Targeting TikTok, can the three sheep replicate the domestic "myth"?

Three Sheep has officially entered the overseas live streaming sales market. What did Three Sheep do behind its success overseas? Can Xiao Yangge's domestic strategy be replicated in overseas markets? How should Three Sheep expand overseas markets? If you want to know more, you can read this article.

Three Sheep has officially entered the overseas live streaming e-commerce market.

On January 10, Three Sheep Network collaborated with local Singaporean influencer @shop with sasax to conduct its first live streaming event, setting a new record for TikTok’s e-commerce sector in Singapore. The live streaming room also topped the local Singapore chart.

In the fourth quarter of 2023, Three Sheep Network, a subsidiary of Three Sheep, was also listed on the TikTok Shop Southeast Asia Cross-Border Excellent Institutions List. What did Three Sheep do behind the overseas achievements? Can Xiao Yangge's domestic strategy be replicated in overseas markets? How should Three Sheep expand overseas markets?

1. What did the three sheep do behind the success of their first live show in Singapore?

As early as April last year, Crazy Brother Yang expressed his idea of ​​expanding overseas. At that time, he said in a live broadcast that he would "earn money from foreigners" in the future and revealed that he would enter the cross-border e-commerce market through TikTok.

Brother Yang's decision to use TikTok to develop cross-border e-commerce was a choice made based on his own situation. Three Sheep CEO Du Gang said, "The cross-border e-commerce business is mainly because we found through analyzing a large amount of data that the content of Three Sheep is popular on TikTok by many foreign users who understand Chinese and Chinese culture. Some fake accounts have even accumulated millions of followers. This means that we can understand each other in terms of content, and it is relatively easy to convert."

Therefore, content became the entry point for Three Sheep to enter the overseas market. In July last year, Three Sheep Network, an overseas MCN agency under Three Sheep, was successfully established. The first thing it did was to distribute a large amount of sliced ​​content on TikTok, strengthening its influence by spreading the volume.

In fact, before entering TikTok, Three Sheep's sliced ​​content business had already matured, and it launched the "Zhong Xiaoer" App. After the editor obtains IP authorization through online application, he can conduct secondary creation of the host's live broadcast content, thereby generating revenue by selling goods.

On Douyin, there are hundreds of accounts that specialize in @疯狂小杨哥 live streaming slices, and almost all of these accounts are certified by the "Three Sheep" MCN agency, and some accounts have hundreds of thousands or even millions of fans.

The potential of content slicing is also reflected on TikTok. According to the official disclosure of Three Sheep, it took only three months for its editing team to complete the construction of a content matrix with 2 million fans in Southeast Asia.

Du Gang, CEO of Three Sheep Group, once revealed that they had previously considered setting Indonesia as the first stop for their overseas expansion, but were unable to proceed due to local policy reasons. Later, they chose Singapore as the first stop for Three Sheep's overseas layout.

Like Indonesia, Singapore has a high concentration of Chinese people, and local residents are more receptive to Chinese products and culture. In addition, the TikTok Shop Singapore site currently fully supports Chinese live broadcasts and Chinese short videos, which lowers the threshold for TikTok merchants to enter the Singapore market. It is worth mentioning that @shop with sasax uses Chinese to communicate during live broadcasts.

And as the only developed country in Southeast Asia, Singapore has relatively complete payment systems and logistics. These infrastructures are conducive to the development of the three sheep.

In addition, Singapore's population has a high purchasing power. Compared with other TikTok stores in Southeast Asia that take a low-price route, the average customer spending per store in Singapore's TikTok stores is mostly in the range of US$10 to US$15, which is higher than other Southeast Asian markets in the same period. This to a certain extent avoids the situation where price restrains sales.

In the first live broadcast of @shop with sasax, a local Singaporean influencer, the main cosmetics product was the Chinese brand Jiao Run Quan, which has cooperated with Three Sheep. From the official flagship store of Jiao Run Quan on Douyin, we can see that the price range of this brand's products is between 39 yuan and 199 yuan, which is basically in line with the mainstream customer unit price of Singapore's TikTok stores. Perhaps this is also the key to its good performance.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

In addition, Yang's Select, a self-operated brand of Three Sheep, is also a product that it promotes overseas. In November last year, Three Sheep successfully opened up the overseas logistics supply chain system. At the same time, the company also established a local warehouse in Singapore. Yang's Selected's popular products such as garbage bags, tissues, face towels, hand and mouth wipes, and meat floss bread have been gradually delivered to the Singapore warehouse, making it more convenient for the storage and distribution of subsequent products.

In the past two years, TikTok's e-commerce sector has been repeating the rapid growth of Douyin e-commerce in China in the past two years. Under various favorable conditions, the three sheep's first battle in Singapore has a good start. The process of the three sheep's overseas expansion is still continuing. According to the official account of the three sheep's TikTok business department, Malaysia has been determined to be the second stop for the three sheep's overseas expansion.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

2. What should the three sheep do next?

Three Sheep has established a certain influence on TikTok through a large amount of sliced ​​content, but the cultural habits behind the content are issues that influencers must face when going overseas. For example, in the Southeast Asian market, there are large differences in the complex cultural styles and beliefs among the various countries in Southeast Asia. For influencers and institutions, this means spending a lot of time learning and understanding local cultural habits to avoid offending local users.

The best way to solve this problem is to build a local work team or cooperate with mature local companies to integrate into the local business environment to the greatest extent possible. Clour had an in-depth conversation with the head of an MCN agency with relatively mature overseas business development. He said: "Overseas development must have a local partner, and the agency must stay firmly in that place, go to the local area, respect the local area, and truly "roll" with the local agencies."

In addition to factors that need to be considered, such as cultural differences, consumption habits, and demographic attributes, the difficulty for super IPs to play a role in attracting traffic to live broadcast rooms is one of the challenges that Three Sheep faces overseas.

On Douyin, whether it is a live streamer signed by 3Yang or a vertical live streamer under its umbrella, as long as @疯狂小杨哥 appears in a live streamer for a period of time, the number of people online in that live streamer will increase several times. Within 3Yang, @疯狂小杨哥 is even called the "walking Qianchuan (Douyin traffic tool)". In order to boost the data of each of its live streamers, @疯狂小杨哥 will appear in multiple live streamers in one day.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

However, this operation strategy is difficult to replicate abroad. On the one hand , @疯狂小杨哥 is not a top streamer in TikTok. Although he has built a content matrix with 2 million fans in Southeast Asia, the traffic is relatively scattered and the IP influence is difficult to exert . On the other hand, due to geographical limitations, @疯狂小杨哥 cannot direct traffic for overseas anchors for a long time.

According to information previously disclosed by Du Gang, Three Sheep will do cross-border business by providing supply chain services to overseas bloggers. In the first stop in Singapore, Three Sheep completed the cooperation with Singaporean influencer @shop with sasax by means of authorized live broadcast. The influencer acted as the anchor and was responsible for product explanation, while Three Sheep was responsible for supply chain. During the live broadcast, the background board of the influencer's live broadcast room also had obvious Three Sheep logos.

For Sanzhiyang, authorizing talents not only saves the cost of training overseas anchors, but also speeds up the process of going overseas. However, authorization also means that the controllability of talents is lower, and Sanzhiyang needs to bear higher risks, which may affect the efficiency of docking.

The head of overseas business of an institution said: "Overseas influencers have a different understanding of work than domestic ones. They have a stronger sense of self-awareness and are more easily satisfied with the status quo. For example, our team believes that a slight optimization can greatly increase GMV, but some influencers are unwilling to pay more work costs for this, thinking that the current situation is already very good." Behind this is a reflection of the fundamental differences in the values ​​of domestic and foreign influencers, which is also a problem that Three Sheep may face.

3. How should institutions seize opportunities amid the overseas expansion craze?

As the benefits of live streaming e-commerce in China have peaked, many organizations have begun to explore overseas to seek a "second growth curve" to gain greater business space. According to iiMedia Research, China's cross-border e-commerce exports are expected to reach nearly 3 trillion yuan this year, with a clear growth trend.

Among many channels, TikTok has become the mainstream choice for institutions to go overseas. According to the latest data released by the application analysis company App Magic, in 2023, TikTok's downloads on the App Store and Google Play Store reached 1 billion times, far ahead of other competitors and became the most downloaded application last year.

As the development of overseas markets becomes clearer, more and more organizations are starting to develop overseas businesses, and leading MCN organizations are also joining in. Recently, Dongfang Zhenxuan launched recruitment for overseas business-related positions, including content operations manager, business manager, operations manager, and TikTok overseas store operations, with monthly salaries ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 yuan.

Image source network

In fact, as early as 2022, there was news that Dongfang Zhenxuan's predecessor "New Oriental" was going to do live e-commerce on TikTok, but then there was no news. However, Dongfang Zhenxuan has always been thinking about the overseas market. Yu Minhong also mentioned in his conversation with Dong Yuhui that @与辉同行 is also thinking about the opportunity of live broadcasting abroad and may consider live broadcasting abroad in the future. He also suggested that Dong Yuhui could go to Australia for live broadcasting.

As early as 2022, Jiaogepengyou entered TikTok and established the "Jiaogepengyou Overseas Business Department" and "Jiaogepengyou Overseas E-commerce Academy". The former focuses on marketing, products and live streaming, and the latter focuses on talent and merchant training. Hao Xijie, head of the Jiaogepengyou Overseas Business Department, once said that in 2022, Jiaogepengyou's overseas business monthly revenue will increase by 50%-70% month-on-month, and in some months it will reach a growth rate of 100%. It is expected that the overall revenue will reach 100 million yuan in 2023.

Unlike Dongfang Zhenxuan and Jiaogepengyou, which focus on IP output, Qianxun takes the route of technology empowerment and mainly plays the role of a service provider. Qianxun provides live broadcast solutions for live broadcast e-commerce companies going overseas through AI digital human live broadcast technology. In addition, Qianxun has also built a cross-border live broadcast team to provide live broadcast training and operation guidance for local merchants in emerging markets such as Southeast Asia.

In addition, organizations such as 51Media, Yaowang Technology, and Baitu Video have also entered overseas markets, with TikTok being the focus of their efforts.

Although it is a general trend for institutions to go overseas, they still need to make decisions based on their own situation and not blindly follow the crowd. An institution director said that MCN institutions should be cautious when deciding to go overseas because their capability models are not matched. If they started out as content and e-commerce companies in China and want to do well in TikTok abroad, their core capabilities may not be content or e-commerce capabilities, but the ability to understand traffic. This ability to understand traffic is mixed with the degree of understanding of the local population. Different places have different people, and it cannot be simply compared with the domestic situation.

Another head of an agency said, "TikTok is still very different from Douyin in China. Its entire business closed loop cannot be compared with Douyin two years ago. So when TikTok's infrastructure is not yet fully built, the opportunity to go overseas should be based on sufficient resources and advantages overseas, rather than because the market is hot. "

In general, going overseas has become a new proposition for MCN agencies. In the current trend of going overseas, agencies should not only consider the benefits they can obtain, but also think clearly about the costs and risks of going overseas. When should they choose to go overseas? In what form should they go overseas? These are the key points that need to be considered. For agencies like Three Sheep that have already gone overseas, whoever can first clarify the rules and gameplay of the overseas market will be more likely to reap the traffic dividend.

Author: Aries

WeChat public account: TopKlout (ID: KOL-TOPKLOUT)