2023 Two profitable and award-winning cases make one thing clear: Going overseas requires an "entrepreneurial eye"

In 2023, more and more industries will go overseas, but what are the characteristics of those that can make money? Let's take a look at what the author talks about based on cases~

Looking back at the overseas industry in 2023, two significant industry trends have emerged:

Trend 1: After years of watching the overseas market, many mature domestic enterprises, second-generation factory owners, and serial entrepreneurs began to aggressively expand overseas markets in 2023, viewing overseas expansion as a "new" growth curve.

Trend 2: The global "consumption downgrade" trend has made overseas consumers more price-sensitive and inclined to look for new alternative brands or products. Therefore, under the main theme of low prices, all brands are provided with an equal opportunity to "re-introduce themselves" and compete.

This is a special year for overseas brands and overseas consumers to make new choices and "run in both directions". However, it is not easy to open up new consumer groups. The personal experience of countless overseas people tells us an "iron rule": no matter how dazzling the achievements have been made in China, copying the domestic business model can only be a "dead end". When entering an unfamiliar market, the business logic must be redesigned according to the local market conditions.

In some examples of failure overseas in the past, many brands failed to design PMF (Product-Market Fit, the best fit between product and market) from the beginning to the end, and thus could not establish the brand's indispensability in the local market.

This year, Morketing has paid attention to some overseas brands that have become popular overseas on TikTok and even won major awards in the marketing industry. Without exception, they have designed very exciting market competition "hooks".

1. Cases of overseas brands that became popular on TikTok and won awards

At the end of November, two major awards in the marketing industry, the "Operation Award" awarded by Morketing to encourage global marketing and the "Effie Global Marketing Award" awarded by Effie Greater China, successively announced the 2023 winners.

In the field of overseas expansion, TikTok for Business has achieved fruitful results. It not only helped iQiyi and OPPO win three Osmo Awards through their advertising cases on TikTok, but also helped overseas brands such as Haier, Ulike, and MeToo win 21 Effie Awards.

Among them, there are many successful cases of "going global to start a business". We focus on the situation of two winning brands:

First, let’s take a look at the case of the hair removal device brand Ulike going global to North America. In China, Ulike has been a popular brand in the past two years. During every big promotion, Ulike always tops the sales of hair removal devices in China. But to expand into the US market, Ulike has to go through the journey from 0 to 1 all over again.

According to Statista data, hair removal ranks among the top five non-surgical items in the United States all year round, and there are about 27.8 million users of hair removal related products. However, at the same time, American users still often use traditional hair removal methods such as hair removal creams at home. The market for home hair removal devices is still blank, and there are broad development opportunities.

Therefore, Ulike implemented the "Ulike Seed Plan" on TikTok. As the name implies, it is to prioritize finding a group of core TikTok influencers to post Ulike related videos, so that users in the circle covered by the influencers can learn about the Ulike hair removal device and the new generation of hair removal methods. Then, a second round of in-depth communication will be carried out for the user groups radiated by these influencers to make them familiar with and like the Ulike hair removal device. The "Seed Plan" allowed Ulike to successfully enter the US market, and essentially played a multiple role in product promotion, brand communication, customer group screening, and grass planting.

Through the layer-by-layer dissemination from the first-generation seed users to the second-generation seed users, Ulike completed the "seeding" of the minds of American hair removal device users, and finally tasted the sweetness of overseas entrepreneurial success - the Seed Plan, which enabled Ulike to successfully cover tens of millions of American users and gain over 1 billion brand voice; at the same time, GMV increased by 1200000%+ and ROAS increased by 15000%+.

Also using influencers as a way to open up the market, the mouthwash brand MeToo created an influencer challenge in the Indonesian market and won the Effie Award in the "New Market Breakthrough, Brand and Effect Synergy" category.

The difference between MeToo and Ulike is that the mouthwash category that MeToo sells is already a hot commodity in Indonesia, especially in offline channels, where it faces fierce competition from local brands. Before MeToo entered Indonesia, selling mouthwash through online channels was a rare strategy in Indonesia.

But because of this, MeToo seized the opportunity and achieved online conversion through TikTok, while also driving offline sales growth. TikTok for Business suggested that MeToo's strategy was to use the product differentiation selling point "custom stickers" + "talent challenge" to easily let users know and become familiar with MeToo's mouthwash products through more interesting and interactive online gameplay, and establish brand awareness: more than 20,000 talents posted competition videos, and the talent challenge achieved more than 10 billion views; at the same time, it also achieved a direct conversion from product to effect: the number of orders exceeded 1.4 million within 6 months after the launch, setting an online sales record for the mouthwash category in Indonesia.

With such unstoppable growth, MeToo has become a well-known brand in the local area, attracting some of the leading local supermarkets to actively seek cooperation. Subsequently, MeToo quickly entered more than 50,000 offline channel stores in the Indonesian market and established a firm foothold in the local market.

2. The underlying differences between the Chinese and foreign marketing environments

The premise for the success of Ulike and MeToo is to understand the underlying differences between the Chinese and foreign marketing environments.

Ulike and MeToo are two completely different brands: one has a relatively high average order value, while the other has a relatively low average order value; one’s overseas target market is the United States, where spending power is stronger, while the other’s is Southeast Asia, where spending power is relatively lower; one’s product purchase decision cycle is relatively long, while the other’s is relatively short; one category still needs market education, while the other’s local market competition is saturated…

But for North American and Indonesian consumers, no matter how well they have achieved in China, they are still unknown "small" brands. Before this year, it was unheard of for North American consumers to spend a lot of money to buy a home hair removal device. For Indonesian consumers, giving up the small supermarket near their home and buying a new flavor of mouthwash from an unknown brand online is not a wise choice.

Therefore, in the early stage of overseas entrepreneurship, both Ulike and MeToo faced the arduous task of "introducing themselves" to overseas consumers. In essence, they are both using the idea of ​​overseas entrepreneurship to open up the market. In the two cases, we can also find some common reasons for success.

First, it tapped into the strong demand points in the local market. Ulike saw that Americans had a strong demand for hair removal, and that home hair removal devices were not yet popular, so it let consumers accept and fall in love with more convenient and practical home hair removal devices. MeToo seized the relatively unpopular online channels in a red ocean market with extremely strong demand, innovated the product ingredients and sales channels of common categories, and took a large piece of the market cake with its creativity.

Second, in the early stages of their overseas promotion, both brands used influencer promotion and social sharing on the TikTok platform to spread real user experience and win the trust of consumers. In other words, as a brand that local users are not familiar with, they first build brand/category awareness before selling products;

Third, seize the right opportunity for communication. "Before the peak season, Ulike has completed the construction of user minds and all-round planting." In this way, Ulike can usher in a concentrated outbreak of sales. The "MeToo Ramadan Mouthwash Master Challenge" launched by MeToo on TikTok seized the special festival of Ramadan. The team observed that during Ramadan, local people need to take a bath and brush their teeth several times a day to keep their bodies clean, and an average of 3-4 bottles of 250ml mouthwash per person per month. Therefore, the overall progress of the challenge was promoted during Ramadan, which achieved an unexpected communication effect.

Faced with the vast overseas market, people going overseas will always be confused at the first step: they have to increase their popularity and sales, how can they get two results with one penny? However, Ulike and MeToo have opened up the overseas market so "smoothly" and have been recognized by local consumers. In the final analysis, TikTok for Business and the two brand teams grasped the three core differences between the Chinese and foreign market environments when designing the marketing campaign.

First of all, most overseas markets, including popular overseas destinations such as Europe, the United States, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, are in the process of migrating from offline sales channels to online sales channels.

Indonesian mouthwash has already built a high wall in offline channels. MeToo saw the extremely high activity of Indonesian users on the TikTok platform and realized that attention equals sales opportunities. So it started from online and opened up the offline market, and really squeezed into the local mouthwash market.

Brands can seize the blank product categories in online channels to seize the market opportunities; or seize the unsaturated information in online communication to increase the online voice and feed back to offline channels. In any case, the changing market channels provide overseas entrepreneurs with opportunities to overtake others.

Second, there are huge differences in the purchase paths and brand marketing links between domestic and foreign users. We have always said that the level of digital marketing in China is ahead of that overseas, and the overseas industry also agrees that email and outdoor advertising are more mainstream marketing tools in the European and American markets. This means that unlike the increasingly multi-threaded purchase paths in China, overseas consumer catalysts and shopping habits are more in line with the traditional marketing funnel theory - so no matter what channel is chosen to enter the local market, the brand must establish brand awareness or let consumers form cultural identity. In short, it is necessary to form a distinct memory point to pave the way for subsequent outbreaks, and not to rush for quick success and bring goods right away.

At the Morketing Overseas Private Conference this year, some overseas players shared that in the past they followed the domestic approach and directly asked Internet celebrities to help sell goods, but this year when entering overseas markets, they will first let KOLs on TikTok play the role of brand public relations; some overseas players also said that they would transfer part of the budget to traditional media, and believed that this would greatly help boost sales.

Whether it is selecting high-quality KOLs to drive American consumers to understand the Ulike hair removal device, or using fun stickers to awaken Indonesian users' interest in regular daily necessities and trigger the fission of MeToo mouthwash, the reason for success is that in the underlying communication logic of Ulike and MeToo, brand/product awareness is cleverly established through the TikTok platform, and selling goods is a natural thing to do.

Third, there is a time lag between the industry development process in overseas markets and that in China, and fully understanding the local market culture is a prerequisite for finding business and marketing opportunities.

For example, in the case of Ulike, the brand first gained insight into the overall market environment of hair removal products in the United States, including user usage habits, peak sales seasons, market penetration of hair removal devices, etc., and discovered the business opportunity of Ulike to promote new hair removal methods in the North American market. And based on a full understanding of the market, Ulike did not choose to use well-known spokespersons + overwhelming advertising to educate the category, but instead used "seed users" as the entry point.

The reason for doing this is actually that local market consumers are still unfamiliar with this category. Ulike will have many big moves in 2023, such as the official announcement of brand spokespersons such as Jeon Ji-hyun, Cecilia Cheung, Zhang Yuqi, and Zhao Lusi. They can indeed help brands establish a more advanced brand style in markets where the category is already mature, but this is not applicable to the US market at this stage. Therefore, in North America, compared to sky-high spokespersons, in order to encourage local consumers to embrace slightly trendy and more technological products such as hair removal devices, it is a wiser choice for Ulike to let seed users drive circle awareness and consumption power on platforms with a strong social atmosphere.

With reference to the above three differences in the marketing environment between China and foreign countries, people going overseas can design specific overseas entrepreneurial paths according to the market and track. Only when overseas brands have "entrepreneurial eyes" can they see the brand's overseas development path more clearly and in the long term.

3. What have overseas brands that are good at leveraging TikTok taught the industry?

Not only Ulike and MeToo, the logic of content products going overseas is similar.

Let's take a look at the gold award case of TikTok for Business in the Lingmou Award. iQiyi's TV series "Hua Rong" has gained a large number of loyal viewers overseas. One of iQiyi's core competitiveness is content capability or cultural capability. Therefore, in Thailand, iQiyi created a creative UGC activity of "video drama review" on the TikTok platform. First, it provides overseas audiences with a more fun and more participatory occasion for chasing dramas and communicating; second, it allows "Hua Rong" to lead the fairy culture in the drama to go deep into Thailand and have a deep impact with local audiences.

In fact, one of the reasons why iQiyi, Ulike, and MeToo have been so successful is that they are good at leveraging the unique advantages of the TikTok platform to help "overseas entrepreneurship."

First, we observed the characteristics of the TikTok platform: among mainstream Internet platforms, TikTok has a relatively higher proportion of Gen Z users overseas, which means that users are more receptive to emerging things. Therefore, Ulike and iQiyi both chose relatively novel strategies such as "seed plan" and "video drama reviews", which can quickly break the circle on the platform.

Second, using TikTok allows brands to release more "emotional value". At this stage, short videos are the most effective form of communication that can quickly meet users' emotional needs and trigger fission. The TikTok platform has a diverse population, and these award-winning brands have seized this feature. While providing value, they also attach importance to social functions to break through the crowd. In this way, they have gained huge brand recognition.

Third, make full use of TikTok's feature of "complete closed loop from product to effect". As mentioned above, overseas consumers pay great attention to "brand", so overseas entrepreneurs can use the characteristics of the TikTok platform to design a design plan that covers the entire business process. In the funnel, it can not only spread the brand on a large scale, but also directly increase sales, and achieve marketing goals at different stages of overseas expansion.

In addition, if overseas brands can use TikTok for Business to gain detailed insights into overseas markets and customize marketing solutions, it will be a more effective option and more likely to maximize the marketing potential of the TikTok platform.

Finally, returning to the underlying competitive advantages of enterprises, overseas enterprises still need to formulate marketing plans based on their own "entrepreneurship levers". Referring to the award-winning cases of Ulike and MeToo in the overseas industry, it is recommended that overseas brands actively deploy TikTok in 2024 and pay special attention to the following three points:

1. Find the “key users” and create emotional explosion points.

In Ulike's seed plan, TikTok for Business first helped Ulike produce native materials from local influencers in the United States, triggering TikTok users to spontaneously participate in the dissemination event; in the final stage, it reached consumers again through a mix of influencer videos. This closed loop not only maximized the use of content and emotions accumulated in the early stage, but also promoted the transformation from product to effect.

2. Focus on online and offline linkage.

For example, MeToo, which has overtaken others, attaches great importance to the linkage between online and offline channels in overseas markets where offline is still the mainstream sales channel.

3. Choose the right approach to deeply connect with the local market

KOL, advertising, brand challenges, etc., the key is “quality” rather than “quantity”.

Take KOL as an example. In the case of Ulike, the first batch of KOLs who served as seed users actually played a number of roles, such as spreading new hair removal concepts, establishing brand image, bringing goods, and accelerating marketing events to break through the circle. TikTok can provide many ready-made gameplays. Overseas brands should cleverly design gameplays based on their own characteristics or platform suggestions to maximize the effect.

Author: Claire WeChat public account: Morketing