Oriental Selection’s sales exceeded 175 million on the first day of listing on Taobao: Is the nesting doll-style coupon rebate a major contributor?

Yesterday, Oriental Selection made its debut on Taobao Live, bringing in 170 million yuan worth of goods. What changes has Oriental Selection brought about since it entered Taobao? What were the highlights of yesterday's live debut, and what should we pay attention to? Let's take a look at the analysis in this article.

Taobao has welcomed the long-awaited big anchor to fill the position.

Yesterday, Oriental Selection made its first live broadcast on Taobao, bringing in 170 million yuan worth of goods in 17 hours. During the pre-show warm-up, the number of fans of Oriental Selection's Taobao account was 576,100, which has now tripled to 1.967 million. The number of people online in the live broadcast room has continued to exceed 100,000, and the cumulative number of viewers has exceeded 10 million.

Compared with its peers, Luo Yonghao entered Taobao on Double 11 last year, live-streaming for 13 hours, with 70,000 people online at one point, 26.5 million cumulative viewers, and GMV of about 210 million yuan. Considering that the entry time of Oriental Selection was not blessed by a large-scale promotion festival, as well as the difference in the goods, it is difficult to judge the effect of the two debuts horizontally.

However, there are some details and differences that deserve attention. For example, before their debut, both Make Friends and Oriental Selection held multiple warm-up sessions. Considering the competition for traffic, top anchors Luo Yonghao, Yu Minhong and Oriental Selection CEO Dongfang Xiaosun all chose to appear during the prime time of live broadcast between 5 and 6 pm.

The first show of Oriental Selection lasted longer, starting at 8 a.m., directly covering all traffic peaks and troughs. The new live broadcast room model of "nesting doll-style red envelope returns" contributed greatly to this.

Taobao Live, naturally, is not reluctant to spend money to attract traffic to Oriental Selection. Oriental Selection can be seen in the opening screen position, hot search position, and homepage banner entrance.

Oriental Selection is well prepared for its entry into Taobao. Not only does it not charge a slot fee, it also offers an 88% discount on its own products plus red envelope subsidies. All of its main anchors are on Taobao, and Yu Minhong even personally served as the "New Oriental chef" in the live broadcast room, frying eggs and making steaks.

Taobao platforms that have entered the shelf logic will inevitably need to change their appearance, especially as a typical case of Douyin's interest content e-commerce, Oriental Selection's pain period may be even longer.

An interesting detail is that when opening up a new battlefield, it is easier to gather traffic if internet celebrities take the lead. However, when 30 million "mothers-in-law" were ready to escort Dongfang Zhenxuan internet celebrity anchor Dong Yuhui to Taobao to fight against the "Li Jiaqi girls", Dong Yuhui did not appear in the Taobao live broadcast room.

01 Taobao launched a big campaign, but Dong Yuhui was not there

The methodology of emotional marketing and knowledge-based marketing does not completely work on Taobao.

"Friends, there are only 75 orders left for all the hair dryers in stock. Don't hesitate any longer. Let me show you our subsidies. Pull down to get the coupons, and you can get 400 yuan back after payment. This is too cheap. Don't worry about the color, friends. It's just the texture. I am willing to pay for his brand and aesthetics."

When anchor Zhongcan switched to Taobao live streaming, the first impression of the old fans who followed Dongfang Zhenxuan into Taobao was, "Taobao's pace is too fast, and the anchors talk like machine guns," "YOYO and Zhongcan have Taobao style in their clothes," and "It's okay to say you don't want to buy on Douyin, but on Taobao they really emphasize placing orders."

One is a live chat room, and the other is a live selling room. In Douyin’s Dongfang Zhenxuan, users like to listen to the host’s leisurely poetry and songs, and place an order to buy something. On Taobao, a pure consumption platform, the most direct demand of users is shopping. Users enter the live broadcast room, see the products they like, buy them and leave without staying. “It feels like there is no content to chat with the host in the Taobao comment area, it’s all about asking for red envelopes.”

One rule is simple, the other is complex. It is quite simple to sell goods on Douyin through Dongfang Zhenxuan. It is a street hawking. There are no cross-store or instant discount rules, and there is no rush to buy atmosphere. There is no limit on the quantity of products, and you can go in at any time. The products on the shelves are basically in stock. Taobao is equivalent to a shopping mall. Although there is no concept of cross-store and deposit during the promotion period, there are millions of red envelopes and tens of millions of subsidies, plus the rules of receiving coupons, stacking, and instant discount red envelopes, which need to anchor consumers' subsequent purchases. Now a product is sold out in 1 minute, and some products are out of stock before they are introduced.

It is not difficult to see that after entering Taobao, the anchor group of Dongfang Zhenxuan started using the Taobao live broadcast language and began to promote in the live broadcast room how big the product discounts were and how cost-effective they were compared to someone else, thus starting a price war for the first time.

On Taobao, Dongfang Zhenxuan may hope that the anchor will become "Li Jiaqi-like" and become a salesperson with bargaining power. At this time, Dong Yuhui's feelings and knowledge-based methodology may not be suitable for Taobao. He also joked that in the Douyin live broadcast room, he often forgot to sell goods while talking, and was reminded by the platform.

It is the content itself that is the primary and necessary element of the Douyin live broadcast room. The combination of information flow and product flow speeds up the efficiency of shopping decisions. That is why Dong Yuhui was selected by the Douyin algorithm and became the "chosen one".

If Dong Yuhui talks about life with shrimps in the Taobao live broadcast room, Taobao users may comment, "Don't talk about these useless things, how much discount can you get?" However, if the original content live broadcast model is abandoned and directly converted to the traditional live broadcast sales model, what is the differential barrier of Dongfang Zhenxuan's "storytelling ability"?

It can only be said that Dongfang Zhenxuan arrived at the right time. Taobao, which is currently undergoing a content-oriented transformation, is a content depression.

On the one hand, Taobao users need content. Take Dun Dun as an example. He wrote some poems in his product introduction last night and gained 168,000 followers in half an hour. New fans entered the live broadcast room and praised him, saying, "This anchor is so cultured" and "I haven't seen such a fresh and refined live broadcast room for a long time."

On the other hand, the platform is also willing to support content, which is a bonus worth competing for. In the past two years, the traffic distribution mechanism has changed from the main indicator of "transaction" to "double indicators of transaction and content". When the content of a featured live broadcast room is differentiated from most live broadcast rooms and the conversion rate is high, it will obtain more public domain traffic.

02 The nesting doll-style red envelope return: Lose a little money and gain traffic

"I've gone crazy buying nesting doll-style red envelopes."

Last night, old fans lamented that the "red envelopes for placing orders" model in Taobao live broadcasts is too addictive. For example, when Zhongcan introduced the liquor Wuliangye in the live broadcast room, he said, "The cash back red envelopes from placing orders for Wuliangye are almost enough to bring Ecuadorian South American white shrimp home directly." If you buy white shrimp and get red envelopes, you can continue to buy other products.

An insider of Dongfang Zhenxuan told the owner that this was their first attempt to use the "red envelope return for ordering" model in the live broadcast room. In fact, this is already a "nesting doll" routine left over from Tmall Supermarket, the purpose of which is to guide users to continue placing orders and ensure high shopping conversion.

Because it was the first attempt, Dongfang Zhenxuan suffered a setback. A product called "Dongfang Zhenxuan's 4.5 catties smoked potatoes" was sold at a price of 23.16 yuan at a 18% discount. When placing an order in the Dongfang Zhenxuan live broadcast room, a 25 yuan red envelope was also given, which was equivalent to buying for 0 yuan and getting 1.84 yuan. Hundreds of thousands of netizens who were watching the live broadcast room discovered this loophole and quickly placed orders to take advantage of the situation.

Without the host introducing the product, Dongfang Zhenxuan sold more than 20,000 orders of this smoked potato in one hour. The live broadcast room then took emergency action to remove the product from the shelves. Dongfang Zhenxuan customer service replied that the product would be shipped normally.

Because of this "turnaround", the popularity of the Oriental Selection live broadcast room soared. At that time, the number of fans of the Oriental Selection Taobao live broadcast room increased to 879,000, and the number of viewers in the live broadcast room reached 6.9 million. After that, the discounted price of the product was changed to 26.32 yuan, and more than 10,000 orders were sold.

Even if you lose a small amount of money, it's like spending hundreds of thousands on advertising. You gain traffic, popularity, and big money, especially the real money earned from high-order, high-profit self-operated products.

According to the owner of the website, Dongfang Zhenxuan’s Taobao live broadcast room carries more than 300 products, including dozens of categories such as agricultural products, daily necessities, and home appliances. It particularly favors self-operated products, with more than 60 products, and more than 10 products with sales exceeding 1 million orders across the entire network. At the same time, it also released two new products, one of which is snail rice noodle, which sold 5,000 orders. The other is an upgraded version of Dongfang Zhenxuan mooncake, which sold more than one million orders last year, and sold 10,000 orders.

In the Taobao live broadcast room of Oriental Selection, a poster with the words "12% off all self-operated products" is placed next to the anchor, and red envelopes can be stacked. The last time the self-operated products were discounted was because the Douyin live broadcast room of "Oriental Selection's Self-operated Products" was suspended in July. When a big promotion was temporarily launched on its own App, a sign of 15% off for a limited time for self-operated products was put up, and the total sales in four days exceeded 120 million yuan.

Especially under the premise that no placement fees are charged for other products, live streaming on a new platform involves various communications and product selection, and it is easy to fail if the mechanism cannot be negotiated. However, self-operated products are easier to control, and are different from the homogeneous products on the platform, have more characteristics, higher profits, and a more eye-catching debut.

03 The layout of Taobao is not broadcast daily

What kind of business is Oriental Selection doing?

"We don't do daily broadcasts at the moment, we only do large-scale events on Taobao." Anchor Yoyo mentioned in the live broadcast room last night.

The change in the logic of their channels can be seen from the entry of MCNs such as Jiao Ge Pengyou and Yao Wang into Taobao Live. Previously, on Douyin and Kuaishou, they mostly used the IPs of top anchors to make their live broadcast rooms popular. After entering Taobao, they entered with MCN as their IP. On the one hand, Taobao Live, with its rich product pool and mature platform mechanism, is a relatively worry-free commercial realization channel, and also an increase and guarantee.

On the other hand, they enter Taobao's public domain to attract fans and sell goods at the same time, treating the channel as advertising and traffic, which ultimately falls on the brand. Yu Minhong said in his official account "Lao Yu Xianhua" in August last year that the lively model established based on external platforms is inherently extremely fragile.

Last year, someone close to Taobao Live said, "You can think of the organization as a brand idea, and Taobao is an important business base for them, and this trend will become more and more obvious." This means that Douyin and Taobao are not a choice between the two. For Oriental Selection, both are channels, and how to coordinate and plan a multi-channel layout is a difficult problem that the Oriental Selection brand will encounter in the next stage.

On August 25, Oriental Selection announced its full-year results for fiscal year 2023, from June 1 last year to May 31 this year.

Data shows that Oriental Selection achieved revenue of 4.5 billion yuan, net profit of 971 million yuan, annual GMV of 10 billion yuan, and a total of 136 million orders, almost all of which came from Douyin.

That evening, at Oriental Selection's 2023 fiscal year performance exchange meeting, Sun Dongxu responded for the first time that after entering Taobao Live, Oriental Selection will plan for coordination and balance among the three major platforms of Douyin, its own App and Taobao.

The figure shows the changes in the income structure of Oriental Selection in the past three years

Based on the above data, Sun Dongxu stated that Douyin is a strategic stronghold for Oriental Selection. Oriental Selection’s matrix account on Douyin must still work at full capacity and go all out to promote excellent products, and will not reduce investment in the original platform. He also bluntly stated that "Douyin itself also has huge incremental space for Oriental Selection."

The confidence of the Oriental Selection brand comes from its own products. In fiscal year 2023, the total revenue of Oriental Selection's own products and live e-commerce division was RMB 3.9 billion, of which the total revenue of self-operated products exceeded RMB 2.6 billion, and the GMV of self-operated products accounted for about 67%. Affected by the gradual increase in self-operated products, the gross profit margin of Oriental Selection increased from 37.8% in fiscal year 2022 to 38.2% in fiscal year 2023.

For this reason, Yu Minhong confidently stated that the 2023 fiscal year marks the company's transformation into a brand new company named "Dongfang Zhenxuan", a company with its own brand products and live streaming e-commerce. At present, Dongfang Zhenxuan has become a well-known platform for selling high-quality, cost-effective agricultural and other products.

This means that in the early stage, Dongfang Zhenxuan found a wave of high-net-worth user groups through culture and brand. Coupled with the gradual increase in the proportion of self-operated businesses, Dongfang Zhenxuan's gross profit margin is generally higher than that of other live broadcast companies such as Jiao Ge Pengyou. The establishment of a membership system will support Dongfang Zhenxuan to become a brand that can continue to carry high premiums.

It’s like an online version of Sam’s Club.

The challenge of continuously acquiring customers and maintaining user activity for one's own APP still requires reliance on large-traffic platforms such as TikTok and Taobao. This is long-term work and cannot be achieved overnight.

Author: 24

Source: Doujiao TMT (ID: ylwanjia), the smell and temperature of new traffic, new technology, new gameplay, and new economy.