Let's start with a set of data.
NielsenIQ e-commerce monitoring data shows that from the perspective of the omni-channel growth rate of FMCG in 2023, content e-commerce led by Douyin has achieved a market share growth of 4% with a sales growth rate of 55.7%. Among them, in September 2023, the food and beverage content e-commerce channel will grow by 75% to drive the overall online channel growth by 14%. [1]
It can be said that Douyin e-commerce, as a battleground, is still in a fierce competition for food and beverage brands. At the same time, on this "battlefield", the placement of food and beverage brands on Douyin e-commerce is a complex system covering multiple levels such as self-broadcast operation, influencer cooperation, precision advertising, traffic entrance utilization, and store operation, far beyond a single dimension of ROI (return on investment) consideration.
But the problem is that some brands can achieve a win-win situation through Douyin advertising, while some brands do not have a satisfactory return on traffic.
On March 29, FBIF invited Fan Changchuan, Chief Marketing Officer and Dean of the Data Research Institute of Digital 100, Yi Zihan, Founder and CEO of Songxianxian, Lao Liyi, Head of Content E-commerce of Mo Xiaoxian, and Liu Shixuan, Head of Mass Consumption Food and Beverage Industry Strategy of Giant Engine Commercial Products, to discuss how food and beverage brands can play with global traffic in Douyin e-commerce and achieve business growth while acquiring traffic.
Liu Shichuan mentioned that at the moment of frequent marketing nodes, the huge number of Qianchuan global promotion relies on the underlying model and advanced technology, which will bring a broader business growth space for merchants. In addition, Giant Qianchuan also shared the cases of food and beverage brands such as Haoshi Bread, Fenjiu, and Yuexianhuo to achieve definitive growth through the Douyin e-commerce advertising platform.
What is the value of Douyin food and beverage industry status and brand layout? What are the changes in platform traffic as the competition on the track becomes increasingly fierce?
This article consolidates its core ideas for the industry and readers alike.
1. The growth rate exceeded 40%, and food and beverage brands accelerated the deployment of Douyin e-commerce
In 2023, the number of monthly active consumers in the food industry on Douyin will exceed 150 million, the number of food vertical experts will exceed 900,000, and the search volume of food industry-related content will reach 58 billion+. [2] It can be said that the "eating and drinking business" has shown great development potential and commercial value on the Douyin e-commerce platform, showing a trend of all-round growth.
During the dialogue, Liu Shiquan, head of the mass consumption food and beverage industry strategy of the giant engine commercial products, revealed that between 2022 and 2024, the omni-channel growth rate of the food and beverage industry is expected to be about 5%, and the online growth rate is 6-7 times that of the offline growth rate. Among the online platforms, food and beverage brands on Douyin have maintained a growth rate of more than 40%, and Douyin e-commerce has contributed more than 40% to the overall online growth of the food and beverage industry.
From the perspective of subcategories, snacks, grains, oils, rice noodles, fresh food and other categories are still the basic plate of Douyin's food and beverage business.
As food and beverage brands that entered Douyin e-commerce earlier, Song Xianxian and Mo Xiaoxian have insight into the commercial value of the Douyin platform, and have achieved a significant business jump through the strategic use of the Douyin e-commerce advertising platform.
Founded in 2020, Songxian Xian is a brand that focuses on healthy condiments. When asked why he wanted to carry out brand layout on Douyin, Yi Zihan, founder and CEO of Songxianxian, said that in 2021, Songxianxian tried third-party operation services and "lost a lot". Later, she realized that traditional e-commerce channels must need off-site exposure to support. The online voice will spill over to other e-commerce platforms, leading to the growth of offline business.
In 2023, Songxian achieved three times the business growth on Douyin, and the key to achieving this result is to balance the organic flow and paid flow of Douyin. "Our strategy is to do a good job of natural flow content, and then use a huge amount of paid streams to undertake. Both organic and paid streams should be used well. If you do the introduction of paid streams at the beginning, you are more likely to lose."
Image source: Song Xianxian
Founded in 2017, Mo Xiaoxian focuses on making trendy fast food that is close to young people and cost-effective. Looking back at Mo Xiaoxian's content layout on Douyin, Lao Liyi, the person in charge of content e-commerce, believes that Mo Xiaoxian's content strategy is basically unfolding with the rhythm of the platform:
At the end of 2020, he entered Douyin e-commerce in the form of celebrity live broadcast;
In 2021, Chongdaren live broadcast and Chongxing Map will carry out content delivery;
In 2022, the brand tried to broadcast itself;
In 2023, heavy KOC short videos + a small number of star maps will expand the A1-A3 crowd, use a huge number of thousands of rivers to amplify high-quality KOC videos, and then achieve conversion through self-broadcasting.
At present, Mo Xiaoxian's monthly sales on Douyin are about 20 million, of which 50% are self-employed, and 50% are short videos and live broadcasts. At the same time, Mo Xiaoxian has also created a number of "Douyin hits", ranking firmly in the fast food category.
Lao Liyi shared that Mo Xiaoxian found a more accurate customer base through the huge Qianchuan platform.
Take Mo Xiaoxian's new "Moos Kitchen Brown Rice" as an example. As a healthy fast food product with a unit price of up to 59 yuan, it is not easy to "sell well and sell well". "When you go to a convenience store, you probably won't buy such expensive rice at all." But through a huge number of thousands of rivers, Mo Xiaoxian "accidentally" found the precise customer group of brown rice: the elderly, sugar friends, and fitness people. Later, through scientific placement and targeted marketing, the new brown rice products of Mooss Kitchen quickly opened up the market.
Image source: Mo Xiaoxian
At present, Douyin merchants can be roughly divided into three categories: global, advertising, and content.
Advertising merchants focus on advertising through the Douyin platform to achieve the purpose of brand promotion and product sales, content-based merchants refer to those who attract users through high-quality content and focus on content, and global merchants are the integration of the first two, which will not only produce high-quality content, but also comprehensively use the various functions and services provided by the Douyin e-commerce advertising platform.
Song Xianxian and Mo Xiaoxian are both typical global merchants, and they have achieved key business results through their own refined operations and long-term cooperation with Douyin's e-commerce advertising platform.
Liu Shiquan shared another set of interesting data: at present, the GMV of a huge number of Qianchuan merchants accounts for 17% of the total GMV of Douyin merchants. The GMV volume of global merchants is 2.5 times that of advertising merchants, and 1.6 times that of content merchants with "content blogging", and global merchants have obtained the highest profit scale.
This means that food and beverage brands must do a good job of synergizing organic traffic and commercial traffic in order to bring certainty to growth. In other words, in Douyin, there is also a threshold for payment. Crude "investment and smashing traffic" does not necessarily bring sales, and the basis for leveraging traffic is high-quality content and high-quality products that can induce consumers to place orders.
Second, competition is intensifying, traffic acquisition is becoming more and more difficult, and costs are increasing... How are brands responding?
Since organic traffic and paid traffic need to be "grasped with both hands", what should brands do?
In the past, brands needed to produce short videos, live broadcasts, connect with streaming service providers, search optimization, product portfolio strategies, and analyze business data.... Brands need to constantly adjust their advertising strategies according to the characteristics of traffic to improve the efficiency of reach.
However, the problem is that the traffic ecology is ever-changing, and key factors such as user interests, hot topics, and even algorithm weights may change significantly in a short period of time.
Yi Zihan observed that on Douyin, the crowd and the needs of Song Xianxian have changed significantly in the past two years. "In the future, we will make more intensive actions in the refinement of content and operation. Lao Liyi found that in the highly competitive traffic environment, the homogenization of brand content is becoming more and more serious. "Once a piece of content becomes popular, there will be a lot of similar content the next day, and the traffic of the original popular content will be differentiated. ”
In order to solve the problems of difficult brand traffic acquisition and high operating costs, Juda Qianchuan has launched a "global promotion" product. On the basis of the stable achievement of the overall payment ROI of live broadcasting, the product helps many live broadcast rooms improve the overall GMV through the layout of Douyin global traffic, and at the same time helps reduce the operating costs of brand merchants and improve human efficiency.
To put it simply, "global promotion" allows merchants to maximize GMV "lying down", which is an out-and-out traffic amplifier.
巨量千川LOGO；图片来源：巨量千川
For brands, in fact, paid traffic and organic traffic do not have the same requirements for "people-goods-venues", and it is not easy to perfectly undertake these two types of traffic at the same time.
"Natural traffic is like a downpour, it's hard to catch. It's hard to find out what exactly caused the business to improve. But paid traffic is like a faucet, more accurate and efficient." Liu Shiquan also explained that "global promotion" can help brands gain more traffic advantages, because "global promotion" has three characteristics:
First of all, "global promotion" breaks through the distinction between paid traffic and organic traffic on the Douyin platform, which can expand the global traffic of live broadcast such as Douyin information flow recommendation, live broadcast square, mall, search, etc., regulate the global high-quality traffic, and drive the overall increase in live broadcast transaction volume.
Yi Zihan mentioned that the "global promotion" has helped Songxian to make in-depth optimization in terms of product mix and content around the core population and user needs. This kind of optimized content has been undertaken and converted in the live broadcast room through "global promotion", which has brought about an explosion of GMV.
Secondly, "global promotion" can help brands reduce costs and increase efficiency. As a fully automated product, global promotion can be controlled with one click, which can release more labor costs and time, allowing brands to devote their energy to deep cultivation of content and material production in the live broadcast room.
"We're all concentrating on content right now," says Lau. "We now have our own in-house team, which will use standard advertising to test creatives, and then use "global promotion" to increase volume and expand new products. ”
Finally, "global promotion" can effectively expand new customers and achieve new customer transactions. By expanding the traffic increment, "Global Promotion" reaches more high-conversion value users who originally had no chance to reach, thereby increasing the GPM (1,000 impressions transaction amount) in the live broadcast room, and finally achieving breadth coverage and depth penetration.
3. How can we make good use of the "traffic amplifier" of "global promotion"?
In addition to the cases of Song Xianxian and Mo Xiaoxian, Liu Shixuan also shared three brand cases in the live broadcast. These three brands in different business scenarios have improved their advertising efficiency, accumulated crowd assets, and expanded their business scale through "global promotion".
1. Haoji bread
Haoshi Bread, which is mainly engaged in bread baking, once showed an increase in sales after naming a costume drama last year. However, after the popularity of the series subsided, the GMV and ROI growth of the brand fell into a relatively weak predicament. During this year's Chinese New Year Festival, Haoshi Bread not only needs to be watched by multiple pitchers in shifts to build a plan, but also has the problem of limited manpower and insufficient material investment in the supply of materials.
This year, Haoshi Bread seized the opportunity of the business explosion of the "March Light Food Season" and promoted it all-for-all. During the launch period, Haoji Bread guaranteed more than 7 new materials every day, which exceeded 34% of the same type of merchants. In 30 days, Haoshi Bread achieved a 23-fold increase in GMV, with a stable ROI compliance rate of more than 92%, and was ranked TOP1 on Douyin's hot list in the 38th Light Food Scene.
Image source: Giant Qianchuan
2. Joy and freshness
As a leading brand in the high-end fresh milk category, Yuexianhuo has a stable customer base and a mature business model, and it is not easy to reach a new high in business. In 2023, after switching to "global promotion" and continuing to test for more than 3 days, Yuexianhuo successfully achieved a strong peak in annual GMV, and the GMV of the live broadcast room exploded by 806%.
Image source: Giant Qianchuan
3. Blue and white Fenjiu
During the Spring Festival, the liquor category entered the peak consumption season, and the purchase demand increased sharply. As a liquor brand, Qinghua Fenjiu wants to pursue higher single-show live viewing and comprehensive GMV. Through the cooperation of high and low customer orders and the layout of group goods, Qinghua Fenjiu provides a conversion guarantee for the high-quality traffic brought by switching to "global promotion". In the end, the average daily GMV of Qinghua Fenjiu increased by 184%, and the comprehensive ROI increased by 17%.
Image source: Giant Qianchuan
In short, whether it is a hot-spot supporting brand or a mature brand, Huge Qianchuan "Global Promotion" can predict the conversion probability of users according to the user's behavior, preferences and the information of the people and goods in the live broadcast room, and find users with greater conversion value for the live broadcast room, so as to achieve precision marketing. This not only provides merchants with a more efficient and intelligent delivery solution, but also increases user conversion rate and engagement, ultimately helping merchants achieve sales growth and ROI improvement.
After data testing, on the basis of the stable achievement of the overall payment ROI of the live broadcast, the overall GMV of the live broadcast room with "global promotion" enabled will increase by 15%-20%. At the same time, the number of new fans/new customers increased by 5~10%, the proportion of new fans/new customers increased by 15~20%, and the GPM of the live broadcast room increased by 10~20%, bringing more significant business growth.
At present, a large number of Qianchuan's "global promotion" large-scale incentive activities in March will return to the end of April, as well as large-scale benefits such as new customer incentives, exclusive traffic incentives, and effective test incentives to help merchants achieve effective business explosion. Click to read the original article at the end of the article to learn more about the event.
IV. Conclusion
"Douyin is the first position of brand exposure, this core will not change, around this core, we will continue to invest in Douyin. When it comes to Song Xianxian's next development plan in Douyin, Yi Zihan said. At the same time, she also hopes that the Douyin e-commerce advertising platform can expand more in terms of paid traffic to help brands further reduce costs.
From the perspective of Douyin's e-commerce advertising platform, Liu Shixuan also shared his insights and expectations. He called on merchants to keenly capture and grasp the key time nodes such as the upcoming travel season, summer season and the highlight of the year, the 618 promotion, and strive to find the best balance between organic traffic and paid traffic, and gradually transform into a global merchant with extensive influence and in-depth operation capabilities.
At the same time, the Douyin platform will actively play the role of an enabler, providing valuable decision-making reference and practical guidance for brands by providing more dimensional and deeper business data disclosure, as well as the sharing of refined operation cases from successful merchants. This series of measures aims to help merchants accurately grasp the pulse of the market, improve operational efficiency, and jointly promote the leapfrog and growth of brand business.
Reference Sources:
[1] Riding the Momentum of Content E-commerce, Winning Food and Beverage 2024: NielsenIQ "Reviewing Food and Winning the Momentum: An Overview of Douyin Industry Trends" report
[2] "2024, How Can Food and Beverage Brands Break the Peak of Douyin?Three Directions Help Business Explode", 2023-12-22, Huge Engine Marketing Observation
This article is the original of FBIF Food and Beverage Innovation, author: Gloria, please contact for authorization for reprinting.