Station B deepens "open-loop e-commerce"
With the approach of "618", Station B, which is anxious to make a profit, is ready to go.
Recently, Station B announced that it will further deepen its "big open loop" strategy.
In addition to strengthening the cooperative relationship with existing partners Alibaba and JD.com, it also actively expands new partners and incorporates important platforms such as Pinduoduo and Vipshop into the cooperation map, aiming to build a more open and diversified "big open loop" e-commerce ecosystem.
At the same time, in order to further improve the user experience and promote traffic conversion, Bilibili will be comprehensively upgraded from three key dimensions: product tools, traffic support, and new customer incentives.
In order to better serve brands and merchants, Bilibili also provides a comprehensive set of "618 Preparation Strategies", covering marketing strategies, data analysis, user behavior insights and other aspects to help partners formulate effective promotion plans and grasp sales opportunities during the promotion period.
With a huge user base with more than 100 million daily active users, Bilibili has become a new source of customers in the field of Internet e-commerce.
This torrent of traffic is the intuitive manifestation of the business potential of Station B.
Judging from the various actions of Station B, it has urgently wanted more commercial value and monetized its huge traffic.
For e-commerce platforms and brand partners seeking growth, Bilibili's huge young user base and strong community culture will become a source of high-quality traffic.
Last year's Double 11, Station B made a special layout adjustment to its App, temporarily renamed the "Member Purchase" entrance in the bottom navigation bar to "Double 11", and a new "Tmall Double 11" section will appear after clicking in, displaying Tmall products, and seamlessly connecting to the Tmall platform, which is convenient for users to buy immediately.
Source: E-commerce News Pro
At the same time, Station B also joined forces with JD.com to launch the "Jinghuo Plan". With the help of Bilibili's grass planting video, the plan guides traffic to JD.com, which not only accelerates sales conversion, but also uses rich background data to evaluate the effect of these promotional contents.
Through in-depth analysis of user behavior, brands can not only target potential customers more accurately, but also effectively carry out subsequent marketing and remarketing, which greatly enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of brand planting.
This year, Station B is still moving on business cooperation. In February, users noticed that content cards labeled "Creation and Promotion" appeared on the homepage of Bilibili, and once they clicked on these cards, the system would directly direct users to jump to third-party applications.
In March, an advertisement pointing to Li Jiaqi's "Fashion Festival" live broadcast room appeared on the homepage of the mobile app of Station B. By clicking on this advertisement, users can jump directly to Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room on the Taobao platform.
B stands farther and farther on the road of "open-loop e-commerce".
The monetization dilemma of station B e-commerce
Station B chose to be an "open-loop e-commerce", in fact, because its "closed-loop e-commerce" performance was mediocre, and it was facing the dilemma of "love to generate electricity, but not to realize".
The core competitiveness of Bilibili lies in its unique community culture and user stickiness. This community is made up of a group of young people who love two-dimensional culture and pursue personalized expression, where they share videos, exchange ideas, and make friends.
This strong community atmosphere makes Bilibili face a huge challenge in the commercialization process: how to implant e-commerce elements without destroying the community atmosphere?
If you push for commercialization too aggressively, you may cause resentment and even loss of users, but if you are too conservative, you may miss the opportunity to monetize your e-commerce.
For example, when a user encounters an abrupt marketing ad while watching knowledge content, they feel uncomfortable, believing that it destroys the otherwise focused learning environment, thus affecting the platform's reputation and user loyalty.
Source: Station B
In addition, as a platform based on content consumption, the main purpose of user access is to watch video content rather than shopping.
This means that it takes a lot of time and effort to educate users to make purchases within the platform.
At the same time, compared with Taobao and JD.com, which already have mature supply chains, business quality control and logistics systems, Bilibili needs to invest in the construction of these "behind-the-scenes" facilities on a large scale. This includes the construction of the supply chain, the control of commodity quality, and the improvement of the logistics system.
For Bilibili, these are complex projects that need to be built and optimized from scratch step by step.
Although as early as 2017, Station B took the step of e-commerce exploration and launched "Member Purchase", specializing in selling peripheral goods loved by two-dimensional enthusiasts.
However, compared with other mature e-commerce platforms, "membership purchase" has encountered many bottlenecks.
The price is not competitive, and the price of similar goods is not too attractive.
Although it helps to meet the needs of the core user group, the lack of diversity is not enough to attract a wider range of consumer groups, which limits the expansion potential of the market.
In addition, user reviews and market feedback are not ideal, especially in terms of service experience, which does not show special highlights, and it is difficult to break through in the highly competitive e-commerce market.
Source: Black Cat Complaint Platform
Moreover, in the Chinese e-commerce market, giants such as Taobao and JD.com have dominated the market, with well-established e-commerce ecosystems, strong supply chain capabilities, and rich operational experience.
In order to get a share of this highly competitive market, Bilibili not only needs to overcome its own shortcomings, but also needs to find differentiated competitive strategies to distinguish it from other e-commerce platforms.
Station B takes the initiative to embrace "cats and dogs fight"
Faced with the dilemma of its own e-commerce monetization, Bilibili has chosen a path of win-win cooperation: in-depth cooperation with e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo and Vipshop, and engaging in "open-loop e-commerce". This cooperation model aims to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results, opening up new growth space for both parties.
Through cooperation with e-commerce platforms, Bilibili has opened a huge traffic entrance and guided users to the cooperative e-commerce platform for transactions, thus promoting the growth of its own advertising revenue.
Judging from the financial report data, Bilibili's annual advertising business revenue in 2023 will reach 6.4 billion yuan, an increase of 27% compared with 2022, and this growth rate ranks first among Bilibili's four core business segments - mobile games, value-added services, advertising, IP derivatives and others.
Source: Financial report of station B
At the same time, the cooperation with Pinduoduo and Vipshop is not only a simple product diversion, but also a deep integration of marketing strategies, data analysis, and user behavior insights.
These behaviors will help Bilibili improve its commercial operation capabilities and the depth of brand cooperation, and lay the foundation for exploring more diversified business models in the future.
For the cooperative e-commerce platform, Bilibili's huge young user base and high user activity are very attractive incremental markets.
Through the cooperation with Bilibili, these e-commerce platforms can reach a wider group of young consumers, tap the potential consumption potential, and achieve the expansion of the user base and sales growth.
During the Double 11 Shopping Festival in 2023, the "Spark Plan" implemented by Station B has achieved remarkable results, and compared with the 618 Shopping Festival that year, its effectiveness has been significantly improved, and sales have increased by 83%. This program has attracted more than 70 brands to participate in the cooperation, and the proportion of new customers delivered by Bilibili to cooperative merchants has exceeded 50%.
Source: Bilibili Business News
In the current e-commerce market, the cost of acquiring new customers is gradually rising, and user growth has begun to slow down, forming the so-called "stock era". The 54% new customer rate means that the young user group brought by station B has undoubtedly opened a new "blue ocean" for cooperative e-commerce.
For Bilibili, the cooperation with e-commerce platforms means opening up new ways of commercialization, and platforms that are trapped in content-led will gradually open up new profit margins.
For e-commerce platforms, the cooperation with station B has opened an efficient channel to reach young consumer groups. In the context of the current market saturation and increasing customer acquisition costs, the young user group of Bilibili is particularly valuable. These users tend to have higher willingness to spend and stronger brand loyalty, which is a new driving force for the continuous growth of e-commerce platforms.
This "two-way rush" may mean that cross-border cooperation and ecological win-win will become the key force to promote industrial upgrading and stimulate market vitality.