With 5.28 million new users in one year, are small and medium-sized influencers taking the center stage in Douyin's e-commerce?

Small and medium-sized influencers are becoming the backbone of Douyin e-commerce. There are 5.28 million new influencers, a year-on-year increase of 74%; among authors with annual sales of 500,000 to 5 million, 81% of influencers have less than 100,000 fans... These are the data released by the "2024 Douyin E-commerce Influencer Growth Report". Since the beginning of this year, the fading out or withdrawal of super-head anchors from the live broadcast room has been a hot topic in the industry, and "de-heading" has almost become a consensus on the platform. So, how can the platform leverage new growth? Can small and medium-sized influencers take up the banner?

Small and medium-sized influencers are becoming the backbone of Douyin's e-commerce.

There are 5.28 million new influencers, a year-on-year increase of 74%; among the authors with annual sales of 500,000 to 5 million, 81% have less than 100,000 fans... These are the data released by the "2024 Douyin E-commerce Influencer Growth Report".

Since the beginning of this year, the fading out or exit of top anchors from the live broadcast room has been a hot topic in the industry, and "de-heading" has almost become a consensus among the platforms.

So, how can the platform leverage new growth? Can small and medium-sized talents take up the banner?

1. Small and medium-sized talents take the center stage

On July 24, Douyin e-commerce held a "New Income, New Consumption" theme sharing session in Beijing. On the same day, Douyin e-commerce released the "2024 Douyin e-commerce talent growth report".

The report shows that in the past year, Douyin e-commerce has added 5.28 million new influencers, a year-on-year increase of 74%, the total live broadcast time of influencers increased by 40% year-on-year, and the total sales of influencers increased by 43% year-on-year. A large number of high-quality creators have found new development paths on Douyin e-commerce.

In the past year, among the authors whose annual sales on the platform reached 500,000 to 5 million, 81% had less than 100,000 fans. Small and medium-sized influencers have become the backbone of sales.

In the first half of 2024, about 560,000 small and medium-sized influencers sold goods on the platform every day, and the order volume increased by 65% ​​year-on-year.

The increase in the number of mid-level influencers is related to the support plan launched by Douyin e-commerce.

It is understood that Douyin has launched a number of plans to support small and medium-sized anchors, such as "Looking for Companions", and has helped small and medium-sized anchors and businesses gain more attention and development opportunities through special support projects such as "Mountain Products on the Headlines" and "Seeing the Craftsmanship Plan".

There is also a special training program for potential talents - the Star Leap Plan, which provides exclusive support for potential talents with high business diligence, good product prices and good user experience, and provides billions of traffic to help talents operate and grow efficiently.

In addition, Douyin e-commerce has also upgraded its influencer rating system, adding two new evaluation indicators: "price score" and "number of operating days", aiming to increase the activity and price power of influencers on the platform.

Adjustments to these plans and related evaluation systems will help high-quality influencers and businesses grow, and promote the emergence of more successful cases of small and medium-sized influencers.

At the meeting, five representatives of Douyin e-commerce influencers came to the scene and shared their stories.

For example, electrician Wang Jiansheng filmed a maintenance video that attracted 8 million people to watch, sold out the inventory of pointer meter manufacturers, and sold more than one million power tools; the host of the children's channel switched careers to explore a new track for knowledge sales, and raised children scientifically with the "post-95s" and "post-00s"; from a programmer to "Director Xiao Yang", a young man from Inner Mongolia, Yang Guomin, cleverly used the balcony economy to create a niche "explosive product", selling 300 tons of sheep manure fertilizer in a month...

The new broadcast site also discovered that these five talents are not all top talents. The number of fans of "the unpopular champion Li Yuanyuan Aquatic Products Management Department" is 200,000, and the number of fans of "Director Xiao Yang" is 300,000.

These influencers do not have any organization, and they rely on their own professional knowledge and product selection ability to bring goods. These cases also show that when the top anchors gradually fade out or even exit the stage, more and more mid-level influencers have blazed a trail for small and medium-sized anchors to bring goods with good content and their own expertise.

2. Super bulls exit the market, and everything comes to life after a whale falls

This year, the fading out or exit of top anchors from live broadcast rooms was once a hot topic in the industry.

In March this year, the news that Xiao Yangge had withdrawn from the live broadcast room became a hot topic. At present, it seems that Xiao Yangge's work focus has shifted from the live broadcast room to broader areas, such as short plays, music festivals and his own brands.

Not long ago, Luo Wangyu, a top beauty anchor who was caught up in a public opinion storm, also announced her withdrawal from the Internet.

In addition to the TikTok platform, Li Jiaqi is also fading from the live broadcast room. On August 1, Li Jiaqi was rumored to participate in the variety show "Brothers Who Make Waves 4", and the topic #皮哥4官宣李佳琪# also became a hot search on Weibo.

The top anchors' desire to quit is related to their own development plans and the fading benefits of the live streaming e-commerce industry. As the biggest beneficiaries of the myth of wealth creation in live streaming e-commerce, top anchors once firmly held the right to speak. However, with the development of the industry, both users and merchants have begun to disenchant them.

For users, many incidents of big anchors failing in recent years have made them realize that the products of top anchors are not necessarily guaranteed.

For example, the "CSS Olive Essence" incident caused many beauty bloggers to fail, exposing the loopholes of beauty bloggers in product testing.

For merchants, a top anchor does not necessarily mean high GMV.

In January this year, a brand owner revealed that Yang Zi and Huang Shengyi went to the live broadcast room of Douyin influencer @cousin (覃进降) to sell goods. The person in charge of a bacon brand prepared bacon products worth 1.7 million yuan for this purpose, but only one order was sold.

According to a previous report by Blue Whale News, the sales of the first live broadcasts of bloggers such as the Guangdong Couple, Qi'er, Pan Yurun, and Xiao Bingchuan during the promotion period decreased by more than 70% year-on-year. Among them, the sales of former top beauty anchor Luo Wangyu during the 618 promotion this year plummeted by more than 90%. The appeal of the top anchors is no longer what it used to be.

As for the platforms, de-centralization has long been a consensus in the industry. After all, the disadvantages of over-reliance on top influencers are obvious.

When a whale dies, everything comes to life. In the live e-commerce industry, this means that the exit of top anchors will release more traffic for mid-level and even bottom anchors.

In addition to Douyin e-commerce, Kuaishou e-commerce has also recently launched support policies to help the small and medium-sized talents and new talents on the platform grow their business. Kuaishou e-commerce has launched a "deposit discount" policy and "start broadcasting rewards" support for Kuaishou small store talents, further reducing the operating costs and thresholds of platform talents, and helping them expand their business growth space.

In order to reduce the operating pressure of small and medium-sized influencers, Kuaishou E-Commerce launched a preferential deposit policy, which significantly reduced the deposit amount based on the previous three basic deposit levels of 200 yuan, 500 yuan and 1,000 yuan.

3. How do small and medium-sized talents break through?

According to LatePost, Douyin e-commerce has recently adjusted its business objectives and priorities, no longer putting "price power" first, and will focus on pursuing GMV growth in the second half of the year. At the beginning of this year, achieving low prices was still the most important task for Douyin e-commerce, followed by the "perfect order rate" that measures consumer experience and the number of monthly transaction customers (MAC) that reflects the scale of e-commerce users, while GMV ranked last.

Some industry insiders believe that after abandoning the "price power" strategy, Douyin e-commerce will now turn its attention to small and medium-sized influencers on the platform and help them grow, returning to its best path of using content to promote sales, that is, paying more attention to "content power."

The ability of small and medium-sized influencers to bring goods can also be seen from the "2024 Douyin E-commerce Semi-annual Report" released by Chanmama.

The report shows that in the first half of the year, the number of small Douyin e-commerce influencers (with 10,000-100,000 fans) grew the fastest, followed by mid-level influencers, and the number of top influencers decreased by 3.2% year-on-year.

In terms of sales power, the average sales power of the tail influencers (with less than 10,000 fans) increased most significantly, with a year-on-year increase of 79%; followed by the top influencers, with a year-on-year increase of 39%.

Image source: Chan Mama "2024 Douyin E-commerce Semi-annual Report"

This shows that small and medium-sized influencers have great potential to bring products and obvious room for growth.

After all, compared to the top anchors who are hard to come by, difficult to train, and limited in number, there are more small and medium-sized talents, and they cover a wider range of fields. Secondly, the high prices offered by top anchors often discourage businesses, while small and medium-sized talents are more cost-effective and more popular.

We are also increasingly finding that in today's live streaming e-commerce industry, the product mechanisms that influencers can get are no longer very different, that is, the prices are the same. So why users choose to buy from you is a test of both people and content.

Therefore, for small and medium-sized influencers, good product selection and returning to content are the key to creating differentiation and breaking through.