The age-old marketing adage “Where the users are, the brand should be” holds true even in today’s market.
In China, short video platforms have seen an almost 90% penetration rate, with the number of users surpassing those of traditional e-commerce online shopping. Douyin short videos alone contributed to a 161% increase in GMV growth, while live streaming brought about a 124% increase from July 2021 to June 2022. Notably, 1351 businesses achieved over 100 million yuan in sales, with 164 emerging brands and 175 products crossing this sales threshold.
All signs point to short videos and live streaming e-commerce platforms as the new frontiers for brand building in China.
Short Video Platforms Experience Overall Growth
In the past, short video platforms were merely used as a conduit for advertising, attracting consumers’ attention through unique and engaging content. However, with the continuous infrastructure development of platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, content ecology, and the continuous improvement of product services, these platforms have now transformed into a comprehensive online ecosystem, integrating entertainment, social networking, shopping, and education. It has become a fully functional marketing system that caters to both online and offline needs.
China’s live streaming e-commerce is now one of the most important battlegrounds for brand building, providing a highly engaged user base that recognizes and intends to purchase branded products. Live streaming rooms have become an essential platform for users to understand, interact with, and consume branded products.
With short video content, live streaming rooms, online shopping malls, and search services available on platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, live streaming e-commerce has become the prime platform for new product launches and best-selling star item creation. Whether it’s a well-established or a newly emerging brand, these platforms have facilitated significant business growth for companies.
The rapid development of China’s live streaming e-commerce industry has resulted in the integration of brand marketing and business operations. In this trend, rational and pragmatic decisions in brand marketing can bring certain results. Brands need to have a much sharper understanding of the changing demands of their target consumers and clarify their true problems in order to seize business opportunities and make efficient growth-oriented marketing decisions.
Efficient brand building not only requires selecting the right marketing battlefield, but also relies on a robust marketing system for support. The core demands of brand owners can be divided into three categories: presentation, content, and e-commerce.
Brand marketing must create a diverse system of brand advertising that targets different characteristics and demands of the audience including the awareness, interest, consideration, conversion, and repurchase segments. In addition, the core value of brand marketing lies in high-quality traffic, innovative strategies, outstanding creativity, and efficient integration. The combination of these elements can help companies effectively reach and engage consumers, make efficient use of budgets, flexibly construct brand relationships, and promote sustained business growth.
Marketing content, as a carrier connecting brands and consumers, carries brand concepts, product information, consumer needs, and expectations, serving as a bridge between brands and Chinese consumers. By building a sustainable and vital ecosystem that involves high-quality, creative, and resonant content among brands, creators, and consumers, it can effectively enhance the relationship between brands and users.
New Era of Brand Building in Live Commerce
In the live-streaming e-commerce era, the path to brand building is no longer limited to traditional linear development models. Instead, companies can choose a more diverse and parallel path based on their specific industry and target audience.
Renovating brand awareness, expanding the audience, and promoting “best-selling” star products are the three key elements of brand marketing with Chinese short video platforms.
Firstly, through branding investment with high traffic and favorable positioning, the brand’s voice can quickly gather momentum and help establish or renovate brand awareness among its target audience. This approach generally follows the path of “from awareness to recognition to purchase,” laying a solid foundation for gaining consumer trust and future conversion. Brands that choose this approach hope to establish a more trustworthy brand image in consumers’ minds and become a top-of-mind brand for purchasing decisions.
Expanding the audience: When a brand enters the next stage of rapid growth and needs to increase its customer base, it is crucial to establish a closer relationship with consumers. Only when core consumers identify with the brand’s values and philosophy can the brand gain a more solid brand recognition that is widely spread.
Therefore, it is important to focus on building the network of key brand ambassadors and influencers. Through various forms of content and influencer strategies, the brand can deepen its relationship with consumers and achieve higher efficiency in audience accumulation and conversion.
Finally, in order to quickly accumulate brand momentum and capture market share, one of the most effective strategies is to create highly popular and desirable “best-selling” star products. This approach allows brands to rapidly establish brand awareness and secure a strong foothold in the market. Previously utilized primarily by emerging consumer brands, this brand building approach is increasingly recognized and adopted by more traditional consumer brands.
Brands employing the “best-selling” star product strategy place a significant emphasis on market validation of their products, firmly believing that successful products serve as the cornerstone of brand success. By achieving tremendous sales figures for their star products, brands can plant the seeds of brand awareness in the minds of consumers. Meanwhile by producing high-quality content, brands can further reinforce brand recognition, foster a strong connection with consumers, and leverage the traffic generated by the star products to bring additional value to the brand, achieving scalable growth.
In the consumer e-commerce markets in China, brands can often occupy the top sales spot in a particular category with one or several “best-selling” star products. By leveraging the sales power and broad recognition of star products, brands can quickly build and strengthen their brand awareness in the designated marketplace.
In the process of developing “best selling” star products, marketing content on Chinese social media has become an important channel for brands to explore “potential stars”. Today, live streaming e-commerce platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Taobao have established a complete content ecosystem, covering short and medium videos, live streaming, graphics, notes, albums, and other content formats. Brand owners can choose different content carriers and strategies to maximize the value of high-quality content and achieve their branding objectives.
No matter how the digital marketing environment in China changes, we firmly believe that company growth requires the perseverance of a long-term mindset, and brand building is the real long-termism. Adhering to the concept of value investment, investing in the brand, and continuously accumulating brand value through the right strategy, is the most effective path for brands to resist risks, increase profits, and withstand uncertainty.
