From the initial imitation of learning Xi to today's uniqueness, China's e-commerce has developed for nearly two decades. In the past 20 years, in the spring breeze of policy, the surge of users, the boost of capital, the contest of strategies, and the war of logistics, countless e-commerce companies have struggled, hesitated, honed, nirvana, grown, evolved and even died.
All these are the best footnotes to the great development of China's e-commerce.
In the third quarter of 2023, the total online sales will be 3,657.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 112%, down 56%, the fourth quarter is the peak season for e-commerce, considering that the base of e-commerce Q4 last year is slightly lower, it is expected that this year's Q4 will maintain 11The year-on-year growth rate of about 5% was slightly higher than the year-on-year growth rate of Q3, with a scale of 4,679.5 billion and an annual online retail scale of 154993 billion.
Although the economy is slowly recovering, the relative lack of momentum in consumer investment is reflected in the e-commerce industry, the most intuitive is the tightening of marketing budgets, result-oriented marketing targets and sporadic financing amounts. At the same time, forms of direct sales linkage, such as live streaming, have become popular.
At present, China's live broadcast e-commerce industry market is in a stage of rapid growth. According to the data of the Ministry of Commerce, in 2022, the market size of the live broadcast e-commerce industry will reach 35 trillion yuan, an increase of 48 percent year-on-year21%；In the first nine months of 2023, the scale of live broadcast e-commerce in the country will reach 198 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 606%, accounting for 10% of online retail sales8 trillion of 183%, accounting for 21. of the physical online retail sales of 9,043.5 billion9%。In 2023In the first three quarters, the GMV growth rate of the live broadcast e-commerce industry was about 45%, which was significantly higher than that of the e-commerce industry, but the driving factors have shifted more from the live broadcast room to emerging channels such as short information flow, shelves, and search.
From traditional e-commerce to live e-commerce, will live broadcast e-commerce continue to lead the way in the future?
According to the data of Cicada Mother, in the first half of 2023, the number of likes, barrages, and followers of Douyin live broadcasts will decline year-on-year. 5% and 25%, the audience's willingness to interact is reduced, and the length of stay is significantly shortened.
The growth rate of live broadcast e-commerce has declined, and at the same timePerformanceOn the self-broadcast of talents and brands, according to the data of Jigua, the average number of ** people and the average audience of Douyin on Double 11 have declined significantly regardless of whether it is a store broadcast or a broadcast. The average purchase conversion rate, average interaction rate, and fan conversion rate in the live broadcast room also declined by about 1-3 percent.
In 2023At the beginning of Double 11, the discussion on monopoly between the top anchors was staged, followed by the competition for the lowest price on the whole network between platforms, coupled with the fast entry of new players such as instant retail, and the roles of all parties involved in the promotion were gearing up to grab the attention and traffic of users. However, despite the simplification of the big promotion gameplay, users' enthusiasm for consumption does not seem to have been fully ignited. Rationality and pragmatism have overcome impulse, the consumption trend has returned to be dominated by users, and users' perception of big promotions is gradually weakening, and their willingness to participate is gradually decreasing.
Obviously, "change" is the essence of change.
As a result, "the e-commerce boom subsides", "no traffic if you don't spend money", "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" also plague every marketer, brand long-termism begins to return, and the balance of quality and efficiency begins to level again.
At the same time, this also puts forward higher requirements for the brand operating company behind it.
We can no longer apply concepts such as influencer, financing, growth, and scale to high-quality brands, precise positioning, product reputation, and product effectiveness.
1. Digital capabilities may be the underlying cornerstone to support the sustainable growth of the brand. Service providers serve as the key chain connecting brands, platforms and consumersTo help brands grow, they must pay attention to market changes and continue to deploy on multiple platformsStudy the traffic operation rules of different platforms, the purchase psychology and consumption paths of different groups of people, and tap new growth potential.
In the new economic cycle, new consumer enterprises are facing unprecedented pressure, and how to regain growth has become an important topic for the whole industry to think about. At the same time, brand owners should not only establish a considerable output ratio for enterprises operating on behalf of e-commerce, but also realize the long-term development of the brand, so as to seek stability in the "change".
Recently, Tmall, together with China Brand List and E-commerce Industry Research Institute, released the "2023 China Top Ten E-commerce Agency Operation Company Ranking", summarizing the development status of the e-commerce agency operation industry in 2023, and systematically sorting out and predicting the development trend in 2024. The list is based on six indicators such as international standard product operation ability, resource cooperation ability, content marketing ability, scene construction ability, live broadcast operation ability, and comprehensive service ability, and a total of 100 executives of China's top 500 and cutting-edge brand enterprises were interviewed, and about 1,000 enterprise brand practitioners above the manager level were invited to conduct quantitative verification, and finally formed the list results, among them, Suo Xiang ranked third, and the top two were the veteran operators Baozun and One Network One Chuang.
Here's the full list:
Suo Xiang is third, and the top two areBaozun e-commerce, one network and one creation
"The general environment is not good" is a high-frequency word to describe the economy this year, as e-commerce companies expand their territory and accelerate the penetration of online consumption Xi, the growth rate of online retail sales in the country has shown signs of slowing down year by year, from 23 in 20189% down to 4% in 2022.
In the first half of 2023, e-commerce giants will return to their old business - fighting low prices. **Tmall and Jingdong directly showed the "tens of billions of subsidies" to fight for the stock bayonet. For decades, the sea of e-commerce traffic has ebbed and flowed, and with the addition of strong competitors such as Douyin, it is now a tributary and still water.
This year's Double 11, major e-commerce platforms are still emphasizing low prices, in addition to abandoning routines, returning to the basics, trying to give consumers the most worry-free Double 11. However, the excitement only belongs to the e-commerce platform, and the Double 11 is really dead. Now instead of talking about consumption downgrade, it is better to talk about consumption stratification, people on the one hand pick and search, can save what they can save, on the other hand, they are also willing to pay for what they think is really worthwhile.
At the same time, brands and the e-commerce operators behind them are also caught in the industry knockout game, either going out of business or struggling to survive. Lu Yongfeng, chairman of Suoxiang, once said this"The market is right, if the market brings us pain, we should think about how to adapt to the market, instead of holding our own wounds and feeling sorry for ourselves. ”
Generation OperatorsThe situation is also like a fish drinking water, cold and warm self-knowing, which is also reflected in the revenue figures.
In the first half of the year, Baozun e-commerce achieved revenue of 420.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 248%。Among them, in the first quarter, the company achieved revenue of 188.8 billion yuan, down 486%, GAP China contributed about 1900 million yuan. Net income in the second quarter was 2.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9%. GAP China contributed 3200 million yuan, comparable same-store revenue increased by 10%. For the decrease in revenue in the first quarter, Baozun E-commerce said that it was mainly due to a 29% decline in product sales during the first quarter of 20239%, partially offset by the incremental contribution from the company's new business line launched in the first quarter of 2023, namely product sales revenue managed by the Baozun brand.
Beauty Beauty's third quarter report for 2023 shows that from January to September, the company achieved revenue of 193 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 8%;Net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies - 5193160,000 yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3422%；The non-net profit loss was 5648550,000 yuan, a slight increase of 2 year-on-year28%。
In response to the performance loss, Beauty Beauty pointed out in the third quarterly report that it was mainly due to the fact that the operating income of some brands operated by the company did not meet expectations, the decrease in subsidies received, and the increase in R&D and marketing investment of its own brands.
Affected by the decrease in cash received from the sale of goods and the decrease in the collection of payments from the brand, the net cash flow from operating activities in the first three quarters of Beauty Beauty was -25 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6824%。
Ruoyuchen will achieve a total revenue of 8 in the first three quarters of 20232.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 150%。The cost side of the operating cost is 49.7 billion yuan, down 1276%, fees and other costs 30 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2740%。After deducting operating costs and expenses, the total operating income attributable to the parent company was 3372890,000 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9902%。。Specifically, its own brands such as Blooming Home and Yuejing Anman accounted for 39% of Tmall's revenue, a year-on-year increase of 28%;Douyin channels accounted for 33%, a year-on-year increase of more than 100%, and multiple channels such as Xiaohongshu and JD.com continued to maintain double-digit growth.
In the first half of the year, OneNet created a revenue of 61 billion yuan, down 3 billion year-on-year62%。During the reporting period, the company achieved GMV75$1.4 billion. Regarding the decline in performance, OneNet Yichuang said that compared with the same period, the company's changes in operating income, GMV and profit were mainly caused by the equity of Zhejiang Shangbai E-commerce.
It is worth mentioning that after Suoxiang's revenue proposed an e-commerce strategy that integrates quality, efficiency and sales in 2022, it will achieve a historical peak4100 million yuan, and then in the decline of other operating companies still maintain stable revenue, the average quarterly revenue is about 400 million yuan, 50% of the revenue contribution comes from brands in the field of daily chemicals, beauty, and health, 30% from food brands, and 20% is emerging creative brands.
It is undeniable that it is not uncommon for many companies to reach a certain stage of development, whether it is to find a second curve or to broaden the boundaries of business, both to avoid sluggish growth and to seek leapfrog development. But I have to admit that a company like Suo Xiang that can make such a big plate of global interest e-commerce in just two years is actually rare in various industries. Because in many cases, once the pace is too big, it may be a huge pressure on resource investment, or it may be a risk that many businesses are difficult to balance.
From the perspective of the industry, not only Baozun, but almost all the "water seller" brand service providers who have grown up in the Tao system, including Ruo Yuchen and Beauty Beauty, are improving their ability to deploy new channels such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and even doing their own brand management business in order to find the future.
Through the decline of Baozun and others, it is not difficult to see how Suoxiang China, which ranks third, has achieved good results today with the scale disadvantage of "small but beautiful".
First of all, thanks to the service concept of integrating quality and efficiency and sales, if in the past, brand promotion and effect promotion could still be side by side and fight independently, then now in the case of a general tightening of market budgets, maximizing the brand and effect has obviously become marketing 3The core issue of the 0 era, and its core driving force is the "integration of quality, efficiency and sales". As an e-commerce agency operating company, Suoxiang is the only company that can reshape the "fixed assets" of sustainable development for the brand while achieving profit transformation for customers, and because of this, it has created 4 single product sales champions a year, and the digital marketing miracle of GMV breaking 10 billion yuan is from the hands of Suoxiang.
The other is to take the lead in seizing the momentum of Douyin live broadcast, and the leader adjusted the direction in time. At that time, Douyin's "interest e-commerce" was upgraded to "global interest e-commerce", and Suoxiang caught up with the times, and in the basic service content of one body and two wings (marketing consulting, interactive communication, and full-link e-commerce), the "global interest e-commerce" was included in the full-link e-commerce sector, forming a new business segment of "one body, two wings and one tail", in addition to still implementing the "content + delivery" strategy, emphasizing the shelf scenes of "goods-people-goods" such as anchors, talents, ** search, stores, and windows, so as to meet more needs of users.
From brand design to integrated marketing, from digital marketing to full-link e-commerce, every step is a "thrilling leap". These "keywords" have become the secret of Suoxiang's success for 20 years. This is also a significant difference between Suoxiang and Baozun, Beauty and other large and complete operation models, often changing and new, always new. In 2022, when the industry is full of mourning, the result of revenue growth has still been achieved.
According to the relevant ** analysis,Combination of quality and efficiency and sales, and coordinated operation in the whole domainIt will be the development trend of e-commerce agency operators in 2024. The outstanding advantage of the integration of "product efficiency and sales" lies in the fact that the whole link from the brand reaching users to the precipitation of brand equity and then to the follow-up grass planting is concentrated on one ecology, so it not only has a high conversion rate, less churn, and strong growth sustainability, but also has a wider range of sales channels and a longer brand life cycle.
In 2023The overall growth rate of e-commerce channels has slowed down, and interest e-commerce and live-streaming e-commerce have brought new vitality to the industry with strong communication and strong interaction, and shelf e-commerce have assumed the roles of meeting daily consumption needs and stimulating unplanned consumption respectively, and synergistically helped merchants develop. Therefore, e-commerce platforms are accelerating the integration with social platforms, and they all hope to build a high-stickiness and high-transaction convergence platformE-commerceActing as an operating companyIn this context, it has gradually transformed to the direction of combining product efficiency and salesIt will be an inevitable trend.
Sustainable explosive products, replacing Internet celebrity explosive products
In the just-concluded Double 11 promotion, many brands grasped the growth power of new products and handed over exciting report cards. Gao Fan shines in the market with a black and gold down jacket and wins the first place in the whole cycleFenjiu debuted a limited edition in Sanxingdui, and the sales of a single product exceeded 15 million;Miguang released the second generation of the new collagen cannon, creating a new product of more than 100 million yuan, and the new domestic brand PMPM was popular all over the Internet, and the star product rose essence oil sold more than 62,000 pieces, and topped the Tmall essence oil pre-sale list, praise list, and hot sales list TOP1 ......
In the future, e-commerce operating companies should use the platform push model, continuous trial and error, verification and optimization, and identify explosive products to create a product with excellent sales and stable and long-term development. In addition, the track can be selected according to the sales trend of the current seasonDo a small range of pre-inspection in the brand's best friends group before going public;Then enter the recommendation flow to obtain the verification of the market, identify the explosive products and pour resources into promotion.
Therefore, the future explosive product model must be sustainable products, which also puts forward higher requirements for the e-commerce operating company behind it, such as the service type should change from a phased service to an accompanying service.
Previously, Baozun E-commerce acquired Full Jet, a consulting and management company focusing on brand strategy and operation, which further strengthened Baozun's brand understanding ability and brand appeal, and the brand resources of Full Jet also helped Baozun expand the scope of cooperation. The strategic alliance with Fosun Fashion Group (Cayman)** has made Baozun a big step forward in the luxury industry, and its influence has quickly penetrated into more fields through luxury brands. In the same way with the acquisition of fashion brand e-commerce solution provider Yishang, Baozun has further penetrated into the apparel category and strengthened its strength. Under Baozun's leadership, GAP China, which has been acquired for less than a year, is quickly back on track.
Unlike Baozun, which focuses on fashion brands and luxury brands,Rope elephantsIn recent years, e-commerce has focused on new consumer brands, and has become famous for exporting hot new brands every year, and continues to create short-term and fast-selling hot product planning cases. It is reported that its explosive product strategy advocates creating explosive products from three dimensions: Explosive products, trending products, cultivated products. Among them, explosive products form potential energy to drive the overall product and brand power;Trending products are constantly amplified in the test, and constantly optimized in the amplification, and strive to become a new explosive productCultivated products are invested and cultivated according to changes, and various trends are grasped according to the actual situation to amplify their advantages, and they can become the echelon of new explosive products at any time. Through the classification of products, customers have the management awareness and business accumulation of multi-explosive product outbreaks, so as to form different explosive product creation capabilities at different stages. Whenever there is an outbreak of new explosive products, the brand's marketing can immediately form a new explosive product planning and management matrix, and quickly promote new marketing peaks.
One network and one creationthenHe is well versed in brand operation, has the ability to cultivate "stock", and builds a strong middle platform system to improveDigital productsEfficiency, newData analysisTeam,Through the pre-product market analysisTrial and error analysis in the product, postpartum iterative analysis,ImplementationService brand explosive productsContinuous expansion,Multi-frequencyWork together.
It is worth noting that behind the brand's explosive performance, it is the sustainability of cutting-edge brands to put aside traffic and comprehensively examine growth from a multi-dimensional perspective, as well as in-depth innovation in products, chains, channels, consumers and other aspects. Although new business is a new product, the principle of long-termism has not changed. As we all know, brand marketing is not necessarily immediately effective, in the case of the underlying logic unchanged, in a slow, gradual, solid way to occupy the user's mind, the increase in conversion rate will be visible to the naked eye, and this process is also called the integration of product efficiency and sales.
Therefore, it can be seen that the share of e-commerce operating companies such as Ruoyuchen and Beauty Beauty in the list is being scraped off, also because the ability to sell explosive products in e-commerce still needs to be stabilized.
Private domain reach: The public and private domains are linked into a new engine
Liang Rubo, CEO of ByteDancesaid that the double 11 matching of people and goods has long changed, in the past, the double 11 was a dot match, and after the rise of live broadcast (through one anchor) it is linear. However, the current challenge is that the traffic dividend of the public domain is gradually disappearing, and it is becoming more difficult to break through growth, and the traffic of e-commerce is now scattered in the decentralized platform, and the rules for matching people and goods have changed. In addition, another pain point of live broadcast e-commerce is that brands, platforms and consumers in the entire industry chain rarely make profits, and the anchor is the winner.
This problem is even forcing some anchors to shift from the public domain to the private domainLiang Rubosaid, "The problem of public domain traffic is difficult to solve, and some celebrities who used to live broadcast on big platforms have also switched from public domain to private domain for fan operation." ”
In response to this situation, e-commerce agency operators have begun to establish in order to reduce enterprise costsEstablish a global linkage marketing model of short ** + live broadcast room + search + private domain to establish consumer minds in an all-round wayFor example, Suoxiang e-commerce has built a million-dollar live broadcast room, opened Douyin e-commerce services, and upgraded the integration of product and sales of traditional brand e-commerce to the integration of product efficiency and sales of interest e-commerceOne network one creation, Bicheng digital and other e-commerce agency operation enterprises,Make full use of the platform's algorithm mechanism to get more free traffic；It is worth noting that the core of crowd reach is to seize the user's attention time, so it is recommended to choose a low-cost and high-effect reach mode: 1) Low cost: guide free traffic from outside the site into the live broadcast room or the business details page of the product, so as to improve the weight of the live broadcast room and products, and obtain more ** and conversion possibilities through the platform algorithm mechanism;2) Excellent effect: Omni-channel builds brand mentality, gains consumer trust, and lowers the threshold for conversion.
When the tide goes out, you can tell at a glance who is swimming naked. After more than 20 years of cultivation, China's e-commerce has obviously entered a period of stable development, but shelf e-commerce, search mode, recommendation mode, short ** + live broadcast, community**, instant retail, e-commerce going to sea and other trends are rising wave after wave, which is still a changing market.
At present, although e-commerce platforms are involved in unprecedented fierce competition, there are still opportunities to follow. The truly revolutionary opportunity is to help brands and consumers operate and obtain goods more efficiently, and we might as well wait and see who will be the first to reach tomorrow.