Targeting Dianping, why is Douyin poaching Dianping users?

As the short video app TikTok continues to grow in influence, it has once again turned its attention to the review field. TikTok has recently been actively attracting well-known users of Dianping and improving the review system on its platform. This article will analyze the competition between these two major applications in the field of online life services.

Recently, Douyin has turned its attention to Dianping in its efforts to develop local life.

Recently, according to media reports, Douyin is vigorously developing the platform's review system. It not only invites a large number of Dianping V5 users to join, but also launches a series of policies to support and reward high-quality review users on the site.

According to Clough's observation, Douyin is inviting users with Dianping Lv5-Lv8 and Douyin ratings below Lv3 to join. If users upgrade to Lv5 within a single month, they can get 4 group purchase coupons issued by Douyin, which are worth 30 yuan off for purchases over 30.1 yuan. After December 19, the coupon rewards dropped from a total value of 120 yuan to 100 yuan, divided into four levels of 10 yuan, 20 yuan, 30 yuan and 40 yuan.

Douyin has never stopped its efforts in the local life market. The continuous influx of traffic has allowed it to grab a piece of meat from strong competitors such as Meituan and Dianping. What does the evaluation system mean to Douyin? Can Dianping take on this wave of strong attacks?

1. Grabbing people, grabbing businesses, and grabbing low prices

Douyin has always regarded the in-store consumption model as the focus of developing local life. This is because the in-store consumption model attracts users to consume offline through traffic distribution and high-quality content, which is more in line with Douyin's platform mechanism and content advantages.

As Douyin grows, its huge traffic pool has naturally attracted many businesses and users, and many people use Douyin and Dianping at the same time. According to data from Jiuqian Middle Platform, the overlap between Douyin and Meituan and Dianping’s catering businesses is as high as 87%-90%. In Dianping’s must-eat list in Shanghai and Beijing, a sample of 24 found that 10 of them have already deployed Douyin.

The battle for stores is undoubtedly a key focus in the local life track.

In October this year, Tai Er Pickled Fish became a hot search on Dianping.com for its “disappearing 48 hours”. However, no relevant entries were found when searching for “Tai Er Pickled Fish” on Dianping.com. This was due to differences in the rules between the two parties in terms of marketing and technical interfaces.

The day before the news came out, Tai Er Pickled Fish launched a live broadcast on Douyin, and the total transaction volume of goods exceeded 100 million yuan in the first 12 hours of the broadcast. This also made the local life battle between Douyin and Dianping the focus of this year's Double Eleven.

According to Claure's observation, Tai Er Pickled Cabbage Fish launched several low-priced products during its first live broadcast on Douyin, including "69 yuan for a 100 yuan voucher", "139 yuan for a 200 yuan voucher", and "99 yuan special meal for two".

The picture comes from the official Weibo of Taier Pickled Fish

In the early stage, Douyin officials emphasized to local life service providers that Douyin packages must be the "lowest discounts on the entire network", using high-value discount coupons and preferential policies to attract users to consume. At the same time, in the early stage of development, Douyin's commissions are settled on a monthly basis, and merchants who meet the relevant conditions can return 50% of the commissions, and Douyin will also provide new merchants with 60 days of commission-free services.

By attracting consumers with low prices and launching welfare policies for merchants, Douyin's simple and direct approach of attracting merchants and offering low prices has accelerated the development of local life.

At the same time, content platforms gather a large number of consumers who are interested in content. On the one hand, it is easier to promote direct conversion of users by linking live broadcasts, short videos, pictures and texts, and then verifying consumption coupons offline. On the other hand, through online content planting, users can be encouraged to purchase consumption coupons across platforms or conduct offline transactions.

At this point, the post-consumption review content has become the last piece of the puzzle of Douyin’s local life. Douyin is also using incentive policies and cash rewards to poach Dianping’s “corners” openly and covertly, which is undoubtedly a counterattack against Meituan and Dianping’s development of live streaming.

2. Traditional service platforms should reject content anxiety

Douyin, which uses short videos and live broadcasts as two "time-killing" tools, has had a significant impact on life service platforms such as Meituan when it first entered the local life market. However, in 2023, after the recovery from the epidemic, Meituan still delivered performance that exceeded the industry's expectations.

According to Meituan's second quarter and half-year financial reports, Meituan's revenue in the first half of 2023 was 126.582 billion yuan, an increase of 30.2% compared with 97.207 billion yuan in the same period of 2022. Among them, Meituan's core local business quarterly revenue reached 51.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39.2%.

It is worth noting that in Meituan’s eye-catching financial report, the keyword “live streaming” was mentioned three times. At the same time, Meituan also specifically pointed out that “we are exploring cooperation with third parties in traffic acquisition” and has also regarded “live streaming” and “short videos” as one of the marketing tools successfully launched in the second quarter.

Meituan launched the live broadcast function on the site this year, and opened multiple official live broadcast rooms such as "Shen Gaoshou", focusing on low prices. At the same time, in the short video track, Meituan directly launched a mechanism for watching videos to receive cash, and added local channels, merchant group purchase links, and other content.

However, over the past year, Meituan has always faced the key challenge of content development - how to find content producers and change users' usual usage habits.

Most merchants developing local businesses do not have the foundation and ability to create high-quality content, and more often choose to rely on third-party service providers for content promotion. However, relying on third-party service providers means higher economic and communication costs, and merchants are also taking a wait-and-see attitude towards the influence of Meituan’s video content, which makes the commercial effect of the content extremely uncertain.

The head of an offline catering brand once revealed to Clour in an interview: "At present, we are still hesitant about the live broadcasts of Meituan and Dianping. On the one hand, we don't have the manpower and budget, and on the other hand, we don't know how efficient it is, so we dare not invest casually. We will consider following up only after it matures and gradually stabilizes."

In terms of consumers' platform usage habits, the tool attributes of Meituan and Dianping are more obvious. First there is user demand, then there is search and order. However, content-driven consumption is more about the platform finding people based on algorithmic mechanisms and using interests to drive consumption. This has created a new problem for traditional local life platforms.

At the same time, low prices are an important incentive for users to place orders. Faced with the fierce offensive of the "rich and powerful" Douyin, Meituan had to make changes and was dragged into a price war, which is something traditional local service platforms like Meituan do not want to see.

Let's look at Dianping.com. Its unique review system has irreplaceable advantages. First, Dianping.com has a complete account level system, and each level has benefits such as coupons and free trials, which can inspire users to spontaneously post content on Dianping.com.

The picture comes from Dianping.com

Secondly, the consumption willingness and ability of the Dianping user group are relatively strong. According to public data, each daily active user of Dianping can bring in about 667 yuan of revenue per year, which is at a relatively high level in the industry. In 2022, the revenue contributed by Douyin users was 14% less than that of Dianping.

Douyin has set its sights on this group of users with high stickiness and high willingness to spend, undoubtedly hoping to complete the last piece of the puzzle in the local life track. However, Dianping's merchant evaluation system is based on consumers' evaluations and real feelings after consumption, while Douyin's evaluations are still mainly based on influencers. There are few consumers who post short videos and live broadcasts to comment, and the threshold is too high, making it difficult to cultivate habits.

3. A new stage for local life events

As content platforms "declare war" on service platforms using group buying functions as a starting point, service platforms use their own relatively complete service systems as a "shield" while accelerating the creation of content "weapons" to cope with market loss. The "chaos" in local life has entered a new stage.

According to the "Brand Social Marketing Series Research - Local Life" by Clour, the development of local life business has entered the 4.0 stage, and "new e-commerce scenarios" and "new nearby consumption" have become the main characteristics of the current stage. Local consumption scenarios are scattered across multiple platforms and models, and the combination of short videos and live broadcast operations of offline stores has gradually become a new trend.

Report source: Clour, citation requires authorization

In this competitive environment, the traditional comprehensive platform's weak social and strong reputation platform mechanism has attracted a large number of amateur users, who provide real and objective consumer evaluations. The advantage of the content platform is that it has attracted a large number of consumers with interesting content, making it easier to directly convert users.

Nowadays, platforms such as AutoNavi, Koubei, and Xiaohongshu have also announced their entry into the local life battlefield. The entry of new players has brought new gameplay and changes to the local life competition. Each platform has its own advantages and bottlenecks. Clourry expects that the layout of life services on each platform will be greatly improved, and merchants will also benefit from the support of major traffic platforms and get more customer acquisition opportunities.

The competition in the local life track has not yet reached its end. We will have to wait and see how the future battle will develop.

References:

100 yuan reward for each person! In addition to snatching merchants, Douyin also started snatching Dianping experts? | New Broadcasting Field

Buddhist "big" Zhongdianping, unwilling to be "small" and "rich" in mining｜Financial Story Collection

How to divide the local life service "cake"? ｜Nanfang Daily

Author: Dake

Source: TopKlout (ID: TopKlout), a self-media ecological observation account that combines good-looking and informative content