Decoding the 618 Strategy: How does Douyin e-commerce achieve the formula for hit beauty brands?

This article mainly introduces how Douyin e-commerce helps beauty brands achieve sales growth, and lists and analyzes some successful cases to interpret and prove the effectiveness of this strategy.

"Making trouble" on Douyin e-commerce has become the new normal in beauty brand marketing.

First, the big new brand Fenty Beauty By Rihanna made its debut on Rihanna's Douyin live broadcast, and with the help of the "star effect" attracted millions of people to watch in half an hour. Then, the international brand Lancome cooperated with Douyin's native variety show "Nice to Meet You" concert, leveraging the variety show and celebrity hot spots to drive brand effect explosion. There was also the Douyin e-commerce "beauty queen" Hansu, which broke through with short dramas and built a full-link layout, Runbaiyan, which cooperated with Douyin's Beautiful Planet Music Festival to achieve a hot sale at its first launch, and Disi Ap, whose brand manager went to his own live broadcast room and sold 20,000 sets in a single show with no preheating... There are too many to list.

For the just-concluded 618, the sales and growth performance of beauty brands on Douyin e-commerce were even more gratifying. Data shows that during this year's 618, the overall sales of beauty products on Douyin e-commerce increased by 107% compared with last year's event, and various types of patch masks, facial soaps, and liquid essences were hot-selling. The skin care methods of platform consumers have also become more refined, with eye masks, smear masks, and neck masks all achieving triple-digit growth. The trend of "self-pleasing consumption" has also come to the male group, and the sales of men's skin care products on the platform increased by 147% year-on-year.

The question is, why are more and more beauty brands entering the Douyin e-commerce market and increasing their investment? Can the hit strategies and brand-effect results of beauty brands such as Fenty Beauty By Rihanna, Lancome, and Hanshun be replicated? How can they be replicated?

A single brand may have deviations and is not worth discussing, but in fact, there are hidden clues and hidden veins. If you connect the actions of multiple brands, you will find that Douyin e-commerce has already written a set of formulas for the success of beauty brands.

01

It is not only a traffic window for the brand, but also directly brings sales growth.

Douyin is a content sharing platform that can help brands quickly accumulate popularity and attention through content; and the Douyin e-commerce field can smoothly take over the interested people brought to the brand by the content, achieving product-effect integration. Data shows that the GMV of the beauty industry of Douyin e-commerce has increased by more than 80% year-on-year in the past 23 years, among which there are more than 300 million-level hot products, and the GMV has increased by 167%, and there are more than 3,300 million-level hot products, and the GMV has increased by 121%.

With over 100 million daily active users, Douyin is now a well-deserved hot spot incubator. The #Rihanna live debut# that has been hotly discussed recently was first released on Douyin. Once the related topic was released, more than 100 hot searches quickly climbed to the hot lists of major platforms, with more than 1 billion exposures on the entire network. Rihanna's offline pop-up store "Shandong Queen Pancakes" not only caused an earthquake in the talent circle/beauty circle/marketing circle/media circle, but also received active coverage from influential overseas media CNN and Global Times, and also triggered imitation and check-in by the whole nation.

The platform characteristics and overwhelming traffic of TikTok are naturally suitable for the fermentation and spread of "marketing events" and "innovative content". As Antonius HANEGRAAF, Vice President of KENDO Group and General Manager of Asia and Global Travel Retail (KENDO is a beauty incubator under the luxury group LVMH) said in an interview, the reason why TikTok was chosen as the platform for Rihanna's first live broadcast was largely because of TikTok's content and ability to create hot spots, which can amplify the marketing effect.

For brands, the biggest pressure of content marketing is not the ability to produce content, but the ability to summarize and predict consumer content preferences, especially for start-ups and foreign brands. As a platform, Douyin can make up for this shortcoming of brands and match brands with the corresponding crowds through sophisticated operations. For example, when answering the question "How can international queen Rihanna and Fenty Beauty By Rihanna, as international brands, enter the Chinese market", Douyin e-commerce used Rihanna's "Shandong Queen" as a localized content entry point, found "sameness" in "difference", and invited beauty and fashion KOLs to interact with the offline pop-up store. In just a few hours, topics such as #Rihanna spreads pancakes# rushed to the Douyin website's hot list, which not only shortened the distance between Fenty Beauty By Rihanna and Chinese consumers, but also brought huge exposure to the brand's hit products.

Douyin e-commerce is not only a window to showcase brand content, but also a business field that can directly bring sales. The traffic brought by Rihanna's first live broadcast and pancake stall was converted into sales in the live broadcast room, which promoted the formation of hot products and directly broke the brand's single-day sales record!

The traditional consumption path is that users first plant grass on content platforms, then go to information platforms to search for product information, and finally purchase on e-commerce platforms. There are gaps in the user purchase path. The more gaps there are, the higher the merchant's loss is, and the more difficult it is to trace. The 50% of advertising fees that are wasted have troubled 100% of brand people, but today, this problem has finally been solved.

Douyin's e-commerce shelf field collaborates with the content field to achieve "integration of planting and harvesting, integration of product and effect", using one ecosystem and a complete path to the greatest extent solve the problem of "integration of product and effect" that brands have criticized in the past, achieving a win-win situation for the platform, brands and consumers, and achieving the effect of 1+1>2.

Users can complete the entire process from product seeding to purchase on the Douyin e-commerce site, and brands have achieved the transition from "cross-platform seeding and harvesting" to "single-platform seeding and harvesting". Douyin e-commerce's content field and shelf field work together, not only providing beauty brands with a dual platform for display and sales, but also seamlessly connecting from content seeding to shelf pulling, reducing traffic loss while also invisibly improving the efficiency of brand explosion.

02

It not only brings about a breakthrough in the single product, but also drives the overall growth of the brand.

It is more efficient to create hot-selling products on Douyin e-commerce, which actually has two meanings: first, driven by hot-selling content, it is easier to produce hot-selling products with large traffic; second, e-commerce shelves can take on the traffic brought by hot-selling content, as well as the support of marketing IP resources such as "Douyin Mall Super Brand Day" and "Douyin Mall Big Brand Surprise Day" on the platform, which makes the conversion efficiency of hot-selling products higher.

On Douyin e-commerce, the more popular a hit product is, the higher the global traffic and the better the conversion rate. The traffic of a hit product on Douyin e-commerce is 78 times that of a non-hit product, and the conversion rate is more than twice that of a non-hit product. In the fast-moving consumer goods industry, hit products contribute more than 64% of the global GMV and 58% of the GMV on the shelf. This fully demonstrates the effectiveness of the hit product strategy. By creating hit products, beauty brands can not only attract a large amount of traffic, but also achieve efficient conversion.

It is more efficient to create hot-selling products on Douyin e-commerce. This is the basic logic behind the beauty brands flocking to the Douyin track, but it is not all.

The explosion of a single hit product is a single point of victory, but it is not the end of victory. A hit product is a huge traffic-generating product that can not only bring greater exposure and more endorsements to other products of the brand on the Douyin site, but also drive the overall business growth of the brand through the spillover influence of Douyin e-commerce.

There is an unwritten saying in the e-commerce industry that "Douyin grows fast, and the whole network sells well." Because Douyin e-commerce has the attributes of a media platform in addition to selling goods. It is not only a hot spot for voice and business conversion that can be derived from other social and third-party e-commerce platforms, but also the user's multi-touchpoint usage needs have brought the platform advantage of "Douyin sows, the whole network harvests." For beauty brands, the value of Douyin e-commerce is far more than a single breakthrough in hot products, but also a lever to drive the brand's overall growth.

03

It’s not just a booming individual case, but also a replicable brand growth methodology.

The question is, is Fenty Beauty By Rihanna's success an isolated case? Can all beauty brands create hit products on Douyin e-commerce? Is there a set of hit product methodology that can be followed?

It really does exist.

Stock up on the goods + sell at a good price + choose the right venue = Douyin hit product.

Below, I will explain to you the formula for beauty brands to become popular on Douyin e-commerce, using case studies.

1. Good product placement: the power of a single product

On Douyin e-commerce, choosing the top-selling products from a brand is the key to success.

What is a "big single product"? That is, a best-selling product that has been generally recognized by users, meets key needs and common scenarios, and can contribute to GMV in a sustainable manner in the business of merchants. In plain words, it is hard currency that has been verified by the market. The performance of single products in Douyin e-commerce also conforms to the Matthew effect of "the strong get stronger", so if brands want to rely on single products to break through the traffic siege, they must show some sincerity in products and use killer-level big single products, or even customized ones. For example, Fenty Beauty By Rihanna's 520 gift box that meets specific holiday consumption needs, and Fenty Beauty By Rihanna's sensitive skin beauty needs, the main products of which are special care foundation and air cushion, have successfully attracted a large number of consumers, and the latter has achieved a single-day new product GMV of over one million.

2. Sell at a good price: the temptation of sets/free gifts

Consumption is a mirror of the times. In recent years, "quality-price ratio consumption" has undoubtedly been the main theme.

The 2023 Consumption Trend Observation released by China Business Network shows that "quality-price ratio" is becoming a new consumption concept recognized and followed by consumers. Simply put, consumers want both quality and good price.

Good price does not simply mean low price, but a kind of "price power" that is obtained by comprehensively considering the "value and price ratio".

Price power = low price + X. This "X" can be the price of the product, a good combination of goods exclusively provided by Douyin e-commerce, or a privileged gift or high-quality service such as interest-free installment, etc.

For example, Lancome’s flagship product, the “Absolu 3-piece set”, is offered by the official flagship store as a free full-size set for the first purchase of a set. The more attractive combination sets and more affordable prices not only meet consumers’ pursuit of quality-price ratio, bringing a conversion effect of 900% for a single product, but also deepens consumers’ impression of the brand.

For example, based on consumers' stockpiling mentality and the frequency of repurchase of pink cushions during the big promotion period, YSL innovatively put together a set of "pink cushion + replacement core", coupled with a promotion mechanism that is far superior to single products, to meet girls' stockpiling needs; YSL, which has its own haute couture genes, also uses the brand's just-released spring makeup "Pure Wild Rose Makeup" as a basis, and combines the must-have hot-selling pink cushion and black tube lip glaze 610 in makeup, and cooperates with off-site promotion, focusing on "a set to get haute couture makeup", allowing consumers to buy with ease. Reducing psychological costs is also one of the manifestations of "good price".

"Price power" is not only the consumer's demand for "quality-price ratio", but also the basis for business growth. Good price power means more traffic, which can achieve a double explosion of brand traffic and GMV. Businesses can drive the improvement of "operating power" by improving "price power", giving consumers benefits through low-priced goods and providing more high-quality services, gifts, and platform traffic while gaining more user attention. Consumers who buy their favorite goods at a more cost-effective price will have a good impression of the brand and increase repurchases, forming a positive cycle with consumers and achieving a win-win situation for brands and consumers. This is a healthy and sustainable business logic.

3. Choose the right market: Make the best-selling products even more popular

One space can have different scenarios and carry different values.

It can be roughly divided into three types of venues: marketing venues for storing water, live broadcast venues for increasing volume, and shelf venues for conversion.

The live broadcast venue and shelf venue are clear at a glance, while the marketing venue has more options and is more complex, so brands need to decide based on their own circumstances.

For example, the representative of domestic cosmetics brand Hansu adopted the dual-drive of super-quality micro-variety show + native local short drama. On the one hand, it cooperated with Douyin Mall Super Brand Day and Jia Nailiang to create a super heart-pounding quality-price ratio micro-variety show, with the topic #Jia Nailiang's sincerity is the killer move of domestic products, ranking TOP9 on the grass-seeding list, and then linking the shelf special to undertake direct conversion; on the other hand, it cooperated with @姜十七 to create brand-native short drama content to accumulate crowds, and then achieved rapid sales growth through live broadcast and shelf management. This strategy not only increased the brand's popularity, but also brought real sales to the brand.

However, as an international brand, Lancôme chose the popular slow variety show "Nice to Meet You" on Douyin, and invited celebrities such as Li Weijia, Shao Yuxuan, Xijing Mudan, Su Yunying and other celebrities to talk about music, building popularity through high-quality content. Even the live broadcast was hosted by Aya, who talked about the "Lancôme High-end Line Elite Series" products, focusing on intellectual elegance, and accurately grasping the tone of the brand's target consumer group and the variety show audience, which are the same group of people.

SkinCeuticals targeted Ma Shuai's super special event and invited Lin Yun to be a guest in Ma Shuai's live broadcast room to interact with fans and share product experiences, ultimately achieving a double breakthrough in marketing and sales during the promotion period.

It is not difficult to see that good content and selling goods are not in conflict.

Guan Xinran, the person in charge of the beauty and daily chemicals industry of Douyin e-commerce brand business, once revealed in a podcast program that Douyin e-commerce actually has a "golden triangle" model for achieving blockbuster products through blockbuster content. That is, the product is the soul, the content is the engine, and the platform field is the accelerator of the entire marketing action. The three modules revolve around user needs to form a stable business explosive.

Whether it is an international brand or a domestic brand, whether it is a mature brand or a new brand, they can find a way that suits them on Douyin e-commerce to achieve a breakthrough in explosive products. The key is to clarify what kind of attitude the brand should take to gain a foothold in Douyin e-commerce and find content that matches the brand's tone. For example, for new brands, they can try to create high-quality content at a low cost to achieve a hot spot breakthrough on Douyin e-commerce, create explosive products, and drive sales with precise volume. This is both a minimum feasible marketing activity experiment and a beautiful and complete debut. For mature and high-end brands that already have a certain degree of popularity, they can also use content on Douyin e-commerce to warm up their brands, continue to plant grass in the hearts of consumers, and convert at any time to form a virtuous circle.

Final Thoughts

Through the cases of Fenty Beauty By Rihanna, Lancome and Hansu, we can see that Douyin e-commerce not only provides a new stage for beauty brands to showcase themselves and interact with consumers, but also helps brands achieve the transformation from popular content to popular products through its unique content and shelf advantages. In today's increasingly difficult growth, it brings brands a broader market space and more growth possibilities. With the continuous development of Douyin e-commerce, we have reason to believe that Douyin e-commerce will become a new high ground for beauty brand marketing, and we also look forward to more new practices from more brands, giving us more valuable experience to learn from.