ROI is nearly 15, new customer rate exceeds 70%, the accelerated growth and long-term test of B station e-commerce

In recent years, as a well-known bullet screen video website, Bilibili has not only attracted a large number of young users, but has also gradually expanded its e-commerce business. What is remarkable is that the ROI and new customer rate of Bilibili's e-commerce have achieved incredible growth in a short period of time. Such results not only represent success, but also mean that Bilibili's e-commerce faces long-term tests and challenges. Only through continuous innovation, high-quality services and the establishment of user relationships can it maintain sustainable growth and success in the fiercely competitive e-commerce market.

"During this year's Double 11, the ROI of a Chinese home appliance brand on Bilibili was close to 15."

"Mr. Mideng, the top UP host in the home improvement field of Bilibili, has achieved nearly half of Yaowang's GMV. During the Double 11 Home Improvement Festival, his cumulative payment amount across all channels reached 1.68 billion, a year-on-year growth rate of 500%."

"The leading domestic beauty and skincare brand invested millions of dollars in Bilibili, but unexpectedly it directly drove single-store sales to over 100 million during the Double 11 pre-sale period."

The annual e-commerce promotion event has finally entered its 15th year, and the word-of-mouth growth myth has quietly changed. In the just-passed Double 11, Bilibili became the largest "incremental market" in the eyes of brands.

In fact, there have been signs of the rise of Bilibili's e-commerce dividends.

In terms of selling products through videos, an interview with LeFen founder Ye Hongxin this year sparked a discussion in the brand market about selling products on Bilibili. According to him, LeFen hair dryer reached the young market through a hardcore press conference on Bilibili, and finally achieved an ROI of more than 10 through the form of hanging blue links in the comment area + take-off investment. Bilibili's potential in selling products through live broadcasts should not be underestimated. The GMV transaction volume of the first live broadcast of "Bao Jian Sao", a super million-level UP host, reached 28 million yuan, and the total number of transaction orders exceeded 250,000.

The B station fashion UP @Coco敲敲_ (hereinafter referred to as "Coco") achieved a total GMV of over 4.5W+ in the first live broadcast, dominating the shopping list and life list that night. It was Qingteng Culture's first successful shot in the field of live streaming sales on B station.

"Coco's first live broadcast had two very eye-catching key data. The first is that the average viewing time per person was as high as 9.5 minutes, which is enough to prove that the live broadcast room has a strong sense of immersion and high stickiness. The second is that among the number of transactions in the live broadcast room, the proportion of new customers is as high as over 30%. This data proves the strong trading atmosphere of Bilibili and the potential for tapping the peripheral traffic of live broadcasts." said Li Xiaoru, general manager of content marketing of Qingteng Culture.

B站 is indeed more resolute in its determination to develop e-commerce. In terms of commercial infrastructure, this year's Double 11, B站 vigorously expanded its commercial scenarios, temporarily renamed the original "Member Purchase" entrance at the bottom of the mobile app to "Double 11", and added a "Tmall Double 11" section to directly display Tmall products and support clicks to jump to the Tmall page for purchase.

Compared with the wait-and-see attitude of UP hosts in previous years, this year's UP hosts' willingness to sell goods through live streaming has also been leveraged. According to data from Ebrun Power, during this year's Double 11, a total of 57 UP hosts started broadcasting from October 23 to November 11, of which 11 were awarded the title of Top 100 UP Hosts. @Mr迷登 also revealed in an interview that last year his live streaming GMV increased from 30 to 40 million to nearly 700 million, and this year's GMV target is directly set at 2 billion. It is not difficult to see that Bilibili's live streaming sales are taking bigger and bigger steps.

Although Bilibili has accelerated the expansion of its e-commerce business this year, compared with vertical e-commerce platforms, Bilibili's e-commerce explosion still needs stronger momentum and fulcrum.

On the one hand, the commercial infrastructure of Bilibili is still under construction, which is directly related to the commercialization process of Bilibili. On the other hand, after the emergence of top UP hosts such as @Mr迷登 and @宝剑嫂, Bilibili needs to continue to output large-scale sales cases to enhance the trading atmosphere within the site.

What is certain is that Bilibili, which has found the right direction, has already seen the light of day ahead.

1. Strong new user acquisition and high conversion rate, Bilibili e-commerce has found its core competitiveness

As e-commerce platforms enter the stage of stock competition, how to break through the bottleneck of attracting new users and find traffic depressions has become a common problem faced by platforms and brand merchants. From the perspective of brand flow, on the one hand, brands still stick to vertical e-commerce platforms to consolidate the mainstream consumer groups, and on the other hand, brands are also focusing on short videos and content platforms with larger traffic, trying to connect with users with higher consumption power.

From the perspective of the brand's thinking, during the stock competition period, brands want to directly reach high-value groups. In terms of specific labels, they are young, have a strong willingness to consume, and rarely go through the sifting of e-commerce platforms. These characteristics are exactly in line with Bilibili, which is dominated by young users.

"Before we officially started live streaming to sell goods, we carefully studied the data of Coco's video promotion. According to previous business order data, Coco is a strong promoter. The conversion data of each of her promotion videos is very high. This strengthened our confidence in starting live streaming to sell goods on Bilibili." Li Xiao analyzed to Doujiao.

High conversion has always been an important feature of B station's sales promotion, especially in the category of high-priced goods. During this year's Double 11, B station's home furnishing UP host "Ajian and his appliances" achieved a single-game GMV of 7 million through joint promotion with UP hosts such as "Yang Liuwa Benwa" and "Zhongzhuangjia Panda", and the highest ROI exceeded 70%.

In Li Xiao's opinion, the high conversion rate of B-site live streaming is inseparable from the UP masters' deep cultivation of content. "B-site UP masters are different from Douyin bloggers. B-site UP masters have two major characteristics in terms of content: first, the content is vertical enough, and second, the content is deep enough. The overall community atmosphere of B-site is good, and the relationship between UP masters and fans is closer and stickier, so the conversion rate is good."

Take Coco as an example. As a fashion blogger, Coco accurately targets female users with pear-shaped bodies and creates content for pear-shaped women to "modify wide hips and thick legs" and other demands, thereby establishing an emotional connection with users. "For UP hosts on Bilibili, vertical and professional content sharing is like the 'core' of building UP hosts. Only in this way can the stickiness between UP hosts and fans be improved."

In terms of live streaming, stronger fan stickiness not only directly leads to high conversion rates, but the trust relationship established between UP hosts and fans also ensures a lower return rate. Li Xiao introduced that during the product selection period, Coco first paid attention to brands that had been recommended many times before and had good fan responses. These brands have accumulated enough recognition in the hearts of fans and are more trustworthy. Doujiao observed that in Coco's first live broadcast, nearly 70% of the brands were actually experienced by Coco and verified by fans.

Li Xiao added that when selecting products, Coco paid special attention to price policies and freight insurance. In terms of price, all products in Coco's live broadcast room are in line with the Double 11 event prices to ensure that fans' trust is won at the price level. In addition, since Coco's live broadcast room is all clothing products, Coco insists on obtaining freight insurance from merchants to solve users' concerns about after-sales issues.

Because of this, the return rate of Coco's live broadcast room remains at around 26%, far lower than the average level of clothing live broadcasts.

The second characteristic of Bilibili’s sales promotion is its ability to attract new customers. Bilibili, which gathers young users, not only has stronger spending power, but also has a stronger willingness to accept brand-seeking content.

According to official information from Bilibili, during this year's Double 11, an international beauty brand used "staying up late" as a related word to accurately match core users, and placed content and customized content in high-activity areas for women who stay up late, such as the film and television area, entertainment area, and daily life area, achieving efficient new customer growth, with a new customer rate of up to 70%. Industry insiders analyzed to Doujiao that the beauty brand is L'Oreal.

As the e-commerce potential of Bilibili is released, brands’ recognition of the products sold on Bilibili is increasing.

"After Coco's first live broadcast, our greatest sense of accomplishment is that through this live broadcast, many brands have realized the charm of B station live broadcast." Li Xiao's tone was not without excitement. According to her, the brands that ranked in the top ten or even top twenty in terms of transaction volume in the first live broadcast have expressed a strong willingness to reinvest.

From the perspective of sub-categories, home appliance and beauty brands are paying more and more attention to Bilibili. Huoshaoyun data shows that in October, the number of videos promoting home appliance products on Bilibili increased by 86.6%, almost double that of September. On the one hand, the trend of home appliance brands strengthening online sales is becoming more and more obvious. On the other hand, the unit price of home appliances is high, and the transaction volume relies more on the pull of new customers, which is exactly the advantage of Bilibili's e-commerce.

Data source: Fire Cloud Data

From a vertical perspective, domestic brands have also used Bilibili as the main battlefield to promote their brand. According to Huoshaoyun data, eight of the top ten brands with the highest new broadcast volume in October were domestic brands. Among them are well-known domestic brands such as Huawei and Xiaomi, as well as old domestic brands represented by Fenghua and emerging domestic brands represented by Laifen.

Data source: Fire Cloud Data

The inherent advantages of B station's e-commerce development are becoming increasingly obvious: a younger user circle with greater consumption potential, as well as high-quality content and community atmosphere. Based on this premise, B station's open-loop strategy is to reconstruct the e-commerce ecosystem through an open and interconnected e-commerce chain by leveraging its strengths and avoiding its weaknesses.

2. Bilibili e-commerce is in urgent need of an explosion

In the field of e-commerce business, Bilibili, which started with ACG content, does not have the generally recognized "first-mover advantage". Faced with the mature closed-loop e-commerce ecosystem, Bilibili broke through with the "big open-loop" strategy, established a differentiated e-commerce chain, and also took advantage of the situation to occupy a corner of the e-commerce market.

From the perspective of platform maturity, compared with traditional e-commerce channels, Station B's e-commerce path is indeed still under construction. However, all signs indicate that Station B's e-commerce is accelerating its accumulation of energy.

"One of the biggest concerns when doing e-commerce business on Bilibili is the platform's infrastructure capabilities," Bilibili service providers told Doujiao. "E-commerce infrastructure capabilities, such as live broadcast components and data detection capabilities, are directly related to the efficiency and effectiveness of e-commerce business execution."

The "big open loop" strategy that Bilibili adheres to places higher demands on the platform's commercial infrastructure capabilities, because the transaction link under this model involves off-site jumps, and the smoothness and completeness of the transaction process require support from the technical end.

For Bilibili, commercial infrastructure is a proposition that the platform needs to persist in.

Previously, Doujiao reported that in June this year, a management change of Bilibili started from the superstructure and opened up the commercial ecology within Bilibili. On June 28, Bilibili issued an internal email, announcing that it would integrate multiple teams to form a new first-level department, the Transaction Ecology Center, which would be directly managed by Bilibili's Vice Chairman and COO Li Ni. At the same time, the product and operation team of the original e-commerce division, the main site business center, and part of the product delivery project team were also incorporated into the Transaction Ecology Center.

During the Double 11 shopping festival, Bilibili directly connected its product library with various e-commerce platforms, and relied on the "Spark Plan" and "U-Select Plan" to work with Alibaba to provide platform-level traffic subsidies to brands and merchants. At the same time, Bilibili also jointly created the data ecosystem project "Jinghong Plan" with JD.com, using data to improve brand acquisition and conversion efficiency on Bilibili.

In response to the UP host sales business of B Station, B Station has also recently launched the UP host customer service function. Simply click the customer service logo in the upper right corner of the UP host's homepage on your mobile phone to chat directly with the UP host and his e-commerce sales team. The current UP host customer service function setting issues are similar to those of traditional e-commerce platforms, including delivery time, whether free shipping, and coupons. B Station opened this function naturally as one of the ways to improve the user transaction experience and empower UP hosts' transaction efficiency.

It is worth noting that according to Yibang Power, as of now, among the 57 UP hosts who started broadcasting on Double Eleven, only 3 UP hosts have enabled this function on their B station homepage. It is foreseeable that B station will continue to upgrade its e-commerce service capabilities and activate the trading atmosphere within the site.

In addition to infrastructure capabilities, the pallet issue is also a common problem faced by platforms that have just entered the e-commerce business.

"Compared with traditional e-commerce platforms, the most difficult dilemma for content platforms to do a good job in e-commerce business is that there are few merchants and insufficient shelves." Industry insiders lamented to Doujiao. Among the UP hosts who started broadcasting during Double 11, 58% of the UP hosts did not open product selection and investment to other brands or merchants, and only promoted products for their own Taobao stores or their own B station member purchase stores and B station workshops. From this point of view, it can be seen that the shelves provided by the B station platform are more general shelves, which have limited effect on UP hosts who emphasize personal settings on the platform.

The unique content and personality of the UP masters at Station B determine that the goods provided by the platform must be more refined and personalized, and the supply of goods must be tailored to the individual. This is a key issue that must be solved in the process of bringing goods to Station B. Doujiao observed that Station B is constantly improving the initiative of goods in vertical categories, especially in the fields of home appliances, 3C, and beauty. Breakthroughs in these fields have laid a solid foundation for Station B's e-commerce.

The ability and rhythm of selling products on a large scale and in a sustainable manner are also areas in which Bilibili continues to focus its efforts.

Unlike traditional e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com, and short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, Bilibili, as a content platform, has to take user acceptance into consideration when promoting products on Bilibili. In view of this, Bilibili UP hosts often intentionally reduce the frequency of promoting products, thereby reducing the impact of promoting products on their own content and fans.

Doujiao observed that during this year's Double 11, top UP hosts such as Bao Jian Sao, Dao Yue She Food Encounter, and Ying Wu Li, who started live streaming on Bilibili to sell goods and achieved impressive results, did not start broadcasting during the Double 11 period.

After Coco's first live broadcast achieved impressive results, Li Xiao also considered the rhythm of subsequent live broadcasts. After comprehensively considering factors such as user feedback, brand cooperation, and anchor willingness, she revealed to Doujiao that she hopes to maintain a certain frequency of live broadcasts in the future. After completing the first live broadcast on October 19, Coco's second live broadcast was scheduled for November 30.

Indeed, B Station's e-commerce has gone through the pioneering period, and this year's Double 11 performance is enough to prove to the outside world its potential in brand breakthrough and growth. However, if we look at the industry track, B Station's conversion cycle is longer and the transaction atmosphere within the site needs to settle. For B Station, the breakthrough of e-commerce business still needs to be accelerated.

Author: Bukong WeChat public account: Spicy