Meituan becomes a store exploration "MCN" to compete for Douyin influencers

Recently, Meituan has started to explore store business and launched Meituan Circle Store Explore, which has built a cooperation platform for merchants and influencers and started to engage in traffic business across the entire network. What is the difference between Meituan's store explore and Douyin's store explore? This article discusses this, let's take a look.

Douyin and Meituan, which have frequently clashed in local life, have made new moves in the last two days of 2022.

Douyin opened up the eligibility of transportation service platform service providers and started the taxi business. Meituan quietly began to try the field of store exploration and launched the WeChat applet "Meituan Circle Exploration" to match merchants and store exploration experts. "Tech Planet" reported that Meituan will name the new business "Worth Grabbing" and embed Meituan Circle in the homepage navigation bar, alongside Meituan Youxuan, shared bicycles and other businesses.

Douyin Business Travel Mini Program and Meituan Circle Store Visit

The local life business worth trillions of dollars is a big cake. Since 2019, Douyin has joined hands with service providers to continuously increase its investment in local life business by leveraging its content and traffic advantages. It has used content created by more than 600 million daily active users and countless store explorers to "strike at Meituan from a lower dimension", expanding from various group purchases to food delivery, and continuously attracting merchants with low commissions and traffic, frequently testing Meituan's base.

In the first half of this year alone, Douyin's local life GMV exceeded 22 billion yuan. Although it is still less than Meituan, it has surpassed Douyin's own goal for the whole of last year.

Short videos embedded in group-buying links have entered the local life track, using "interest" to seize "urgent needs", and also putting Meituan, a traditional shelf-based platform, under "tremendous pressure".

Now, Meituan has set its sights on the resources of store explorers across the entire platform. The newly launched Meituan Circle Store Explore seems to no longer compete for merchant resources, but in fact it is more like a roundabout way to save the country: secretly competing for the resources of store explorers by "fleecing the sheep", transferring the content to Meituan and its partner platforms, and building a cooperation platform for merchants and experts, starting a business of monetizing traffic across the entire network.

However, the low commission is destined to attract only some small and medium-sized store explorers to join and transfer. At present, the business order recruitment progress in the mini program has been displayed as 0. Even the experts who have previously done cashback in Meituan Circle are not familiar with the newly emerged store exploration content. "Before, everyone did group buying through local life circles. They were more like wool group leaders and had no experience in being store explorers."

Meituan has started a mini program to match store explorers with merchants, which has united various forces and is also secretly poaching from Douyin.

1. Meituan’s store visits are cheaper than Douyin’s group purchases

Media reports indicate that Meituan Quanquan Store Exploration is still in the internal testing phase, but a search will reveal that it can already be accessed through the Meituan Quanquan Store Exploration WeChat applet.

Meituan Quanquandiandian currently supports 5 platforms for authentication

If store explorers want to join the platform, the requirements are not high. They only need to be authenticated in the background. The platforms that can be authenticated include Dianping, Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu and Weibo. Experts only need to upload relevant information of the account, and there are no requirements such as the number of fans.

Although there are no clear requirements for Meituan Quanquan store exploration, if you want to put group buying links on the Douyin and Kuaishou platforms, there are still potential requirements of the platforms: you can be certified as a group buying expert only if you have more than 1,000 fans.

After completing the certification, the influencer can select the business order on the homepage of the mini program, publish the corresponding store exploration short video on other platforms according to the requirements of the business order, embed the corresponding link provided on the business order details page in the short video of Douyin and Kuaishou, or publish the group purchase product password on Weibo and Xiaohongshu. After completing the task, upload the relevant short video or blog post link, and you can get income after the review is passed.

The income from cooperation with experts is divided into three parts: fixed price, cps and others.

Fixed price refers to the reward income that the influencer can obtain after completing the business order; the full name of cps is Cost Per Sale (payment according to the sales amount), which is the commission income obtained by the influencer after the group purchase is sold; the others are the income from participating in the Meituan Circle Store Exploration Activity.

Meituan Quanquan and Meituan Quanquan store exploration

Currently, Meituan Quanquan store exploration is only open in Changsha, and there are only two business cooperation orders displayed on the homepage. However, the categories on the homepage have revealed that it may be involved in multiple local life areas in the future. Subcategories such as catering, beauty, leisure and entertainment, sports and fitness, hotels, travel, and parent-child are already displayed on the homepage.

As the name suggests, Meituan Quanquan Store Tandian is closely related to the previous Meituan Quanquan. The two mini programs belong to Shanghai Xiyi Network Technology Co., Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Meituan.

The same name and the company behind it make it easy to imagine that Meituan Quanquan, which already has a large number of merchant resources, may gradually transfer the merchant resources to Meituan Quanquan Store Exploration - currently the merchants and product links on the Meituan Quanquan Store Exploration platform can also be searched on Meituan Quanquan, and the prices are also the same.

Meituan Quanquan, formerly known as "Meituan Tuanjieshe", has been operating for nearly two years and previously provided local group buying and flash sales services through WeChat sharing by influencers. In the first half of this year, Meituan Quanquan gradually withdrew from cities such as Xi'an and Xianning, and currently only operates in Wuhan, Changsha and Panzhihua.

In terms of price, Meituan Quanquan can be regarded as a special version of Meituan Group Buying: many group buying products from the same stores will be more favorable on Meituan Quanquan, even more favorable than Douyin group buying.

Take the LINLEE hand-made lemon tea, which is currently open for commercial orders, for example. The group purchase price on Meituan Quanquan is 15.8 yuan for 3 drinks to choose 2, but this package cannot be found on Meituan. The 15.8 yuan group purchase can only buy a cup of milk tea. On Douyin's group purchase platform, 15.8 yuan can only buy one drink, and a similar 4-choose-2 drink group purchase also costs 27.8 yuan. At the same time, the "Hey Frog Jump" group purchase package on Meituan Quanquan is also 30 yuan lower than the Meituan and Douyin group purchase packages.

The group purchase price of the same product on Meituan Quanquan, Meituan and Douyin

The two mini programs have the same name, carry the same products, and have the same group of sharing experts.

A store exploration expert who has worked for Meituan Quanquan revealed that many of the current Meituan Quanquan store exploration groups are WeChat sharing experts who have worked for Meituan Quanquan before, and the operation of Meituan Quanquan store exploration has always encouraged "taking more orders on platforms such as Dianping, Douyin, WeChat Video Account and Kuaishou, which will also bring additional income."

2. Meituan starts to become an “MCN”

It has set its sights on store exploration experts and short videos, but the current Meituan Quanquan Store Explore is more like an "MCN agency."

It not only supports expert certification on five channels, namely Dianping, Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu, but also provides transaction matchmaking services within the platform, provides expert docking services for merchants, and provides order-taking and revenue settlement services for store experts.

It seems that it has given up the competition for merchant resources and started to become an MCN agency, but if you look closely, you can find that there are more reasons behind Meituan's "letting go".

1. Integrate store exploration experts from other platforms, and join them if you can't beat them. 36Kr reported that an insider revealed that Douyin's GMV from January to October this year was close to 60 billion yuan, and in the first half of the year, short videos accounted for nearly 70% of Douyin's life service GMV contribution. In comparison, Meituan's previous short video store exploration has almost disappeared, and choosing to integrate expert resources on the platform may be a better move. Meituan's circle store exploration shows that the expert commission composition includes rebates from Douyin and Kuaishou, but this part of the commission is settled by the Douyin and Kuaishou platforms, and the group purchase rebates from Weibo, Xiaohongshu and Dianping that are cleared through Meituan's password are settled by Meituan. This move is more like aggregating expert resources to provide merchants on the platform with order traffic conversion for the entire platform;

2. Meituan secretly used "薅羊毛" to attract store explorers from other platforms to join Meituan's platforms and partner platforms. Although it offered a fixed-price income and required the explorers to post short videos on Douyin, Meituan also "encouraged the explorers to post videos on other platforms."

Support provided by Meituan Quanquan Store Tandian

Meituan’s official operations department released an announcement at the end of November, stating that influencers can copy and publish store exploration videos on other platforms “on Dianping, Kuaishou, and WeChat Video Account platforms without having to shoot and edit them again, and the platforms will give additional income.”

At the same time, Meituan Quanquantandian has also launched a policy to support experts, which will provide traffic support from platforms such as Kuaishou, Dianping and Video Account to help quickly increase fans.

Although Douyin was not mentioned, it is not difficult to see that these policies are basically launched against Douyin short video store exploration experts. Under multiple sets of operations, Douyin experts can be guided to transfer their previous content to Meituan’s field, and they can also be guided to operate on multiple platforms and secretly dig into Douyin’s foundation;

3. Meituan seems to be handing over merchant resources to others, but it is undeniable that merchants are already deployed on multiple platforms. Many merchants are even willing to provide Douyin with lower-priced group-buying products to gain traffic. Meituan’s previous low-price advantage no longer exists.

In this case, Meituan provides merchants with a platform similar to the store exploration MCN agency service to attract experts to settle in. These resources can actually retain merchants with store exploration needs and increase merchant stickiness.

As a major rival of Meituan in the local life sector, Douyin teamed up with Ele.me this year to launch a food delivery service. In early December, it reached a cooperation with Dada, SF Express, and Flash Express to provide delivery services to Douyin's local life service merchants, turning Douyin's in-store group buying into "food delivery."

Douyin group buying food delivery and Ele.me food delivery live streaming

Meituan, which is under attack from all sides, is targeting short videos to promote group buying. This is not the first time.

In 2020, Meituan tried to promote store visits through short videos, but it didn’t gain much traction. At the end of last year, Meituan and Kuaishou officially announced their cooperation, but it was more like an embedded mini-program. An industry insider said, “Their (Kuaishou and Meituan) cooperation is still relatively shallow, a group-buying traffic shelf-style cooperation, and the volume is getting weaker and weaker.”

In April this year, Meituan started live streaming and invited merchants to live stream on the platform, but the results were not good. Subsequently, Meituan integrated experts and started professional store exploration and group buying live streaming.

Perhaps it was this group of store-visiting and group-buying experts who allowed Meituan to see a new direction: professionals doing professional things, and instead of letting merchants do live broadcasts, it is better to attract experts from outside the platform, thereby bringing new incremental or existing operations to Meituan.

Meituan Quanquan Store Exploration is such a model. It attracts experts with an order-taking model similar to that of "MCN" and service providers, and at the same time attracts experts to join by deploying profits on multiple platforms. Experts who want to "take advantage" will not miss the monetization opportunities of other platforms. Meituan can also attract many store exploration experts to its Dianping and its partner Kuaishou, quietly holding the initiative in its own hands.

3. Can small players support traffic and content?

An industry insider once told "E-commerce Online" that the core of combining local life services with short videos is to seize the business opportunities of those who browse with interest. This is an incremental increase in the new scenario and also an incremental increase with higher conversion.

For Meituan, the opportunity comes from the new model of short video group buying itself, not the simple increase of entrances or channels. But at present, it seems that Meituan’s new platform mainly attracts local small and medium-sized store explorers.

The sales performance of several top food-exploring influencers

Tiantian, who once operated millions of store exploration expert accounts, said that the main way for top store exploration experts to monetize is to accept business orders and sell goods through live streaming, while the prices given by Meituan Quanquan store exploration business orders are too low to attract big bloggers: the price of a business order from a store exploration expert account operated by Tiantian is 30,000 yuan, while the highest price given by Meituan Quanquan store exploration business orders is only 115.8 yuan.

At the same time, the basic rewards such as free meals and commissions mainly attract local small and medium-sized store explorers, but are not very attractive to big bloggers.

However, among the pyramid-structured store explorers, small and medium-sized store explorers are the majority and the main force in local store exploration. "A big blogger's 30,000 yuan promotion fee can buy the promotion of 300 small bloggers. Although the traffic of small bloggers themselves is not large, a little bit adds up to a lot, which can make people in the same city see the store and group buy."

In Tiantian's opinion, Meituan may be targeting this group of small and medium-sized store explorers and enriching its own content ecosystem through them.

These contents can attract users, increase the time they stay on the platform, and also capture business opportunities from interested browsing.

But the question also arises: can small and medium-sized players among group buying experts support short videos?

Chen Ge, who worked for Meituan Quanquan, said that he had learned about Meituan Quanquan store exploration from the official operation before, but was not very interested. "Meituan Quanquan is done by sharing pictures and QR codes on WeChat, which is very convenient. The store exploration requires short videos. The short videos posted on my video account are pictures, music and text. We have never made short videos and don't know how to do it."

Meituan Quanquan’s rebate sharing is mainly in the form of pictures and texts

Chen is also doing local lifestyle group buying on other platforms. For Chen, he mainly reaches consumers through WeChat Moments and communities. Pictures and texts are a more convenient and intuitive way of presentation. "Sharing pictures and texts for group buying can also earn a lot of commissions. There is no need to spend energy on making short videos."

Shanshan, another Changsha-based food blogger on Douyin, also said that he had heard of Meituan Quanquan store exploration, but had not yet tried it. "The main reason is that I am not clear about the review standards and requirements of this platform. Most people around me have never heard of it."

At present, there are many products on Meituan Quanquan store search that are cheaper than Douyin group purchases, but Shanshan said that he did not find the relevant product links on Douyin. "It is said that you can find group purchase products by copying the store and product names provided in the merchant order, but there is no such product link on Douyin, only on Meituan Quanquan."

Perhaps it is for this reason that the progress of business order recruitment posted on Meituan Quanquan Tandian has been 0.

But Shanshan said that she would try to explore stores on Meituan Circle in the future. On the one hand, there is one more platform and one more commission. On the other hand, the lower price than Douyin group buying can indeed attract consumers and allow her to earn more commission.

Different store exploration bloggers, similar store exploration content

The quality of content from small and medium-sized influencers cannot be ignored. Most small and medium-sized store exploration influencers who work alone cannot compare with top influencers in terms of content quality. They have also developed a cloud store exploration model, which allows them to publish store exploration content through materials provided by merchants or service providers. The content of small and medium-sized bloggers is highly homogenized, and whether they can attract users to place orders and go to the store for verification is still a problem.

Although it has become an "MCN", Meituan's most essential need is still to monetize traffic.

Meituan, which has merchant resources and user minds, uses "wool" to attract short video store explorers with strong grass-planting attributes, and combines the products on the platform with lower prices than Douyin group buying. However, whether these can help Meituan seize business opportunities for interest browsing remains to be seen.

Author: Wang Zhan; Editor: Si Wen

WeChat official account: E-Commerce Online (ID: dianshangmj), see sharpness and insights, and focus on innovative media on the Internet and new business.