitness habits.
brief summary:
Online live broadcast, is it a momentary hilarity or industry limelight?
For the comprehensive platform, at present, it relies on a very small number of head anchors to support the lively scene, and it is difficult to become a climate in a short period of time.
For keep, a vertical platform that has been stuck in the online fitness track for many years, it has been in a huge loss for a long time. According to the prospectus, in 2019, 2020 and the first three quarters of 2021, Keep's adjusted net loss was 366 million yuan, 106 million yuan and 696 million yuan, respectively.
And fitness at a certain level, it is also a challenge, after all, people are born with inertia, get up and exercise and fitness, which is comfortable lying down to play games and brush dramas.
Under the influence of netizens and entertainment, Liu Qihong became popular overnight; but this may not prove that the online fitness track has ushered in spring.
Red Star News reporter Yu Yao Liu Mi
Edited by Tao Yueyang