Douyin for Retail: Trends to Grow China Retail Business
In the rapidly evolving landscape of e-commerce, China stands out as a global powerhouse, shaped by its innovation and unparalleled market size. As businesses navigate the complexities of this dynamic market, staying ahead of emerging trends is crucial for sustainable growth and market leadership.
In this blog post, we delve into the transformative trends reshaping the retail landscape. From holiday marketing to product seeding, these trends promise to redefine how brands connect with and cater to their audiences in China.
Join us as we explore the rise of interest e-commerce and social commerce in China before uncovering the top 5 trends shaping China’s e-commerce market.
What is interest e-commerce in China?
After years of keyword-based search and static product listings on traditional e-commerce sites, the landscape of online shopping has undergone a significant transformation. Instead of relying on users to seek out and navigate a brand or merchant’s online store, social apps like Douyin meet individual user needs based on interest.
On Douyin, users express their interests and preferences for products through their viewing habits and daily interactions. From watch-time duration to content creation and product purchases, user interactions accumulate and enable brands to find them based on proven interest.
Using this data, Douyin is able to match content and user behavior with high accuracy and provide a platform for interest-based shopping, known as interest e-commerce. This in turn gives brands a stage to create relevant product offers, sales events, and marketing strategies to reach their target customers and convert them into long-term customers.
What is social e-commerce in China?
As consumers in China transition from the traditional ‘search to buy’ approach to the new ‘watch and buy’ approach, livestreams and short videos have become the most attractive content format for consumers. These two channels not only inform their purchasing decisions but also create the foundation for social commerce on platforms like Douyin.
Social commerce refers to an online retail approach that leverages social networks to capture attention, enhance engagement, foster product recommendations, build trust, and facilitate transactions. This streamlined process not only enhances convenience but also capitalizes on the viral nature of social media, where engaging content can quickly reach a wide audience.
On Douyin for retail, users can browse and discover video and live content related to imported products and then follow links to purchase those products directly on the app. Through watching livestreams, searching for products, and ordering, users experience one-stop shopping that takes them from attraction to purchase, establishing new consumption patterns.
Douyin caters to users’ existing shopping demand with more traditional product-based mall scenarios too, allowing in-app searches to facilitate easy purchasing while taking advantage of 400 million daily product searches.
As an interest-based platform, Douyin’s recommendation algorithm also helps to match consumers with content and products that fit their interests and viewing habits. As a result, products no longer wait for users to search; instead, interest-based content feeds ignite latent user interests and facilitate transactions as part of one funnel.
Why Douyin for retail & shopping is crucial for e-commerce growth in China
Launching products on a new e-commerce site in a highly competitive market like China can be challenging for global brands, especially for new entrants. Navigating this initial phase and leading customers through the four stages of awareness, acknowledgment, recognition, and willingness to buy can be a slow path to growth on more traditional e-commerce platforms.
The rise of interest-based e-commerce, livestream e-commerce, and social commerce in China, provides global brands an alternative and faster path to reach their target audience and generate sales.
Enabling brands to take advantage of this new e-commerce model, Douyin has launched its own e-commerce arm called Douyin E-commerce and a special unit for global cross-border sellers called Douyin EC Global.
Douyin E-commerce and Douyin EC Global offer a comprehensive suite of e-commerce solutions for brands entering the Chinese market or expanding their long-term presence. This includes a collection of Douyin shopping and marketing products and a seamless shopping experience for users, allowing brands to take users from awareness to conversion on the same platform.
5 e-commerce trends in China
It’s time now to explore China’s top five e-commerce trends, starting with China’s impressive line-up of annual shopping festivals.
1) Take advantage of shopping holidays in China
While shopping festivals aren’t official public holidays in China, they have become an integral part of consumer culture. Offering substantial discounts and membership benefits, shopping festivals provide consumers with the chance to grab great deals on popular and trending items. These marketing events also enable merchants and brands to achieve regular spikes in sales through elevated exposure, marketing promotions, and mall traffic.
With established shopping habits formed around these annual events, businesses can strategically position themselves to meet demand during these festivals including 618, Black Friday, Double 11, and Double 12. As an example, during Double 11, the Australian vitamins and supplements company, Swisse, increased its daily GMV by 58% YoY (year-on-year), reaching 6.4 million exposures, with livestream e-commerce’s GMV increasing 92% YoY.
The key to successful marketing during these festivals is to attract users’ attention or turn their wish list into a shopping list within a short period of time, and then quickly close the deal by offering discounts or other benefits to meet their needs.
Beyond single-day surges, merchants benefit from the recent increase in daily transaction volume following promotional events. The increased visibility and sales recorded during the festival spurs future growth from exposure to more long-term customers as well as more sales data to inform paid advertising and organic traffic recommendation models.
2) Build trust with KOL marketing
Trust is an essential element in e-commerce, and key opinion leaders (KOL) play a vital role in connecting and forming new relationships between users and brands.
By collaborating with creators aligned with their brand marketing/sales goals, brands can implement a powerful market entry strategy for China, significantly enhancing brand visibility, especially during major shopping festivals. Brands can also accelerate sales and bolster their reputation with the support of trusted online creators.
While finding a lineup of KOLs for your brand may seem challenging, Douyin EC Global’s KOL Alliance simplifies this process by bringing together millions of KOLs in one convenient marketplace. The network includes a diverse range of elite-level KOLs, long-tail, and niche category influencers, along with overseas influencers representing Chinese KOLs residing abroad.
This rich creator ecosystem not only understands the consumer market in China and their preferences but also recognizes what products and consumption habits are trending in other countries and regions, especially among outbound Chinese tourists. Additionally, they have the unique ability to share valuable insights about the origins and production process of products abroad by co-creating content with brands and touring their production facilities.
3) Create a flywheel on Douyin following the FACT+S formula
Leveraging Douyin’s built-in e-commerce features, brands can build a highly effective flywheel that cycles between content creation and product sales—all on the same app. This approach is not only more efficient but more effective at generating endorsements through word-of-mouth marketing.
The Douyin for retail flywheel starts with content to collect and drive interest. Specifically, content is designed around the FACT formula, which consists of “Field” specialization, “Alliance” with content creators, themed “Campaigns”, and “Top KOLs”. The other section of the flywheel is “Search”, “Shopping Center”, and “Shop”, which add e-commerce touchpoints, thereby forming the FACT+S formula.
Success story: Athletic Greens (New Zealand)
Following this formula, New Zealand supplement brand, Athletic Greens, has created and utilized content to build a highly targeted audience. Leveraging influencer endorsements, collabs with popular creators, and livestream content to push e-commerce campaigns, Athletic Greens has been able to convert this audience into customers and achieve their sales goals without competing on price.
This increased brand searches 20x, while monthly GMV increased 10x compared to a year earlier, and new subscribers jumped 134% over its competitors.
Success story: Mistine (Thailand)
Similarly, the Thai sunscreen brand, Mistine, has been generating relevant content and attracting word-of-mouth on Douyin since 2021.
As part of a Douyin Super Brand Day held in April 2023, Mistine engaged brand ambassadors and the Thailand Tourism Bureau to promote their new line of products. Capitalizing on the audience accumulated over the last two years, Mistine’s LIVE event increased their daily average GMV by 150% and the brand reached No. 1 in the sunscreen category on the platform.
4) Cooperate with creators through product seeding
Product seeding offers another powerful digital marketing solution, enabling brands to cultivate brand advocates and drive sales growth.
Product seeding involves leveraging influential creators and content to nurture user interest. One way brands can achieve this is by offering their products for free or at a discounted rate to influencers, celebrities, or creators with a large social media following.
The goal is to generate buzz, increase brand awareness, and encourage word-of-mouth marketing among the influencer’s audience. This helps to nurture user interest through increased visibility, credibility, and ultimately, conversions for the brand.
From a marketing standpoint, this strategy notably enhances A3 to A4 conversion rates (Ask → Act), with product seeding leading to substantially higher conversions from both organic and paid traffic. Product seeding can increase total ROI on Douyin by 53%, significantly boosting ad traffic across livestreams and short video shopping channels, according to a recent study by Ocean Engine.
Success story: Dear Doer (South Korea)
In 2023, the South Korean personal care brand, Dear Doer, launched a product seeding mission to introduce its Hidden Body Body Scrub to Chinese consumers seeking natural skincare solutions.
The brand enlisted Key Opinion Consumers (KOCs) across diverse sectors including beauty, lifestyle, fashion, and travel who received the product and, in return, produced authentic review videos. These videos not only showcased the product’s benefits but also demonstrated its relevance across various lifestyle contexts, enhancing credibility and consumer trust.
Their campaign’s impact was substantial, yielding impressive results including 33+ million total hashtag views, 1,017 videos published, and 750,000+ total interactions.
5) Invest in paid advertising using Ocean Engine
Paid advertising can significantly enhance the effectiveness of e-commerce and retail-based marketing campaigns, especially as organic traffic typically has a limited lifespan of around 72 hours.
For e-commerce brands and merchants looking to maximize their presence on Douyin, Ocean Engine provides a comprehensive suite of marketing and advertising services.
Below are some of the key benefits of this platform.
- Creative ad formats: From product cards to shopping ads, Ocean Engine offers a variety of ad formats that capture attention and drive online sales. These formats enable brands to showcase their products in innovative ways and drive more sales.
- Influencer collaboration: Ocean Engine facilitates partnerships with Douyin influencers who have established credibility and influence within their respective niches. Collaborating with KOLs enables brands to amplify their reach, leverage the influencers’ authentic voice, and connect with followers authentically, driving brand advocacy and trust.
- Targeted advertising: In addition to increasing traffic supply, advertisers can accurately locate target groups to improve advertising efficiency and return on ad spend. Using Ocean Engine’s accurate 5A consumer insight and segmentation, for example, brands can identify which audiences to target and when to increase their advertising, including specific strategies for marketing campaigns and individual products.
- Performance analytics: Integral to Ocean Engine is its robust analytics and reporting tools, providing brands with actionable insights into their campaign performance metrics such as impressions, clicks, engagement rates, and conversions. These insights enable continuous optimization and refinement of advertising strategies to achieve e-commerce objectives effectively.
- Brand safety and transparency: Maintaining brand safety and ensuring transparency are paramount on Douyin. Ocean Engine implements stringent measures to safeguard brand reputation, including content moderation, ad review processes, and compliance with industry standards and regulations, fostering a trustworthy advertising environment.
Crafting your Douyin for Retail Strategy
In the new era of interest e-commerce and social commerce in China, Douyin offers enormous opportunities for brands looking to scale their business. From KOL marketing to product seeding, businesses can build brand awareness, drive engagement, and ultimately, achieve sustainable growth in a highly competitive digital landscape, as we have explored in this post.
As you navigate the opportunities available on Douyin’s e-commerce platform, it’s crucial to tailor your strategy to leverage its unique strengths. Whether you’re considering influencer partnerships, hashtag challenges, or paid advertising, Douyin and Ocean Engine offer a versatile platform to engage with a vast and engaged audience in China.
For direct assistance, including information about Douyin for retail and Douyin EC Global, please feel free to reach out to us via the Contact Us form on our website.
For further insights on China e-commerce solutions, you may like to read our practical guides to product seeding and the product venue strategy.
