Does Bilibili make money not from e-commerce, but from e-commerce platforms?

Vipshop launched the "Weihuo Plan" through Bilibili, trying to break the traditional marketing model and attract young consumers with a more youthful image. This is not only a change in marketing strategy, but also a bold attempt to rejuvenate the brand.

Speaking of Vipshop, the scene that has left the deepest impression on people recently is the advertisement in the hit TV series "The Story of Rose". In the picture, Zhu Zhu is wearing a white polka-dot French top, with a graceful figure and a moving look, and she said the familiar advertising slogan.

Last year, "Fang Hua" was a hit, and Vipshop was not absent from the product placement. Netizens were caught off guard when they saw the advertisement, and they even called out to Wong Kar-wai, asking if he could shoot the mid-roll advertisement together.

Similar things happen almost every day. Wherever there is a modern drama, there will be Vipshop. No matter whether it is a blockbuster drama or a popular variety show, Vipshop will always be there.

Such a marketing action is very reasonable. As we all know, Vipshop's user group is mainly middle-aged women. They are either housewives who are in charge of the financial power in a small family and need to take on the shopping goals of the whole family; or female leaders in the workplace who pay attention to brands but want to be low-key and at the same time pay attention to cost-effectiveness.

With these loyal users whose purchasing power is at the "top of the pyramid", Vipshop, which should have been lying low, seems unwilling to do so.

Not long ago, Vipshop suddenly had an idea to cooperate with Bilibili, a community for young people with a high concentration of two-dimensional content and memes, in order to try some alternative marketing tricks.

On July 3, Bilibili officially announced the launch of the "Weihuo Plan", which, as the name suggests, is a set of integrated marketing plans tailored by Bilibili for Vipshop, covering both seeding and conversion. Following the Spark Plan (Alibaba) and the Jinghuo Plan (JD.com), Vipshop has also boarded Bilibili's train and joined the ranks of dancing with young people.

This can't help but make people curious, how will Bilibili and Vipshop, two players with different ambitions, styles, and low overlap in user portraits, cooperate and what kind of sparks will they create?

1. After coming to Station B, Vipshop became a three-person shop

The four words "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" are a true reflection of Vipshop's marketing route after it came to Bilibili.

First of all, Vipshop chose an anthropomorphic name for itself, not the common "Xiao Wei" or "Xiao Hui", but "Sankou Niang". We have to admit that once the word "Niang" comes out, the flavor of the second dimension is right, and everything becomes abstract.

But this is just the first step. The more abstract thing is that Sankou Niang imitates Zhang Yuanying's spinning (a Korean girl group idol), skipping the third subject, and making a drastic change to Madam Shexiang, as well as keeping up with current affairs to release a tool to increase fans - cat meme videos.

As a result, the barrage and comment area went crazy, with netizens lamenting that "the world is finally upside down" and couldn't believe that this was Vipshop's official account. After their emotions stabilized, they began to worry about the editor's mental state.

It can be seen that in order to increase fans and traffic, Vipshop broke its inherent brand image and started to "play together" with young people, or the operator under the guise of "Sankou Niang" is himself a post-00s.

Of course, in addition to the official accounts creating memes, more UP hosts have also started to share Vipshop’s products and outfits, and “treasure hunt” and “big brand bargain hunting” have become high-frequency words in such videos. In the future, we may see that the chemical reaction between Vipshop and Bilibili can create more alternative and diverse content marketing channels.

At this point, Vipshop is no longer the traditional shelf e-commerce company that "does not please young people and only wants to stabilize the basic market."

Perhaps because it has been in the social media era for too long and feels out of tune with the market education that shouts "Whoever wins the young people wins the world", Vipshop has to start trying to step out of its comfort zone.

Vipshop Chairman and CEO Shen Ya once said that Vipshop achieved performance beyond expectations in 2023. The apparel category continued to drive growth and performed better than the industry average for a full year, helping the company achieve an annual GMV total of 200 billion yuan for the first time.

Vipshop’s financial report data also shows that as of December 31, 2023, it has been profitable for 45 consecutive quarters, and the past year was also the most profitable year in Vipshop’s history.

At a time when e-commerce platforms are competing with each other by offering low prices, it is already difficult to survive in a corner. What's more, Vipshop has been able to maintain its "small and beautiful" business while achieving frequent successes. This signal is precisely the confidence that Vipshop has in stepping out of its comfort zone.

An industry insider revealed to Hedgehog Community: "As early as in March this year, in a high-level performance meeting, Vipshop expressed its intention to actively acquire customers in 2024 and appropriately increase marketing expenses. In particular, communities with large user bases, such as Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, which had no cooperation or had relatively little cooperation, have certain room for investment."

It can be seen from this that Vipshop may continue to increase its brand activities in the second half of the year, continue to expand its popularity on social media and short video platforms, export its brand to young groups, attract more young people to place orders on Vipshop, and balance the age structure of current users.

Of course, for Bilibili, joining hands with Vipshop will not only enable it to monetize traffic more quickly, but also enrich its inventory, supplement infrastructure, and empower businesses such as live streaming, which is a "two-way approach."

2. E-commerce platform, come to Bilibili for team building

In May this year, B station COO Li Ni predicted the increase in advertising revenue during the 618 period in a conference call. She mentioned that the year-on-year increase in the overall platform budget for 618 this year exceeded 30%. B station's budget and customer budget share in all e-commerce nodes are continuing to increase.

From this perspective, rather than saying that Bilibili was absent from the 618 shopping festival, it is better to say that it has become one of the biggest invisible beneficiaries of the 618 shopping festival. On the road to commercialization, Bilibili has more and more e-commerce partners.

From Taobao, which co-built the "Spark Plan", to JD.com, which built the "Jinghuo Plan", to Pinduoduo, one of the biggest sponsors of UP masters, Bilibili has already connected the product libraries of all the mainstream domestic e-commerce platforms. In addition, second-tier e-commerce platforms such as Vipshop, 1688, Dewu, and Xianyu have also joined the cooperation and placed advertisements on Bilibili.

During the 618 and Double 11 shopping festivals, e-commerce companies compete fiercely to get consumers to open their wallets. At this time, Bilibili is like a large transit station, gathering the "special offer flyers" of various companies together.

There are two main reasons why e-commerce platforms choose Bilibili.

On the one hand, Bilibili’s e-commerce strategy provides ample space for cooperation with external e-commerce platforms.

Unlike most current Internet content communities/platforms, the e-commerce strategy adopted by Bilibili is not to defend a single corner. Douyin and Kuaishou are both committed to building a closed loop, and Xiaohongshu is also in the final stages of building a closed loop e-commerce. Only Bilibili has chosen the "big open loop" strategy to eat "a lot of food", and naturally became the object of competition among e-commerce platforms.

Bilibili's "big open loop" strategy began in the third quarter of 2022. It means opening up Bilibili's content ecosystem to leading e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com for diversion, and exporting content-based transaction traffic to outside the site, thereby replacing the closed-loop business path of on-site promotion and on-site transactions.

Data shows that the "big open loop" strategy has brought continuous growth in commercial realization to Bilibili. During this year's 618 promotion, Bilibili's advertising revenue driven by product promotion increased by 93% year-on-year. E-commerce platforms, digital home appliances, and home furnishings became the three industries with the highest growth rate in Bilibili's product promotion advertising revenue during this 618 promotion. Among them, the product promotion advertising revenue from e-commerce platforms was 14 times that of the same period last year.

On the other hand, as the favorite video community among young people, Bilibili’s core users have a more promising “growth line” and diverse and rich consumption scenarios, making it a “must-fight place” for e-commerce platforms.

For example, during the recent college entrance examination season, the food section UP host @南翔不爱吃 recycled used mobile phones and refined them into gold, which means "pass the imperial examination". The video ranked 9th in the entire site rankings.

As the sponsor of this video, Zhuanzhuan, a second-hand idle trading platform, has gained huge traffic exposure. As batches of young users grow up, every time they reach important life nodes such as job hunting, marriage, and childbirth, the consumption demand in the B station community in many fields such as 3C digital products, home appliances, and maternal and child products will also increase accordingly.

The content ecology of the B station community, the high retention and strong stickiness of users, and the emotional connection between UP hosts and fans will further enhance users' acceptance and trust in brands. During the 618 shopping festival this year, a domestic water purifier brand attracted 70% of new customers from B station, and its product unit price exceeded 2,000 yuan; a domestic nutritional food brand achieved a ROI of 7% on the B station on the day of the big promotion, and female users became the main buyers of the brand.

At the 2024 AD TALK Marketing Partner Conference, Bilibili released a series of efficiency-enhancing plans for commercial products and technologies. Based on the needs that brand owners are most concerned about, namely how to better penetrate the minds of young people and do good marketing on Bilibili, it proposed four major scenario marketing solutions: "launching new products, rejuvenation, transaction conversion, and major nodes."

Taking 1688 as an example, recently Bilibili cooperated with 1688 to launch the "Poor Happy Night" - first let 1688 become a UP host to narrow the distance with users; then through co-creation with users, with the positioning of "grassroots team", invite audiences to nominate treasure UP hosts to co-create the party; and publicly call out to these UP hosts in the community to hold a grand party.

During the promotion period, the brand search volume on 1688 increased by nearly 600% month-on-month. The brand-related content word cloud was strongly associated with "poor but happy", "student party" and "substitute". The number of fans of the brand's official account increased by 119 times, and the number of fans continued to increase after the live broadcast.

This also proves the strength of Bilibili's party. An event mobilizes the power of the entire community. Users are not only participants, but also "atmosphere groups" and the "tap water" that continues to split the new brand image outward.

Judging from the actual results, Bilibili's marketing model is helping e-commerce platforms find a more trendy and interesting positioning, and through long-term activities, it penetrates the young consumer groups and further releases the commercial value of users.

3. Youth, a protracted “narrative war”

In the tide of the social media era, "youth" has long become a keyword for brand development. It is not only about the competition for market share, but also about the continuation of brand vitality.

Marketing has never been a word of praise or criticism with judgmental connotations, but rather a specific behavior. Only exaggerated marketing will be despised by people.

The fact that e-commerce platforms have turned their attention to Bilibili also proves that for brands, the question is not whether they need to become younger or not, but that they have to become younger and communicate effectively with young people. Through content marketing, they have launched a protracted "narrative war."

The so-called "narrative war" is to control traffic and discourse power. Traffic is the basis of brand exposure. Without sufficient traffic support, the voice of the brand is difficult to be heard. Discourse power represents the influence of the brand on social media, which determines whether the brand can stand out in the market competition.

"Narrative" means that brands are no longer just providers of goods, and platforms are no longer large marketplaces that aggregate all information, but have become storytellers.

For example, Vipshop works with UP hosts to create content such as fashion wear and beauty tutorials, conveying to young users that quality life can also be cost-effective; Dewu can also consolidate its leading position in the field of trend culture through content such as fashion information and sneaker reviews; Xianyu stimulates young users' environmental awareness and creativity through content such as second-hand trading guides and transformation of idle items.

These contents not only meet the actual functional needs of young users, but also resonate with them emotionally and enhance their sense of brand identity.

However, this sense of identity cannot be achieved overnight. It requires continuous use of high-quality content to establish one's own discourse system, understand user needs and feedback, and communicate with them in a way that they are familiar with and like.

It can even interact and cooperate with some users to jointly create more valuable content and experiences. Such a sincere and considerate marketing method is probably hard to resist.

A few years ago, someone pointed out that "Bilibili users have low purchasing power and are picky." But this is not a problem with Bilibili, but a sign that brands should dance with increasingly savvy young consumers in various ways:

As users become more cautious in their decision-making and pay more attention to cost-effectiveness, brand narrative capabilities that become memorable and recognizable, as well as the use of sincere and interesting user communication methods to reshape consumer minds, are becoming increasingly important.

(The pictures in this article are all from Station B)