Author | Guo Zhaochuan
Edit | Weber Li Xiaotian
Southeast Asia, a fertile land full of infinite possibilities, is attracting many consumer brands to enter the market and compete with each other.
For merchants, taking advantage of local festivals and major nodes for brand marketing is an excellent opportunity for brands to go overseas. From traditional festivals to international shopping festivals, many consumer brands have taken advantage of the big promotion nodes to occupy the market and thrive.
For the Muslim community in Southeast Asia, the past Ramadan is equivalent to the "Spring Festival", the most important festival of the year, and pre-holiday procurement is essential. Around the time of Eid al-Fitr, TikTok in relevant countries in Southeast Asia is filled with short videos of preparations and celebrations for Eid al-Fitr, and popular content includes family gatherings and prayers. For consumers and tourists in Thailand, Laos and other countries, Songkran Festival is also the most lively and festive time of the year. Around April 13-15, there were many Songkran topics and challenges on TikTok, including Thai makeup, as well as joyous scenes of water gun battles and bucket battles on the streets of Songkran, which attracted a surge in traffic.
Cross-border e-commerce sellers in Southeast Asia have just survived these two "pressure-mounted" promotion nodes in the first half of the year. In the second half of the year, the "9.9", "10.10", "11.11", "12.12" and "Double day" Mega sales are coming all the way, and the next round of "Node Competition" is about to kick off. Based on the importance of "festival marketing" in the Southeast Asian market, how to "roll" the important festival node marketing competition in the Southeast Asian market has become the most concerned thing for businesses.
Source: TikTok @aydagifts_
During the holidays in Southeast Asian countries, the consumption power of local residents is strong, which is the most attractive time to bring goods.
When cross-border e-commerce sellers enter the Southeast Asian market and formulate market strategies, they must first understand and respect the unique culture, language, religious beliefs and festival traditions of each country, and more importantly, they need to consider the diversity and complexity of the Southeast Asian market.
In the exploration of cross-border e-commerce localization, the many holidays in the Southeast Asian market and the cultural differences of different countries make many sellers feel strong cultural barriers: Indonesia, the largest economy in Southeast Asia, has annual festivals such as Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, and local festivals such as National Awakening Day and Independence Day, while in Singapore, where more than 74% of the Chinese are Chinese, everyone attaches great importance to the Chinese New Year, and also attaches great importance to Christmas under the influence of Western culture. Vietnam, on the other hand, is a fusion of Han culture, Indian culture and Western culture, forming a unique cultural system. The main festivals of the locals are Vietnam's National Day, South Vietnam's Liberation Day, and Ho Chi Minh's Birthday, among others.
图源：TikTok for Business《2024全球消费趋势白皮书——东南亚篇》
Secondly, accurately grasping the marketing rhythm of festival nodes is a key part of "local festival marketing" in Southeast Asia.
For example, in the past "Ramadan" marketing, although many domestic sellers have tried to understand the "Ramadan" culture of the local market, many people still have a shallow understanding of localized festival promotions.
"In fact, Ramadan is the New Year of Indonesians, who usually buy things before the year and come back to work after the New Year. A Southeast Asian e-commerce seller told Xiaguang Agency. According to the experience of cross-border e-commerce sellers, "the real good sales and traffic are in the marketing period before Ramadan, and you have to stock more goods in the local warehouse, because you sell more." ”
When it comes to the local holiday on April 10-18, traffic will enter a period of lull - for Indonesian residents, the "Mudik" after Eid al-Fitr is the most crowded and congested time of the year, and people will spend more time visiting relatives and friends and family gatherings to spend this leisure time. During this period, everyone has just passed the peak consumption season, and the promotional activities of major online and offline supermarkets and e-commerce have also come to an end. Therefore, accurately grasping the marketing rhythm is crucial to the success or failure of a merchant's marketing campaign, and if you "enter" too late, you will miss the almost annual holiday marketing opportunity.
At the same time, successful Southeast Asian cross-border e-commerce sellers are relatively better at understanding the local business environment, understanding local policy guidance, studying the consumption behavior of local users, and developing personalized marketing activities. Merchants can incorporate social media platforms such as TikTok to reach and engage potential young consumers more effectively.
For example, according to Indonesia's local labor law, companies are required to pay Muslim employees 13 weeks in the 1-2 weeks leading up to Eid al-Fitr, so that employees can spend their holidays financially. This part of the young population working in big cities is more likely to spend on emerging products and consumer goods, which are the target customers and potential consumers of cross-border merchants in the local market.
For this part of the population with spending power, cross-border e-commerce sellers in Southeast Asia are using more popular social media platforms to carry out targeted promotion. In particular, TikTok has a large number of young users, which is especially important for businesses to target the young market. TikTok encourages users to create and share creative content, including dances, challenges, special effects, and funny videos, etc., and merchants' content can easily go viral, and a successful short video can quickly attract millions of views, bringing huge exposure and conversions to brands.
In Southeast Asia's "local festival marketing", TikTok has almost become the most important content platform. Merchants can co-create diverse, interesting and exciting short video content with influencers and users, and can also provide users with immersive experiences and interactive gameplay through live broadcasts, so that products can be presented in the most intuitive and clear way, directly hitting the needs and minds of consumers.
According to TikTok for Business's "2024 Global Consumer Trends White Paper - Southeast Asia", 48% of Southeast Asian consumers will open TikTok online live streaming at least once a week. Among them, viewers in Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia watched TikTok live streaming with a relatively higher frequency. An investor focusing on the Indonesian market in Southeast Asia told Xiaguang that locals are becoming more and more accustomed to spending their leisure time in the company of TikTok, and at the same time, they are constantly exposed to new brands and products without realizing it.
Especially during the holiday season, many users will share local cultural content about food, drinks and other things on TikTok, and the number of video views and creations will increase significantly. Content posted on TikTok is also easy to spread quickly through sharing and imitation by users.
During Ramadan, some food bloggers on TikTok will post ideas and recipes for Iftar during Ramadan (including some trendy healthy light foods, such as fresh fruits, yogurt, nuts and dried fruits), which attract countless followers to imitate, and the preferential and promotional information on food, tableware, gifts and other products mentioned in the video has also become shopping inspiration for consumers. For example, some Ramadan entertainment content on TikTok with hashtags #BeautyTok or #eidmakeup. Beauty bloggers focused on the use of lipsticks and mascaras for Eid al-Fitr, with #eidmakeup alone garnering 180 million views during Ramadan.
Similarly, during the recent Songkran Festival (Songkran) in Thailand, short videos of Thai TikTok influencers were filled with short video content about Songkran toys, clothing, and even sunglasses. Many young Thais are being influenced by social media trends such as TikTok by opting for Songkran toys and gear, as well as sunscreen items such as shoes for Songkran, sunscreen and raincoats.
Source: Unsplash
MeToo, an oral FMCG brand, observed the rigid demand for mouthwash during Ramadan in Indonesia, so it chose to launch new products on TikTok, using mouthwash positioned by young consumer groups and fashion brands as a breakthrough, and adopting a "three-step" marketing approach:
The first step is to gather ideas. MeToo integrates product ingredients and efficacy into interactive creativity, and users can trigger the special effect of teeth whitening when they encounter mouthwash in the video, which not only adds interest but also allows users to effectively understand the value of the product.
The second step is to expand the number of talents. MeToo invites local celebrities and top influencers to participate in the challenge to help the challenge gain further diffusion and exposure, so that MeToo can be quickly recognized.
The third step is long-term operation. MeToo leveraged the native traffic generated by the challenge combined with the commercial traffic generated by brand advertising and bidding advertising to jointly promote new products, and seized the popularity of the Ramadan Challenge to continue to invest in the next few months to drive product sales.
MeToo's "three-step" strategy helped it quickly expand its territory in the Southeast Asian market, and it rushed to the top 3 position of TikTok Shop's FMCG list a week after the product was launched.
Source: Screenshot of MeToo@TikTok short video
In terms of consumer mentality, Southeast Asian consumers do attach great importance to preferential prices, but they are not "blindly low prices" as many sellers speculate.
According to TikTok for Business's "2024 Global Consumer Trends White Paper - Southeast Asia", Southeast Asian consumers are looking for a balance between quality and price, and they need to feel like they have "earned".
Based on this mentality of "pursuing cost performance", Southeast Asian consumers are more reluctant to miss every node marketing and promotion activities.
Petsup, a pet food brand that goes overseas, once mentioned in an interview, "Consumers in Southeast Asia have a very mature understanding of big promotions, and we will cooperate with the big promotion cycle to do targeted preferential promotions and increase advertising investment." "The pet food and care products market in Southeast Asia is fiercely competitive, and local consumers have a higher demand for high-quality, natural, organic and additive-free pet food.
Many businesses choose to amplify the value of products through TikTok live broadcasts during holiday promotions: live broadcasts can better let consumers perceive the value of goods by means of anchor explanations and real-time displays, while at the same time, the "limited-time discounts" and "on-site calculation discounts" in the live broadcast room meet consumers' pursuit of cost performance, making consumers feel that they have seized a rare opportunity to obtain product information.
As a result, merchants can provide consumers with a profound "earned" shopping experience through TikTok's social attributes and resource products, which also enhances user engagement and brand loyalty.
图源：TikTok for Business《2024全球消费趋势白皮书——东南亚篇》
If merchants and brands can efficiently link omni-channel at the big promotion node, they will have a better chance of detonating sales. TikTok for Business's content creation and traffic guidance strategy can undoubtedly help merchants smoothly connect with multiple sales channels such as online and offline, direct distribution, etc., which can be described as killing multiple birds with one stone and getting twice the result with half the effort.
Specifically, as a social platform and content e-commerce, TikTok can attract users to place orders directly on TikTok Shop through creative short videos and live broadcast content planting, and this closed-loop ecology provides merchants with a TikTok Shop direct sales position. Many consumers begin to have an impression of a certain brand or a new creative product when they watch short videos on a daily basis, and once they are interested or favorable, consumers can directly jump to the in-station purchase scene such as TikTok Shop through short videos.
For example, POSEE, a global brand that specializes in slippers, entered TikTok Shop in June 2022 and opened its markets in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand at the same time through short videos, with hundreds of orders in each market every day. In October 2022, POSEE also entered the live streaming track. After 8 months of development, POSEE's overseas GMV has increased by 300% and has become the top seller in the cross-border fashion industry of TikTok Shop.
Source: Screenshot of POSEE TikTok account
TikTok can also direct user traffic to merchants' own independent stations or other direct channels. Content e-commerce can bring immeasurable exposure to brands with rich, interesting and engaging content ideas. Many Southeast Asian brands create short video content to show product features and usage scenarios, and directly attach a link to an independent website in the video description to guide users to visit and purchase.
For example, a handmade jewelry brand has gained a lot of attention on TikTok by posting videos of the production process and the display of the finished product, and has successfully converted traffic into orders from independent stations. An up-and-coming women's fashion store also warmed up the shopping festival by launching a topic challenge on TikTok, attracting consumers to visit the platform and offline stores to purchase products during the promotion period.
In addition, TikTok's online marketing also brings direct traffic to the brand's offline stores. According to TikTok for Business's "2024 Global Consumer Trends White Paper – Southeast Asia", a large number of Southeast Asian consumers are more likely to be motivated to experience products after browsing social media, to actually evaluate product quality offline, or to experience the corresponding products/services. These behaviors can not only deepen the brand impression of consumers, but also push consumers' purchasing behavior one step further.
Makuku, a mother and baby brand that goes overseas, said in an interview, "The traffic on TikTok not only overflows online, but also overflows our offline sales channels. According to a previous survey, nearly 20% of consumers go to the store after learning about our brand through TikTok. ”
Online and offline attacks can make the product clearly and intuitively reach the target consumer group. Dreame, a cleaning home appliance brand from China, has also used TikTok to attract traffic to offline stores in the Southeast Asian market.
In 2022, Dreame began to deploy TikTok in Southeast Asia, not only making strong efforts online, but also using online traffic to penetrate into the local and offline markets, integrating online and offline two-way, and creating a retail innovation scene for consumer brands. In August 2022, during the launch of Dreame's new product in the Vietnamese market, it invited TikTok's top influencers in Vietnam to participate in the offline press conference and broadcast it live online, and in early 2024, Dreame signed a contract with brand spokesperson "Xiaoshui" Baifern Pimchanok in Southeast Asia to increase the brand's omni-channel exposure through endorsement and publicity, and combined with TikTok Super Product Day activities and influencer live broadcasts to drive product sales. Taking the Vietnamese market as an example, Dreame achieved a maximum GMV of > $100,000 in a single day.
Source: Dreame
In addition to empowering merchants and brands with direct sales channels, merchants can also use TikTok to deploy distribution channels more conveniently and effectively. For brands that settle in offline channels such as convenience stores and supermarkets, on the one hand, they need the traffic and attention of consumers, and on the other hand, they also need the cooperation of dealers to achieve strong sales performance in offline channels. Under the premise that consumers are more likely to experience products and place orders when they enter offline stores, brands promote products on TikTok and mention offline channels, so that consumers can better understand the products and form a certain brand mentality.
At the same time, the dealer will decide whether to purchase the product according to the popularity of the product online. When the product becomes popular on TikTok, dealers choose to purchase more, which is also conducive to consumers to make long-term shopping choices offline.
Bioaqua, a beauty and personal care brand, is a prime example of how TikTok has successfully built up its voice to help penetrate its distribution network. With nearly 1.8 million followers on TikTok and high-frequency traffic exposure, Bioaqua has brought more than $30 million in sales, and has invested in offline channels in 2022 after TikTok debuted, and has now settled in offline stores such as MINISO, Dandan, and Indomaret, and has established dozens of franchised stores in Jakarta, as well as pop-up stores and brand integration online celebrity stores.
Through TikTok's initial occupation of consumers' minds, and then taking advantage of its popularity to further expand offline channels, Bioaqua can be said to have played with online e-commerce and offline distribution networks, and launched a strong entry into Indonesia.
In the next 5-6 months, Southeast Asia is about to usher in the summer festival and the summer vacation economy with many tourists, in addition, the "66 promotion" in Southeast Asia is also a time node that cannot be missed by overseas merchants.
According to the experience of the previous "66 promotions", merchants can take advantage of the TikTok platform to launch intensive promotional activities, such as direct drop of goods in the live broadcast room, full reduction on the platform, joint venture coupon issuance, etc., plus summer beauty and personal care, women's underwear, 3C digital products, and Muslim fashion categories that are particularly popular in Malaysia from May to June, will be the focus of merchants to strengthen their brand image and promote sales.
As the bubble of consumer brands gradually fades, brands go overseas to Southeast Asia and enter the deep waters, and the importance of fine operation is becoming more and more prominent. The so-called "festival hits" and "node marketing" are an in-depth localization strategy for brands in the Southeast Asian market according to local conditions and time conditions. To sum up, if you take these 5 steps well, you will have a better chance of "rolling" to win the marketing of Southeast Asian nodes:
1. Deeply understand and respect each country's unique culture and festival traditions, and develop an effective localized marketing strategy
2. Accurately grasp the festival nodes and carry out promotional activities
3. Make good use of social media platforms such as TikTok to attract the attention and engagement of young consumers
4. Grasp the psychology of local consumers seeking cost-effective and affordable, and use TikTok to amplify the value of goods
5. Make good use of TikTok and make efforts in omni-channel sales
Of course, going to Southeast Asia, in addition to node marketing is worth studying, there are also a series of important lessons, how to choose products, which tracks have great opportunities, and so on...... Sellers who pay attention to Southeast Asian content e-commerce can click to read the original article and download the "2024 Global Consumption Trends White Paper - Southeast Asia", so as to understand the current 2024 Southeast Asian content e-commerce consumption trends and grasp more new opportunities for Southeast Asian e-commerce.