Douyin, the biggest short video platform in China, being a goldmine for B2C marketing is almost common sense. But is it possible for B2B companies to leverage Douyin as an important marketing channel? We are positive about it.
Douyin is unarguably one of China's top social media players. According to "2020 Douyin Data Report", 600 million DAU were generating 450 million daily search requests, and the numbers keep growing. Creating an account and posting content in Douyin is a big leap to improve your online presence, and that makes you ready to utilize all the built-in features to expose your business to a large consumer base.
Douyin’s ecosystem might be more sophisticate than you think. If you wish to take a step further, there are a number of options for exposure boosting. Not only offering plenty of paid advertising methods, Douyin allows brands to ruffle traffic surges with an official marketing tool DOU+. On top of that, the official KOL service platform “Xingtu” is for you to book tasks and create collaborative campaigns.
One needs to keep in mind the fact that the Douyin platform is like a sea of creators and content – if you were to operate unstrategically, your creations would drown and sink to the bottom before reaching your target audience.
Although many domestic and international businesses have already created accounts and even posted a ton of videos, their performance is less desirable than they expected. A common mistake is putting everything together without caring about if they are scattered and inconsistent, which indicates that their brand positioning is unclear or confusing, thus unattractive to your audience.
Before creating an account (or entering any other social channels), you may ask yourself these questions: who am I and what do I offer? Who is my audience and what they need? How can I cater to those needs be more appealing? The answers will be the guidance for determining the “theme” of the whole account. Especially in the early stage of operation (building the foundation), you want to maintain a relatively uniform theme and tone, and avoid frequent style changes. Here, small steps like using consistent thumbnails will make a huge difference to the appearance of your homepage.
B2B content tends to be professional and less casual. Diversifying does not mean compromise the informativeness. Although Douyin allows longer videos, we recommend you to keep them short and only include a few points, and possibly embellish them with storyline, light music and special effects.
Following hot topics and trends is crucial to Douyin operation, simply because Douyin algorithm promotes viral videos. For starters, don’t be hesitate to use slang and memes that convey positive energy. You will find that high profile entities and even national TV networks use popular internet slang in their Douyin content.
In addition, Douyin creators are encouraged to participate in trending activities and challenges, as a way to attract more views and engagement. Companies are also allowed to create their hashtags and host their own exclusive events. Hashtag topics led by Companies could be related to products, usage scenarios, and hotspots within the industry .
The Douyin account homepage contains many interactive touchpoints. The personal profile section allows you to add a link to your website, contact info, address, business hours and other useful information. You could also add these in the "promoting revenue" module of "Enterprise Service Center".
The interactive system of Douyin video is complex, for each video, viewers could like, comment, save, and share. The comment section itself offers a set of touchpoints, including resource retention and customer acquisition, private domain management, brand promotion. B2B companies can select "Add Operating Tools" and change specific settings before publishing each video.
We will share more about Douyin in future content. If you need fresh insights about social media marketing or other marketing to China expertise, please feel free to contact our experts!