The traffic of video accounts has suddenly increased. Some people have encountered bottlenecks, while others have started to scale up.

As an emerging e-commerce platform, Video Account is experiencing rapid changes in traffic. With the influx of new merchants, competition for free public domain traffic has become increasingly fierce, making it more difficult to rely on natural traffic growth. Merchants have begun to seek more refined operational strategies, achieving scale growth and improving transaction efficiency through a combination of natural traffic and commercial traffic, as well as omni-channel operations within the WeChat ecosystem.

"This year, everything is difficult, and I feel that the business has reached a bottleneck period," the founder and CEO of a food brand told Yibang Power. After reaping a wave of explosive growth in video accounts last year, they expected to take another step forward this year, but monthly sales are still fluctuating. The brand is known for its quality and entered the video account market early on. Previously, it relied on natural traffic and influencer distribution to achieve sales of millions in a single event.

This is also a microcosm of the current changes in video account traffic. This year, new merchants have flocked into Video Accounts and are stepping up competition with players who have reaped the benefits, which is rapidly diluting the free public domain traffic obtained by individual merchants. In addition, as techniques such as low prices and holding back orders are gradually becoming outdated, the stage of merchants "picking up money" seems to be over.

Some sensitive merchants have discovered that video accounts are still in their bonus period for selling goods, but the focus and difficulty of making money have changed. Under the anxiety of traffic, merchants' awareness of payment is gradually increasing, and they use a combination of natural + commercial traffic to quickly start up accounts, stabilize conversions, and attract new customers on a large scale; some merchants are gradually increasing their ecological strategies, leveraging more WeChat global traffic through the linkage between public and private domains.

Yibang Power surveyed front-line traders, and most of them reported that the traffic environment of video accounts is no longer as loose as before, and the practice of grabbing free traffic is no longer effective. Now there is a more refined approach, and the merchants who are getting results now are using natural flow + WeChat beans + ADQ to explore suitable experience and strategies. However, the traffic is unstable and the effect needs to be improved, which is still the expectation of many businesses.

Tencent’s second quarter 2024 financial report also confirmed this trend, with video account advertising revenue increasing by more than 80% year-on-year in that quarter. In addition, video accounts also appear in the financial reports of some retail brands. For example, in its 2024 semi-annual report, 361 Degrees Group mentioned that e-commerce grew by more than 20% in the first half of this year, of which video accounts grew by more than 80% year-on-year. The marketing director of Shengjian Goat Milk also told Yibang Power: "This year's growth rate is faster, and the commercial traffic is better than last year."

For merchants that have completed the account creation and are experiencing the process of growing from 1 to 10, most are no longer limited to the single-core layout of the video account, but are exploring new paths for full-area operations with the help of official accounts, mini-programs, corporate WeChat and other touchpoints. This circular operating model of public-private domain linkage + commercial traffic assistance has also become the core strategy for the continued growth of video account merchants.

01 Merchants with keen sense of smell quietly make plans, and three major changes have occurred on the merchant side

Experienced traders usually have extremely strong sensitivity and insight, and also master the latest operating methods and techniques. Since the beginning of this year, many traders have clearly realized that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tap the benefits of video accounts by relying solely on natural traffic.

Especially during big promotions, once the top players start broadcasting, other live broadcast rooms that only rely on natural traffic to bring goods will immediately see a decline in traffic. "On the one hand, the traffic environment of video accounts is different from before. On the other hand, the era of quickly creating accounts by pulling accounts at low prices is over." A video account operator in Guangzhou believes that if merchants want to make a new account, they need to have a stable audience and conversion, and they need to shift from obtaining free traffic to a traffic combination.

As the traffic environment changes, there are also many subtle changes on the merchant side.

First of all, the merchants’ mentality has changed. Simply put, they “started to get anxious.” Last year, the general mentality of many businesses was to seek growth in a casual manner. This year, most businesses that have completed the cold start are going through the process from 1 to 10. They also have to balance traffic, profit and growth, for fear of missing out on the video account dividend and falling behind.

In a stage where traffic is becoming increasingly tight, businesses are more concerned about achieving stable conversions and expanding their user pool through tools such as traffic investment. The head of e-commerce of a certain brand merchant said that at this stage, commercial traffic has a first-mover advantage. Under reasonable ROI, they will try their best to attract new users and increase sales, and settle users in the private domain. "This is the core advantage of the video account, and it is also the reason why we are willing to invest."

Secondly, the environment has changed. Traditional e-commerce platforms have cut both volume and price, and many merchants have accelerated their shift to video accounts, hoping to quickly build up their accounts and gain volume. Newly entered merchants can quickly obtain seed users and user portraits through traffic investment, shorten the cold start period, and exchange funds for time; those that have completed the cold start hope to achieve stable conversions and large-scale new customers, so as to obtain a reasonable profit in addition to growth.

Many successful cases interviewed by Yibang Power this year have achieved the exploration from 1 to 10 through the above method, such as the official flagship store of China Tea, Farmona, Corning Kitchenware EKCO and Shengjian Goat Milk. (For reference, read "How are those merchants who just joined the video account to sell goods this year doing?")

Shengjian Goat Milk tried to use the video account last year but failed. This year, they tried again using the video account and adopted a more focused strategy of promoting single products, positioning the average customer price between 500 and 1,000 yuan. This adjustment soon showed results.

The brand's marketing director introduced that they used a combination of ADQ and WeChat Beans to attract traffic to the live broadcast room, which was effective quickly and accurately reached target consumers, and the traffic and attention of the live broadcast room increased rapidly; due to the social nature of the video account platform, consumers have relatively high recognition and trust in the brand, and the company's average order value on the video account is twice as high as that on other platforms.

Due to higher product quality, average order value and lower return rate, Video Account merchants can maintain profitability at a lower ROI level than similar platforms, which in turn drives a group of high-priced products and merchants into Video Account. Brands that have completed the process from 0 to 1 and are gradually moving from 1 to 10 on Video Account this year include Corning, Zhihe, Zhongcha, and Qianhuang.

Finally, all the strategies are in place, especially the leading players continue to increase their investment in the WeChat ecosystem, driving traffic and transactions across the board. Nestlé has leveraged its global advantages to achieve growth and explosive growth this year. In May, Nestlé took advantage of the "Nanjing Auntie" hot topic to promote and preheat the video account, and mobilized all official private domain touchpoints, such as social groups, mini-programs, and corporate WeChat, to reach and activate brand fans, and also to take over the traffic brought by the explosive content. Combined with the launch of ADQ and WeChat Beans, the number of people online in Nestlé’s live broadcast room on the first day of 618 exceeded 10,000, and the number of daily viewers exceeded 100,000.

Generally speaking, the inventory and pricing systems of leading brands are relatively complex, and it is difficult for them to extricate themselves from this feast in the short term. This instead leaves many mid-tier brands and ordinary merchants with a rare window of opportunity.

02 It is more difficult to get free traffic and increase the number of accounts, and the benefits of large-scale new user acquisition are apparent

For most players, after entering the video account and completing the test from 0 to 1, how to quickly increase the volume or break through the bottleneck becomes the key. At the end of last year, Bama Tea joined the daily broadcast ranks of the video account, and delivered traffic through WeChat Beans and ADQ every day. The ROI could reach 4-5 times during the best period, but now Bama Tea has also encountered a bottleneck in traffic growth, which is a common problem among brands.

Some businesses have reported that their scale cannot be expanded mostly because there are no new customers joining, while the number of old customers is limited. Once they fail to repurchase in time or are completely lost, sales will inevitably decline. Merchants that continue to make breakthroughs are usually able to maintain repurchase from old customers and continuously attract new users from the public domain and convert them into old customers.

Last year, when businesses started their own video accounts, most of them relied on good content, good products, and good services to continuously leverage public domain traffic and play with the linkage between public and private domains. However, after merchants entered the market on a large scale this year, competition for natural traffic intensified. Many operators have reported on Video Account that "it has become more difficult to rely solely on natural traffic for cold start, or to have stable conversions."

Some businesses want to simply copy the practice of violent traffic flow on other platforms, but in the end they can also achieve the desired effect. Zhang Shipeng, the manager of the video account beauty brand, believes that if the content and products in the live broadcast room fail to achieve good consumption under natural traffic, continuous traffic delivery will be counterproductive, leading to a gradual deterioration of the effect.

They have formed a more mature operating model, which is to attract old customers through WeChat Beans to maintain the transaction base, and attract new users through ADQ. Although the ROI of ADQ may not be proportional, they focus more on the number of new users attracted through ADQ and count the purchases of new users every day.

Brands face the same challenges when they try to scale up. An e-commerce operator in Guangzhou mentioned that if merchants want to survive the initial stage from 1 to 10, they must consider how to continuously and scale up the traffic; WeChat Beans can reach video account transaction users to ensure stable conversion, and ADQ can expand new users from across Tencent to achieve large-scale new user acquisition.

It is worth noting that for several quarters, Tencent has been working hard to increase the proportion of internal circulation advertising, introducing more and more traffic into transaction scenarios through advertising. In particular, the process has been significantly accelerated this year, and the benefits of merchants' large-scale volume grabbing have emerged: ADQ can be launched on video accounts and Moments with one click, connecting Tencent Video, Tencent News, QQ and other Tencent's full-domain traffic, allowing jumps to video account live broadcast rooms; WeChat advertising has opened up the ability to jump directly to the product page of the video account store (now upgraded to "WeChat Store"), opening up a larger traffic pool for short video merchants.

Gong Haihan, CEO of the video account marketing technology company "Baizhun", pointed out that the overall traffic conversion efficiency of the video account still has room for improvement. Merchants can also improve the accuracy of their own traffic through trial, deployment and refined operations.

The commercial infrastructure of Video Account is also continuously iterating. According to feedback from some businesses, after recently switching to Tencent's new advertising system (3.0), the ROI of some industries has increased significantly. The new system increases the data granularity at the delivery end. E-commerce and consumer product delivery require more detailed information to be filled in, such as product name, category, brand, raw material ingredients, season, and suitable population, etc.

However, Video Account is a platform in its growth stage, and various sophisticated operation tools have yet to be improved. In addition, with the support of Tencent's private domain ecosystem, its traffic conversion process may be more complicated. In addition to looking at short-term ROI, many businesses will also look at the overall ROI by comprehensively considering demands such as attracting new customers, private domains, and user operations.

This summer, in order to cope with the problem of low conversion rate of live broadcast room traffic during the big promotion, some merchants and influencers turned to increasing the delivery of content materials to drive traffic to the live broadcast room. For example, top influencer Guo Yiyi has done several live broadcasts without selling any products. He only chatted with fans and used a link at the bottom to promote reservations for the next live broadcast with products. It is said that through the promotion, the number of reservations reached 100,000, and the conversion effect was better than directly launching a live broadcast room with products.

This "still to be perfected" and complex transformation process is often criticized, but it is also an opportunity for some people. Wu Yanfei, CEO of Yinbao Technology, mentioned that our consumption data before June 18 was approximately 10 million. With the entry of brands and the increase in content, by the time of Double Eleven, live broadcast consumption may reach around 30 million. The traffic and advertising potential of video accounts will be further released, which will also bring more opportunities.

Jian Feng, CEO of Zero One Digital Technology, is more optimistic. He predicted to Ebrun that in the three years from 2024 to 2026, the platform will at least not be involuted, but it is necessary to choose the right industry. "My friends who are in the top four categories (shoes and clothing/food/jewelry/beauty) have basically made money. So-called fishing is to fish where there are fish."

03 Short-term dividends, long-term overall view, transaction ceiling further increased

A major advantage of video accounts in selling goods, which is different from traditional e-commerce platforms, is the ecosystem. It connects the social, search, recommendation, private domain and traffic investment of the WeChat ecosystem, and encourages merchants to use platform tools and methods to operate independently. A person from a foreign beauty brand once said that although the sales focus was not placed on video accounts, it still invested money in content and delivery, and in 2024 it would vigorously expand the brand's traffic pool, user touchpoints and operational channels.

Tencent is also constantly strengthening this ecological advantage. Starting from August 25, the video account store will be upgraded to the WeChat store. In the future, the merchant’s store or product link can not only be posted on the video account, but also on the official account, and be linked to the mini program through the open API interface, and appear in the WeChat search result list. In the Tencent earnings analyst conference call, Tencent executives said:

"We have recently repositioned our live streaming sales to make it more like a WeChat sales system. We will work with the ecosystem, not just based on video accounts and live streaming. We will build a sales ecosystem within WeChat, connected to the entire WeChat ecosystem, and still leverage the power of video accounts and live streaming. At the same time, it will be connected to all products in the WeChat ecosystem, including official accounts, mini programs, enterprise WeChat, and all social and group activities in WeChat." This means that an ecosystem in which WeChat stores supply goods, video accounts, official accounts, mini programs, and SouYiso provide content scenarios and touchpoints, and thus realize decentralized transactions, has gradually taken shape.

For merchants, first of all, opening up the entire region means greatly expanding the touchpoints for merchants to distribute goods and serve users. For example, a merchant who upgraded to a WeChat store said that traffic generation was smoother than before. Especially in the past two years, public accounts, video accounts, etc. have continuously strengthened algorithm recommendations, and search product capabilities have been continuously iterated, providing a good business scenario for merchants and experts with content capabilities.

Yibang Power once disclosed that the top merchants generally have monthly sales of between 10 million and 20 million yuan on video accounts, the middle and lower merchants have monthly sales of between 5 million and 10 million yuan, and the bottom merchants have monthly sales of between 500,000 and 1 million yuan. In the past, if merchants wanted to increase their monthly GMV, in addition to focusing on video accounts, they could also divert traffic from scenarios such as Moments, mini-programs, official accounts, and corporate WeChat. In the future, they don’t have to direct traffic to the live broadcast room. Conversions and transactions can be completed through mini-programs, search engines, official accounts, and other scenarios. This will inevitably increase transaction penetration and repurchase rates, thereby greatly improving traffic conversion efficiency, including natural and paid traffic.

Secondly, the GMV ceiling of merchants in the WeChat ecosystem has been further opened, especially for merchants with content capabilities, the ability to attract public domain traffic and private domain operations. In addition to raising the ceiling of KA players and accelerating the process from 10 to 100, opening up the entire domain will also help many small and medium-sized businesses and creators to layout content and transaction systems based on their own and category characteristics, thereby enriching WeChat's transaction ecosystem.

It should be realized that the above changes are a reinforcement of Tencent's ecological advantages, and the corresponding strategies and gameplay should also be based on the strengthening of ecological advantages rather than starting from scratch. Ebrun believes that the interaction between public and private domains will be the core strategy for growth in the future, and the combination of WeChat Beans and ADQ will be the core approach to growth.

Finally, connecting the entire WeChat domain makes the linkage between public and private domains smoother and provides more room for gameplay. Li Hao, founder of Kas Consulting, believes that the essence of video e-commerce is the attribute of trust. Whether there will be more ways to combine public and private domains in the second half of the year is also a point worthy of special attention. Video Account is a field with relatively wide adaptability, and all kinds of brands or businesses can find their integration models in Video Account.

Yibang Power believes that returning to the essence, the best way for merchants to improve ROI on video accounts is still content. Whether it is a cold start from 0 to 1, or a breakthrough from 1 to 10, from short videos to live streaming, only by establishing a good personality through content, providing good services and products, and adding traffic dividends and ecological combination gameplay can long-term operation and profit be achieved.

Text丨Dong Jinpeng Editor丨Shi Lei This article is written by the author of Operation School [Yibang Power], WeChat public account: [Yibang Power], original/authorized to be published in Operation School, any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

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