September 8, 2022

China Marketing Insights Monthly Newsletter [June 2021]

Hello,

Welcome to our June Newsletter.

6.18 shopping festival has recently concluded – A total of 250,000 brands participate in this year’s Tmall 618, which is 2.5 times that of last year. A total of 13 million products participate in offering discounts, of which 1.4 million are new products. We will be doing a deeper analysis and provide more insights in July newsletter, stay tuned.

In this issue, we look at several new marketing ideas. First, we cover DOOH across Shenzhen metro network. We have 2 key search ideas. E-commerce SEO or ESO across Taobao. We also cover content seeding and how to effectively optimise it across Tmall & Taobao.

We also cover a new insights report about Douyin e-commerce landscape & the rise of “interest e-commerce”. We wrap up this newsletter with App of the month –UC Browser – a leading browser on most mobile phones in China, their tight integration with Alibaba ecosystem & how to take advantage of the tmall data available for effective advertising.

From all of us at OctoPlus Media – Stay safe & take care.

Sincerely,

Mia C. Chen

CEO & Co-Founder of OctoPlus Media

SHENZHEN METRO DOOH

The Shenzhen Metro currently has 10 operating lines with a total length of 380 kilometres and 260 stations. As of March 2021, the average daily passenger flow was 5.6737 million.

The Electronic Media System

The Shenzhen Metro electronic media system uses the video playback function of the subway passenger consultation system to display information to passengers at a designated time through the control centre, stations and train-related equipment, realizing online live video of the entire route. This information has both audiovisual effects and uses comprehensive means such as language, sound, text, image, action, and performance to spread the information.

Key Features:

The subway line covers all areas of Shenzhen without leaving blind spots
The location is superior, covering most of Shenzhen’s core business districts
Link the major core residential areas of the city to form a closed loop of passenger flow
Shenzhen Metro accounts for more than 50% of public transportation trips
The passenger flow of Shenzhen Metro ranks fourth in the country, and the flow intensity ranks second in the country. The average daily passenger flow exceeds 5.34 million (as of March 2021)
Advantages in passenger flow: passengers take a long time and many times, and the publicity effect is good
High-quality viewers: mainstream urban population, younger, office workers, high-income and high-educated

Key Locations：

Business Centers: High-tech Park, Chegong Temple, Convention and Exhibition Center, Grand Theater, Shenzhen University, Gangxia, Keyuan, Gaoxin South.
Entertainment Centers: Grand Theater, Shopping Park, Window of the World, Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen Bay Park.
Residential Centers: Shangmeilin, Tai’an, Pingzhou, Huangbeiling, Longcheng Plaza, Longhua.
Transportation hub: Luohu, Futian, Huangmugang, Buji, Shenzhen North Railway Station.

Together with our community advertising, we can provide robust additional advertising options to help improve your brand visibility. Contact us to explore or learn more about these options.

CSEO FOR TMALL/TAOBAO

Introduction:

Content Search Engine Optimization or CSEO is a marketing solution whereby articles about a product or service are promoted via search optimizing on major search engines.

Instead of direct advertising promotion, content on Taobao series is positioned as “consumer media” and “consumer community.” The content depends more on high-quality channels, such as good products, short videos, must-buy lists, Taobao headlines, Weitao, etc. Product promotion content is created and released in accordance with the grasp of quality channels by various quality experts.

The phased brand building is to export the topic content through Taonei’s core resource channels (Taobao headlines, good products, wow videos) to increase the brand’s exposure on the site.

The phased construction of the product is based on the content to drive readers’ awareness of the product. Under the long-term planting of Taobao’s various channels (Taobao headlines, good products, must-buy lists, crowd cards, etc.), the content is gradually introduced to create positive awareness of the product.

E-COMMERCE SEO - TAOBAO SEARCH RESULT OPTIMIZATION

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. SEO is a critical necessity for e-commerce as it will grow your sales. Your products need to rank higher than your competitors, and they need to display the right way so some potential customers can find the right products they need, that’s the reason that our ESO solution (E-commerce SEO) was born.

The best ESO Strategy we will provide:

Content guide + keyword search optimization
Let the brand’s influence explode in Taobao Rich media
Tmall pull-down keyword optimization

Create a healthy brand consumption ecosystem through a combination of content guide, keyword search, KOL review & channel distribution. Constantly enrich the user reach path, activate future consumption growth points and accurately target the high-demand users.

The Taobao series content is positioned as “consumer media” and “consumer community”. Doing content in Taobao series is more depends on the quality of the channel, such as: AAAAA, etc. Therefore, product promotion content should be created and released according to each web celebrity’s grasp of quality channels.

A holistic approach to managing customer acquisition & retention via search & search-powered strategies. Besides E-Commerce Search Optimization (ESO), our approach builds on traditional SEO & includes more advanced strategies including App Stoe Optimization (ASO), Social Search Optimization (SSO), Content Search Engine Optimization (CSEO), viral word of mouth amplification, reputation management and more.

Please Contact Us if you wish to learn more!

INSIGHTS REPORT - 2021 DOUYIN E-COMMERCE

In 2020, online consumer demand grew rapidly, and Douyin e-commerce has become a hot spot in the industry. Douyin e-commerce has triggered the massive consumption demand of more than 600 million daily active users, realizing efficient conversion from user interest to consumption realization.

E-commerce industry trends:

Online consumption bucked the trend, China’s online retail scale steadily ranked first in the world

Affected by special events around the world in 2020, the overall retail industry consumption is slowing down. According to eMarketer’s forecast, the global online retail market will reach 4.28 trillion USD in 2020, with an annual growth rate of 27.6%. In 2021, the development momentum of online retail will continue unabated, with an estimated growth of 14.3%. At the same time, online retail accounts for an increasing proportion of total social consumption, about 19.5%.

2. Live e-commerce

Live e-commerce is centred on visual product content, shortening the consumption link, and attracting enterprises and consumers to join at the same time.

From the perspective of the supply side of the live broadcast e-commerce market, there are more than 28,000 new live broadcast industry-related companies in 2020, an increase of 5 times year-on-year. According to data, in total there are 39,000 enterprises related to live-streaming.

From the perspective of the demand side of the live broadcast e-commerce market, according to CNNIC data, as of December 2020, the number of e-commerce live broadcast users was 390 million, accounting for 62.9% of the total live broadcast users, an increase of 46.4% from March 2020.

In an environment where policies drive the healthy development of live e-commerce, the supply-demand relationship of live e-commerce has also promoted the rapid growth of live e-commerce. According to third-party statistics, in 2020, the scale of live e-commerce transactions will exceed one trillion yuan, and the annual growth rate will be as high as 142%, leading the e-commerce market. Currently, the market penetration rate of live broadcast e-commerce is only 8.6%, and there is still huge room for growth in the future.

Rise of “interest e-commerce”

Douyin’s GMV increased by 50X

At the beginning of 2021, Douyin e-commerce closely connected the ecosystem of “users, merchants, talents, institutions & service providers”, and officially launched the new concept of “interest e-commerce” at the Douyin E-commerce Ecology Conference. In the past year, Douyin has served as the entrance to Douyin’s e-commerce business, and the transaction volume has grown rapidly. In January 2021, it increased by more than 50 times compared with the same period last year. As Douyin e-commerce has become a long-term business position for more and more brands and merchants, a new online retail track has begun to take shape.

Changing landscape

1. User: younger, larger, higher spending power

For Douyin e-commerce users, women are the main purchasers, and men have grown faster in the past six months.

Age distribution: Young users born in the 80s and 90s have an absolute advantage, and the post-95s have the highest growth rate.
Cities: First-tier/new first-tier and fourth-tier cities go hand in hand. Shanghai, Chongqing and Beijing become the most shopping cities in 2020
Consumer product types: fashion, new products, health preservation

2. Talent: Douyin e-commerce has become an important growth point for the income of the millionaire

The scale of Douyin e-commerce creators and per capita income continues to grow rapidly. In the second half of 2020, GMV increased by 588% year-on-year compared with the first half of the year. As of January 2021, the number of anchors who received e-commerce revenue has exceeded one million.

Creator age: 18 to 45 years old mainly

Distribution of creators: TOP3 provinces Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu

3. Merchants: Millions of merchants are enthusiastically entering the market

The 2020 Douyin e-commerce TOP30 sub-categories are analyzed, and the second half of 2020 is compared with the first half of the year –

GMV increase: women’s clothing, jewellery gold, beauty and skincare, men’s clothing, children’s clothing, second-hand luxury goods and other sub-categories
GMV growth: mobile phones, art collections, watches and clocks, underwear, children’s clothing, wine and other sub-categories

Douyin e-commerce has become an explosive field for new products: Douyin e-commerce is a popular destination for a large number of users to chase “new”. Under the strong demand for new products from users, various industries have released new products on Douyin, and the new products of the platform present six major products. “New Features”: “New Marketing”, “New Design”, “New Scene”, “New Function”, “New Ingredient”, “New Technology”, covering various industries.

New business growth model: Douyin e-commerce “FACT business matrix”

Field Merchant Broadcast: Merchant broadcast is the basic business of daily sales and has become an important force for merchant growth. In self-broadcasting, merchants have strong control over key operation nodes such as brand image, product selection, discounts, and live broadcasts.
Alliance Master Matrix: The Master Matrix is an amplifier for business growth. Many merchants have established close alliances and partnerships with many masters. The business of the merchants grows rapidly with the increase in the ability and number of talents.
Campaign marketing activities: marketing activities are the explosive field of large-scale sales. A series of marketing campaigns have given Douyin e-commerce holiday-oriented and themed marketing capabilities to continuously create reasons and minds for users to consume on Douyin, and with the help of large-scale traffic aggregation effects, detonate Gao Cheng orders in a short period of time. The centralized transaction is an important way for merchants to quickly grow with the help of platform resources.
Top KOL: Big V on the head. The big V on the head is the place where a win-win situation is announced. The cooperation between brands and Top KOLs such as celebrities and top influencers can help brands achieve the “double detonation” of product promotion and sales. Celebrities and top talents use their strong fan influence and personal endorsements to create hot marketing events, help brands quickly break the circle and achieve a “win-win product and sales” in one fell swoop.

If you are interested to read the full report, in Chinese, please feel free to contact us. You can also get in touch to talk to us about effective advertising on Douyin.

The delisting of the APP involved may cause some trouble to advertisers. If there are advertisers who plan to place advertisements on platforms such as Maimai and Tuniu, please contact us to provide you with exclusive advertising campaign alternatives.

APP OF THE MONTH - UC BROWSER

UC Browser is a browser for mobile phones and computers, developed by China Univision Technology Co., Ltd. and acquired by Alibaba Group in 2014.

UC advertising is especially based on Ali big data, which can realize a multi-scenario marketing platform.

Crowd screening: multi-dimensional circle of people to lock the audience
Intelligent delivery: meet different delivery goals
Advertising management: high-efficiency delivery platform and smooth operation experience of tools
Creative tools: a variety of creative tools empower marketing

In addition, UC ads can also be targeted for promotion based on Taobao’s purchase records. For example, the consumption power on Taobao, or the products purchased on Taobao as targeted promotion, can achieve efficient delivery and more precise contact with the target population.

UC advertising can be based on Alibaba’s unified consumer identification data system and can grasp multi-dimensional data of real users, fully understand consumers, and make more accurate information recommendations for the same user at different stages, different locations, and different interests.

Advertisement options:

Native Ads

Information flow advertisements are advertisements that are mixed with content, which are more friendly and accurate to deliver advertising information in a way that blends with the content. The general form of micro-text images and links are currently also played in the form of video streams, which are placed in accordance with user behaviour and the big data accumulated on the platform so that the advertisement is more closely matched with the target group.

Performance Ads

Performance ads that appear on the content page, the last page of the picture, and the video book.

The main display format is big picture/small picture/group picture/GIF, etc.
With more than 1.5 billion rich traffic exposures, multiple resource locations are accurately displayed, and multi-dimensional targeting such as geographic keywords can be achieved: region, age, gender, network environment, operating system, and custom population.

Open Screen Ads

The advertisements that appear when the APP is launched are generally presented in the form of pictures or videos. The display time is between 3-5 seconds and will be automatically closed after the display is completed. When the user clicks, it can jump to the landing page.