The Objective
As a popular Omega-3 supplements company, WHC began selling its products online in China in 2018.
In pursuit of long-term sales, WHC built its online presence across major e-commerce websites as an alternative to its past strategy of renting a physical store. By 2022, annual online sales surpassed 200 million CNY, securing WHC as the top fish oil seller on one of China’s leading e-commerce platforms.
The decision to then join Douyin in 2022, a pivotal move for WHC, was motivated by several factors. First, Douyin boasts a massive number of daily active users, providing WHC with the opportunity to tap into a vast pool of potential customers.
While WHC recognized the importance of traffic, they also understood that conversion is the ultimate factor when it comes to doing business. In contrast to the challenges faced in attracting and converting foot traffic to physical stores, apps like Douyin offer tools and products for brands to build and convert online traffic effectively.
The second factor was the significantly higher sharing rate of video content compared to images. Ultimately, videos offer a more intuitive and engaging experience, resulting in a higher rate of virality.
The third factor was the daily issuance of coupons by the platform, serving as an effective incentive to encourage more users to make purchases and drive sales for the brand.
Together, these three qualities convinced WHC they could achieve their long-term objective of building and converting traffic into long-term sales.
The Solution
In 2022, WHC launched its global flagship Douyin store with a streamlined team, including roles such as channel manager, store operations specialist, business development associate, and customer service representative.
As the store evolved, the team gradually recognized that brand livestreaming provided the most lucrative long-term solution. This solution aimed to reduce reliance on hiring external livestream hosts with considerable bargaining power and high commission demands, which typically range from 20% to 30%, with top hosts commanding even higher fees.
Moreover, engaging with top hosts involves a lengthy process, encompassing outreach, sample sending, product selection, scheduling, and more.
Brand livestreaming, on the other hand, offered WHC more controllability, profitability, and scalability, with the ability to host over 300 shows per year. Brand livestreaming also gave the brand greater flexibility to implement real-time adjustments to products, prices, and strategies based on direct user feedback.
Finally, brand livestreaming empowers the hosts, who, equipped with professional training and ongoing education, gain a deep understanding of the products. This expertise leads to more impactful demonstrations and immediate issue resolution, ultimately boosting sales conversion.
Thus, rather than relying on influencers to host livestreaming shows, WHC decided to leverage influencers to create and post short-video content with the aim of expanding their audience reach and driving traffic to their brand livestreaming shows.
This approach entailed building a matrix of creators based on a 60:30:10 ratio spread across three tiers of creators: lower-tier (100K-1M fans), mid-tier (1-3M+ fans), and top-tier (3M+ fans). Creators were carefully selected based on strict criteria that aligned with the brand and their products, including content vertical, audience demographics, and the influencer’s ability to drive sales.
In terms of implementation, the brand initially leveraged organic traffic to establish its account and brand livestreaming during the launch phase. In the growth stage, WHC utilized Shopping Ads (with both “Livestream Ads Automated Delivery” and “Payment ROI”) to amplify paid traffic and direct a wider net of users to their livestream room.
Thirdly, in the stable operations phase, WHC implemented Omni-Advertising to control and optimize overall ROI (organic and paid) as well as optimizing their ad creatives to improve results. This approach allows advertisers to explore high-quality traffic (high intent users) across the entire Douyin ecosystem, including For You Feed recommendations, Shopping Center, Search, and other channels.
Ad Products
The Results
The implemented strategies yielded impressive results for WHC, as evidenced by a highly successful Double 11 in late 2023.
Mall traffic witnessed a remarkable boost, registering a substantial increase of over 50,000 unique visitors (UV) as a direct result of creator videos posted during the pre-warmup period leading up to the Double 11 e-commerce festival.
During the festival, transactions facilitated by top content creators demonstrated impressive success, with transactions reaching a significant milestone of 200,000 and one livestream show attracting 650,000 CNY in GMV (Gross Merchandise Value). This highlights the effectiveness of the influencer engagement strategy in driving substantial sales.
Transactions from non-paid traffic also made a substantial impact, constituting 20% of WHC’s overall GMV. This marks a remarkable month-on-month growth of 270%, underlining the success of the brand’s proactive approach to brand livestreaming and the promotional impact of Double 11.
