It is not enough to launch the mall, and the threshold for bringing goods must also be lowered
Recently, Douyin has made frequent moves in the e-commerce market, and the Douyin mall version of the APP was launched not long ago, and now it has lowered the threshold for Douyin to bring goods.
From April 16, Douyin has adjusted the threshold for personal accounts to open videos or pictures and texts.
In the past, if you wanted to carry out video/graphic sales on Douyin, you had to have at least 1,000 followers on your personal account, but now, you only need 500 active followers.
At the same time, for accounts that do not have followers, Douyin also provides options: even accounts with 0 followers can also get the permission to bring goods in the window. When the personal account has more than 1,000 followers, you can open the permission to bring goods in the live broadcast room.
This is obviously an opportunity for ordinary people who just want to try to bring goods.
For non-personal accounts, such as corporate or brand accounts, Douyin's rules are slightly different.
If they have less than 1,000 followers, they can only get the permission to bring goods in the window, and when the number of fans reaches 1,000 or more, they can open the permission to sell in the live broadcast room and short video/graphic goods at the same time.
Source: Douyin E-commerce Learning Center
This adjustment obviously greatly lowers the threshold for bringing goods, and wants to attract more individuals or merchants to join Douyin e-commerce.
Looking back on April 2021, Douyin first proposed the concept of "interest e-commerce". In May 2022, Douyin further developed this concept and proposed "global interest e-commerce". The inseparable word "interest" highlights the importance of content to Douyin e-commerce.
In this model, the talent is clearly a key player. Daren connects "content" and "e-commerce", and is not only the creator of content, but also the promoter of goods.
Unlike shelf e-commerce, which simply displays goods, Douyin's e-commerce model relies more on attracting users with interesting content, so that users can enjoy entertainment while unconsciously generating a desire to buy.
The success of this model depends largely on the ability to produce interesting content, and that's where influencer streamers come in.
The dividends of the e-commerce market are about to reach the ceiling, and it is necessary to find new growth outlets.
Lowering the threshold for bringing goods and attracting more experts with goods is the basis for producing more content and a way to bring more sales.
Talent delivery is decentralized
At present, various platforms in the market are lowering the threshold for bringing goods and giving more benefits to new talents.
Just last month, the Channels account also lowered the threshold limit for bringing goods, and the requirement of more than 1,000 followers to carry out short videos was directly reduced to unlimited, and the number of live fans with goods dropped from 1,000 effective fans to 100 effective fans.
The video account has entered the era when ordinary people can also bring goods.
This is a manifestation of the decentralization of talent's delivery.
Under the layout of the platform, the head anchors are fading out of the stage, and the scale of small and medium-sized anchors is increasing, bringing fresh blood.
The head anchor used to be the pro-son of the platform, and they have accumulated a large number of fans with their funny entertainment and other characteristics, bringing huge traffic and sales to the platform.
However, as the streamer grows, the relationship between the platform and the streamer becomes delicate.
On the one hand, when the influence of one or several anchors is too strong, they will erode the traffic on the platform and convert it into their own private domain traffic, such as personal social media accounts or independent malls, weakening the user stickiness and competitiveness of the platform itself.
Dongfang Selection came back to life on Douyin, grew and became popular, and also converted fans into private domain traffic of its own APP.
In July last year, three days after Dongfang Selection's "self-operated product live broadcast room" and self-operated stores were suspected of being shut down, it made outstanding results on its own APP, with sales exceeding 110 million in 4 days, and it is obvious that the platform's traffic has been successfully converted into its private domain traffic.
Source: Oriental Selection APP
On the other hand, with the growth of the power of the top anchors, they will also occupy a more advantageous position in the game with the platform. As a result, the platform has to make concessions in the face of the streamer's requests, and even in some cases, the platform has to prioritize the streamer's interests over its own long-term development.
Simba, as a well-deserved brother of Kuaishou, publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with Kuaishou during the live broadcast, and even scolded the traffic distribution of the Kuaishou platform when he was excited.
Source: Douyin
On the one hand, Kuaishou wants to maintain the reputation and long-term development of its platform, and on the other hand, the huge traffic and sales performance brought by Simba make it difficult for the platform to give up. The relationship between the two is complex and delicate, and it is difficult to break off.
What's more serious is that once most of the platform's traffic is concentrated on a certain head anchor, what problems occur with the anchor will also be a blow to the platform's traffic.
Therefore, the platform began to gradually "decentralize", introducing more small and medium-sized anchors to avoid relying too much on a single anchor team.
Dong Yuhui opened a single "walk with Hui", and Dongfang Selection is also constantly nurturing the account matrix, diversifying risks and maintaining business growth.
After Wei Ya was unable to continue the live broadcast, the company behind it set up a similar style of Bee Surprise Club, which inherited the original fan base and ensured business continuity.
Li Jiaqi's team has also incubated live broadcast rooms such as "All Girls" and "All Girls' Wardrobe", using the original influence to attract more audiences and broaden the market scope.
Source: 36 Krypton Future Consumption
The big anchors who were once in the spotlight are gradually losing their lustre, and they are replaced by more and more fresh blood.
For the platform, this is a response to crises such as the peak of traffic and the dominance of the head anchor, while for small and medium-sized talents, this is an opportunity for growth. The platform lowers the threshold and gives more traffic support and sharing mechanisms, which will help small and medium-sized talents grow rapidly.
The dilemma brought about by the lowering of the threshold
Douyin has lowered the threshold, although more creators have been introduced, but a series of problems will follow, which need to be solved urgently.
First of all, with the continuous influx of new talents, the difficulty of the platform in content management is also increasing.
Due to the large creator base, it is difficult for the platform to conduct strict review and control the quality of all uploaded content.
This leads to some low-quality videos gaining exposure, which affects the atmosphere of the entire platform.
For example, when a video clip goes viral on the platform, there will be a large number of creators who will follow the trend and create videos with similar content.
These videos often lack innovation, simply imitate or copy the work of others, hoping to "get a piece of the pie" in the heat pool.
Sometimes, the remade video will be more popular than the original video. This phenomenon has hit the motivation of the original creator to a certain extent, and at the same time, it has also affected the innovation and diversity of the platform's content.
The remade video does not identify the original creator
Another problem that cannot be ignored is that with the continuous expansion of the e-commerce sector, the video content space, which was originally dominated by entertainment and information sharing, is now gradually occupied by various advertisements with goods.
When you browse entertainment videos, you may find that ads appear more and more frequently, which greatly affects the coherence and immersive experience of watching content.
The original intention of ordinary users to go to Douyin may be for entertainment, interesting content, and creative inspiration. But as more and more videos are flooded with commercials, users are reluctant to do so.
This sentiment will not only reduce users' interest in influencers, but also affect trust in the platform.
In addition, too many ads can also have an impact on the creator's content creation. They need to think about how to balance commercial promotion and creative content planning – after all, there is a limited amount of time and space for a video.
Source: Douyin
Douyin has to strike a balance between commerce and content.
As a content platform, Douyin has a huge traffic advantage, but Douyin is obviously not willing to be just a content platform.
Frequent advertisements with goods, discounts for new influencers and merchants, and measures to vigorously develop the e-commerce sector...... Converting traffic into orders, Douyin seems to be a little too eager.
The reason why it is so eager is because the platform is extremely competitive.
First of all, on similar content platforms, Kuaishou, Channels, etc. are accelerating their own e-commerce process, trying to eat the big cake of the e-commerce market.
If Douyin does not compete for customer traffic, it will soon be left farther and farther away from the market.
Source: Kuaishou
In addition to the competition of content platforms, traditional e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com are also actively deploying in the field of content e-commerce. Their development of live streaming and short video introduction of products, combined with their own already strong commodity supply chain, will pose a great threat to content e-commerce platforms such as Douyin.
In the face of fierce market competition and many challenges, Douyin must speed up the pace of traffic conversion, and after lowering the threshold, it needs to follow up a series of measures in order to maintain its market share and position.
Author | E-commerce Jun