Content e-commerce, recreating Black Friday in the US

With the booming development of the digital economy, content e-commerce is gradually becoming a new consumer hotspot, especially in the US market. Content e-commerce platforms represented by TikTok Shop are reshaping the shopping experience and bringing the traditional "Black Friday" shopping festival to a new climax.

"Black Friday in November is the shopping festival with the highest discounts in North America. Combined with Cyber ​​Monday before and after the Thanksgiving holiday, it is a good opportunity for international students to grab bargains." Joyce, who is studying in the United States, shared her experience of "shopping" in the United States with Xiaguang Society. "Black Friday", a festival that originated in Philadelphia, the United States in the mid-20th century, is the world's first real shopping carnival. In the digital economy era, Black Friday has also become a must-fight for e-commerce platforms.

Data shows that in 2023, 72% of consumers prefer online shopping during Black Friday, and this trend is expected to continue in 2024. With the increase in exposure of this topic on social media, sales of this shopping festival will continue to rise in the future.

In terms of leading consumer trends and fashion trends, TikTok has 170 million monthly active users in the United States, and its influence is undoubtedly crucial. This year, the discussion topics of users on the TikTok platform have already formed a strong popularity in the United States on Black Friday, with more than 200,000 videos with the Black Friday promotion tag and more than 2 billion views.

In previous years, mainstream American social software, including TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, mainly played the role of topic discussion and media platform. However, with the launch of TikTok Shop in the United States in September 2023, TikTok Shop has accelerated the internal transformation of its own content capabilities and product sales, thereby further enriching the shopping options of American consumers. After a year, while TikTok Shop has developed rapidly on the platform, a large number of cross-border merchants' content e-commerce businesses have also achieved considerable growth. TikTok Shop has become the top 1 to top 3 GMV contribution channel for many merchants, and has officially become a fast-growing platform that is very different from other e-commerce. This year, with the Black Friday atmosphere in the United States becoming increasingly strong, some merchants have revealed that they will focus on sales and self-operation around TikTok. Not only will they prepare to concentrate the launch of new Black Friday products on TikTok Shop, but they will also direct all traffic from media publications, television, print advertising, etc. placed in the United States to TikTok Shop.

TikTok Shop is rapidly growing into a powerful new force in the United States by relying on its unique content e-commerce model.

1. Reshaping the North American e-commerce ecosystem

Looking back at the development of TikTok Shop in the United States, September 12, 2023 is undoubtedly a critical node. The launch of TikTok Shop in the United States became a milestone in the global development of TikTok Shop. Since then, the number of TikTok merchants has continued to increase significantly, and GMV has also seen a sharp rise.

On TikTok Shop, an emerging content e-commerce platform, merchants either quickly capture the market through precise SKU placement and expert short videos, or deepen brand value through careful operation of official accounts and self-made content. Many overseas brands took this opportunity to leap into the North American market, and more and more stories of brand sellers with annual sales of tens of millions of dollars in the US region of TikTok Shop are emerging. Many players even assert: "2024 will definitely be the year of the explosion of TikTok Shop in the US."

In June 2023, there were nearly 42,000 influencers on TikTok in the United States with 50,000 to 100,000 followers, and about 35,500 influencers with 100,000 to 250,000 followers. "TikTok is becoming a one-stop content store in an unprecedented way," said Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at the Pew Research Center.

If the large number of Internet celebrities is only the basic soil for the development of content e-commerce, then the influencers who bring goods directly help merchants to bring goods. According to the latest data released by TikTok Shop cross-border e-commerce, the number of TikTok Shop content e-commerce creators has increased by 13 times year-on-year. The ability of influencers to attract money is also becoming more and more excellent, and "million-dollar live broadcast rooms" continue to emerge. Canvas Beauty's single live broadcast GMV exceeded one million US dollars in the mid-year promotion, and simplymandys's summer promotion exceeded the peak of one million US dollar live broadcast rooms.

In the US market, relying on strong consumer demand and intuitive and diverse marketing effects, care and beauty products have long been the top categories on TikTok Shop. Among them, Canvas beauty, a brand founded by American black woman Stormi Steele, created a record of sales of over $1 million in a single live broadcast on TikTok. Founder Stormi Steele deeply combines personal IP with brand concept, shares daily life through TikTok, and conveys the concept of women's self-acceptance and healthy life; she cooperates with more than 4,000 waist influencers to promote products and accurately reach consumer circles. With high-quality content and influencer marketing, Canvas beauty successfully created a record of one million US dollars in live broadcast GMV on TikTok Shop.

Creating Canvas beauty that made over $1 million in a single TikTok live broadcast

On TikTok Shop, merchants have also achieved great success in their own live broadcasts. For example, during the back-to-school season, Pop Mart's single-game sales exceeded 280,000 US dollars, setting a new record for cross-border brand self-broadcast sales. Vasquez, from the Bay Area of ​​the United States, is a loyal fan of Pop Mart. In order to buy new dolls, she would rush from Daly City to the Pop Mart store in Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco after get off work and queue for more than four hours. Now the Pop Mart live broadcast room on TikTok Shop provides her with a new option.

Pop Mart sets new sales record for cross-border brands’ self-broadcasting

However, although the development of content e-commerce represented by TikTok Shop is already rapid enough, it is different from the operating logic of traditional e-commerce. Content e-commerce needs to be viewed in the long term. Because the accumulation and precipitation of good content and the fermentation and breaking of product reputation all require intensive cultivation and steady progress. Therefore, for sellers, not only do they need to warm up and prepare for a rainy day during shopping festivals such as Black Friday, but they also need to enter the US market to seize the opportunity.

Merchants who have successfully occupied the minds of consumers pay more attention to the content stickiness and long-tail effect of TikTok Shop. According to a report by eMarketer, as of February this year, 81.3% of TikTok Shop purchases were completed by existing customers, up from 64% in November 2023. This shows that consumers are satisfied enough with their purchases and are willing to become repeat customers. eMarketer also predicts that by 2027, each consumer's annual shopping expenditure on social media platforms will almost double, jumping from US$628 in 2023 to US$1,224. As the only large-scale content e-commerce platform overseas, TikTok Shop is not only reshaping the North American e-commerce ecosystem, but will also have a long-term impact on the global e-commerce shopping trend.

Content e-commerce is becoming increasingly popular around the world.

2. The “Big Promotion War” is advancing rapidly

For content e-commerce, big promotions are undoubtedly a critical node for impacting the existing competitive landscape and achieving breakthrough growth.

Now, TikTok Shop is also holding high the banner of big promotion and actively expanding its sales scale. As a social platform that gathers many influencers and has high stickiness, TikTok Shop is also an excellent place to ferment the festival atmosphere and spread hot topics. It has a huge natural advantage in converting traffic into sales. At the same time, TikTok Shop's excellent user sharing ecology and influencer recommendation content ecology also provide more possibilities for merchants to create hot products and lead consumption trends. Merchants can focus on incubating hot products here to achieve a leap in sales.

Here, merchants can work with influencers and users to create diverse, interesting and exciting short video content. They can also provide users with immersive experiences and interactive gameplay through live broadcasts, allowing products to be presented in the most intuitive and clear way, directly hitting the needs and minds of consumers.

As Mr. Xu, the head of TikTok Shop operations at Chaoyang Technology, an overseas merchant, said: "Traditional shelf e-commerce traffic mainly comes from search. Once we have achieved a certain level of ranking, the subsequent traffic needs a long period of accumulation before we can slowly increase sales. But TikTok Shop is different. The attributes of content e-commerce determine that its explosive power is pulsed. As long as a video becomes popular, it can explode immediately."

Image source: Chaoyang Technology

In 2023, TikTok Shop joined the Black Friday campaign in the U.S. for the first time, and its total GMV set a new record in the U.S. Data shows that during the Black Friday promotion, the GMV of cross-border merchants in the U.S. increased by 6 times, firing the first shot of TikTok Shop's promotion in the U.S.

After making its debut on Black Friday last year, TikTok Shop's GMV data continued to rise in several major promotional events in 2024. In the 2024 mid-summer promotion, the overall GMV of the TikTok Shop platform increased by 129%, setting a new single-day GMV record in the US region, and the first million-dollar live broadcast room in the US region was born here; in the mid-year promotion, the overall GMV of the platform increased by 145%, and a new million-dollar live broadcast room and the first $100,000 live broadcast room for merchants were born; in the back-to-school season promotion, the overall GMV in the US region exploded by 117%, of which the content field GMV exploded by 118%.

Looking back at previous major promotions and platform events, key merchants on TikTok Shop have achieved explosive performance. For example, during last year's Black Friday, HoLaRa's single-day GMV increased 40 times, and Anker's single-day GMV increased 10 times.

The success of big promotions has become the key footnote for TikTok Shop's latecomer advantage and continuous catch-up in the US market. Facing the Black Friday in its second year in the US, TikTok Shop is even more ambitious with its unique model of "content e-commerce". It not only took the lead in launching merchants to prepare for the battle, but also launched the best heavyweight rights of the year: 5 billion+ off-site exposures; nearly doubled content recommendation traffic and other three modules of on-site traffic; platform concessions and subsidies for goods; exclusive slots in the live broadcast rooms of super-stars and talents; and winning Ads Credit rebates by achieving GMV targets, etc. It aims to help brands continue to incubate hot products and achieve sales explosions by providing high-quality talent resources, traffic support and other forms.

3. Rapid growth amid challenges

It is worth noting that due to the uniqueness of social culture and content ecology, content e-commerce in the United States also has unique characteristics and attributes.

First, in terms of user characteristics, TV shopping emerged in the United States in the 1980s. As a revolution in the retail industry, it quickly became popular around the world. Today, with the surging mobile Internet and the booming development of social media, the TV screens in front of consumers have switched to small mobile phone screens. Although the media is constantly changing and evolving, American consumers' demand for content-driven sales/live streaming sales has always been strong. The United States is naturally a fertile land for the prosperity of content e-commerce.

Secondly, from the perspective of influencer characteristics, American KOLs are more inclined to express personal opinions and creativity in content creation. The massive amount of high-quality content brings super high community cohesion and a sense of belonging, which in turn drives up the rate of seeding and the efficiency of product conversion.

As the global complex network research expert Barabasi expressed in his book "Links": the structure of a network is mainly dominated and played by hub nodes. It is the hub nodes that connect different social circles and form a close link in human society. In social networks, social influencers are key hub nodes. How big a social platform can be depends on how many celebrities it can cultivate on this platform. A network platform without celebrities that can only output content cannot be considered social at all and can only be called media.

Finally, in terms of product characteristics, the popular product categories in TikTok Shop in the US include beauty and personal care, women's clothing and women's underwear, sports and outdoor, mobile phones and digital, health care, etc.; as well as pet supplies and smart home categories, including smart lawn mowers, swimming pool robots, garden bird feeders, etc. are also very popular in the United States.

Therefore, cross-border sellers need to adapt to local conditions, follow local customs, and embark on the path of deeply localized content e-commerce.

LovelyWholesale (LW), a swimwear brand that has settled in the TikTok Shop platform, has also accurately captured the aesthetic preferences and popular trends of North American consumers, and carefully created a "bright color series swimwear" with novel styles and full of summer style, which quickly attracted the favor of many overseas consumers.

In terms of marketing strategy, the TikTok Shop platform operations manager worked with LW to deeply analyze market data, accurately locate trending products, and quickly produce high-quality and attractive short video materials; using the alliance talent matrix provided by the platform, by increasing the commission rate of key products, a large number of high-quality talents were stimulated to bring goods; at the same time, the platform also encourages merchants to work closely with talents to jointly plan creative content, so as to achieve continuous fermentation of the content field and significant improvement in product sales. With the help of the platform, the swimwear in LW's store has successfully achieved another leap in sales, with daily sales exceeding 1,200 orders.

LW Live Room

Euhomy Haomi, a popular Amazon seller specializing in ice makers, has taken advantage of TikTok Shop to open up a second growth curve. In July 2023, Haomi keenly captured the market potential of TikTok and became one of the first sellers to enter TikTok Shop in the US. Its small home appliance brand ranks among the top three in categories on the TikTok Shop platform. Its cumulative sales on TikTok Shop have quietly exceeded the $10 million mark, with daily sales reaching $100,000 in May this year.

The key to Haomi's success is that its team clearly understands the differences in the US market, so as to accurately adjust the content, goods and working mode. Haomi pays special attention to the high flexibility and efficiency of team structure and talent allocation. They adopt the model of "overseas shooting, domestic editing", handing over the live broadcast operation and delivery to domestic teams or international students, while the anchors are authentic Americans to ensure the local authenticity of the content and user experience.

Euhomy Haomi official website TikTok short video

It can be seen that a huge new global e-commerce opportunity is evolving in overseas markets in the same way as the e-commerce development history we have experienced. Those cross-border merchants who have smelled the same opportunities and are able to adapt to local conditions have quietly made profits, and thus, they have also stepped into the next blue ocean.

Editor | Liu Jingfeng This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Lian Meizhen], WeChat public account: [Xiaguangshe], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.