Four-dimensional upgrade | 10,000 words to sort out the digital growth guide for food brands on Douyin e-commerce

How can brands achieve growth through digitalization of Douyin e-commerce? In this article, the author first introduces the current status and main development pain points of Douyin e-commerce food industry, and then proposes a four-dimensional upgrade solution: upgrading cognition, upgrading products, upgrading content, and upgrading the team, and looks forward to future development trends. Recommended reading for those who are interested in Douyin e-commerce and digital growth.

01 Overview

With the help of Douyin e-commerce's wide user base and precise recommendation strategies , Douyin's food and health industry has achieved a year-on-year growth of +133% in 2022 and a CAGR of +264% in the past five years. The industry's counter-cyclical growth is absolutely inseparable from the growth of excellent brands , but there are still many food brands who have concerns about whether and how to make efforts in Douyin e-commerce.

This article will sort out a guide for the digital growth of Douyin e-commerce for food brands from four aspects: the current status of industry development , the main pain points of brands , growth solutions (the focus of this article), and future trends of the industry. The growth solution section will include specific data tools and actionable guidelines . (The data involved in this article are all from public sources)

02 The current status of Douyin e-commerce food industry development

1. User development status

Among the active users of Douyin e-commerce in the past year, nearly 60% have purchased food and health industry-related products on Douyin, and the number of new users has exceeded 100 million . As of mid-November 2022, the number of new members in the food and health industry of Douyin e-commerce has exceeded tens of millions , a year-on-year increase of more than 7,000% .

2. Business development status

In the food and health industry, as of mid-November 2022, the number of Douyin e-commerce merchants with sales exceeding 100 million yuan in 2022 reached 131 , and the number of merchants with sales exceeding 10 million yuan reached 2,656 , an increase of 130% and 132% respectively over the same period last year.

3. Current status of content development

In terms of e-commerce related content, as of mid-November 2022, the number of views of Douyin's food and health trailer short videos exceeded 300 billion, a year-on-year increase of 41.8 %, driving sales growth of 121% , the number of pan-mall sales items increased by 273% , and the short video exposure conversion efficiency was further improved.

4. Current status of track development

The nourishing and healthy , meat and egg low-temperature , and instant milk beverage tracks took the lead, with year-on-year growth rates of 189% , 189% , and 159% , respectively. Other tracks also performed well. The wine and beverage track found a new distribution channel in Douyin e-commerce, achieving a year-on-year growth of 94% .

The Douyin e-commerce food industry is developing rapidly, but some food brands are facing various development difficulties in this so-called new blue ocean . After communicating with many brand founders and teams and reviewing relevant public information, Lao Bai summarized the following four pain points .

03 Main pain points of Douyin e-commerce for food brands

1. Low order value of products affects traffic acquisition

The average order value in the food industry is naturally low, which results in the GPM (gross per thousand views) of the food industry being lower than the average of the Douyin e-commerce market when the conversion rate is similar. GPM represents traffic efficiency. In the face of the Douyin algorithm that prioritizes efficiency, a low GPM represents poor traffic acquisition capabilities .

The food industry’s supply chain has overcapacity . Once a popular product is released on the market, a large number of similar products will immediately flood in. Severe internal competition will lead to price wars , which will ultimately cause the industry’s average order value to continue to decline, GPM will become lower, and traffic acquisition will be affected.

Merchants in the food industry have relatively simple strategies , mainly relying on discounts and promotions. The beauty industry's strategies of increasing average order value by offering free samples as a gift for combination sets have not been well applied in the food industry, resulting in the industry's average order value continuing to decline during the promotion period, lower GPM, and impact on traffic acquisition .

2. Weak content foundation affects the number of new users

The content of the official Blue V accounts of food industry brands is mainly in the form of hawking , with single content and overly simple and crude language, which affects user perception and length of stay .

There is less innovation in brand content in the food industry and a lack of sense of context . Peers are prone to copying each other, making it impossible to reach more new users , especially high-quality users.

Brands in the food industry invest less in brand advertising , and prioritize performance advertising , that is, the inherent thinking that investment must have immediate output, which leads to the pursuit of efficiency first in content, and the quality of content is bound to be lower than that of other industries.

3. Low product gross profit margin affects overall volume

The overall gross profit margin of food industry products is relatively low, and it does not have an advantage in terms of commissions from top influencers, nor does it have an advantageous position when top influencers schedule products for live broadcasts.

Most brands in the food industry have a high proportion of self-broadcasting , but due to low gross profit margins, if they want to make a profit, they must strictly control the ROI of their advertising , making it difficult to increase the amount of advertising .

The Douyin e-commerce team requires a large number of people and the overall cost is high . Compared with other industries with high gross profit margins, the food industry is difficult to cover costs in the short term, which can easily damage brand confidence and affect the determination to continue to make efforts.

4. Incomplete team affects overall operations

Many traditional brands in the food industry directly transferred members of the Tmall/JD team to be responsible for Douyin e-commerce, but these members lack a deep understanding of content e-commerce , and the inconsistency of the underlying logic makes it impossible to replicate past models.

Many new Douyin brands that started out as Douyin e-commerce companies have a shallow understanding of product card carriers, do not have members specifically responsible for shelf e-commerce, and lack systematic knowledge of store/product decoration and optimization directions.

Most of the Douyin e-commerce teams in the food industry focus on self-broadcasting, so the short video content also uses traffic-generating efficiency as the main assessment target, which leads to high-quality content becoming the enemy of traffic . They have no choice but to repeat themselves over and over again, and the road becomes narrower and narrower, and the marketing department has little say.

Many brands will probably feel the same about the above four pain points, but there are always more solutions than problems. Next, I will talk about the growth solution for food brands in Douyin e-commerce - four-dimensional upgrade . ( The focus of this article! Including data tools and implementation actions )

04 Douyin e-commerce growth solution for food brands

1. Upgrade your cognition

1) Facing the trend, we must have determination and patience

Most of the traffic in traditional e-commerce has been occupied by the top brands in each industry, and the remaining tail traffic is very small and difficult to operate!

Douyin e-commerce has a gold mine , it depends on how deep you dig! It is a rare e-commerce platform where brands still have the opportunity to grow rapidly !

Content is the key to supporting a brand . Don’t just regard Douyin as a sales channel, but position it as a place to connect brands with users . Don’t just regard short videos as a sales vehicle, but position it as one of the many underlying colors that make up a brand !

Trends often represent the future. We must adhere to long-termism and embrace trends rather than being timid and hesitant!

2) Refined operations and good use of tools

More and more brands are entering the Douyin e-commerce market, and the traffic dividend is getting smaller and smaller. Refined operation has become the key to growth. If you want to do your job well, you must first sharpen your tools. Using good tools will improve production efficiency. Lao Bai sincerely recommends the Douyin official data tool, the e-commerce compass , which can be used for free by food brands.

The e-commerce compass is divided into three versions: expert version , business version and strategy version . Among them, the two versions for brand merchants are the business version and the strategy version , each with its own focus.

• "Luo Pan Management" is positioned as a store management brain for all merchants. It helps merchants achieve healthy management growth through data analysis of a single store dimension , covering full-link management diagnosis . Core capabilities include: real-time analysis of the transaction structure of the entire store, shelf scenarios such as search, Douyin Mall, etc., content scenarios such as live broadcast, short video, etc., service experience scenarios such as logistics monitoring, etc.
• " Luo Pan Strategy" is positioned as a business growth strategy engine for leading merchants, suitable for brands with multiple stores and accounts to conduct overall data analysis in the brand dimension. It provides demand data based on Douyin's more than 600 million daily active consumers, explores market trends, and provides insights into global data. It helps leading brands through the three dimensions of products, content, and crowds, and formulates strategies for Douyin's global growth.

The functions mentioned in the following sections are all derived from Lao Bai’s practical experience through "Compass Strategy" , and the specific functional modules involved will be indicated.

3) Pay more attention to the growth of user assets besides business

Brand user assets are people who interact with the brand's products/content, including e-commerce users reached by live broadcasts/short videos/product cards. According to the characteristics of the e-commerce interactive consumption behavior of the crowd, they can be simply divided into three layers: " potential-new-old ", among which potential customers include A1-A3 people.

Taking potential customers as an example, brands should locate the traffic source as much as possible and drill down to different carriers such as live broadcast rooms, short videos, and product cards . Then, by analyzing the turnover rate and user proportion between the asset levels of the crowd, we can understand the crowd's turnover process, locate the core characteristics of the circulating crowd, and conduct product grouping , user touchpoint selection , and target user penetration from the perspective of carriers and user characteristics.

There are actually more than 100 crowd labels unique to Douyin e-commerce. The public domain crowd includes four types: eight strategic crowds , category crowds , basic crowds and scenario crowds . The private domain crowd includes six types: store crowds , live broadcast room crowds , short video crowds , product crowds , member crowds and fan crowds . Under each type, there are more refined labels for brands to choose from. Brands can use tools to select labels for " intersection and subtraction " to achieve crowd selection and delivery .

The operational strategy of user assets is to increase the penetration rate of segmented populations and the growth of ARPU value with the user's lifetime value as the center. For brands, the population that can be penetrated on Douyin can be accurately reached through tags. From shallow to deep, it can be divided into five levels: target portrait population , interest scenario population , industry population , interactive behavior population and brand's own population .

4) Douyin and Tmall are different shelves

What is worth thinking about and paying attention to is, can the shelf scene of Douyin completely copy the shelf scene of Taobao? I think the two are different. First of all, from the perspective of the origin of the user's consumption behavior , Taobao started with search, and the main action of users is browsing (Taobao), but the main action of Douyin users is to browse (Douyin), so in terms of consumption concepts and consumption habits, the two are not at the same stage .

So here I would like to put forward a point of view that the shelf pages of Tmall and Douyin should have different page strategies . The two have different logic drivers. For Tmall, the role of the page should be to increase browsing time and let users browse. The primary driving link of user behavior is: selection → comparison → ordering . But Douyin is actually planting grass → impulse → ordering .

Therefore, Lao Bai believes that Douyin’s page strategy should be aimed at improving user decision-making efficiency and increasing the interest relevance of products.

Everyone can pay attention to the Douyin e-commerce visual that was recently launched on the official flagship store of Dr. Cheese . In the early stage of design, we also had in-depth exchanges and discussions with the service provider team responsible for this e-commerce visual upgrade. Finally, we redesigned a set of e-commerce visuals for Dr. Cheese based on the Douyin e-commerce shelf scene, which is very different from Tmall's e-commerce visuals.

2. Upgrade products

To avoid repeated mention, the following functions involving the compass strategy are marked with "" .

1) Open up new tracks

As a relatively new e-commerce platform, Douyin e-commerce has a major gap with traditional e-commerce platforms in that the supply of high-quality goods is insufficient . There are still some "blue ocean markets". Food brands can use data insights to find new tracks in their main categories. This can be divided into three steps:

1. First, the market structure and category trends can be clearly seen through the "Category Overview" function. Through the two dimensions of transaction amount and month-on-month transaction amount, we can divide the market segments under the main category into four quadrants: the star market with high transaction and high growth rate, the mature market with high transaction and low growth rate, the small dog market with low transaction and low growth rate, and the opportunity market with low transaction and high growth rate. What brands need to do is to seize the opportunity market and increase investment, while keeping other advantageous categories from falling behind. Using the "Attribute Analysis" function, you can further refine your insights into the different price bands and attributes of the opportunity market to further confirm what attitude and image to enter the new track.
2. The "Portrait Insight" function can be used to determine the target group, including who the core users are and their spending power. Combined with the "Demand Trend" function, the recent hot topics, search terms, and scene terms can be mined to ultimately generate content optimization suggestions.
3. Finally, through the "Competition Comparison" function, you can understand the distribution of competitors' price ranges and the product preferences of competitors, and formulate corresponding strategies. At the same time, the development direction of new products can be determined by combining category price ranges, trend attributes, crowd portraits, and competition patterns.

2) Group cargo pick-up order

Food brands can analyze the combined purchasing trends of multiple market segments, identify market segment combinations with high overlap in purchasing populations, and combine products based on users' real demand scenarios to increase average order value.

Product grouping does not mean that brands can simply bundle existing products together to create a combination package. It is necessary to have insight into the populations behind different market segments. A product grouping strategy that conflicts with the populations will waste market space and reduce market production. A product grouping strategy that matches the populations will achieve the effect of 1+1&2 . At the same time, the sense of scene must be considered so that users feel that the brand saves them time in matching products after seeing the combination. It will be more effective if it is accompanied by incentives from interest points.

Notland is the top brand in the health care industry, with multiple health care product categories. The brand hopes to improve the efficiency of existing product grouping based on the existing multiple market segmentation analysis. However, the brand's past grouping was mainly based on industry experience and multiple combination tests, lacking data support and low efficiency.

Five combinations were produced through the "Market Combination Insights" function. In the end, the combination of "Vitamin C+E with Bird's Nest Collagen Peptide" and the combination of "Lutein with Vitamins" both achieved a doubling of GPM (Gross Sales per Thousand Views).

3) Accurate user research

Conducting precise user research on Douyin is a little-known treasure feature. According to the test objectives, it can be divided into product testing (user needs/product concepts/main model selection), population testing , content testing (marketing selling points, channel preferences, etc.) and precise matching of people, products and content .

For example, when conducting user demand research, many brands do not have a clear grasp of market demand during the new product planning period. Based on the big data analysis of market trends, the "research and testing" function can be used to explore the category purchase decision-making needs of the target population, and combined with industry experience and judgment, the direction of new product development can be locked.

Another example is product concept testing . Before a new product is launched, it is difficult to make a decision on multiple existing product concepts (efficacy, packaging, etc.) and there is no clear target audience. The "research and testing" function can be used to confirm the overall preference ranking of different product concepts, lock in the product direction, and lock in the target audience through the preferences of different segments of the population for the product concept.

Another example is communication strategy optimization . Before a new product is launched, there is no clear target group and marketing communication selling points. The "research and testing" function can be used to analyze the preferences of different segments of the population for different marketing communication selling points, lock in the marketing communication selling points , and lock in the target group through the purchase intention of different segments of the population for the product, thereby optimizing the marketing communication efficiency.

The "Survey Test" module currently provides two major testing capabilities : "PK Testing" and "Questionnaire Testing" .

"Questionnaire Testing" is aimed at the strategic scenarios of the entire life cycle of products. It collects and studies consumers' preferences and pain points through questionnaires, empowers product research and development, sales and marketing strategies, and helps merchants accurately understand and match consumer needs.

"PK Testing" is aimed at concept designs or existing products that have not yet been launched on the market. Through interactive voting by consumers, it intuitively tests product elements such as style, packaging , and communication selling points , helping merchants to achieve accurate style selection, stocking, and marketing communication.

Compared with traditional user research conducted through third-party research companies, it is definitely more time-saving, labor-saving, cost- effective and accurate!

3. Upgrade content

1) Increase the sense of scene

The user purchasing decision-making process can be roughly divided into cognitive decision-making, habitual decision-making and collective decision-making , among which the first two types are mainly for individual users.

The cognitive decision-making process is divided into five stages: identifying needs, searching for information, evaluating alternatives, making a purchase decision, and post-purchase behavior . The purchase process begins with the user identifying a problem or a need.

Needs can be caused by internal stimuli . When a person's basic needs, such as hunger, become strong to a certain extent, they become a driving force. Needs can also be caused by external stimuli , which is exactly what brands should focus on researching. They need to find out user problems, needs , and the reasons for their occurrence, as well as how to guide users to pay attention to their own brand products.

The key point is that external stimuli need to be introduced from the appropriate scene to better stimulate demand, and the scene will make users feel more involved. In addition, many decisions made by people are collaborative . Collective decision-making usually involves two or more people who contribute to the results to varying degrees.

Collective decision making involves the following identities:

• The initiator is the person who proposes the purchase demand
• An influencer is someone who can influence the final purchase
• A decision maker is someone who controls the outcome of a decision.
• The buyer is the person who actually makes the purchase
• Users are the people who actually consume the product or service.

Starting from the scenario is also the easiest way to involve all decision-makers. Therefore, it is very important to identify the user's real product usage scenario, because the scenario is both the premise of product development and the core of product marketing . It can be said that a product without a scenario is soulless.

So what exactly is a scene? In fact, in simple terms, it is a narrative that describes the cause and effect of an event. The focus should be on typical events and typical people, and on showing the environment and inner activities of the participants. A good scene can make people feel vivid and immersive .

The "Content Inspiration" function can help brands analyze the content characteristics of published content, and explore keywords such as scenarios, pain points, and authoritative testimonies for brand reference. The "Content List" function can also directly provide brands with popular/rising short videos , background music , and keywords in their respective tracks for brand learning.

2) Expert matrix promotion

When users are interested in a product, they may search for more information. Users obtain information from the following channels: personal channels (family, friends, colleagues, etc.), commercial channels (advertisements, sales staff, websites, packaging and exhibitions, etc.), public channels (mass media, review organizations, online searches, etc.), and experience channels (operation, inspection and use of products).

Generally speaking, most of the product information users get comes from commercial channels , but the most effective information channel is actually personal channels . Commercial channels generally serve to inform , but personal channels serve to judge or evaluate products .

In particular, users are more likely to feel trust when the product comes from actual buyers or users who are similar to themselves. In a purchase decision, most of the user's efforts are spent on choosing from the available alternative brands. We call the set of alternative brands known to users the demand awakening set , and the set of alternative brands that users will actually consider the final consideration set (because users will not seriously consider all the brands in the awakening set due to price, negative experience, etc.).

Data shows that the number of alternative brands included in the user's awakening set is usually surprisingly small , so if a brand is not in the target user's awakening set, it is very embarrassing . And if a user has considered and rejected a product, it is highly likely that it will not enter the awakening set again. This is also the opportunity for new brands to enter the user's awakening set. The main purpose of content seeding is to build a consumption scenario to implant products and then add brands to the user's awakening set.

The influencer matrix planting is a process in which users use content to make them feel as if they have heard the evaluation and judgment of a product from their friends (personal channels) or even idols, and then accumulate trust in the brand. The planting of one or two influencers may allow a brand to enter the user's demand awakening set, but the matrix-style influencer planting will push the brand and product into the user's final consideration set .

The "Influencer Selection" and "Influencer Overview" functions can help brands select influencers of different dimensions and review the results after cooperation. The review dimensions include not only sales transactions but also the influencer's contribution to the brand's user assets .

3) Post-Search Short Video

Post-planting search means that after users browse the brand-planting short video, they are guided to conduct related searches. For users, it means searching after watching the short video . Taking Jiyin Coffee as an example, the brand has several highly correlated content keywords, such as Jiyin , nitrogen coffee , and the same coffee as Yan Haoxiang . After users click on these keywords, they will enter the search page . They correspond to topic words , small blue words in the comment area , and top words in the comment area . After users click or search, they will see Jiyin Coffee products and live broadcast rooms presented to carry forward and convert traffic.

High-quality post-sou short videos can be divided into five types . Brand blue V accounts can post two types of short videos. One is product introduction (taking Dingding Lazy Food as an example), and the second is live slicing (taking Notland as an example). Amateur accounts are suitable for posting buyer shows (taking Fanhu as an example). Brands can do some guiding actions to encourage users to produce this type of short videos. Expert accounts can publish videos that convey the core selling points of products from different angles based on their characteristics, such as grass-roots videos (taking Sumida River as an example), evaluation videos (taking Dad’s Evaluation as an example), knowledge popularization videos , etc.

The three-step operation and maintenance method of short video post-seeding search, taking Dr. Cheese as an example, the first step is for a blue V or expert to post a short video , the second step is to add the brand or product name to the short video title , and the third step is to leave a comment in the message area and pin the keyword . It seems simple, but you must pre-embed the keywords you want to seed in advance so that users will have corresponding search actions. Choosing appropriate keywords to pre-embed for post-seeding search can increase the probability of the word becoming small blue characters, thereby increasing the search volume of post-seeding search. Appropriate keywords have three characteristics:

1. Content-related : words that users will search for after watching the video;
2. Ability to undertake : Prefer "brand words or product words" to ensure that the store can undertake it. Case: A brand operates a category word (coffee), and the user clicks on the small blue word (coffee) in the comment area to enter the search interface. However, due to insufficient optimization of the brand's products, the brand's products are not displayed in the front position of the search results page, missing out on post-search traffic.
3. Popularity : Keywords with a certain level of search popularity are easier to operate and maintain.

The "Search after viewing" function can help brands track which search terms are inspired by the seeding short video and the subsequent analysis and review of these terms. It can also show which short videos in the industry currently have good search after viewing for brands to learn from .

Through this function, brands can know exactly how many users will search after watching the videos released by the brand, as well as which videos they have watched, how many users searched after watching, how many times they searched, what words they searched, the conversion rate and other data. It can even clearly distinguish whether it is a user -initiated search or a system- recommended search . If the user does not place an order after the search but buys a product of a competing brand, it can also be monitored, and the brand can make some targeted competitive strategies. It is simply a treasure trove of functions!

4. Upgrade your team

1) Search operations team

Many people will doubt whether the shelf scene can be established in Douyin e-commerce. The data shows that: the average daily UV of Douyin Mall on Double 11 this year was 150 million, new users accounted for 33% of the total, the incremental ARPU value was 426 yuan, and silent orders accounted for 18% of the Douyin shelf scene, which means that some users have begun to actively search and place orders, which is equivalent to passive income from free traffic.

At the current stage of Douyin e-commerce, food brands have more opportunities in the shelf market because the attributes of the food industry itself are high frequency, high repurchase, and low decision-making costs . Compared with digital 3C and other industries, it is easier for users to form consumption habits, and we should seize this opportunity quickly. Next, I will tell you how to do search operations .

The search process is to identify the user's intention , recall and sort keywords to provide the user with the desired products. For the platform, the first core of search is to understand what the user wants . The second core is to accurately display , recall, sort, and visualize products on the front end. For brands, it is to use reverse thinking to intervene in search results through operational actions. A good shelf operation team will do everything possible to optimize brand search.

Brand search optimization is actually a process of obtaining better rankings by optimizing relevance , accumulating weight influencing factors, and gaining in-depth understanding of the latest rules. The rule to be noted in relevance optimization is that mutually exclusive attribute stacking and product stacking will be downgraded . This requires brands to accurately describe product information and improve user readability . Brands can timely supplement product words and attribute words that meet product characteristics according to user needs to ensure that there are corresponding products under long-tail words. Multiple word segments are accurate and matched continuously , and the score is the highest.

Search operation for Douyin e-commerce is actually the operation of precise traffic , because users will only search when they have needs. Compared with the general entertainment traffic of watching videos, it is of course more precise.

The first step is to obtain accurate traffic so that the products can match the search needs. What we need to do is to optimize the titles of all products on sale, make the basic information more complete, and cover as many hot words as possible.

The second step is to receive accurate traffic so that the products can be seen, clicked and purchased by users in need. What the brand needs to do here is to optimize your key products. For example, the header image must have selling points, promotions, and 5 main images. In addition, the product attribute categories must be accurate, which will greatly affect your search ranking. Finally, there must be interest points .

The "mall analysis" function can help brands conduct multi-dimensional analysis of shelf scenes and drill down into channels .

2) Embrace service providers

For food brands, due to low gross profit margins and a high proportion of store-owned live broadcasts, most brands are unable to afford the fees of service providers, and even create an embarrassing situation where neither the brands nor the service providers make money .

However, as the proportion of shelf ( product card ) transactions gradually increases, users' silent orders will bring passive income to the brand, thereby optimizing the overall ROI , and the service provider ecosystem of Douyin e-commerce will become healthier. It is recommended that food brands can try to embrace various types of service providers in the future to achieve " professional people do professional things " and efficient collaboration between brands and service providers.

Service providers mainly include the following five types: agency service providers ( DP ), advertising service providers ( Agency ), content agencies ( MCN ), consulting service providers ( data ISV ), software service providers ( SaaS ISV )

• Agent operation service provider (DP): provides brands with service capabilities such as Douyin account operation, live streaming, short videos, traffic delivery, store operation, and service fulfillment. It is subdivided into brand service providers, industrial belt service providers, and general service providers.
• Advertising service provider (Agency): mainly helps brands to come up with marketing strategies according to budget and marketing objectives, helps brands to set target TA groups, and breaks down advertising channel allocation and other businesses.
• Content agency (MCN): a content operation agency that provides influencer cooperation and provides brands with influencer recommendation and influencer live streaming services.
• Consulting service providers (data ISVs): service providers that provide brands with brand channel operation strategies, product planning strategies, crowd strategies, and marketing strategies.
• Software service provider (SaaS ISV): a service provider that provides system and SaaS software operation capabilities.

Finding the right service provider actually helps brands save time, manpower and money. After all, there are more scammers than talents in the market. With the healthy development of the entire Douyin e-commerce ecosystem, more and more professional service providers will enter the market.

05 Future trends of Douyin e-commerce food industry

1. Consumption trends: healthier, more nutritious, more convenient, and more interesting (knowledge consumption)

Against the backdrop of rising consumption levels and industry upgrades , the domestic food and health industry is generally showing the following trends. Although different subcategories have different focuses, in general, healthier, more nutritious, more convenient and more interesting are the main themes.

As people's health awareness continues to improve, users' demand for daily food is not only to satisfy their appetite, but also to pay more attention to its ingredients and the impact on their health. In particular, delicious light meals labeled " low sugar, low calories, low fat, and low sodium " have gradually become one of the hot spots of consumer attention. These "light snack" foods can help balance calories and reduce the burden on the body while ensuring deliciousness.

Douyin e-commerce data shows that the compound monthly growth rate of low-calorie delicious light snacks related products reached 32% from November 2021 to October 2022. At the same time, according to Euromonitor International research, the compound growth rate of China's low-fat, low-salt and low-sugar food market will be about 13% in the next five years , and will reach a scale of about RMB 51.2 billion in 2026.

As the post-00s enter the workplace and the post-90s transition to the "main force in the workplace", the fast-paced lifestyle has made young people pay more attention to health preservation . More and more young people are joining the ranks of health preservation, and buying nutritional supplements or health foods is no longer the exclusive domain of middle-aged and elderly consumers.

Therefore, there is a clear trend of younger and family-oriented purchases of nutritional health foods. This has also led to a rapid growth in domestic nutritional health foods. According to Euromonitor International data, China's health food market is expected to reach RMB 236.8 billion in 2026. In addition, consumers nowadays are more eager to enjoy a variety of products anytime and anywhere, which has also promoted the trend of snacks and instant foods for nutritional health products and nutritional supplements.

For example, products such as soft candy and instant fish maw have a strong upward momentum. According to Douyin e-commerce data, during the period from January 2022 to November 2022, "instant bird's nest" and "functional candy" achieved GMV growth of 200% and 551% year-on-year respectively.

With the current trend of living alone and the accelerated pace of urban life, most consumers find it difficult to spare the time and energy to prepare three meals a day. The demand for products that are quick to cook and eat but still taste good is becoming stronger. From the supply side, businesses have also launched new instant foods, quick-frozen semi-finished products, cooking packs, pre-prepared dishes, etc. with upgraded taste, nutrition and raw materials, which can not only meet the needs of simple and efficient operation, but also take into account good taste .

From November 2021 to October 2022, the monthly compound growth rate of the transaction volume of convenient and fast food related products on Douyin e-commerce reached 33% , among which the performance of pre-prepared meals was particularly outstanding, with a growth rate of 99% . According to Euromonitor International's forecast, the market size of China's fast food and cooking packs will reach approximately RMB 324.6 billion in 2026.

As products become more and more diverse, young consumers are more aware of their own brand and taste preferences. They also hope to " equip themselves " with professional knowledge, so that they can "have more knowledge" and know the reasons behind them, so as to make choices that better meet their needs.

At the same time, more and more merchants emphasize the professional endorsement , brand tone and cultural attributes of products while displaying the attributes of goods, hoping to establish an emotional connection with consumers at a deeper level. This has contributed to the rapid growth of " knowledge consumption" . According to Douyin e-commerce data, the monthly compound growth rate of transactions related to " Oriental Selection " reached 77% during the period from December 2021 to November 2022.

Official data shows that the number of Douyin e-commerce searches has continued to rise in recent years, and the average daily number of search users in April 2022 has reached over 100 million .

Users’ search behaviors can be divided into two categories: one is active search , which is the needs expressed by users. The other is “ search after viewing ”, which is when users’ needs are stimulated while watching content and they conduct further searches based on the content.

Whether it is active search or post-search search, these are new opportunities that have not been explored before. The layout around search allows more rigid demand traffic and long-tail traffic to be acquired and undertaken, covering users' multi-scenario and full-link shopping needs, which is a new growth point with great potential.

It is worth mentioning that in the face of search scenarios , leading brands have long-term accumulated crowd assets, and users often actively search for brand names and product names in shelf scenarios. However, for some emerging brands, this consumption path of people looking for goods has not yet been developed. It is precisely because of this that it is necessary and important for emerging brands to strengthen their search operations on Douyin e-commerce.

The first problem that brands face when doing business on Douyin is to obtain traffic . There are two ways to obtain traffic: the first is to obtain natural traffic in the public domain through high-quality content; the second is to obtain commercial traffic in the commercial domain through advertising.

In the process of converting traffic into final business, the people that brands constantly deal with are actually the people behind the traffic, such as people who interact, people who pay attention to the brand, and people who purchase goods and services. In this process, Douyin provides a series of capabilities and methods to effectively activate fans, which is the fundamentals of Douyin's private domain.

The better the brand's fan management is, the more business possibilities it will bring to you. During the whole process, fans can settle down and feed back to traffic acquisition. In essence, Douyin's private domain operation is a pure business increase , and the source of this business increase is fans .

A complete four-step method for private domain operations:

1. Use private domain scenarios to receive traffic and accumulate it into the brand’s own user assets;
2. Use fan management tools to determine fan status and develop fan management strategies;
3. Use a variety of contact methods in comprehensive private domain scenarios to activate fans in layers and improve fan activity and conversion;
4. Use the results of private domain operations to deliver more high-quality traffic to the public and commercial domains, connect marketing and transaction scenarios, and open up the last link of Douyin's live water business.

3. Marketing trend: global marketing collaboration

There are two main pain points for brands to do marketing on Douyin:

• The high cost of brand mind construction is difficult to quantify . It is difficult to achieve extreme conversion by live broadcasts and bidding advertising, and it is difficult to achieve long-term brand building. The brand advertisements invested cannot measure its effect, and I don’t know how to optimize the delivery action. Brands rely on price breaks to start volume, resulting in users being unable to repurchase at normal prices, and brand products cannot support premiums .
• It is difficult for user assets to settle, lack the perspective of full-link operation of crowd assets, and the shortage of crowd assets is lost. It is difficult for Dabo consumer users to convert into brand users to repurchase users, and it is difficult for crowd assets to continue. It is impossible to coordinate multiple scenarios, it is easy to "speak their own words", and the product and effect cannot be integrated.

In the future, the marketing trend of brands on Douyin will definitely be achieved in multiple scenarios across the region . The global marketing strategy is to reach different groups of people through different marketing activities to achieve different marketing purposes, cover the needs of the entire scenario, and then monitor and track business and user assets through tools such as e-commerce compass and giant cloud maps .

Lao Bai lists different marketing actions required in different scenarios here:

At the same time, the delivery strategy should be formulated based on the cognitive stage of different groups of people and the reach strategy should be formulated according to the marketing rhythm.

06 Full text summary

By upgrading awareness, upgrading products, upgrading content and upgrading teams , we must pay attention to the operation of all-region interest e-commerce , content linkage shelves, private domain counter-compensation for public domains, and data-driven growth!

The above is the entire guide to digital growth of the entire food brand Douyin e-commerce.

Author: Brand Laobai; Official account: Brand Laobai (ID: Brand Laobai)