The “Tik Tok battlefield” of tea brands: live broadcasts exceed 100 million views a day, and a large number of influencers become “online franchisees”

As Shan Weijun, CEO of Shanghai Auntie, once said: "New tea drinks have several characteristics. The first is capitalization, the second is chain operation, and the third is onlineization." This article focuses on the new online battlefield for tea brands and analyzes the three major characteristics of online operations and marketing: focusing on node marketing and new products, an increasing number of plot-based and scene-based content, and a large number of franchisees.

The mid-game battle of the new tea beverage industry began with a number of brands collectively submitting their applications for IPO.

Entering 2024, new tea beverage brands have set off a listing boom. On January 2, Gu Ming and Mixue Bingcheng both submitted their prospectuses to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, followed by Shanghai Auntie's on February 14. The latest development is that Cha Baidao, which submitted its prospectus in August last year, updated its prospectus and also plans to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

With the help of capital, tea brands are frantically joining forces to reach 10,000 stores. According to the prospectus, Mixue Bingcheng is the first tea brand to have more than 10,000 stores. As of September 30, 2023, the number of stores worldwide exceeds 36,000, and the number of stores in China exceeds 22,000; the total number of Guming stores has exceeded 10,000; Shanghai Auntie has 7,297 stores as of September 30, 2023; and Cha Baidao has opened 7,117 stores.

Nowadays, various brands are rushing into the secondary market. On the one hand, capital is tired of the tea beverage market, and on the other hand, brands need to find new support to continue to expand and compete. Their competition will extend to a wider field, as Shanghai Auntie CEO Shan Weijun once said: "New tea beverages have several characteristics. The first is capitalization, the second is chain operation, and the third is onlineization."

The focus of this article is on the new battlefield for tea brands, online. With the entry of Douyin, new competitive elements have been injected into the local life track. Meituan and Douyin have been fighting each other for more than a year. With 800 million daily active users, brands naturally have more new options to expand their business. According to Latepost, Douyin's sales target for life services in 2024 is close to 600 billion.

According to Doujiao's observation, brands mostly choose large-scale, nodal live broadcasts in the local life arena of Douyin, focusing on maximizing the volume and sales; in addition, in daily operations, various mid-level influencers and vertical store exploration influencers are the key forces to stimulate consumption. Although such influencers may not have a large personal transaction volume, they can accumulate a large amount of sales for the brand. Douyin has gradually become the main battlefield for online operation and marketing of tea brands.

In the mid-game battle among tea beverage brands, online is another main battlefield.

1. Large-scale live broadcast, focusing on node marketing and new products

Based on the situation in the past two years, most official live broadcasts of brands adopt a node-based live broadcast model rather than a normalized one.

On Women's Day, Shanghai Auntie launched the product "Dark Night Rose" and sold it with peripheral accessories. The product was launched on March 6, and Shanghai Auntie did two consecutive live broadcasts on March 6 and 7. According to Douchacha data, the number of viewers in the four-hour live broadcast on March 7 was 395,000. Neither of these two live broadcasts brought any goods, and they were marketing and seeding live broadcasts.

Shanghai Auntie has also been operating in the Douyin lifestyle service field. During last year's Double Eleven, the brand and the platform jointly launched promotional activities, achieving sales of more than 72 million, more than 43,000 short video submissions, and 260 million live broadcast exposures.

During the big sale, the methodology used by Shanghai Auntie to do live broadcasts of the big sale can be summarized into the following points.

First, launch new products . During the Double Eleven period, Shanghai Auntie launched the new Taotao Dafu drink.

Second, link platforms to participate in topic activities. When doing marketing activities on social platforms, participating in topics is an essential part. Whether it is Weibo or Douyin, this is a good window for aggregating traffic. Shanghai Auntie brought in brand promotion ambassador Tian Jiarui to do activities on Douyin together to inspire users to do secondary creation. According to data provided by Douyin Life Service, the number of short video submissions during the activity period reached more than 43,000, with short video exposure of 260 million times, and the official topic of Shanghai Auntie #桃桃大福奶甜上新 was exposed 28.54 million times.

Third, create a live broadcast scene that matches the product's tone and conduct scene marketing . Doujiao observed that Shanghai Auntie created a pink live broadcast room to match the product, targeting young and female groups. In fact, the deliberate creation of live broadcast scenes has become the choice of most brands doing live broadcasts.

Last year, Chabaidao did a live broadcast in Sanya, and designed the live broadcast room in the style of Sanya sea view, with elements such as sea motorboats, rainbow parasailing, and aerial photography of the coastline all incorporated into the brand live broadcast room. It is reported that the GMV of this single-day live broadcast exceeded 100 million.

Doing node-style large-scale live broadcasts is a common choice for tea brands . There are not many live broadcasts, and the intervals are even long, but you can get good results after broadcasting once. Not only tea drinks, but many types of local life businesses do this, such as Haidilao, Bantian Yao, CoCo, Starbucks, Luckin Coffee, McDonald's, KFC, Cha Baidao, etc.

Chabaidao specifically wrote about its live broadcast performance in its prospectus: Chabaidao has established an account matrix on mainstream platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Bilibili, using topic activities to drive sales. Among them, the highest single-day GMV of Douyin live broadcast exceeded 100 million, and the number of fans increased by nearly 230,000 in a single day, breaking the GMV record of Douyin's life service brand live broadcast.

In March 2023, Chabaidao became the first brand in the tea beverage industry to exceed 100 million yuan in a single-day live broadcast. Looking back at the live broadcast at that time, low prices were still the core of the live broadcast momentum, and the combination of hot products + welfare products attracted users to place orders . The large cup of cold brewed tea, which originally cost 8 yuan, was only 6.66 yuan during the live broadcast, and the hot product Wuqimahei, which originally cost 19 yuan, was priced at 15.9 yuan during the live broadcast. During the Douyin life service live broadcast from May 13th to 15th, the number of online viewers of Chabaidao's three live broadcasts reached a maximum of 77,000, with a cumulative number of viewers of nearly 10 million, and cumulative sales exceeding 52 million.

Data shows that live streaming of Cha Baidao’s orders covers more than 380 cities, with 55% of the people coming from second- and third-tier cities. According to Cha Baidao’s prospectus, the region with the most stores is the new first-tier cities, accounting for nearly 30%. A live streaming also helps the brand expand its user market.

The most important live broadcast node for Gu Ming is May 20. In 2022, Gu Ming first tried Douyin local life live broadcast. The live broadcast room was overcrowded and crashed in 2 minutes. Its mini program also had a bug. Gu Ming had to issue a public apology letter. On May 20, 2023, Gu Ming's local life live broadcast on Douyin had a GMV of over 100 million, making it the second after Cha Baidao.

Why do tea drinks and even the entire local life merchants prefer large-scale live broadcasts? From the perspective of platform traffic distribution, if merchants only do daily live broadcasts, the traffic scale and crowd structure of the live broadcast room will gradually solidify, while through large-scale live broadcasts, the system can show merchants a stronger ability to carry traffic.

Large-scale live broadcasts can help brands expand their audience, and secondly, they can boost GMV levels in the short term . According to data released by the platform, a well-known brand had a GMV of more than 3 million in one day during a large-scale live broadcast, which is 8.4 times the GMV on weekdays, and the daily GMV after the large-scale live broadcast has also increased by nearly 3 times. In addition, the consumption of freshly brewed tea drinks is highly random, and the marketing actions of offline stores are relatively fixed. Large-scale promotions can attract more "impulsive consumers" in the short term through ultra-low prices, celebrity marketing, platform traffic support and other gameplay methods, which have incomparable advantages over offline.

Therefore, large-scale online live broadcasts are very suitable for brands to launch new products and promote hot products at low prices. In Gu Ming’s 520 live broadcast, the Pink Rabbit joint series, the new cheese bayberry, and buy one get one free benefits are all means for them to attract users to place orders. Li Dongyang, product operator of Juliang Qianchuan, once revealed that "the traffic of merchants with super hot products in Douyin e-commerce may be 15 times better than that of merchants without super hot products. Secondly, the overall GMV of merchants with super hot products can account for more than 70% of the GMV of the entire store, and it is becoming a core key growth point."

The only company that regularly conducts live broadcasts on Douyin is the "Snow King" Mixue Ice City. Mixue Ice City has set up a large number of blue V matrix accounts on Douyin. The daily live broadcasts are basically various group purchase accounts of Mixue Ice City. The live broadcast scenes are in Mixue Ice City stores in various places, and the average number of viewers ranges from a few thousand to 20,000 or 30,000. The number of sales is not large, but the daily promotion and multiple accounts live broadcasting together can always open up some sales channels.

Relevant data from Douyin shows that from January to August 2023, the total transaction volume of the matrix accounts of Mixue Bingcheng’s regional stores exceeded 100 million , there were more than 20 accounts with transaction volumes exceeding one million, and the overall brand exposure exceeded 2.1 billion.

We have sorted out the official live broadcasts of tea brands, and the time range is as far back as two years ago. In summary, most brands choose large-scale live broadcasts at regular intervals, and there are not many brands that broadcast on a regular basis. In the Douyin life service field, the core demands of brands are mainly concentrated on two points: new listings and node marketing and promotions.

Low price is the basis . Almost since last year, tea brands have followed the lead of coffee and started offering frequent 9.9 discounts. For example, Nayuki’s “Drink Nayuki Fresh Milk Tea for 9.9 yuan every week” event and Lelecha’s “9.9 yuan every week, Noble Tea every day” event. Most of these discounts are launched during major nodes and live broadcasts. They are limited-time, local promotions and have not yet developed into long-term, nationwide activities.

In terms of product selection, Doujiao summarizes the tea brands’ live streaming products as “signature products + seasonal new products + low-priced flash sales products ”. In terms of gameplay, brands need to master the platform’s gameplay , using topics, celebrities, and secondary creation to increase traffic. After the traffic is transferred to the live streaming room, it is necessary to make new and eye-catching points in terms of scenes and other aspects.

According to the "2023 Douyin New Tea Beverage Track Special Report" released by ByteDance, during the peak tea consumption season from June to July 2023, the monthly order volume of users on Douyin exceeded 20 million.

2. More and more plot and scene content

Tea brands are good at content marketing. Mixue Bingcheng, the king of live shows, became completely popular on Douyin two years ago with its brainwashing hit songs. Heytea has also benefited from Douyin's content.

Nowadays, various brands are still constantly trying to innovate in short video content. Doujiao has observed that almost all brands are publishing video content on Douyin on a daily basis. We have highlighted the official Douyin accounts of four brands, Nayuki, Chabaidao, Heytea, and Mixue Bingcheng, as evidence. They are the leaders in this industry, and their content marketing ideas are relatively clear and easy to refine.

Nayuki likes to create marketing content with plots and hot topics . On February 14, Nayuki posted two pieces of content from the perspectives of boys and girls. The first one was titled "When a boyfriend receives a gift" and used a very common and popular content structure on the platform: the contrast between the surface and the heart. When the boyfriend saw the table full of Nayuki's tea gifts, he was polite and calm on the surface, but he was so happy inside that he kept showing off Nayuki's products and peripherals. The next day was from the perspective of a girl, and it was also a contrast, other people's Valentine's Day vs. my Valentine's Day, which combined the very popular theme of this year that it is better to welcome the God of Wealth than to celebrate Valentine's Day, and received more than 100,000 likes.

Looking through Nayuki's Tea's Douyin page, most of the videos with more than 100,000 likes are plot-based. Similar videos include Heytea, such as "Bring your own cup to drink Heytea elegantly" and "The five male protagonists of Hikari and Nocturne move to Heytea headquarters", which are all attempts at light plot-based content.

Chabaidao started to try scene marketing last year . On the Chinese Valentine's Day, a live broadcast activity with the theme of "Going to Chabaidao's Romantic Secret Land" was held. In the live broadcast room, real flowers and real grass were created, "Cloud Pasture", "Tea Mountain Terraces", "Romantic Starry Sky", three different scenes a day. In the short video content, different outdoor scenes will be selected for shooting in combination with product ingredients and taste characteristics.

All the content activities of Michelle Ice City revolve around the IP image Snow King. It is far from enough to operate an IP content with a popular song. Only with continuous content output can the Snow King IP be extended in multiple dimensions. Last August, Michelle Ice City launched the animation "The Snow King Arrives" with "Snow King" as the protagonist. Three days after the launch, the total number of views of the first three episodes on Bilibili exceeded 2 million. Each episode is five minutes long, so it is more like a series of marketing advertisements for Michelle Ice City than an animation.

On the Douyin homepage of Mixue Ice City, the collection of videos about Snow King includes "Snow King Visits Big Factory", which is a video co-produced with other domestic brands, such as Weilong; "Snow King Diary", which has been updated the longest, where the Snow King IP may appear in any conceivable scene, still with funny and meme-like content, and focuses on being down-to-earth; and "Snow King Music". The total number of views of related videos has exceeded 300 million.

Although Mixue Bingcheng has not created a super hit case like the brainwashing song since then , the emergence of super hits is mostly unpredictable, with a certain degree of chance and luck. But the action of various brands to keep trying is right.

3. Experts and a large number of online franchisees

Nowadays, when searching for tea brands on Douyin, in addition to the local lifestyle stores of each brand, more and more live broadcasts and video clips of various influencers appear. This type of content may be the biggest business position for tea brands on the Douyin platform.

The tea beverage category has produced a “top” anchor, and the expert I am Xiaopang is even called the “Li Jiaqi of the milk tea industry.”

Currently, Xiaopang has 355,000 followers on Douyin. By the end of 2023, the cumulative GMV of his live broadcasts has exceeded 2.8 billion yuan, with an average of more than 10 million yuan per show, and even the best performance of more than 20 million yuan per show. In the live broadcast room of the top influencers, you can even get a lower price than the official brand, 5.2 yuan for a cup of Shanghai Auntie, 8.8 yuan for Bawang Chaji, 9.9 yuan for Cha Baidao...

I am Xiaopang and I can do special live broadcasts for brands. In an interview, he said: " I have cooperated with a certain brand in 2 special live broadcasts to sell goods. I required the brand to give a rock-bottom price in the first live broadcast, and at the same time actively suggested that the price could be appropriately increased in the second live broadcast to help the brand create profits. " Price advantage is still an indispensable means to increase the volume of live broadcasts.

Although it is the top of the vertical category, with about 360,000 fans, it can only be considered as the middle and lower level in the entire Douyin ecosystem. On the Douyin group buying product list, there are many middle and lower level influencers in the beverage column.

For example, Xundi Food, Drink and Fun, which has 336,000 fans, has an average cumulative sales of 10,000 to 25,000 yuan per event, according to Chanmama data. On March 9, there was a special event for Mo Yogurt, with a clear price advantage. The avocado + mango combination, which originally cost 41 yuan, was only 29.9 yuan. The influencer used a small number of shopping coupons from merchants, and basically sold out as soon as the quantity was released.

This type of influencer is like a brand's "franchise store" online. The volume of a single live broadcast room is not large, but when everyone adds fuel, the flames rise high. Previously, Doujiao interviewed a service provider who did influencer live broadcasts for Luckin Coffee. They said that they had five to six thousand influencers and that a four-hour live broadcast could sell one million cups. The logic of tea and coffee is basically similar. When individual sales are small on the data platform, sales data will not be displayed. Most of them have a few thousand to twenty or thirty thousand viewers, but the final cumulative number is considerable.

In addition to live broadcasts, there are even more short videos on Douyin that promote products. The number of fans of short video store exploration experts is even smaller, and many of them only have thousands of fans, which can basically be called amateurs. A one-minute video of offline shopping, pointing out the price, taste and experience, with a brand group purchase link below. The local life service providers contacted by Doujiao said that they have thousands or even tens of thousands of short video store exploration experts under their umbrella, and the business model is also very simple, video production costs + commissions on turnover.

Amateur check-ins are a low-cost promotion model for brands. In April 2023, Chabaidao launched its new product "Osmanthus Fermented Rice and Milk Green Tea". At that time, more than 1,000 small and medium-sized influencers posted short videos, and through amateur check-ins, more tap water users participated in the dissemination. In the later stage, even if there is no need to pay for store visits, there will be a steady stream of content appearing on the platform, which is almost equivalent to free traffic for brands.

A tea drink local life service provider said in an interview with CBNdata that the current conversion methods of Douyin local life are mainly short videos and live broadcasts. Short videos are suitable for new products, new stores and regular promotions by merchants, while live broadcasts are suitable for brands that already have a certain degree of popularity and audience. Currently, large chain tea drink brands mainly use top influencers + some spontaneous traffic (spontaneous refers to 0-cost amateur store visits and cloud store visits).

In addition, Doujiao has found that short videos play an increasingly important role in attracting franchisees. They have even become the core goal of small and medium-sized tea brands to do Douyin. Doujiao learned from service providers that when they provide Douyin full-case operations for tea brands, they will create a separate official franchise account in the matrix account, with franchisees as the main content orientation, filming the daily life of franchise store staff, and franchise guidance, such as how to join and site selection.

According to Doujiao's observations and conclusions, tea consumption itself has a strong offline attribute, otherwise major brands would not be frantically expanding stores and pursuing the goal of 10,000 stores. Compared with offline chain stores, which are a more centralized way of undertaking consumption, brands' online operations are more decentralized. Discontinuous official accounts, irregular live marketing, short videos of small and medium-sized influencers, live distribution, and daily operations of local life positions constitute the online business matrix of tea brands.

Of course, the ultimate goal of online business is to attract offline traffic. Online business is an extension and supplement of offline business . The final effect will be reflected in the sales data of each cup of the brand.

Starting from 2022, most tea brands will have established their business foundation online by 2024. As the brand listing enters the next stage of development, online may bring greater support to the tea chain.

Author: |ljl, WeChat public account: 剁椒Spicy