September 29, 2022

2020 Year In Review and Trend Forecast of China’s Digital Marketing

Looking back on 2020, under the impact of the epidemic, the consumer market has undergone significant changes. Online entertainment, online social networking, new social media platforms, new live-streaming products and other subdivisions and application scenarios have also changed, including innovative digital marketing channels are also developing rapidly.

Trend 1 – The explosion of e-commerce live streaming

The development of e-commerce, online and offline integration, Internet celebrity economy, short video, and live-streaming in the form of e-commerce, forms a major hot spot for digital marketing in 2020. Tmall released data that during Double 11 in 2020, nearly 300 million users poured into the live-streaming room. Taobao Live-streaming’s GMV increased by more than 100% y-o-y, and the number of merchants participating in live-streaming increased by more than 220% in the past 12 months.

According to the related research, the main reasons for attracting users to watch live-streaming are the products – cost-effectiveness, all-round display of products, the appearance/charm of the anchor, and sales skills have a certain effect.

As an overseas brand, in addition to the live streaming of cross-border e-commerce, the live content of travel destinations is also welcomed by users. For example, airlines, destinations and other travel-related companies also do live-streaming through the promotion of “advance ticket sales”.

Trend 2 – Integrate ecological resources and pay attention to private traffic

According to QuestMobile mobile data, the total usage of the four platforms of Tencent, Toutiao, Alibaba and Baidu has exceeded 70%. They are using data and algorithms to integrate resources in the ecosystem in 2020. For example, Toutiao will focus on search portals and get closer to user preferences through the combination of search & intelligent distribution. Live-streaming enriches the content ecology of Taobao platform and becomes a new hot spot for carrying goods. Integrated video platforms (Tencent, iQiyi, Youku, etc.) convert long videos into short video streams, and recommend them to users according to their preferences. WeChat takes advantage of mini-programs, content creators and other application ecology to optimize the operation of private traffic.

Trend 3 – Short videos have become the new expression of social marketing, and content is the key

For social marketing, short video and live-streaming continues to rise, and KOL promotion is still the focus of marketing. Among them, short video has short and precise characteristics, and its core lies in creativity. For brands, it is not only necessary to plan brand content construction, but also to consider the adaptability of the media environment, the simplicity of creativity and the originality of brand expression. Brands can find the key points of their own products that best suit the needs of young people, and make short videos into the brand’s new social language.

Trend 4 – OTT market expansion

According to relevant analysis reports, OTT traffic currently accounts for about 20% of the entire network traffic. It is estimated that the entire market will exceed 30 billion RMB in 2020. As the traditional TV industry has been driven by the Internet, the big screen has been transformed from just a smart terminal to an ecosystem that meets the needs of home entertainment. Through rich content and media services, from data monitoring to the shaping of large-screen scenes and content marketing, it will become one of the hot spots of digital marketing in the future.

Trend 5 – Big data era

In the era of big data, the integration of third-party data has become the focus of digital marketing technology. Using accurate population database and intelligent technology to process existing data will become the focus of digital marketing in the future, which will promote the establishment of intelligent marketing decision-making and digital marketing systems.