Baidu introduces related terms. DTC(direct to customer) refers to the marketing mode that brands directly contact consumers, pay attention to consumer/user experience, and establish user relationship management on this basis. Isn't it a private domain in China?
In China, private domain has almost become a necessity for enterprises. Not only Tencent, but also Tik Tok has begun to deploy private domain traffic on a large scale, hoping to become the basic platform of private domain. More new brands are also emerging on the basis of private domain. Overseas, DTC has become the key choice for China brands to go abroad. Only recently DTC brand has been listed or will be listed soon, and its valuation is rising. For example, Shein, which has been discussed in the industry for a long time and is promoting listing, has a valuation of over 300 billion.
Based on this starting point, Selena, the founder of Brand Plus, was specially invited to attend the private domain e-commerce conference on August 13. Brand plus has been focusing on DTC brand. Selena has hatched three DTC brands in the past, one of which is valued at more than $300 million. Unfortunately, due to the epidemic, the General Assembly had no choice but to announce an extension. However, the postponement of the conference will not affect the release of dry goods.
These days, the in-depth chat with Selena alone has exceeded 30,000 words, in which the differences between domestic and foreign private fields are mentioned in detail, especially the focus of overseas play. Users have different behavior habits and learn from each other. Let's sit down and have a deep chat with the help of words. As follows, enjoy:
Selena, founder of Brand Plus
Reality: What do you think overseas private sector refers to more? What are the characteristics?
Selena: Overseas private domain traffic can directly reach accurate users and generate sticky traffic with consumers. The core component is several plates:
The first is online celebrities and KOL. This is also the biggest source of private domain traffic, and their traffic has a great influence on the brand and a strong endorsement. But this is a relatively "short-lived" traffic, which will help the brand to achieve explosive growth in a short time under the condition of accurate brand positioning and proper brand official website operation.
If you want to be a brand of sports equipment with a sense of male strength, the fans covered by online celebrities are muscular and willing to share fitness knowledge, which is actually the target audience. Attracting accurate target fan traffic to independent stations will form a channel for private traffic, which is an important channel for attracting vertical fans in the initial stage of the brand.
The second is SEO. SEO mainly focuses on brand independence, and achieves the ranking and brand influence of brands and sites on Google through external links, keyword optimization and content output.
The focus is on how to lay out content and external links, so that the traffic accuracy is higher, even higher than that of network celebrities. SEO is a relatively "long-term" private sector traffic, which needs a certain period of accumulation to achieve steady growth of traffic.
The third is social media traffic. There are benchmarks at home and abroad, such as Facebook and WeChat, Twitter and Weibo, Tiktok and Tiktok, Little Red Book and INS.
Different categories have different private domain needs and need to find matching traffic resources on different social media platforms, so the methods of building pools are different. For example, the customer base of an underwear brand is mainly young women, so INS and TIKTOK are the main battlefields.
The above are three relatively large modules in the private domain, and they are also very mature and stable sources of private domain traffic.
Reality: There are many ways to play in China, public domain drainage+private domain interactive transformation. Do overseas brands or foreign brands have similar gameplay?
Selena: There are two kinds of overseas e-commerce ecosystems, one is Marketplace (e-commerce platform). Among them, Amazon, the world's largest cross-border e-commerce platform, has a large public domain traffic, strict platform access and sales rules, and charges a high commission (Amazon 15% as the base). All the core permissions are in the hands of local teams in the United States.
The other is the boutique independent station, which is the brand official website. At present, shopify is the hottest independent station company in the world. The core attribute of this kind of company is "website building tool", which requires users to establish their own private domain traffic pool. There are no particularly strict access conditions and sales rules. According to different store levels, the commission is 2% or even lower.
Amazon is currently the world's largest cross-border e-commerce platform, but the sellers in the platform can't access any user information because the delivery is made by Amazon's own FBA warehouse. You are only responsible for submitting orders in the background, and no user information can be obtained. The station can only send messages to customers, and customers can choose not to reply.
If you choose to build your own warehouse, you will find that the sales of the same products are several times different from those delivered by FBA warehouse. Some time ago, because the seller put a praise card in the package, it was considered by Amazon to manipulate comments, and all the big stores were closed. This is Amazon's high-voltage line, so these big stores are closed.
Therefore, it is not feasible to do public domain drainage+private domain interactive transformation from an e-commerce platform like Amazon, otherwise the cost will be great.
The essence of independent station is that users have established their own "brand official website", and they should attract users to buy it through their own brand power and marketing ability. This nature determines that independent stations must establish private domain traffic pools in order to achieve brand growth, user growth and sales.
All the customer information on the independent station, from the most basic contact information, product purchase information, to all the operation path data after entering the website, can be obtained. The data belongs to the brand, and the operation strategy can be formulated according to the user's situation and holidays. Therefore, independent stations can and must do public domain drainage+private domain interactive transformation. Independent stations are also the first reason for overseas private domain traffic.
In essence, foreign DTC relies on its own brand official website and private domain traffic growth, while domestic private domain traffic growth is on a big platform, and the growth environment is quite different.
In addition, the data there are very different. For example, two overseas DTC brands have been planned or listed in China recently. A company called Shein, a official website company specializing in branding, is an independent station. User data are all in their own hands, and the current valuation is over 300 billion, which is very high. The other is called Anke Innovation, which focuses on Amazon. Listed on the Growth Enterprise Market of Shenzhen Stock Exchange, it is now valued at RMB 47 billion, only a fraction of Shein's, because I don't have the user data on Amazon.
Reality: Very interesting. What are the new trends, phenomena and changes in the development and changes of the private sector abroad?
Selena: The three core things have not changed, and with the rise of DTC brand, users will have higher and higher requirements for these three things: brand power, user operation ability and content output ability.
Three new trends are: more and more accurate positioning, more and more subdivided crowds, and more and more obvious pool stratification.
Three new phenomena are also new changes: short video has become the mainstream of traffic, the age structure of users is getting smaller and smaller, and the brand power is becoming more and more diverse.
Reality: Speaking of short videos, in fact, after Tik Tok came out, foreign private domain traffic has also changed a lot?
Selena: Overseas, from the initial giants such as Facebook, Twitter, INS and YouTube, to the birth of Tik Tok, the pattern has changed, from long texts to short texts, from pictures to videos, from long videos to short videos. Later, there may be a giant in China video.
The first result of this change is the geometric multiple growth of propagation speed. For example, in the process of these changes of online celebrities, the number of fans is expanding and the speed of communication is accelerating, so it is necessary to make a new brand, promote an explosion, or accelerate the establishment of a new brand. It took 1-2 years to establish a new brand through traditional channels, and now it may be realized within half a year at the traffic level in Tik Tok.
Secondly, the requirements for content have become higher. If there is only one to two or three minutes in Tik Tok, then the key information must be made clear in such a short time to attract customers, which will inevitably require higher content.
On the other hand, it requires higher things that cannot be changed, such as strong brand positioning, strong brand positioning recognition ability and good brand story. Without these, no one wants to see the content, and it is only a flash in the pan at most.
Big brands often have strong brand power and storytelling ability. A core story can be shot for more than a dozen episodes and released. However, for some brands that started with product strength, customers are unlikely to see how a product is played every day.
When we help many domestic brands go out to sea, the first thing we need is to empower the brands, refine the stories of the companies and founders to empower the brands, and then create good materials on the content. In the future, only enterprises with good brand power can really do a good job in private domain, and I believe China is the same.
Reality: In the whole overseas ecological chain, which upstream and downstream companies around the private domain have good development prospects?
Selena: The overseas DTC ecosystem is very mature. There is a company that is very professional and deeply cultivates every accessible field, and a company establishes a function. If I help you track all the user data, the user's entrance, where to point, how many seconds to stay and so on. These are quite "horrible" data.
Therefore, in overseas DTC or private domain industrial chain, each chain has a very professional team to provide services in a certain professional field, but generally speaking, the company's reputation and listing financing record are the highest.
For example, if a foreigner suddenly has an idea, no matter whether he has mastered the technology, understood the advantages of the supply chain, or has a new business model, he only needs to find a brand company to do brand planning, and then find a supply chain in China to produce products.
The founders only need to do what they are good at, and other omni-channels, including brand, website building and marketing, will be completed by all-brand companies. Of course, most foreign brands do their own customer operations, and the content output is best done by their own teams.
There are also data companies that live well. Before making any decision, overseas companies should analyze the data without making any decision, especially for the market situation and user data mining.
After the epidemic, these companies all got a big outbreak. The offline entities in the United States are very powerful. Because of the epidemic, people can only buy things online, resulting in a fourfold increase in the market value of an independent company and fierce financing. It is estimated that the overseas DTC ecosystem will rise all the way in the next 4-5 years.
In the data we have seen, the forecast from 202/kloc-0 to 2027 is growth, and the increase rate is between 3 1%-35%, which is the increase rate of the whole DTC market. At least from now until 2027, it will be a very fierce industry.
Reality: Will overseas DTC brands continue to rise in the next four to five years? This judgment is optimistic?
Selena: Look at the data. First, the market value of SaaS companies like shopify has been singing all the way (the highest share price of Shopify has quadrupled after the epidemic);
The second is to look at the brand development data. Companies that are currently making DTC brands, whether in the United States or China, have shown a good development trend, and their listing valuations are also doubling;
Thirdly, the market acceptance of DTC brand is getting higher and higher, especially after the epidemic, there are more and more data, and some categories even actually predict a net growth of as high as 37% for six consecutive years.
Reality: What are the recent development trends of the financing speed and quantity of companies that help brands to do the whole case?
Selena: For example, Casper (a brand that has received financing of $ 1 billion), behind them is the famous brand case company Red Antlers. The development trend of this industry will have these characteristics:
1) The strength of the whole company will become stronger and stronger. Because of the strong financing ability, the purchasing power of talents will be enhanced, and high-quality talents will be concentrated in the strong whole case company;
2) Technology-driven companies can find great opportunities in segmentation;
3) The incubation of brand talents and the rise of global training institutions.
Reality: Back to product strength, what is the biggest difference between foreign product atmosphere and domestic product atmosphere? What are the characteristics?
Selena: First of all, users of independent websites are typical social attributes and are very willing to share them. As long as the products are good, interesting and can impress them, they are willing to share them automatically.
The second is that the unpacking experience can be the ultimate. Independent stations can do experience optimization from the beginning of unpacking: how to design the whole box, what to put in it, and how to surprise customers after opening it.
Some time ago, the flowers were very popular, because the unpacking experience was so good that the online celebrity screamed every time he saw them, because he had never seen such a good package. China's product packaging is better than overseas, because the packaging price made in China is much cheaper than overseas. However, considering the cross-border logistics factors, over-packaging is not recommended.
The third is that customers are very friendly to new and exotic products. There is no shortage of novel and interesting products in China. What is lacking is to let others know that we have such products. Last week, the brand head cheongsam wanted to go to sea, but I was worried that foreigners didn't like things with China symbols. So we used the online celebrity test to recruit online celebrities in Hangzhou and the United States and asked them to wear cheongsam.
Later, online celebrities took a lot of photos of wearing cheongsam, which was very nice. In terms of products with China cultural symbols, the preference of overseas fans is actually beyond our imagination. A key point of foreign product atmosphere is social symbol, so they regard cheongsam as social symbol. With sufficient brand power, few independent customers are very concerned about price, because they think that higher price means higher quality products and services.
There are various clubs overseas. If the product is very good and the unpacking experience is excellent, users will take the initiative to @ you, intrapersonal communication is very capable. There are many millions of online celebrities abroad, and the core is to find something interesting online and test it yourself after buying it.
Reality: What is the user atmosphere abroad?
Selena: The characteristics of user atmosphere are also obvious. First of all, overseas users have very high requirements for brand power, which is related to the fact that overseas users grew up in major brands. China talks about oriental makeup in China, but overseas users don't know what oriental makeup is and what rouge is. So there must be a very strong slogan to let customers remember what kind of brand this is.
The second is that users keep paying for brands, not products. As long as you have a product and a brand in the eyes of users, every user will not hesitate to buy it and will not compare prices.
The third is that users are very concerned about participation. They need to participate in brand playing, product polishing and so on. Participation makes them feel valuable, interactive and can show off.
However, the overseas market is not as fast as the domestic market. It takes half a year for a private pool to be completely stable, and it takes about 1-2 years to continuously exert its strength. Although it is slow, it is difficult to fall down as long as it grows up, and it is very stable.
The fourth is the overseas private domain game. After an explosion, there will be a subsequent explosion. After one explosion, the other two or three explosions will take over this wave of traffic, otherwise the traffic will be weak in the end. When the traffic reaches its peak and is about to enter a recession, new products will push the traffic up again, from point to surface, playing with the overall situation, and users are constantly in a state of climax.
Reality: So what private areas can domestic brands learn from foreign brands?
Selena: 1) In terms of brand power, overseas brands have made greater efforts, especially in the content creation and dissemination of brand stories. Through stories with a sense of substitution and participation, the user's content is promoted to spread, thus realizing brand communication.
2) At present, overseas private domain traffic is the core gameplay: content output, community activities, and loyal fan training. In addition, a lot of energy will be invested in the training process from seed users to loyal users. For example, hold creative activities at the nodes with strong brand categories such as fans' birthdays, holidays, and invite fans to participate, so as to improve their sense of participation.
3) Point-line-area traffic matrix: starting from the single point traffic of a single product, then forming a traffic pool to follow up a series of products and services, and finally forming a traffic matrix, so that users can maintain, transform and fission in the traffic.
Reality: From your observation, what is the general trend of domestic brands going out to sea?
Selena: According to my current operating case and overseas data, domestic brands have become a battleground for major emerging brands. To sum up, there are the following major trends:
1) Domestic brands will directly skip the third-party platform and start from independent stations. It shows that the brand awareness is very strong and the business model of ITV is thoroughly understood. The most important thing is to pay attention to the construction of overseas private domain traffic pools.
2) Domestic brands are no longer limited to categories. From the well-known clothes and 3C products, to the beauty products and national fashion clothes that have become popular in recent years, to boutique shops and Yuan Qi Forest, it shows that China brand is not restricted by any conditions. As long as it meets the export requirements of China Customs and the import requirements of local countries, all legally qualified categories can go to sea.
3) Domestic brands have very good policy support at the national level. Take the overseas support policy of cross-border e-commerce brands in Hangzhou as an example. Whether it is registering brands overseas, advertising, promoting celebrities, sending employees to overseas training, or building overseas warehouses, the government has policy subsidies. I worked on a project before, and when the sales reached 50 million RMB, I got nearly 3 million RMB of national policy subsidies.
Reality: So what are the big challenges and difficulties that domestic brands face when they go out to sea to do private business?
Selena: First, brand positioning. All private domains should be combined with their own brand positioning. Without clear positioning, private domain can't succeed generally, because positioning determines where to go and how to attract private domain traffic.
The second is user insight and continuous in-depth understanding of the real needs of users. Such as content, products and services, these three dimensions are upgraded to better generate user stickiness.
The third is big data. The first step to do private domain abroad is to do brand positioning first, and then do user portrait. The third step is to fully do data research, collect a lot of data from major institutions, verify brand positioning and user insight, so as to judge whether the segmentation conforms to big data, and then determine the traffic style of the whole private domain.
"Practical recommendation"
I am really, really sorry! ! The private domain e-commerce conference originally scheduled for June 5438+03 was temporarily postponed due to the epidemic, and I apologize for the inconvenience caused to the old railway. I look forward to restarting when the environment permits, and I look forward to seeing you again.
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1. Private consulting escort 2. Excellent private domain agent operation III. Venture capital in the private sector. Private domain service provider handbook.