The volume of voice overshadows Douyin, and the "five high" brands should not miss the video account

This article mainly discusses the development trend and user portrait of video account e-commerce. The author believes that video account e-commerce has great potential in terms of growth and commercial value, and is an attractive platform for both white-label merchants and brand merchants. It is recommended for students who want to learn about video account e-commerce.

The overall voice of video account e-commerce has surpassed that of Douyin.

This may be my most intuitive feeling in the past six months. There are many reasons. First, from the perspective of the platform, the dividends of Douyin e-commerce have tended to disappear and entered the stage of efficiency optimization, while video account e-commerce is in the ascendant. Last year, the GMV was 130-160 billion, and this year's estimated GMV will reach 300-400 billion. The growth story has just begun; secondly, from the perspective of merchants, the Matthew effect brought about by the track horse racing advocated by Douyin e-commerce, and the open data make the merchants' people, goods and places "have no secrets", and also make the vast majority of merchants realize that this platform may not be suitable for their own development, and then turn their attention to the video account where the data is relatively closed and some merchants have obtained positive results; finally, it is due to this year's economic trend, which makes more and more merchants become more pragmatic.

If we say that three years after the pandemic, businesses were still obsessed with increasing "sales" and beautiful numbers, then this year, after rolling up their sleeves and working for half a year, businesses found that their arms and legs were still "exposed" and had to turn their goals to pursuing real "profits". As the biggest hope of the whole audience, video accounts have undoubtedly become the unanimous choice of merchants.

Video account e-commerce top merchants

Friends who have watched my video account, official account, or listened to my courses should all know that I am a "bull" on video account e-commerce. Last October, I wrote many articles about video account e-commerce (related reading), and predicted that the GMV scale of video account e-commerce in 2023 would be close to 400 billion. Now, half a year has passed, and I am still optimistic about the growth of video account e-commerce. This is a judgment made from the dual perspectives of user motivation and business motivation. In the "Growth Engine-Founder Growth Strategy Class" I lectured, I interpreted the video account as "the biggest business change in the next five years."

In today's article, I will continue to share with you some of my new knowledge and understanding of video account e-commerce, and give merchants some sincere suggestions on entering the video account.

01 Change the perspective and look at the user portrait of video account e-commerce

If we look at the user portrait of Video Account, we can quickly draw a conclusion that in the past year, the age of Video Account users has been declining, from mainly over 55 years old in the third quarter of last year to mainly over 35 years old at this stage. However, this does not mean that among the active users of Video Account, there are a large number of middle-aged users aged 35-45. Users over 45 years old are still the group with the highest daily activity in Video Account, and are also the group with the greatest purchasing power in Video Account e-commerce.

Where does prediction come from?

In fact, in addition to the video account user portrait information released by official or external channels , I think there is another population data that can better reflect the current commercial value of the video account, that is, the daily available video account population data displayed by the ADQ background . Although it cannot represent the full video account user portrait, these available users who have been labeled with various labels by the algorithm can better reflect the current commercial population value of the video account.

So what are these users like?

According to the ADQ population data (over 14 years old) that a colleague from Kas Consulting took a screenshot of and sent to me on a certain day in April, users over 50 years old accounted for 47.5%, and users over 40-49 years old accounted for 26.9%. In my opinion, these are the representatives of the high-net-worth population in Video Account at this stage. They are a group of people that brands and businesses should pay special attention to and serve well when operating Video Account at this stage. They mostly live in second-tier cities and above, and among them are a large number of retired people who have money and free time.

02 Video accounts “make money” and are more friendly to white-label merchants

Based on the unique user portrait of the video account, we can do a deeper analysis around its population.

In addition to the difference in age groups, compared to Douyin and Kuaishou, this group of people may have another label, which is that they have not been fully educated by the e-commerce market. They have neither experienced the Taobao e-commerce era nor been fully expanded by Douyin and Kuaishou e-commerce.

In the eyes of merchants, users of video account e-commerce are generally more "kind". On the one hand, the same product can be sold at a higher price on video accounts. A core reason is that users of video accounts do not have such a strong price comparison mentality. There is no "Guess you like" channel at present. Users are more willing to place orders independently on the premise of trusting the anchor. On the other hand, the return rate of video accounts is lower. From the market data I have, the return rate of video accounts is between 20%-40%. Taking clothing as an example, the return rate is within 30%, which is much lower than other platforms.

In my founder growth strategy class, some students once jokingly mentioned that the low return rate was because users couldn’t find the return entrance at all. I believe this situation exists.

But another reason is that video account e-commerce "grew" on WeChat, and in the "acquaintance" social network, users have a stronger natural sense of trust. When users make an appointment to follow an anchor, they will probably regard this anchor whom they have never met as a friend or acquaintance in their hearts. The reason why they don't return the goods easily is that they don't want to embarrass or disturb their acquaintances .

My colleague's mother is such a kind video account user. Her overall return rate on the video account is less than 10%, and she is very willing to support her favorite anchor by "placing an order".

In addition to kindness, video account e-commerce based on trust is extremely friendly to the growth of white-label or new brands, because users who have not been crazy baptized by traditional e-commerce and algorithm e-commerce often trust the recommendations of "people around them" more than brands, and the anchors who accompany them every day are like half of "people around them".

Imagine a scene. When a "Teacher Yu" with more than ten years of experience in beauty and skin care shares professional skin care knowledge with you every day in the video account, popularizes the raw materials of anti-aging and spot lightening for you, and at the same time, she will also regularly broadcast live, popularize the value and price of different raw materials for you in the live broadcast room, and recommend anti-wrinkle and spot lightening products produced by her own factory. Over time, under the call of "Auntie, Sister", will you buy it? And once the product experience is good after shopping, and it is not inferior to big brands, will you repurchase? Even share the live broadcast room with "old sisters" with one click, bringing more new users to Teacher Yu.

@羽享国际High-end skin care short video and live broadcast screenshots

In Video Account, "Teacher Yu" is real. Her live broadcast room is called @羽享国际高端皮肤疗. She is a benchmark merchant in the skin care track in Video Account. Through WeChat DouTou flow and public and private domain linkage, Teacher Yu's monthly GMV can reach 30 million.

Of course, there are more than one "Teacher Yu" active on video accounts. They have successfully established two major personas: professional persona and low-price persona, contributing to the GMV base of the current video account e-commerce skin care category. Behind them, there may be powerful factories that are famous for OEM for international brands, or they may have established a strong private domain and started as a WeChat business.

03 Video account e-commerce, brand merchants should not miss it

Of course, the fact that video account e-commerce is currently very friendly to white-label merchants does not mean that video account e-commerce is not suitable for brand merchants. According to the data I have, brand merchants account for about half of video accounts. For video accounts that have grown up in the WeChat jungle ecosystem, there is no shortage of brands entering, nor is there a shortage of good brand cases.

So for brand merchants, how can they do a good job in video account e-commerce? I have a suggestion that brands that have already accumulated private domains, or brands whose product attributes have five high attributes, must enter the video account as soon as possible.

What are the "five highs"? They can be simply summarized as high customer orders, high gross profit, high age group, high repurchase, and high content space. Anyone who meets 1-2 of these points should enter the video account e-commerce as soon as possible . From a phased perspective, the success rate of the video account is higher, and the overall marketing cost is relatively low. Compared with other platforms, the video account's unique public-private domain linkage streaming model has also lowered the business threshold for merchants to a certain extent.

Take the leading clothing brand "GIRDEAR" in the video account as an example. In fact, if you disassemble the live broadcast of this brand in the video account, you will find that GIRDEAR has not made any differentiated operations around the video account, because GIRDEAR's "Sun Never Sets Live Broadcast Room" adopts multi-platform streaming, that is, the video account live broadcast is pushed to Douyin, Taobao, Kuaishou, mini programs and other platforms for broadcast, and the anchor only needs to be responsible for product explanations and outfit demonstrations. User comments from various platforms are mainly answered by the "central control" role in the comment area. Of course, the anchor will occasionally answer questions from video account and Douyin users.

@哥弟真的好品牌 VS 线店直播室

Although this streaming live broadcast model may not be popular on the platform, it has brought Gedi a monthly turnover of more than 10 million, not including the GMV of Gedi's offline stores. According to the content of "WeChat Open Class", the GMV of Gedi's matrix stores has exceeded that of the brand's self-broadcasting, and compared with the brand's flagship stores, the traces of private domain operations of offline stores will be more obvious.

For example, "GIRDEAR is really good" is not to recommend this kind of "killing two birds with one stone" live broadcast model, but just to tell merchants that video account live broadcast is not as difficult as imagined. Many brands have already obtained positive results. The reason why they won at the starting line is that in addition to entering the market early and having strong brand endorsement, it is also because they persisted and ran through the model of public-private domain interactive diversion through continuous optimization of "people-goods-place", awakening a large number of "dormant customers" of brands. According to GIRDEAR, 70% of the current video account users are GIRDEAR's old customers.

It is important to mention here that among the “five high” attributes of products, products with high content space and easy content externalization must seize the opportunities of short video e-commerce.

According to internal data, the GMV of short video trailer sales in Q1 this year doubled compared to Q4 last year, and at this stage, trailer videos do not affect natural flow recommendations. Medium and low-order standard products that are easy to display through content, such as food, novel and unique daily necessities, must pay attention to short video trailer sales. For non-standard products, it is recommended to start live streaming sales with a stable frequency in addition to strengthening short video content .

Alice Clothing, a benchmark merchant of video account e-commerce, has undoubtedly reaped the dividends of "retention-sales" of video account e-commerce. Through sincere and positive content, Alice Clothing has accumulated millions of fans. The GMV of its first broadcast in February this year exceeded 2 million, and the GMV in the first month exceeded 55 million.

04 My three suggestions for merchants to enter the video account e-commerce

Finally, here are some suggestions for merchants who want to join the market.

First of all, we must follow the development concept of “slow is fast” advocated by WeChat.

Video account e-commerce does not have the same scale of rapid traffic as Douyin, and because third-party data crawlers are not allowed, there is no methodology that can be copied to the development of video accounts today. Merchants who want to have a roller coaster-like experience of explosive orders like Douyin, please ignore video accounts; merchants who have done very well on Douyin and just want to enter the video account with the intention of "shooting at the bit", are also advised to ignore video accounts.

Secondly, it is product-oriented rather than operation-oriented.

Zhang Xiaolong, the founder of WeChat, has repeatedly emphasized: "I believe that products can solve all problems." The thinking of product-driven growth has also been applied to the optimization process of video account e-commerce and creator ecology. At the second WeChat open class in 2023, Zhang Xiaochao, vice president of Tencent and head of video account, also mentioned such a point of view, namely: use productization to standardize heavy operation work and use product capabilities to allow more authors to have income.

These are all reverse reminders to businesses: Don’t expect Video Account to take the same route of strong operations and strong services as Douyin. The basic prerequisite for doing well in Video Account is to follow the products of Video Account. Every adjustment in product rather than operation may hide opportunities for dividends.

Finally, businesses must have the awareness of long-term operation and must respect middle-aged and elderly users.

Why should we have the awareness of long-term operation?

Here I would like to share with you a vivid metaphor from the inside of the video account: Douyin is like everyone going to the river to fetch water. If you are slow and inefficient, the water may have been taken away by others. But on the video account, everyone digs his or her own well. The size of the well depends on your ability, and you can drink the water from the well you dig yourself.

In other words: every merchant is expected to take a scoop of water from the traffic pool of video accounts through refined operations. But the prerequisite is that the account you create should respect middle-aged and elderly users and create "people-goods-place" content that is more suitable for their needs, rather than copying the experience of Douyin.

For example: the host's live broadcast style can be peaceful and quiet, rather than hurried and pushy; for example: in the design of the scene, you can place more large-character display boards and provide more order guidance; for example: in the live broadcast content, you can add more knowledge popularization, and change "dear" and "babies" to "sisters" and "aunts". At the same time, in terms of character building, it is also recommended that you be positive and full of positive energy.

In short, with more sincerity and less routine, the value of a single video account will be higher than that of Douyin in the long run.

Author: Li Hao

Source: WeChat public account: "CaasData (ID:caasdata6)"