The short drama on TikTok that has attracted 800 million users, is Hansu the winner behind the scenes?

In the traffic boom of Douyin short dramas, how did Hansu use marketing strategies to become a leader in the beauty track? This article deeply analyzes the business code behind Hansu, explores how it captures the consumption psychology of small town ladies, and the challenges of continued growth it faces. It is recommended for readers who are interested in beauty brand marketing and social media traffic monetization.

The beauty industry is changing its throne again. Public data shows that in the first quarter of 2024, Hanshu’s Tmall GMV was 179 million yuan, Douyin’s GMV was 2.007 billion yuan, and the total GMV of the two platforms was 2.186 billion yuan; PROYA’s Tmall GMV was 1.247 billion yuan, Douyin’s GMV was 762 million yuan, and the total GMV of the two platforms was 2.009 billion yuan. According to relevant data, L’Oreal’s sales on Douyin in the first quarter were only 500 million to 750 million yuan, a month-on-month decrease of 11.81%. Hanshu has become a well-deserved brand with the top GMV of the two platforms.

Hansu, which embraces Douyin, seems to have opened up the "Ren and Du Meridians" of business. Compared with the data of the same period last year, Hansu achieved 60% of the GMV of the Douyin platform last year in just one quarter, even close to the Douyin GMV of the L'Oreal brand last year, which can be said to be "a leader" on the Douyin platform. The 2023 financial report data shows that Hansu's GMV through the Douyin platform last year was about 3.34 billion yuan, an increase of about 374.4% over the same period in 2022.

What kind of business code has Hanshun unlocked? What kind of consumption enlightenment can it bring us?

1. Hansu has its own traffic code to top the Douyin throne

What almost everyone cannot deny is that Hansu’s success is due to its clung to the “big thick leg” of Douyin.

The "2024 China Cosmetics Industry Development Trend Report" shows that in 2023, the total transaction volume of skin care and makeup categories on the three major online e-commerce platforms of Taobao Tmall, Douyin, and JD.com reached 424.879 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.87%. Among them, the transaction scale of beauty makeup on Taobao and JD.com was 227.022 billion yuan and 50.585 billion yuan, respectively, down more than 11% and 15% year-on-year. On the contrary, Douyin's beauty makeup transaction was 140 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 59.49%. In the skin care and beauty track, Douyin has grown steadily and achieved remarkable results.

Focusing on Douyin is the key to Hanshu's catch-up. Seizing the platform tonality of Douyin, Hanshu timely adjusted its traffic strategy based on the full use of Douyin's overall market growth rate and formed its own methodology - it adopted the method of short dramas and brand self-broadcasting, instead of the KOL promotion route, using short dramas to open up the Douyin audience market, using highly cost-effective package products as the main promotion products, weakening the dependence on top influencers, creating a self-broadcasting account matrix, and successfully leveraging Douyin's traffic.

At the beauty industry conference at the end of last year, Lv Yixiong, founder and CEO of Shangmei Co., Ltd., also shared his methodology with the outside world for the first time, including betting heavily on Douyin, focusing on Korean bundles, focusing on daily sales rather than big promotions, and avoiding competing products. He said, "The reason why we succeeded on Douyin is because we found our own model."

Hansu's popularity has a lot to do with the popularity of "short dramas". Seizing the opportunity of short dramas, in 2023, Hansu collaborated with 6 female talents to create 22 serialized short dramas.

From February to September 2023, Hansu invested in five short dramas by the short drama creator Jiang Shiqi, including "Dress to Grow", "Heartbeat for More Than a Moment", "A Beam of Sunshine and a Beam of Love", "All Love and You", and "You Will Be Famous Eventually". The dramas softly implanted Hansu's "Red Waist" series of products in combination with the plot, which successfully became popular on Douyin and achieved over 5 billion views, allowing the "Hansu Red Waist Gift Box" to successfully "go viral".

Image source: Hanshu Weibo

To match the traffic of short dramas, Hansu quickly built a matrix of more than 30 short videos, acting as a model worker in the live broadcast industry with a "sun never sets" live broadcast method. At the same time, it intensively released short video slices, anchored the short drama audience for "face recognition", and drove steady sales growth.

However, as international big brands and beauty brands such as PROYA and Juduo have entered the short drama track and are back on the same starting line, Hanshu has gone the other way. Recently, a "real-name" circle of friends by Lv Yixiong, the founder of Hanshu's parent company Shangmei Co., Ltd., surprised the outside world, saying, "After November 2023, Hanshu will basically stop making short dramas."

It is said on the Internet that this is Lv Yixiong's circle of friends

If Hansu can still achieve strong performance without making short dramas, what sales code has it grasped?

2. The key to success is the “people” behind it: the “small town” ladies behind the surging consumption power

Recently, the term "small town ladies" has become popular. This group of people in third- and fourth-tier cities who have low wages but "money and leisure" have been targeted by more and more brands as consumption downgrades.

But in a sense, Hansu has already "taken action" - according to the survey data of short drama audiences by Enlighten, the core audience group of micro short dramas is women under 30 years old, of which low- and middle-income people account for more than 70%. According to the audience portrait disclosed by the short drama creator Jiang Shiqi, the group aged 0-18 accounts for 30.18%, the group aged 18-23 accounts for 29.52%, and the group aged 24-30 accounts for 20.99%. In terms of gender, women account for 60%. This is the user group that Hansu hopes to focus on.

Yien Short Drama Audience Survey

According to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the population of China's lower-tier cities will account for 70% of the total population in 2022. According to the survey data of QuestMobile, the category with the largest penetration space in the lower-tier cities is precisely the beauty and skin care category. In the lower-tier cities, there are many unmet beauty and skin care needs. This is undoubtedly a huge "cake" for beauty and skin care brands.

According to Archaeology Plus data, more than 90% of Hanshu consumers are women, 28% are aged 24-30, 37% are aged 31-40, and 54% are from third- and fourth-tier cities. This group of people is price-sensitive consumers, and they constitute the main consumer group of Hanshu Red Waist.

Hansu’s “Red Waist Series” is a “big single product” aimed at the target group in third- and fourth-tier cities who have a monthly income of 5,000-7,000 yuan on Douyin, have anti-aging and whitening skin care needs, and are more sensitive to prices.

First, in terms of efficacy, Hansu Red Waist has anchored the "anti-aging" demand that this group of people is really concerned about. This product, with anti-sugar, anti-oxidation, and anti-wrinkle as its core selling points, is very much in line with consumers' needs in terms of mentality. At the same time, Hansu's advertisements in Douyin short dramas all reinforce the iconic product Red Waist, and through constant repetition in consumers' memories, strengthen the impression of the product as a "big single item."

Today, like Helena's black bandage, SK-II's magic water, PROYA's ruby ​​essence, etc., Red Waist has become Hansu's iconic product. In 2023, the sales of the Red Waist series on Douyin exceeded 3 million sets, dominating the top of Douyin's six major charts, and the sales of all channels reached 5.04 million sets.

Secondly, in terms of price demand, Hansu's "high cost performance" also caters to the expectations of this main consumer group. For "small town ladies", although they are willing to spend money, price is still a "sensitive area".

At the same time, the popularity of "Lady Cream" among small town ladies also shows the lack of education for big-name cosmetics. This is exactly the space for Hansu to play - Hansu Red Waist is priced at 399 yuan, including five major items: cleanser, lotion, emulsion, essence, and cream, plus a gift of lotion and emulsion of the same specifications, as well as 14 gifts such as mask and eye cream, covering the entire skin care process, completely targeting the consumer psychology.

At the same time, Hanshu continues to strengthen its brand image by strengthening a series of elements such as packaging and price. With its appearance in various short dramas, "Hanshu Red" has become a symbol implanted in consumers' cognition.

At the same time, unlike many brands that are working hard to promote big sales, Hansu basically gave up big sales and ensured the stability of the price of "399". For consumers, if there are regular low-price promotions, they will consciously suppress their short-term consumption needs. Price stability brings consumers enough sense of security, and even in high exposure, consumers will not have a bad impression of the brand due to comparison.

At the same time, the price of 399 has become a "price anchor" and a comparison benchmark for consumers. Among the many anti-aging products at home and abroad, there are almost no products that can achieve this price, which in turn boosts consumer recognition.

By capturing consumers through emotional needs and formulating a practical big single product strategy through insights into consumers, Hansu has successfully utilized the traffic of short dramas and continued to fly in the wind, and it is foreseeable that it will continue to fly for a while. However, if it wants to "fly" for a long time, Hansu still has to overcome several difficulties.

3. Key challenges for maintaining high growth in Korea

Looking at Hansu's "development line", there are undoubtedly several issues that need to be answered urgently if it wants to achieve long-term development.

01. How to spill over the potential energy of Douyin to other channels?

With the peak of Douyin's traffic dividend and the overcrowding of the short drama track, Hansu is exploring new development paths.

At the beginning of this year, Lv Yixiong proposed the strategic focus of Shangmei Group in 2024: "Strengthen Douyin, focus on Tmall, and return to offline." The strategies of "focusing on Tmall" and "returning to offline" can be regarded as Hanshu's "make-up lessons" for its previous development strategies. Hanshu's core development focuses on the Douyin platform, but its presence in Tmall and offline channels is relatively weak. In particular, offline channels may carry the "basic plate" of brand stability.

02. How to ensure that the brand continues to “capture” the hearts of small town ladies?

Hansu's traffic surged due to the short drama, but looking at the history of the development of the beauty industry, many brands are the same, such as the "old Internet celebrities" Huaxizi and Perfect Diary. But now, they are "made by traffic and failed by traffic". Huaxizi's reputation was damaged due to a live broadcast accident and it is difficult to develop. Perfect Diary is struggling due to high publicity costs and unstoppable investment. Hansu's marketing performance is better than theirs, but it does not change the essence of "traffic for sales". How to firmly capture the "small town ladies" and establish sufficient user stickiness and brand loyalty is also the answer that Hansu needs to respond to.

03. How to copy Hansu’s model to other brands?

A single tree cannot make a forest. Over-reliance on the Hansu brand is undoubtedly risky for the group. Once there is a problem with the channel, it will directly affect revenue. Looking at the performance of other brands under Shangmei, Yiyezi's revenue last year was 357 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 32.7%, and the proportion of total revenue also dropped from 19.8% to 8.5%. The revenue of the maternal and infant brand Red Elephant also fell sharply, down 42.6% year-on-year, and the proportion also dropped from 24.5% to 9%.

At the same time, although newpage, a functional skin care brand focusing on sensitive skin for babies and children, has grown by 498.0% year-on-year, its current size is still relatively small, only one-thirtieth of Hanxuan's.

Author: Dake; Editor: Yang Bocheng; Source public account: Hydrogen Consumption (ID: 1093584)