Core TipsAuthor |Gao Yuzhe.From making a friend, Oriental selection, to crazy Brother Yang, everyone's eyes have turned to overseas, but can the successful model in China be replicated, and is it easy to make money overseas?
Edit |Xing Yun.
In April 2023, Crazy Brother Yang mentioned in the live broadcast: "To earn foreigners' money", and in less than a year, this declaration has been implemented.
Two months ago, Three Sheep Network cooperated with Singaporean local talent @shop with SASAX to complete the first live broadcast, which not only refreshed the historical GMV of the anchor, set a new record for the TikTok e-commerce sector in Singapore, but also topped the local list in Singapore.
Although the official did not disclose the total amount of goods, shortly after the end of the first live broadcast, the official account of Three Sheep TikTok announced that the next stop would be to Malaysia.
As the ceiling of the domestic Internet celebrity industry, Brother Xiao Yang has always been a topic of conversation. Recently, on the one hand, the decline in his performance with goods has sparked discussions, and on March 5, Brother Xiao Yang said in the live broadcast that he will reduce the frequency of live broadcasts with goods in 2024. On the other hand, after tasting the sweetness of the first overseas battle, Brother Xiao Yang also sounded the clarion call for big anchors to enter overseas.
When the three sheep were in full swing and preparing to go to Malaysia, Dongfang Selection was also revealed to cooperate with TikTok in terms of overseas ** chain. According to the China ** Daily, in response to this rumor, a person familiar with the matter responded to reporters: "The news is true." In addition to these two major institutions, earlier on, the "Make a Friend" led by Luo Yonghao and the humble culture behind Wei Ya have been one step ahead of others to test the overseas market.
For the huge potential of the overseas market, many people's perception comes from the first generation of Internet celebrity Li Ziqi, a content creator with 18.3 million YouTube fans, who still earns as much as 780,000 yuan a month after a year of stopping. Now it has been nearly three years since Li Ziqi stopped, and the big domestic anchors can't hold back and have opened overseas. But can the successful model in China be replicated? Is overseas money easy to make?
1. Towards Southeast Asia
In November 2023, Crazy Brother Yang revealed in the live broadcast that "all employees will be relocated to the new building". The so-called new building is an office building with a construction area of 50,000 square meters located in the core area of Hefei High-tech Zone. This little Yang brother costs 1The building purchased by 0.3 billion yuan is known as the "Three Sheep Global Headquarters".
At the time, "global headquarters" may have been just a façade. But in fact, before moving into this office building, Three Sheep had already laid out in advance for entering the overseas market.
In May 2023, Du Gang, CEO of Three Sheep Network, told Ebang Power that Indonesia, an important overseas market for TikTok, "we have a lot of fans there." However, five months later, with the introduction of new e-commerce regulations in Indonesia, TikTok was forced to shut down its e-commerce business in the country, and Sanyang eventually moved to Singapore, where there are many Chinese, to test the waters.
In order to quickly break into the overseas market and accumulate traffic. In July 2023, Three Sheep established its overseas MCN agency, Three Sheep Network, and once again took out the "slice distribution" as a drainage tool. On the domestic platform, live slicing has become a common way for anchors to play, this kind of operation has quickly created a matrix for Brother Xiao Yang, and brought considerable high income, in 2022, Brother Xiao Yang has "lying to earn" through live slicing18.7 billion.
Now, Three Sheep is good at playing, copying this model to the overseas market that is still a blue ocean, and three months after distribution, Three Sheep IP has achieved an advance from 0 to 2 million fans in Southeast Asia, and these fans are actually scattered in the official account of Three Sheep and the currently authorized** slice distribution account.
The overseas march of the three sheep actually carries a bit of a sense of having to "roll".
Although Brother Xiao Yang has a large number of fans, according to Douyin 7 in FebruaryIn terms of the number of 500 million monthly active users, 1 out of every 7 active Douyin players is his fan, and his ability to bring goods is amazing, but with the advent of the stock era, it is difficult to reach new heights regardless of the number of fans or the growth of GMV. MoreoverWith Crazy Brother Yang's strong personal style, it is also difficult to open up new fan groups and cultivate diversified consumption power.
Brother Xiao Yang is not the only one who is aware of this problem, and Dongfang Selection, which has been on the cusp of the storm many times recently, has also begun to actively promote going to sea. Not long ago, Oriental Selection has successively listed a number of TikTok-related positions on the official website and recruitment**, including Oriental Selection TikTok overseas store operation, Oriental Selection Content Operation Manager (TikTok), etc., with a monthly salary of between 20,000-40,000 yuan. In this regard, Yu Minhong, the helmsman of Dongfang Selection, responded, "You may have also seen us recruiting TikTok operators on the Internet, but in fact, we are just testing the waters."
After all,Domestic e-commerce live broadcast has entered the stock market, and in order to cope with various uncertainties such as traffic decline, the overseas market has gradually become a new battlefield for big anchors.
2. The style of play is different
Although Brother Xiao Yang's "voice" to go to sea is high, among the anchors, the one who went to sea earlier was "Make a Friend" under the leadership of Luo Yonghao.
As early as 2021, Make a Friend tried to extend its tentacles overseas, incubating local companies in Indonesia, and then establishing American companies. In 2022, two main departments were established: the Overseas Business Division and the Overseas E-commerce Academy. These two departments also cover the three main overseas businesses: marketing, talent distribution and overseas operation.
The anchors are all involved overseas, but in the "testing the waters" stage, the operation models and playing styles are different.
In 2022, Hao Xijie, then head of the overseas business department of Make a Friend, said in an interview that the proportion of talent marketing business accounts for 70% of the total overseas business, and the proportion of agency operation is about 20%. That is to say,The key to making a friend and going overseas is mainly to replicate the successful marketing experience in China and help domestic brands go overseas through influencer marketing and other methods.
At the same time, he believes that whether it is to make a friend or other Chinese overseas institutions, what they are good at is the party and execution of live broadcasting, and the disadvantage lies in the in-depth understanding of the market and the management of multinational teams.
Among the domestic anchors, although Crazy Brother Yang is sitting on the top stream, Simba's shadow is always indispensable in the pace of specializing in the sinking market and establishing an apprenticeship system. In the mode of going to sea, Crazy Brother Yang and Simba go in two directions.
In May 2023, Xinxuan Group officially landed overseas, taking Thailand as its first stop. According to Xinxuan's official data, the Simba team has put dozens of products on the shelves such as fruits, skin care products, and latex pillows. According to the data of Guoji Feigua, the total sales of the day exceeded 8300 million yuan, the total order volume exceeded 6.78 million orders. This live broadcast, in addition to emphasizing "low price", is different from Brother Xiao Yang in that what is sold is not its own products, but local specialties in Thailand.
In the first battle of Three Sheep in Singapore, the goods were brought by the domestic brands Jiaorunquan and Xiaoyang selected products that they had cooperated with before. Its model is mainly by attracting local trafficSales of its own brand, Xiaoyang, selection and cooperative brandsIt is understood that the three sheep will start to build an overseas ** chain system from 2023, and many of the explosive products selected by Xiao Yang, including garbage bags, face towels, etc., have entered overseas warehouses one after another, and some products can be sent directly locally.
It is worth noting that although the three sheep had a good debut in Singapore, butIn a country with a population of 6 million, how to calculate the total cost of input and the benefits of transformation is still a difficult account.
It is different from Brother Xiao Yang's establishment of ** chain overseas and selling his own productsSimba's "Xinxuan International Going to Sea" focuses on local first-class businessmen and brands to cooperate, which is essentially to go overseas to find a low-price ** chain.
Judging from the actions of the top anchors, who can take the lead in seizing the blue ocean market in the future depends on the layout of the overseas ** chain on the one hand, and on the other hand, it depends on whether the operation model can work.
3. Can TikTok blow up domestic anchors?
Not long ago, Hao Xijie publicly stated that with the rise of platforms such as TikTok, Temu, and SHEIN, a large number of excellent enterprises will be born, and there will be great opportunities for overseas marketing, brands, and SaaS.
As a product of ByteDance, the overseas version of Douyin TikTok has become one of the most visited social platforms in the world after several years of explosive development.
Data shows that as of 2023, TikTok has more than 167.7 billion users, including 1.1 billion monthly active users. Among the top-level social platforms in China, only WeChat has more than 1.3 billion monthly active users. Looking at the world, there are more than 1 billion monthly active social platforms, mainly Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc.
Behind the monthly active users of more than 1 billion is a huge overseas user market. This is also one of the reasons why major anchors choose to deploy overseas markets on TikTok.
Since 2021, TikTok has tested the waters of e-commerce in Indonesia, and has successively carried out business in Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Malaysia.
According to TikTok e-commerce business data released by Yipit Data, during 2023, TikTok's global e-commerce GMV will be about 13.6 billion US dollars, of which Southeast Asia will contribute more than 90%; Specifically, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia accounted for % of GMV, respectively.
This also explains the reason why Crazy Brother Yang, Simba and others have taken Southeast Asian countries as their first stop to go to sea, on the one hand, in terms of user scale and activity, the development prospects are broader; On the other hand, in terms of e-commerce consumption habits, Southeast Asia has a high acceptance of the domestic live streaming model, which is an important breakthrough to enter the overseas market.
Although major anchors and MCN agencies are eyeing TikTok, trying to "do the business done on Douyin on TikTok again". But in the face of an uncontrollable global market,It is not easy to replicate domestic experience and do live streaming on TikTok.
According to the statistics of the Fastmoss Research Institute, 80% of the e-commerce sales on TikTok are linked by influencers, and only 20% are live streaming and**. Especially after leaving the Southeast Asian market and entering the U.S. market, the acceptance of live streaming will be lower. In addition, live broadcast agencies will also face localization problems such as cross-border efficiency management.
A TikTok store owner revealed on social platforms that the newly opened store is inviting British influencers to bring goods, but no one has responded to the dozens of invitations sent out. Finally negotiated a talent cooperation, after receiving the goods, the talent directly filmed without any communication, they are really Buddhist". Returning to the popular Southeast Asian market, how to form efficient communication with local influencers and partners has also become one of the tests faced by overseas anchors.
With the saturation of domestic e-commerce, more people will take TikTok as the next outlet, and many small and medium-sized players have entered the game. But from the perspective of revenue and conversion, a seller on TikTok told "Leopard Change": "I have been doing it for a year and a half, and there are only people in the live broadcast room, no conversion, and the average number of ** people is less than 60"; There are also sellers who complain, "The ones who make money are all training institutions that ask for tuition."
It can be seen that whether it is a head anchor or TikTok, it will inevitably take time to break through the habits and culture of overseas locals. However, the pioneers may also boost the commercialization of TikTok, and the two form a synergy to accelerate the process of Chinese e-commerce going overseas.