The dawn of the video account is quiet

With the rise of video accounts, WeChat, a huge social platform, is gradually changing the rules of the game in the e-commerce field. This article deeply explores the latest developments of video accounts in the e-commerce field, analyzing its traffic changes, user behavior and merchants' response strategies.

After the National Day holiday, the traffic in the video account live broadcast room was extremely poor.

The accounts we have incubated are basically dead:

Previously, the number of live streaming rooms with natural traffic online had dropped to single digits, and traffic investment was also greatly restricted. No matter how we reduced the ROI, we couldn’t spend the money.

I’m back from vacation, and I can’t make it through payment, so being able to spend 50% is a success.

Since you are in the game, it doesn’t matter whether you are pessimistic or optimistic. The key is to make the right prediction and find a breakthrough.

Regarding video account e-commerce, some recent thoughts:

1. Has the video account reached the dawn of its explosion?

2. What is the correct cognitive framework for video account e-commerce?

3. How should you enter the game?

01 Quietly, but profitable

Most of the pessimism and pessimism about Video Accounts are not objective.

Rather, it is a blame caused by overly high expectations based on WeChat's national-level traffic.

"With such a huge amount of traffic, we only achieved such a small amount of performance", "With various strict restrictions, the traffic cannot be increased"...

In fact, as a "relatively new" e-commerce platform, Video Account's data is growing rapidly.

Taking Tencent’s second quarter financial report data as an example, as of June 30, 2024, the total monthly active users of WeChat and its overseas version of WeChat further increased to 1.371 billion, and the total user time of video accounts in the quarter increased by more than 20% year-on-year.

Video accounts have 520 million daily active users, more than twice that of WeChat Moments. The data should be growing faster now.

Some people are still predicting a decline, while others are already making money.

Making money is also done quietly.

The video account is very "WeChat", but it does not have large traffic distribution and does not have third-party sales data.

The video account is like the "Dark Forest" in "The Three-Body Problem", where each person develops his or her own "civilization" and establishes his or her own live broadcast style and system.

For example, one of the live broadcast rooms our team collaborated on was for high-end women’s clothing, and the manager was the owner of a traditional offline buyer’s store who had never done e-commerce before.

The live broadcast room has strong product shaping capabilities, with GPM (gross money per thousand views) reaching 2w+. In the last few hours of the live broadcast, the average person stayed for 90 minutes, and the overall return rate was less than 40%. Currently, the monthly sales are increasing to around 10 million.

This live broadcast room has been in operation for 4 months, with a monthly net profit of approximately 2 million.

However, all this was done quietly and no one knew about it.

All the third-party data platforms for video accounts charge extremely high fees. But they are useless, so I won’t name them one by one.

Since the video account has not opened a third-party data interface, the data on all third-party data platforms are incomplete and completely inaccurate.

Not only is it a waste of money, but it can also be misleading.

In short, don't buy it.

"Dark Forest" has no instruction manual and no third-party data, which makes it particularly unfriendly to e-commerce players who have adapted to the Jingtao, Douyin and Kuaishou systems.

However, it has allowed another group of people who have adapted to the WeChat ecosystem to grow quietly.

02 What is the right thing to do?

The trouble that video accounts bring to e-commerce people is that they don’t know what the correct understanding is.

Because there is no official operational guidance and no third-party data platform for you to refer to, you can only explore on your own.

So what is the correct cognitive framework? The video account team probably doesn’t know either.

Because they are also observing as they go along, using "product thinking" to optimize algorithms and rules during development.

After four years of working on the video account, I have repeatedly iterated my cognition:

1. User habits determine the form of content.

Middle-aged and elderly users are still the main force of video account e-commerce users. What they need is sincerity and companionship, so the live broadcast format needs to be innovative to adapt to them.

At present, the official rules point to "only normal broadcasting is allowed", which means that the anchor cannot use routines excessively: holding back orders, routines, cheating, etc.

Once "inducement" is detected, points will be deducted, traffic will be restricted, traffic will be cut off, or even the account will be blocked.

Users are too naive and too easily deceived, so the routine is banned.

2. Establish “WeChat traffic thinking”.

How does WeChat generate traffic? It’s all based on acquaintances.

Therefore, if you want to obtain new public domain traffic and sales conversions, you essentially need to turn new traffic into acquaintance relationships.

How to do it?

First of all, the establishment of a personal IP makes trust the foundation.

There is no need to say more about this. Just shoot more short videos and increase the authenticity of the interactions.

Secondly, establish the "first transaction relationship" in the live broadcast room. Doing business is a matter of practice, and the first order is actually the most important point in whether the live broadcast room can increase its volume.

Without this awareness, it will be difficult to develop a video account.

Unlike Douyin, Kuaishou, Taobao and JD.com, their users come to the "platform" to shop in their minds, and all trust is built on full trust in the platform's rules.

The mindset of video accounts comes from the habit of using WeChat, and users still have to buy things from people they trust.

Where does trust come from?

As long as we think about this issue day and night, the video account business will get better and better.

03 Correct entry posture

If the video account remains a "dark forest", the day will never dawn for many people.

Some people are still there before dawn, while others are already scorching hot.

Which part of the world are you? The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras described it in his article:

Among those who go to the Olympics, some go to compete, some go to be referees, some go to sell water, and some go to be spectators.

Let’s talk about the roles and entry positions of video account e-commerce:

1. Unlike Douyin, the "first user" of Video Account is the merchant, not the influencer.

Because Douyin's traffic depends on influencers to create content, while WeChat does not need that and the traffic is ready-made.

Although influencers are needed to contribute content to keep short videos active, e-commerce live broadcast rooms may be separated from short videos.

Selling goods is selling goods, and entertainment is entertainment.

This is a big difference. Purely selling accounts like Simba and Dongfang Zhenxuan do not rely on short videos to create their accounts.

This determines that merchants with goods are the first users of Video Account and are also the group of people who can enjoy the biggest benefits of Video Account e-commerce.

A cruel truth: there are no top influencers on video accounts, so it is difficult to go the route of influencer distribution because they are too small and scattered, and the BD cost is high.

One conclusion: Merchants on Video Accounts must find a way to sell goods through live streaming.

2. Experts must find ways to develop private domains.

The algorithm of the video account cannot run smoothly with large traffic, which means you must find a way to reuse your traffic.

Developing private domain may be the ultimate approach.

Despite various rules to "restrict the transfer of public domains to private domains", adding a WeChat account is still not a difficult task within the WeChat ecosystem.

You see, the ways of playing in this ecosystem are different, and everyone needs to find a way under the rules.

All of this tests your cognition and your ability to obtain resources.

Quiet, but undercurrent is surging.

It is a dark forest where you can’t see your hand in front of you. Since we cannot gain a lot of experience and knowledge from public channels, we must stick together for warmth.