The data after 618 will tell you which channel is better to choose when you enter China!

Nearly 20 days have passed since the 618 promotion this year, but the controversy over the "most popular 618 in history" has never stopped in the industry.

Before the pre-sale, Taobao, JD.com, Suning, Gome and other platforms may enter the "10 billion subsidy" or "crazy discount", betting on this mid-year promotion with the highest sincerity. However, after the platform "a hustle and bustle", 618 ended in a low-key manner on the consumer side.

According to data, during the 618 period this year, the beauty category (skin care + perfume makeup) was still the hot-selling category, with a total sales of 40.6 billion, but compared with last year's 618 of 41 billion yuan, there was still a slight decline of 0.98% .

However, for practitioners in the beauty industry, this big promotion still has a very high review value: Which brands stand out during the big promotion? Which categories have more room for dividends? What business opportunities in the second half of the year can we see in advance?

On July 5th, we joined hands with data experts such as Fang Xuan, commercial director of Cicada Mama Hangzhou Branch, Mu Yi, senior operation director of Chenmu Interactive, Zhan Yunshan, Director of Business Operations of Shanghai Relian Enterprise Management Co., Ltd., and Chen Jingrun, Business Analyst of Guoji, comprehensively analyzed the 618 battles of popular e-commerce platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu this year, and explored new opportunities for brand growth in the second half of the year.

Part 01: Douyin e-commerce grew by 70% year-on-year, and three major trends were exposed for the first time

Data from Cicada Mama show that during the 6.18 promotion this year, the GMV of Douyin e-commerce payments increased by 70% year-on-year, and the number of products for sale increased by 57% year-on-year. The number of merchants participating in the event increased by 196%. indivual. Guoji · Feigua data also pointed out that on the Douyin platform, more than 143,000 brands participated in this 618 promotion, and the number of participating products exceeded 36.71 million.

According to Chen Jingrun, a business analyst at Guoji, the beauty market still maintains strong growth, with sales increasing by 69.12% compared with the 6.18 promotion in 2022. All categories have an upward trend to varying degrees, of which the beauty/personal care equipment category has increased by 120.24%.

"Given an overview and interpretation of the development trends, marketing insights, business distribution and platform gameplay of the Douyin e-commerce platform during this year's 618 period, we have sorted out three major trends that deserve attention during this year's Douyin 618." Fang Xuan, commercial director of Cicada Mama Hangzhou branch, said.

1. The consumption of thousands of yuan will see the fastest growth, and the consumption behavior will be more rational.

According to Fang Xuan, although products in the price range of 100-300 yuan still occupy the TOP1 position in the market share, the growth rate of orders of more than 1,000 yuan is overwhelming, followed by products priced at 500-1,000 yuan and 300-500 yuan. This shows that people's consumption has not been downgraded, but instead is more rationally shifted to products with high customer orders and products that stimulate consumers' core needs.

In terms of categories, the growth rate of high-priced categories such as smart phones, bags (second-hand luxury goods), jadeite, pure gold jewelry, and facial beauty equipment is relatively fast.

Consumer core demand products such as air circulation fans, health food, investment precious metals, etc. increased by 5027%, 3813% and 3123% year-on-year respectively.

Judging from the content that consumers pay attention to during the promotion period, topics such as #抖音618好物节#, #分类好物推荐#, #超已超货货#, #father’s day# and other topics received a lot of attention. It can be seen that good products featuring cost-effectiveness are the focus of current consumers, and the superimposed effect of Father’s Day and 618 festivals also promotes consumption decisions to a certain extent.

2. Merchants pursue short video seeding + live broadcast monetization, but there is traffic competition between the two.

One week before the 6.18 promotion, all-category brands mainly focused on short video content for seeding, while during the official event, merchants mainly promoted growth by lengthening the duration of each live broadcast. Data shows that during the Douyin e-commerce 618 period in 2023, the number of short videos linked by merchants (shopping carts) was played 130.9 billion times, the cumulative live broadcast time was 42.02 million hours, and there were 413 live broadcast rooms with GMV exceeding 10 million.

It is worth noting that, from the perspective of traffic changes, during the 616 Cui Xiao period, the average playback volume of each short video was reduced by 1.66%, and the interaction volume was reduced by 18.29%;

The average daily live broadcast time and the average number of viewers per game in the live broadcast room both increased by about 10%, but the average stay time of a single live broadcast only increased by 0.54%.

This shows that consumers will face more choices in the future, and the competition for short video and live broadcast traffic will intensify.

3. The shelf mall is a new addition to Douyin e-commerce in the future, and brand merchants are moving from B2C to C2B. From FACT to FACT+, and then to FACT+S, which is the main promotion this year, Douyin e-commerce has strategically combined interest e-commerce and shelf e-commerce, and consumers’ purchasing forms on Douyin have also become "video + Live + Shelf Mall".

Cicada Mama data shows that this year’s Douyin e-commerce 618 Good Things Festival, the live broadcast GMV of the shelf mall increased by 178% compared with the same period last year on 618, the number of payment users increased by 126% year-on-year, and the average daily GMV brought by search also increased by 154% year-on-year. In shelf malls, clothing, underwear, food and beverages are the most popular categories, and standard kitchen and bathroom appliances and 3C digital are the fastest-growing business categories.

In addition, combined with FACT+S, Yameng, Helena, Lancome, Estee Lauder, Hou, La Mer, Proya, etc. have been squeezed into the official flagship store list of Douyin's 2023 618 brand list.

In addition, the beauty equipment brand Jimeng has entered the top 10 of the industry's best-selling brand list during the 618 period of Douyin in 2023. Taking Jimeng as an example, it achieved a GMV of 240 million+ during the 618 promotional period. The brand’s self-broadcasting combined with @广东夫妻直播间大人’s live broadcast (influencer distribution), and the final live broadcast accounted for 80% of the goods.

Dismantling the strategy of Jimeng 618, we can see that the "F" of the brand is short video and live broadcast linkage, and realize "A&T" by combining the influence of celebrities such as celebrity spokesperson Zhou Dongyu and @广东夫妻, Also released new products at the Douyin E-commerce Opening Day event, using new products to drive the old generation of products to obtain long-term traffic, so as to achieve product and sales synergy to achieve "C", Finally, the "S" was completed in the optimized search of shopping malls/window selling points and consumer demand, and finally ushered in a 618 sales explosion.

Part 02: Xiaohongshu's beauty search has increased by 200% year-on-year, mask/sunscreen has attracted the most attention, and small categories have high potential

In the first half of this year, the popularity of Xiaohongshu skyrocketed. First, Dong Jie's "gentle" live broadcast became popular. The first two live broadcasts brought nearly 100 million yuan in goods, occupying the TOP1 seat on the Xiaohongshu live broadcast list for many times; Zhang Xiaohui, the originator of fashion in Hong Kong, China, came from behind, and brought 2400W+ in the first 6-hour live broadcast...

Although the closed loop of Xiaohongshu e-commerce with a monthly activity of 200 million+ has been criticized by people, its accurate user circle is favored by beauty merchants.

The data shows that Xiaohongshu users account for more than 50%+ in the first and second tiers, and 70% of them are high-net-worth individuals composed of post-90s users.

According to Chenmu Interactive’s observation, the month-on-month increase in the publication of beauty-related content on Xiaohongshu was 24.2%, and the search exposure increased by 12%, indicating that Xiaohongshu users have a high degree of attention and demand for beauty makeup.

The data performance during the Xiaohongshu 618 promotion period also echoes the above argument. The data shows that during the period, the search trend of all categories increased by 200%+ year-on-year, and 55%+ month-on-month, and the release trend of related notes increased by 300%+ year-on-year.

Specifically, in terms of categories, personal care, skin care, make-up, and perfume accounted for the top 4 categories in the month-on-month period, with a month-on-month increase of 117%, 66%, 53% and 47%, respectively. Among them, the sun protection trend in the field of skin care is very good, the search for water and milk essence continues to be hot, and small categories such as makeup remover cream have unlimited potential. In the field of color cosmetics, concealer and beauty products are growing rapidly, and the demand for gifts is especially obvious around big promotions & festivals. On the whole, Xiaohongshu's beauty and skin care products are characterized by refinement.

Aiming at the continuously growing Xiaohongshu e-commerce market, Mu Yi, Senior Operations Director of Chenmu Interactive, pointed out that KFS (ie Kol+ Feeds+Search) combined with scientific marketing (ie good content + deterministic traffic) can help brand growth.

According to Mu Yi, brands can first delineate the KOL pool that matches the brand’s tonality, select KOLs with strong commercial content capabilities, high cost performance, and meet the needs of magnitude, and create content that meets the product’s target search terms in combination with hot spots on the site. Secondly, determine the audience group through interest tags, search interaction behavior, etc., increase the click-through rate, interaction rate, etc., increase the coverage of planting grass, and quickly create high praise notes at low cost. Again, seize the track of search card slots and refine the minds of the crowd.

Taking a beauty brand served by Chenmu Interactive as an example, the brand diagnosis results before the big promotion show that,

The brand is currently facing two major problems: the main sales & audience group is not consistent with the brand's target group, the consumption power of fans of the beauty and cosmetics category is average, and the product content type is not favored by the target users.

Mu Yi further pointed out that on the content side, Chenmu Interactive focuses on four major directions: professional skin care, dry goods anti-aging, exquisiteness, and recommendations for mature sisters.

Hit the pain points of consumers by changing check-in, hoarding activities, good product recommendations, etc., and also use the DMP crowd package to limit the search crowd and content scenarios to improve the effectiveness of crowd reach. On the search side, Chenmu Interactive will also optimize content such as brand words, product words, category words, industry words, and function words.

Based on this, according to the above-mentioned KFS plus scientific marketing strategy, matching Xiaohongshu with Taobao in large quantities, the brand finally achieved a 27% increase in searches on Xiaohongshu, a 34% increase in searches on Mobile Taobao, and a 45% increase in brand ROI during the 618 period.

Part 03: After the big promotion, brand savings and income promotion in 4 steps

It is not difficult to find that whether it is Douyin or Xiaohongshu, in addition to brand self-broadcasting, Dabo is an important part of brand marketing that cannot be ignored. However, brands often fall into a misunderstanding when selecting cooperating talents: they only select from two dimensions: the number of fans of the talents and the amount of monthly sales.

"The matching degree of talents is above everything else, and their greatest value actually comes from fans. That is to say, understanding the fan portraits of the talents and the categories of goods they carry are the core value points of the brand when doing talent marketing." Zhan Yunshan, Director of Business Operations at Shanghai Hot Chain Enterprise Management Co., Ltd., pointed out.

How does a brand choose the right talent? Zhan Yunshan gave suggestions from four points: fans' gender, age, region and product categories:

1. Choose talents with more female fans. Except for men's vertical products, almost all other brands can choose talents with more female fans to cooperate with. "To a certain extent, female fans represent purchasing power and conversion power."

2. Choose talents who are 24-40 years old and have more fans. This is because the conversion ability of the Z-generation crowd aged 18-23 is poor, and the crowd over the age of 50 is not the main force of online shopping.

3. Choose a region that is consistent with the brand tone. "When the brand tone is high, you can choose experts who have more high-awareness consumers in first- and second-tier cities for cooperation. It is difficult for high-awareness consumers to be brainwashed and cultivated by the selling points of white-brand products."

4. The details are compared to see if the category of goods brought by the master is consistent with the brand. "A talent with good total sales data may not be suitable for your brand. You need to look at what category this talent sells the most, and then see if your brand is a similar category."

In Zhan Yunshan's view, the prerequisite for completing the above actions is to clarify the positioning of its own brand from the three dimensions of product category, brand image and capital. Later, based on Douyin's characteristic of "the one who wins the hottest products wins the world", big brands with sufficient funds can bind top talents; on the contrary, small brands such as white brands need to spend more energy to find seed talents.

Seed talent means that the fan portrait of the talent matches the crowd portraits of brands A1~A5. "When the brand discovers the seed talents, it will launch a short video trailer cooperation with all the target talents with the help of the 100 yuan initial investment policy. Relying on this kind of small fund test, after the horse racing races out the talents with excellent data, the cooperation will be increased. "Zhan Yunshan said so. If you find a suitable live broadcast talent, you need differentiated customer unit price and strong product selling points to attract the attention of the talent.

Zhan Yunshan took Laifen hair dryer as an example. She said that as a white brand, Laifen relies on strong selling points such as "Dyson same style" and "big brand replacement", and at the same time attracts consumers with a price that is ten times different from that of big brands.

Finally, during the 618 period of this year, it set a new high of 330 million in sales, with a total of 600,000 units of cumulative shipments, firmly standing on the first throne of multi-platform hair dryer categories such as Tmall and JD.com.

"It is an indisputable fact that natural traffic is decreasing, and using commercial traffic to amplify its own conversion effect should be a place where brands need to pay attention." Zhan Yunshan pointed out.