The battle for talents, a short encounter between Meituan and Douyin

Author | Hanxing

Cover source | Photogram.com

Local life is a cake that is difficult to continue to grow, and if Douyin swallows one more piece, Meituan will have to take a bite less.

Zhang Rong, who has 4 years of Meituan operation and 1 year of experience as a Douyin service provider, has clearly felt the "change of sky" since the fourth quarter of last year. "The unit volume of Douyin group buying is growing too fast, and sometimes merchants can achieve sales in Meituan in one month." Zhang Rong told Snow Leopard Finance and Economics.

The media has exposed more impactful figures: in 2022, Douyin life services will complete about 77 billion yuan of GMV, about 54% higher than the target of 50 billion yuan set at the beginning of the year. In 2023, Douyin's local life GMV target is 150 billion yuan, almost double that of the previous year. This figure is close to half of Meituan's total transaction volume in 2021 for in-store, hotel and travel business.

A number of Douyin group buying service providers revealed to Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that Douyin will further increase its takeaway business after the Spring Festival. On February 7, there were rumors that Douyin would launch a national takeaway service on March 1. TikTok subsequently denied the timing.

When Douyin began to shake Meituan's basic business market, one of Meituan's ways to fight back was to compete with Douyin for talent resources.

This time, did Meituan find the right direction?

Spend a small amount of money and can't dig people

At the end of November last year, in the official WeChat group of Meituan's talents, an announcement caught Zhang Rong's attention: "Meituan's official multi-platform store exploration business cooperation is being planned internally and is expected to be officially launched in December. ”

Soon after, a WeChat mini program called Meituan Circle Exploration was launched, and Dianping, Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu and Weibo influencers could perform threshold-free authentication in the background. After the expert authentication is successful, you can receive the business order task on the platform and publish the store exploration video on each short video platform, so as to obtain revenue.

"Meituan Circle Exploration Shop is essentially a small program that has made the previous expert operation group into a mini program to improve efficiency and facilitate promotion." Zhang Rong told Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that Meituan's purpose is to collect the resources of experts and let them help Meituan do distribution and bring goods.

In his view, the logic of making money in local life is clear: whoever can link the talent and the merchant will be profitable. "Circle Exploration is essentially a service provider, Meituan has no shortage of merchants, it needs experts who match the number of merchants."

Meituan, which lacks talent, tried to "poach" from other platforms, but this plan failed.

The Circle Exploration Shop has been online for more than a month, but the task release function of the Circle Exploration Shop is currently only available in Changsha. There are only a few business tasks on the platform, and the recruitment progress is not halfway through.

Changsha Douyin shop expert Song Yi has more than 3,200 followers on Douyin and has posted more than 200 short videos of Changsha local shop visits. The no certification threshold, additional income and multi-platform traffic support of Circle Exploration Store have a certain temptation for beginners like her.

After completing the registration, Song Yi found that there were only 6 stores on the circle exploration store, including 4 milk tea shops, a bathing center and a takeaway stall.

After clicking Copy Product and pasting it to Douyin or Kuaishou, you can automatically obtain information such as store name, store address, group purchase discount amount, etc., without any Meituan logo. After posting a short video on Douyin or Kuaishou and uploading the video link to the circle shop, the income obtained by the influencer consists of two parts: a flat price paid by Meituan and a CPS (commission) issued by Douyin and Kuaishou.

Circle Exploration Shop Group Purchase Product Replication Function Source: Circle Exploration Mini Program

In other words, compared with directly posting grass videos on Douyin and Kuaishou, the use of circles to explore the store is equivalent to earning an extra "one price" for Meituan.

Song Yi's delivery level in Douyin is Lv4, and the price of taking a video is unified at 100 yuan, and the follow-up commission rate is 5%~10%. On the circle exploration store, the list price of Lv4 ranges from 50~150 yuan. In Song Yi's view, this kind of gameplay does not require her to do additional editing, just upload the link to get an additional income, "it is still worth trying".

But for Qiubai, who has 12,000 followers on Douyin, this "mosquito leg" gain from Circle Exploration is too chicken. According to her delivery level, the charging standard for the shop exploration video on Douyin is 800 yuan per video plus 5%~8% commission, and the highest price on the circle exploration shop is only 400 yuan, and the lowest is only 30 yuan.

"Leg shop explorers like us don't look very much at the benefits of circle shop exploration, let alone those who have more than 100,000 fans." Qiubai told Snow Leopard Finance and Economics.

On January 9, Meituan launched a video rising star program on Dianping, and video creators with more than 10,000 Douyin followers or more than 1,000 Xiaohongshu followers can sign up. Collect tasks and post video notes in Dianping, you will have a chance to get rewards, and the basic reward amount of the highest level is 1,000 yuan.

In the view of Douyin service provider Xiaoman, the Nova plan and the circle shop are similar, and in essence, Meituan is trying to "spend small money and do big things". But if you want to rely on small money to recruit talents, it is obviously not so easy.

Meituan catches cicadas, and TikTok is behind

"At this stage of local life, it is robbing people for resources." Xiaoman believes that talent resources will become the next outlet in the field of local life.

Before the emergence of circle exploration shops, there were already many Douyin service providers doing business to connect influencers and merchants through social channels such as WeChat mini programs and WeChat groups. Xiao Man was one of the first to start.

The WeChat mini program developed by Xiaoman is called "City Sharing Talent", which has 6 functional sections, including task release, service mall, talent entrance, and talent display.

Although the interface of this mini program is obviously different from Meituan's circle exploration store, the operation principle is almost the same. After Douyin Shop Explorers pass the background certification, they can receive tasks in the Mini Program and earn commissions. Xiaoman told Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that the only threshold for doing this mini program is that some business resources are needed in the early stage, and with merchants, it can naturally attract talents.

Left: Meituan Circle Exploration Store Right: City sharing talent developed by Xiaoman

At present, the number of registered people on Xiaoman's mini program has exceeded 1,000, and the total transaction volume in 10 days during the Spring Festival holiday (January 19 to January 28) is 1.0321 million yuan, with 35 mobile merchants and 7 newly signed merchants.

A battle for talent has quietly unfolded between Meituan and Douyin.

Zhang Rong revealed to Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that since the end of last year, Douyin has successively relaxed the threshold for short videos to mount group buying links in many cities, and lifted the limit of 1,000 fans, and there are currently more than 20 pilot cities. As more and more players join the game of competing for Douyin's talents, Meituan's "grabbing people" will become more and more difficult.

Peng Rui, who has more than 6 years of experience in Meituan's merchant agency operation, also noticed the recent dispute between talents. He believes that the multi-platform layout of merchants is the general trend, but the group buying distribution logic of Meituan and Dianping is still people looking for goods, "although Douyin's goods finding model can bring more traffic, the problems of poor stability and low write-off rate are still serious."

Meituan's advantage has never been that of talent, but of merchants. According to the 2022Q3 financial report, the number of active merchants in Meituan has reached 9.3 million.

By the end of 2022, Peng Rui's Meituan agency has more than 3,000 cooperative merchants, mainly Beauty Human. According to Peng Rui's rough statistics, in 2022, the write-off rate of cooperative merchants on Meituan group buying can basically reach 1 to 1 (100%), while the write-off rate of Douyin group buying is less than 30%.

"Short video shop exploration is very popular now, but from the perspective of merchants, whether the traffic can be monetized is more important." Peng Rui believes that influencers prefer Douyin's traffic, and merchants prefer Meituan's stability.

Can Meituan hold it?

Taking 2022 as the dividing line, Douyin, which has long coveted local life, has made a completely different way of playing.

The previous phase began in 2020. Douyin upgraded its enterprise number, launched a group purchase function for the first time, and launched a hotel and ticket booking button; Star Map platform online expert shop exploration task; In the following year, Douyin tested the "preferential group buy" function, and also established a takeaway business department, and "Xindong Takeaway" opened the internal test.

Development history of Douyin local life services Source: Zhongtai Securities

But Douyin's early offense did not hurt Meituan's fundamentals. At the beginning of 2021, Douyin set a target of 20 billion yuan for the local life business, but it was only half completed that year. In the same year, Meituan's in-store, hotel and travel business transactions totaled more than 300 billion yuan.

A research report by Zhongtai Securities believes that Douyin is expected to account for no more than 20% of GMV in the field of in-store group buying, considering the write-off rate and operating leverage, the proportion of profit is lower, which is the opposite of Douyin's situation in the e-commerce market. The in-store group buying business is a "low-margin niche market" among Douyin's various monetization businesses.

Douyin's offensive was unsuccessful, and Meituan's counterattack was also superficial.

From entering the Kuaishou platform to test the water live broadcast to launching the independent app of Meituan's live broadcast assistant in April last year, Meituan's investment in the field of talent operation and short video live streaming has not been large. As of the end of January 2023, Meituan Live Assistant has been installed on Android less than 10,000, and only 6 users have rated it on iOS.

By 2022, the tug-of-war between Douyin and Meituan's local life has entered the second stage. Douyin continues to increase its code in the local life business, with frequent actions, attaches importance to business resources and relies on service providers, and not only launched the local life merchant service platform "Douyin Laike" App, but also reached a strategic cooperation with Ele.me.

In early January this year, Zhang Rong received news that Douyin was asking companies or merchants with development capabilities to build third-party delivery mini programs. A number of Douyin service providers revealed to Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that Douyin will further increase its takeaway business after the Spring Festival.

On February 8, the person in charge of Douyin life service said in response to rumors that Douyin takeaway was about to be launched nationwide that the group buying and distribution project is still being piloted in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, and merchants in the three cities have recently been opened to self-service entry. In the future, depending on the pilot situation, consideration will be given to gradually expanding the pilot cities.

This means that Meituan is about to usher in a new wave of Douyin's attack in the field of local life.

From the results, Douyin's local life GMV reached 77 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of 7.7 times over the previous year, and set a target of 150 billion yuan for 2023.

Meituan CEO Wang Xing said on the 2022 Q3 earnings call that Meituan's in-store business provides differentiated value for users and merchants. "The format of the short video platform is different from ours, and the sales of the two cannot be compared horizontally."

However, according to a late LatePost report, Meituan was very wary of Douyin's actions and set up a special project team to defend Douyin. New gunsmoke fills the old track of local life.

The battle for talent is just a short battle, and how to defend the heart is the real challenge that Meituan will face.

(The characters in the article are pseudonyms)