Source: Karth Data
In 2024, Bilibili will refresh its presence at the live e-commerce table.
On March 7, Station B handed over the fourth quarter and annual financial report of 2023, which showed that Station B achieved positive operating cash flow for the whole year of 2023, of which Q4 reached 640 million positive operating cash flow. CEO Chen Rui officially finalized the key node of turning losses into profits in the third quarter of 2024 on the conference call.
In the past year, Bilibili seems to have put the improvement of e-commerce infrastructure and the incubation of more UP owners with goods into a more priority ecological niche. Outside, Station B has reached a closer cooperation with cats and dogs in the product pool with a large-open-loop strategy, and at the beginning of this year, it further opened up the permission to jump from the station to Taobao live broadcast;
From a content community to an e-commerce company, Station B is no longer screwed and works the road of e-commerce. However, looking back on the commercial actions of the platform in the past, Karth believes that if you want to rely on e-commerce to achieve the goal of turning losses into profits, Station B still has "three passes" to be solved.
Does good content make good business?
At the 2024 AD TALK conference, Li Ni, vice chairman and COO of station B, once said, "Investing in station B is investing in young people, investing in new consumption power and new consumption increment, and investing in the present and future." ”
To a certain extent, the high density of young people is indeed one of the characteristics that distinguishes Bilibili from other Internet communities. The data shows that the average age structure of station B users is about 24 years old, and the coverage rate of Z+ generation users has reached 65%, which is mainly distributed in first- and second-tier cities geographically.
However, young and energetic users have brought an almost "double-edged sword" impact to Station B. On the one hand, on the whole, among several mainstream communities, Bilibili is the platform with the highest requirements for content quality. Young users pursue content quality and are keen to express, so they can see a lot of in-depth and professional content on station B, and high-quality interactions are often brushed in the comment area.
But on the other hand, the comparison of content also makes it easy for users to "drill the horns". In the past few years, there have been many UP that have "overturned" because of content, and the most typical case may be Director Ao. The reason is that in the process of rapid development, celebrities often do not have too rigorous content for the sake of monetization and traffic. On other platforms, users may get by, but if they are placed on station B, "just rotten rice" may bring the risk of "collapsed houses". For a long time, this is one of the important reasons why the business atmosphere of station B is not strong and the UP owner is "difficult to realize".
In Bilibili, brand placement is much more closely related to content. If you want to achieve the integration of quality and efficiency at station B, merchants must abandon the law of "traffic first", deeply bind the product and talent design, content, and make business into the content itself.
From the award-winning works of the "Fireworks Award" at Station B, it can be seen that the platform hopes for the ideal form of business order: in the video "Cat and Mouse 2.0" cooperated by the domestic pet food brand Honest One Bite and the cute pet UP master @ Milk Cake Chengjing Archive Society, the UP master uses "freeze-dried into essence" as the creative point to accurately capture the pet's expressions and movements, reproduce the famous scene of "Cat and Mouse", and shoot a big drama of milk cake and hamsters competing for freeze-dried custody. This high-quality business order finally received 8.93 million plays on the station, and it was listed on the 222nd issue of station B to be seen every week, and users have commented on "Party A earns over".
Source: UP main @ milk cake into the essence of the archives
In terms of deeply reaching the minds of young people's consumers, Bilibili has its unique advantages, but as Li Hao, the founder of Karth, repeatedly emphasized in the "Global Growth Strategy Class", the characteristics of heavy content actually increase the difficulty of successful marketing of merchants at Bilibili. In the ecological environment of station B, the brand advertising competition is not only the advertising of friends, but also a large number of UP owners who generate electricity for love.
This also means that if the merchant does not have strong enough strength, brand influence and budget, or its own sensitivity to content is not high, it is difficult to make good marketing on station B.
In the past year, what are the new trends in the commercialization of Bilibili?
In the era of stock, Station B obviously hopes to become the increment of the industry. In the past year, Bilibili has started the process of "checking and filling gaps", and has made many adjustments to its business structure and profit model.
"Blue chain with goods" is undoubtedly one of the new business trends of station B. Blue link refers to a blue link with goods inserted and pinned by the UP master in the comment area of the business order video, usually accompanied by a UP main recommendation copy, and the user can jump to the product purchase page by clicking it. This marketing tool is often used as a supporting facility for brands to launch UP masters, and the products are directly linked to the transaction scene after the content is planted, taking the path of "content + bringing goods" that Station B is good at.
Since last year, many brands have even been white-labeled, grafting the blue chain to Taobao or the live broadcast room through linkage efficacy and health-care UP masters, so as to run good data. Huozhuoyun data shows that in February this year, the number of blue chain goods brought by station B was 4 times that of last year, more than 7w, and the goods category was concentrated in snacks and beverages, beauty and skin care and health products.
When the brand power is not enough to "fight" with big brands, blue chain goods have also become one of the channels for small and medium-sized brands to "go up". Karth found that many efficacy and health care products have been expanded in station B through the method of "blue chain + grass planting". For example, in February, among the TOP3 brands with goods at station B, Miaojie and Ruisi have used this combination delivery model, the former is an emerging massager brand, which has been launched in the form of "wide net" at station B;
Explore the model of this kind of health care product "speedrun" station B, some cooperate with fitness and sports UP masters, and some directly cultivate special advertising accounts, and then vigorously invest in traffic to increase exposure. For example, the launch of Airenkang on station B is based on the successful experience of the talent to lose weight from a large base, and it frequently appears in the content recommendation position with the flow of streams to "force" the attention of users. With the support of streaming tools, one of Aikrenkang's grass planting videos has received 17 million views, but the user interaction rate is very low, with only more than 300 comments.
In addition to the blue chain, another business trend is live streaming. In 2023, Station B will run out of the fashion UP master @Parrot Pear with 50 million goods in a single game, as a benchmark for verifying the consumption power of women in the station, and has been broadcast three times, as well as @大物 is also with a GMV of more than 10.21 million in a single game.
Another live streaming expert in the fashion district, @Coco Knock, achieved a GMV of more than 17 million in a single game with 500,000 fans.
Source: Station B UP main @Coco knock knock_
On the one hand, Coco's success path lies in the fact that the clothing category is easier to volume. From Zhang Dayi and Sydney in the Weibo and Taobao eras, to the first batch of selling heads in Douyin and Xiaohongshu, it has been verified that when a platform opens live e-commerce, clothing is likely to be the best selling category.
The high conversion rate of the clothing category stems from the fact that the essence of the live broadcast room is to make content, and the clothing itself is both a commodity and a content, especially for fashion bloggers. Previously, there was no shortage of users "seeking the same style" under the outfit video, and when this scene was transferred to the live broadcast room, the user's decision-making link was greatly shortened, and as long as the blogger looked good, he could achieve conversion.
On the other hand, it lies in the strong functionality of Coco live streaming. In the follow-up update, she consciously combined her body characteristics to share good things with keywords such as "covering meat", "not showing fake crotch" and "thinness", hitting the consumption pain points of users who are also pear-shaped. On station B, Coco has accumulated 500,000 fans, although the increase in fans is slow, but the loyalty and stickiness of fans are very high.
In summary, the functionality of the account is greater than the content and interest, which is the main reason why Coco sells goods, which is slightly different from the path of @Parrot Pear's "content with goods", but the common thing between the two is that fans consume, and fans plant grass in the front and go to the live broadcast in the back. Due to the shallow live broadcast traffic of station B, the live broadcast room of the talent often relies on fans to "support the field", so the high stickiness of fans is very important.
For the B war, which has been started for more than a year since e-commerce, there are not many benchmark cases won by the platform, and some UP owners choose to return to the content comfort zone due to poor results after testing the live broadcast. However, Station B's determination to open the main live broadcast of UP to bring goods can be seen: in February this year, Station B opened the live broadcast investment of home decoration, clothing and beauty tracks. In April, it also opened the spring and summer key content investment, covering node marketing, large-scale activities, documentaries and other fields.
Station B e-commerce, must pass the "three passes"
For the B war, on the road to e-commerce, Karth believes that there are still "three passes" to be solved on the platform.
First, the premise of ecological establishment is infrastructure, and the e-commerce infrastructure of station B is not perfect. Station B, which has stayed in the ACG community for too long, does not yet have mature e-commerce genes, so when Xiaohongshu blows the horn of "buyer e-commerce", the platform is still struggling to improve the e-commerce infrastructure, and based on the special community ecology, Station B cannot "copy" the mature e-commerce model of Doukuai.
The immaturity of infrastructure is more reflected in the immaturity of the live broadcast mechanism at the level of UP main live streaming, and the UP master and team lack experience in live streaming, and Taobao merchants also need to be run in. The whole process of "linking up" is like a problem for Station B, which is trying the water live broadcast e-commerce for the first time, @Coco and there are also preferential mechanisms and link bugs in the live broadcast room, which leads to the inconsistency between the price of the user's order and the live broadcast price.
From the platform level, because it is difficult for station B to provide a sufficient pool of goods for UP owners, the platform chooses a large-scale open-loop strategy that is closely integrated with traditional e-commerce platforms such as cats and dogs. In 2024, Station B will further deepen its binding with Taobao, and you can jump to the Taobao live broadcast room with one click from the station.
However, the open-loop strategy also means that in addition to the traffic loss caused by the long conversion link, Bilibili also faces multiple challenges such as platform competitiveness and commodity after-sales service. In order to attract more merchants and brands, Bilibili must provide a more intelligent talent matching mechanism, lower the threshold for cooperation with UP masters, and improve the grass planting effect measurement products, so as to dispel merchants' concerns with strong conversion data.
Station B is also accelerating the process of filling the gap in ecological infrastructure. In 2023, Bilibili will launch the "Spark Plan" and "Jinghuo Plan" one after another, providing advertisers with crowd insight data and post-investment effect analysis, including collection, search, browsing, and repurchase data of Bilibili users on the platform.
Secondly, no matter how extreme the content is, it may not necessarily have ideal sales. In the case of the economic downturn, the brand marketing budget has also declined, and the previous brands will pay more attention to the concept of "quality and efficiency", talk about the brand concept and content at station B, and precipitate the minds of young people, but in recent years, more and more brands have begun to pay attention to ROI, and "whether they can bring goods" has become their primary concern. The problem in front of the UP master is that even if the content has been done to the extreme, "transformation" is still a metaphysics, some people will bring goods for the UP master to "thank Party A", and some people will choose to pull the progress bar.
Also, traffic is expensive. Expensive traffic is a common problem faced by all platforms at present, but the impact on station B may be greater. Since most of the popular content on the site is long videos, the video production cycle of the UP master is longer, and the content cost is also increased. This makes the unit price of the UP master's commercial cooperation video actually higher than that of the short video, and in the case of uncertain traffic and sales, the brand's trial-and-error expectations and costs will also increase.
At present, the live broadcast of station B has moved towards verticalization and segmentation, such as @大物是也, which specializes in personal care, @Mr fans of the home track, and @Parrot Pear of the fashion track. But not all products can run through station B, a typical case is that the head of the fashion district, the UP master, Bao Jiansao, brought beauty products live and did not receive the expected feedback, although there are also reasons for the attenuation of traffic dividends in the beauty area and the involution of talents, but also because of the lack of competitiveness of the price mechanism obtained by the UP master. Since most of the beauty products are big standard products, users have developed a mature consumption mind, and they will subconsciously compare prices on the whole network, and at station B, the pallets of the TOP1 beauty bloggers are not as good as Li Jiaqi.
How to help the UP owner find a suitable pallet is also a problem that needs to be solved on the road of e-commerce.
Chase products such as 9.9 yuan garbage bags are difficult to "eat" on the platform. Users obviously prefer the UP owner to combine their own vertical and professional selection, and for example, fresh fruits with high requirements for the supply chain are not suitable for most UP owners, and the @王师傅与小毛毛 rollover is a precedent.
In addition, large standard products need to fight a price war, and when the external platform has run out of its own advantageous categories, the selection of products at station B may only become narrower and narrower. Relatively speaking, home, fashion, personal care, and digital are already relatively easy to monetize, but in these fields, Station B still needs more benchmarks.
In short, the goods and the UP master are indispensable. When Station B has decided to go to live e-commerce, the next question that needs to be answered by the platform is: How does UP mainly support Station B's e-commerce ambitions?