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Zhang Hongchao _ In Douyin run through the group buying business, the local life field is full of gunsmoke

author:Xiao Tan Financial Business News

Running around on Douyin to engage in group buying, the local living area is full of gunsmoke

As Douyin pushes the takeaway pilot, the local living area is full of gunfire.

WeChat is testing the water of catering delivery in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other places; Meituan has tested takeaway live again, and opened a "takeaway live broadcast" channel entrance inside Meituan App; Pinduoduo relies on the power of fast groups... Today, Douyin's veteran powerhouse Kuaishou is finally at the end.

Kuaishou has chosen Shijiazhuang and several other cities as the main investment sites for local life business. Kuaishou in these cities will be strong in operation, strive to run the local life business, and then copy it to other cities.

Until then, Kuaishou was more cautious to venture into local life.

At the earnings call last November, Cheng Yixiao clearly pointed out that one of Kuaishou's local life business strategies is to "strictly control the amount of investment" and select a number of key cities for strong operations, which is a continuation of the previous strategy. In his view, this also reflects concerns about the slowdown in the expansion of user scale and the change in the market environment after the traffic dividend fades. At present, Internet companies generally rely on cost reduction and efficiency to squeeze out profits and cash flow, and prudent trial and error is consistent with the current situation.

However, the opponent's move has sharply accelerated the competition in the local life field, and judging from the recent move, Kuaishou is still accelerating the layout of the local life business.

In late February, Yibang Power Network reported that in addition to the cooperation with Meituan, Kuaishou Local Life was suspected of experimenting with new transaction links, making small troubles, and targeted several catering, tea and other chain brands that had not been stationed.

At this moment, Kuaishou is trying to occupy the local living market in the form of commodity subsidies. The alphabet list found some local life group buying products that are now sold on Kuaishou, which are much lower than Meituan's prices, and are labeled with the text label "Kuaishou subsidized".

Take Universal Studios for example, the official price of the ticket on March 11 is 528 yuan, the price of Meituan is 512 yuan, and the price of Kuaishou subsidized "adult single-day weekend single ticket" is 409 yuan for people.

Zhang Hongchao _ In Douyin run through the group buying business, the local life field is full of gunsmoke

Due to its late start, Kuaishou is not much different from Douyin in terms of the volume of local life business, and it is clear that Kuaishou is still expanding its market scale and ecology.

A considerable part of Kuaishou local life group buying orders rely on third-party platforms.

At the end of 2021, Kuaishou and Meituan achieved cooperation, and Kuaishou launched the Meituan Mini Program. If you enter Kuaishou through the Meituan Mini Program, click on them to purchase items in the "Local Life" group purchase, and then jump to the Meituan Mini Program to trade.

For Kuaishou, which started late, cooperation with Meituan is a shortcut to quickly make up for the shortcomings of local life merchants on the platform, but Kuaishou really has to make up its mind and do a good job in local life business, it is impossible not to visit the scene and form a closed loop, in platform enterprises, this law is also universal.

Relying on the third-party platform to carry out the layout of local life business, users need to skip the third-party brand mini program when buying goods in a group, and the first time they use a certain mini program, the platform prompts the authorization information, which has a certain impact on the user experience. Therefore, third-party platforms must be considered when developing short video applications. The transaction page shows that other brands are not conducive to the mental cultivation of Kuaishou local life brands, and at the same time, difficulties in product control have also arisen.

Zhang Hongchao _ In Douyin run through the group buying business, the local life field is full of gunsmoke

In this context, Kuaishou has launched its own transaction link, which has become inevitable. It will provide users with more choices and convenience. As early as a few months ago, Kuaishou was already trying a new transaction link, not that it would break with Meituan, and from the above analysis, it can be seen that Kuaishou local life should improve infrastructure construction, there are more sufficient reasons.

I stood from another angle, compared with Douyin, Kuaishou local life business is still in the market expansion stage, and Meituan at this stage can help Kuaishou achieve in the short term, make up for the lack of supply of B-end merchants and commodity supply at low cost, in order to cultivate market mentality. Coincidentally, Kuaishou can also feed back Meituan's traffic.

Kuaishou Shop, Local Lifestyle – Learn about Kuaishou Local Life and experiment with new transaction links. It brings goods from offline to online by building relationships with local merchants. In this link, users can directly complete transactions without jumping to the third-party merchant mini program in the process of purchasing group purchase products. On Douyin and Kuaishou, similar scenes also exist. In addition, the evaluation of this item remains in Kuaishou's own system.

Complementing Kuaishou's endogenous closed-loop transaction link means that Kuaishou's local living infrastructure is becoming more and more complete.

It has to be mentioned that the local life merchant entry method and subsequent operation mode set by Kuaishou have a high similarity with Douyin, which will lower the decision-making threshold for merchants who have already settled in Douyin to enter Douyin to a certain extent, and also facilitate the dual-habitat operation of merchants. From a merchant's perspective, this means that they can spend less than 1 energy on more than 1 business.

But it's not enough to just build a frame. The rise of Douyin group buying has multiple factors, a large number of store exploration videos have emerged on the platform, stationed in Douyin, merchants are increasing, group buying products are also relatively rich, user-side purchasing mentality has been gradually cultivated, the platform can step into large-scale growth, and it is also the only way for Kuaishou to carry out local life business.

When building its own ecological closed loop, Kuaishou began to support local life merchants.

A Kuaishou insider told Alphabet that Kuaishou selected several cities as the focus of attention in the local life business, that is, the internal feeling that investing heavily in major cities is not efficient, and it also leads to waste of resources, and the criteria for city selection, or the large population base of the city, a large number of potential markets are ignored, or Kuaishou has a greater local market advantage.

At the beginning of the year, Kuaishou's local life teams have been stationed in major cities to strengthen operations, which are mainly manifested in two aspects: first, the official will give commodity subsidies and traffic subsidies, and second, it will plan to visit stores.

In early February, Liangshan Haohan, a 9-year-old self-service barbecue brand in Chengdu, entered Kuaishou, originally selling 78 yuan lunch and dinner general buffets, and after subsidies, Kuaishou sold for 58 yuan.

It is also a "sky city" playground under Tatan International in February this year. Kuaishou search for Sky City, you can watch many Kuaishou experts explore the playground store to release videos, and add the "Sky City Playground" special group purchase link to the video. Open Douyin short videos to find similar promotions. From the webpage, you can see that the products enjoy "Kuaishou subsidies", and currently "33,000+ have been sold".

Zhang Hongchao _ In Douyin run through the group buying business, the local life field is full of gunsmoke

Behind hundreds of Sky City shop exploration videos, there are Kuaishou planning short videos and live broadcast matrix style expert shop exploration. "We hope to let more consumers understand the culture and tourism experience of Sky Country through short video + live broadcast, and bring better services to tourists." On February 12, Sky City launched a group purchase of tickets in Kuaishou, and Kuaishou has organized nearly 100 local life experts to produce more than 150 shop exploration videos, and at the same time, it has also arranged daily live broadcasts of influencers, and the high exposure composed of short videos has been further converted into live broadcast transaction volume. Within a week after its launch, the ticket sales of Sky City Amusement Park exceeded 5,000, and in less than two weeks, the transaction exceeded 10,000.

It is not difficult to find that in addition to traffic and commodity subsidies, Kuaishou is trying to expand and strengthen the local life business by increasing content supply, which is also a favorable condition for content platforms as trading products. Among them, live streaming is Kuaishou's advantage, and it has been verified through e-commerce live broadcast, and live broadcast is the best means to close transactions.

A person in charge of a local life service provider once told Alphabet List that live streaming is more conducive to promoting transactions than short videos, "short videos are a normal selling path, but live streaming is a flashpoint."

A local life operator of Kuaishou said that the team repeatedly checked the effectiveness of live streaming and short videos, "and we found that live streaming is significantly better than short videos in terms of traffic and number of orders. ”

The live broadcast is also paired with a group buying scene. Kuaishou's local life is also increasingly refined in terms of traffic distribution, and local life live streaming publishes traffic according to geographical location, so that traffic reaches people more accurately.

According to Kuaishou Local Life's recent moves, at the same time, it is also encouraging influencers to take the road of live broadcasting, which drives the growth of transaction volume. On the Douyin platform, "group purchase offers" have become a popular feature, and users can purchase various special goods on the Douyin platform. Kuaishou has a live streaming featured channel above the "Group Purchase Offer", recommending local lifestyle influencers in the live broadcast.

However, for many influencers who start shooting short videos, it is not a simple task to do a good live broadcast. On platforms such as Douyin, some talent shows began to appear. Kuaishou was found on the alphabet list and recommended local life in the live broadcast room, many of which sold Wallace's things. "That's why I bought a dress on Douyin, but not on Kuaishou." "We measured that the GMV of Wallace's eight-piece meal for two and a barrel of ten wings was extremely high," said a Kuaishou insider.

In order to encourage influencers to launch programs, Kuaishou is implementing a traffic and cash subsidy policy, depending on the live broadcast sales, the number of manuscripts, POI click rate and other indicators set up in 4 grades.

For some in-depth cooperative merchants, Kuaishou has increased the scheduling of live streaming of influencers, and at the same time, live streaming has also been improved, upgrading the live streaming traffic of shop exploration to Category A.

Some merchants are benefiting from the new policy. "Our customers are influencers and celebrities, and they put their favorite things in the live broadcast room for everyone to share together. After Liangshan Haohan settled in Kuaishou, Kuaishou invited experts to visit the store live broadcast, and among the six stores launched by Kuaishou, each store will set aside 2 tables every day for Kuaishou experts to watch live, and the number of Liangshan Haohan live broadcast orders has exploded, since then, short video orders have continued and the long-tail effect has been released. It is reported that the new customers brought by Kuaishou channel to Liangshan good men can now occupy 2~3% of all channels.

In February 2021, Douyin closed beta launched preferential group purchases; In May, the entrance of Kuaishou City changed from grayscale internal testing to full opening and opening at the end of this year, and the cooperation between Kuaishou and Meituan was realized at this time, Kuaishou is still only a testing stage in the field of local life, mainly relying on third-party platforms to complete the expansion of platform merchants.

In September 2022, Kuaishou integrated the local life business of the original main station with the relevant teams of the life service industry of the e-commerce business unit, upgraded the local life business to an independent business department, and established the local life business department, which improved the local life business.

In general, due to its late start, compared with Douyin, Kuaishou is still in its early stages of business scale. In the next few years, with the rapid development of the domestic mobile Internet market and the gradual cultivation of user habits, as well as the promotion of capital, Kuaishou local life services will be further developed and expanded. However, looking at Kuaishou's recent moves, Kuaishou's local life business may also experience a period of sharp growth.

First of all, since Kuaishou is providing traffic and cash support for local lifestyle businesses, it is clear that this can help merchants find more local lifestyle business target users in Kuaishou user pool.

Secondly, Kuaishou's local life business is shifting from the past to third-party platforms to a healthier ecosystem. Third, Kuaishou is no longer simply serving users, but has begun to focus on how to create value through content production. The significance of Kuaishou Qiang's operation in some key cities is this, so that the content supply and commodity supply are constantly enriched, and the more sufficient the supply, the more prosperous the business.

Of course, it is quite difficult for Kuaishou to really win the local life market, Meituan's foundation is very strong, the stronger Douyin layout is earlier, DAU is also higher, and the layout of the local life business is more radical.

The reason why Kuaishou has this situation is because, unlike the Douyin user group, there is still an unsatisfactory market in the local life field, and the unit price of customers is low, which belongs to the snack fast food category, and the affordable self-service market is an example. If Kuaishou wants to achieve its goals, it must find a market segment and positioning that suits its own development, which is the key to its success. In other words, Kuaishou with a high degree of crowd overlap brings an incremental market with a relatively large ROI for local merchants entering their ecosystem.

Zhang Hongchao _ In Douyin run through the group buying business, the local life field is full of gunsmoke

Ma Jiyong, a chain restaurant brand of Lanzhou ramen, started from Shanghai, and there are about 100 stores in Shanghai, basically in office buildings, just need communities and other places. This company mainly deals in "horse" snacks, focusing on small bourgeois atmosphere, focusing on product taste and service quality. Ma Jiyong officially entered Kuaishou in February. Ma Jiyong sells a classic single set meal, the original price is 40 yuan, including 1 bowl of beef noodles + 5 skewers of lamb, after the FMCG subsidy, the set price is 27 yuan; At the same time, Kuaishou matched, and Ma Jiyong teamed up with a large number of experts to explore the store.

Within a week, 1,600 copies of Ma Jiyong's classic set meal were sold, and Shanghai orders accounted for nearly half. It excites him. Although the consumption level of high-tier cities is high, there are still areas of rigid need and sinking areas, etc., and there are still unmet needs in these areas; The medium and long-term is the target market dominated by mid-to-high-end people. Moreover, in many cities, Kuaishou user groups are more in line with the mainstream consumer groups in the city.

Focusing on cost-effective buffets, Bai Roast Seafood Barbecue Buffet has set up three stores in Qingdao. At present, a number of new products have been launched. The local life operation of Kuaishou under Bai Roast said, "Unlike buffets with high unit prices, which tend to be younger groups, Pan Yaki buffets such as Bai Roast are positioned for family-style consumption, and their main target users are anchored as middle-aged groups." Compared to other brands, Kuaishou is relatively cheaper. But in the northern province of Shandong, Kuaishou covers the main group of such consumers.

In February, Bai Roast Seafood Barbecue Self-service entered Kuaishou, and the platform and merchants jointly made profits, and the price of 70+ per person was reduced to 40+. As an innovative product, it has achieved nearly 100 million yuan in revenue in just one month. Within 10 days of the launch of the campaign, the number of orders exceeded 10,000 and the GMV output was 500,000.

Many businessmen are benefiting from the local life. They think TikTok is a good platform. And for some local life merchants who have accumulated mature methodologies on Douyin, this is not to mention.

They were able to replicate the experience of running group buying products on the content platform, and then analyze the different user groups of the two platforms, and make specific operational adjustments to the product characteristics, adding merchants and Kuaishou's local life business.

However, it is necessary to cut a large piece of cake in the local life field, Kuaishou obviously has a heavy task, and the key is to allow more merchants to actively enter the market with competitively priced products. The subsidy period is an important policy window. Moreover, Kuaishou is to be verified, and when the subsidy period expires, merchants can still achieve new development here.

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