During the 618 shopping festival this year, the overall sales volume of beauty products on Douyin e-commerce increased by 107% compared to the same period last year. Behind this data lies the platform's vibrant development vitality and also reflects that an increasing number of beauty brands are using Douyin e-commerce as an important battleground for "major marketing events."

From international brands like Fenty Beauty By Rihanna and Lancôme, to domestic brands such as Han Shu and Fang Li, major beauty brands are increasingly inclined to create "blockbuster products" on Douyin e-commerce with "blockbuster content." By constructing a full-chain marketing ecosystem of "content-product/brand-search-conversion," they are quietly brewing a "marketing revolution" that is intertwined with the era of omni-channel e-commerce.

The marketing approach for beauty brands is changing, with Douyin e-commerce becoming an important battleground for "major marketing events."

The competition among beauty brands is never just about the products themselves; it tests the brand's comprehensive understanding and response speed regarding the product, market, users, and channels.

This major test becomes particularly stringent whenever there is a change in the market environment.

In April of this year, the retail sales of cosmetics in China decreased by 2.7% year-on-year, while the number of new product filings during the same period reached 81,428, an increase of 57.26% compared to the previous month, hitting the highest number of filings in the past three years. The divergence of these two data points indicates that the competition in the beauty market has intensified again, with the pressure of brand voice and product sales growth increasing sharply. Brands urgently need to find a more efficient "brand-effect-sales" integrated development model.

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At the same time, consumer attitudes are also changing in the long-term market relationship where supply and demand are inverted. Notably, "value for money" has become an important focus for beauty consumers. "Quality" does not only refer to the product quality but also includes service quality, content experience, emotional value, etc., all of which pose higher requirements for the brand's product control, brand building, and marketing innovation capabilities.

With unprecedented market competition and consumer demands reaching new heights, the simultaneous adjustment of these two variables makes it extremely difficult for beauty brands to break through.

As a result, more and more beauty brands are starting to change traditional marketing methods, shifting their marketing focus to Douyin e-commerce, which has a broader user base and more efficient conversion mechanisms. They create "blockbuster products" through "blockbuster content" to achieve growth in brand voice and breakthroughs in sales.

For example, Lancôme collaborated with the Douyin original variety show "Nice to Meet You" concert, reaching consumers who highly match the brand's target audience with content that fits the brand's tone. Then, by leveraging the popularity of the hit variety show and the attention of celebrities, they gradually strengthened the mental connection with consumers, ultimately driving the "Lancôme Absolue Trio Set" to achieve a 900% surge in sales during the promotional period.For instance, Han Shu, the first domestic brand to invest in TikTok short dramas, leveraged the popular content of these dramas to boost brand and product recognition, leading to a surge in related search traffic and accelerating sales conversion towards a tipping point. Among them, the hit short drama co-produced by Han Shu and TikTok influencer @Jiang Shiqi brought marketing value beyond expectations. Combined with the brand's comprehensive layout across self-broadcasting, influencer broadcasting, and the mall, Han Shu achieved a GMV of over 240 million in just 7 days during the TikTok E-commerce Super Brand Day, directly breaking the beauty IP record.

More importantly, such successful cases continue to ferment, replicate, and innovate on TikTok E-commerce. This includes Fang Li's joint live broadcast with TikTok for a global launch event, which broke the million mark in new product GMV in a single day, achieving a "launch and explode" effect. Ju Duo invited celebrity Zhang Yuxi to their TikTok E-commerce self-broadcast room, while launching exclusive products and member benefits for TikTok E-commerce members. The event saw over 280,000 new members joining, efficiently accumulating brand assets.

Data shows that in 2023, the number of beauty industry products with a GMV of over ten million on TikTok E-commerce exceeded 300, and those with a GMV of over one million exceeded 3,300. The industry's GMV year-on-year growth rate also exceeded 80%. During this year's 618 period, various types of patch masks, facial soaps, and liquid essences on the TikTok E-commerce platform became hot sellers, with eye masks, face masks, and neck masks all achieving triple-digit growth. From international to domestic brands, from established to emerging forces, from mainstream categories to niche markets... In the process of the beauty industry accelerating its embrace of the era of omni-channel e-commerce, creating "hit products" with "hit content" seems to have become a trend, and TikTok E-commerce has become an indispensable marketing battlefield for beauty brands.

Entering the positive cycle of full-link conversion, leveraging the synergistic growth of "brand, performance, and sales"

Philip Kotler once pointed out that the essence of marketing is the ability of a company to create, communicate, and deliver value, as well as to make a profit in the target market. What truly brings profit to a company is the "intangible value" provided by the company, such as emotional resonance, cultural and value identification, as well as the "intangible costs" paid to gain consumer trust.

This view can perfectly explain why so many beauty brands choose TikTok E-commerce as the next gathering place for "marketing events."

Firstly, the content field of TikTok E-commerce is naturally suitable for the fermentation and spread of "marketing events" and "innovative content." Brands can not only use events and content as carriers on TikTok E-commerce to intuitively convey the brand's "intangible value," but also rely on the huge user base and precise matching mechanism of TikTok E-commerce to deliver the "intangible value" point-to-point to "those who need it," achieving "goods find people."

In fact, most beauty brands have a certain content creation ability, but no matter how good the content is, it needs to be distributed in front of potential consumers to achieve marketing effects. Antonius HANEGRAAF, Vice President of KENDO Group and General Manager of Asia and Global Travel Retail, said that the main customer group of Fenty Beauty By Rihanna is mostly under 30 years old, and this group usually likes to watch live broadcasts on platforms like TikTok, follow beauty hotspots, and learn more interesting things. Beauty brands can find their target customers here more quickly and achieve precise diffusion of marketing content, which is also one of the reasons why Fenty Beauty By Rihanna chose TikTok E-commerce to launch marketing events when it first entered the Chinese market.

Secondly, the shelf field of TikTok E-commerce can work with the content field to achieve "integration of planting and harvesting" and "unity of brand and performance," allowing consumers to achieve a one-stop "brush-search-purchase" on a single platform, helping brands to reduce the "intangible costs" of obtaining consumer trust and attention, while also meeting the needs of "people find goods."

In the past, the online purchase actions of beauty products were fragmented. After planting grass on the content platform, consumers would often jump to the information platform to search and consider repeatedly before turning to the e-commerce platform to purchase. Attention and purchase interest are very easy to be damaged in the long behavior chain. However, the smooth connection between the content field and the shelf field of TikTok E-commerce can not only eliminate the risk of damage in "cross-platform planting and harvesting," allowing products to become hit products faster, but also better accept the long-term effects of high-quality content such as "Nice to Meet You," and promote transformation at any time to achieve the "evergreen" of hit products.It is worth noting that beauty makeup is inherently a category characterized by "strong cognition, strong content, strong interaction," and its marketing needs are almost naturally aligned with the comprehensive advantages of Douyin E-commerce, which "amplifies the effect of content and converts immediately in the shelf field." It can be anticipated that when beauty brands find the right fulcrum on Douyin E-commerce, they will have the opportunity to leverage the "brand effect, sales, and marketing" synergistic growth, and then move towards a single-channel positive cycle of "the more explosive the product, the higher the traffic, the better the conversion," as well as a full-channel positive cycle of "product breaking the circle, brand spillover, and feeding back sales," thereby driving the overall business growth of the brand and continuously exploring deeper and broader market potential.

Mastering systematic methodology to break through the competitive encirclement with the "shortest path"

Public data shows that in 2023, the growth rate of active beauty merchants on Douyin E-commerce was 43.52%, the growth rate of active products was 60.50%, and there were 327 merchants with a scale of more than 10 million. This set of data indirectly confirms the beauty brands' recognition of the marketing value of Douyin E-commerce, and also reflects the increasingly crowded beauty track.

In other words, choosing the right marketing position is certainly important, but brands still need to learn to adapt to market trends, grasp the right business methods, in order to break through the encirclement with a shorter path.

Guan Xingran, the person in charge of the beauty and daily chemical industry of Douyin E-commerce brand business, introduced that for beauty brands that hope to adapt to the full-domain marketing strategy more quickly and meet consumer needs with full-domain deployment, "laying out goods well - selling at a good price - choosing the right place" is a set of effective methodology, which has also been verified in the performance of many beauty brands.

Laying out goods well means focusing on laying out major single products that have previously accumulated user reputation, have strong universality in scenarios, and have outstanding sales, allowing products that already have the "explosive gene" to be hit again by explosive content.

Selling at a good price refers to making a suite or adding gifts to the major single products that have been selling well for a long time, and providing a more affordable unit price through a combination of sales. For example, Han Shu is using a suite strategy like the Red Waist series and White Waist series to strengthen its advantages, and finally occupies the top 1 in the beauty category of Douyin E-commerce with a "disruptive" advantage.

Guan Xingran specifically pointed out that the essence of making a suite is actually to create a "price power" advantage based on the consumer's "quality-price ratio" demand. Since this year, Douyin E-commerce has started to focus on "price power" management and provide certain activity support and resource support for "price power" products. Starting from this underlying logic, in addition to making a suite, the brand should also comprehensively do a good job in goods plate combination, rights and gifts, exclusive supply, high-quality service and a series of actions to strengthen "price power" and improve "quality-price ratio", in order to promote the dual explosion of traffic and business.

After considering "what to sell and at what price," it is necessary to solve the problem of "how to sell." Douyin E-commerce has summarized from multiple case experiences and found that most beauty brands can follow the "marketing first water storage - content rush sales - shelf improve conversion" trilogy to choose the right place.

Still taking Han Shu as an example. In the early stage of water storage, Han Shu participated in the Douyin Mall Super Brand Day event, and worked with Jerry to create a micro variety show "Super Heartbeat Quality Price Ratio", and launched a popular short drama in cooperation with Jiang Shiqi at the same time, allowing the two explosive content of "Super Brand Micro Variety + Short Drama" to work together, quickly increase exposure, and thus complete the effective water storage of people and traffic.After the brand and product popularity have shown a significant increase, it is possible to leverage "self-broadcasting + influencer broadcasting" content to sustain the momentum. At this stage, Kans has signed a contract with the top influencer Qian Hui on Douyin E-commerce as the spokesperson for the star product and invited her to be a guest in their self-broadcasting room. At the same time, they have created a super influencer broadcasting matrix with "top star influencer Jia Nailiang as the leader, and mid-tail influencers as the support", to seize the opportunity comprehensively and quickly convert traffic into sales.

In addition, shelf management is also a particularly important piece of the puzzle. Liu Ming, the vice president of Kans' parent company, Shangmei Shares, stated that many brands might overlook the shelf side of Douyin E-commerce, but Kans places great emphasis on connecting the traffic from water conservation, exposure, influencer broadcasting, and self-broadcasting to the Douyin Mall. By optimizing the brand zone and strengthening resources such as value purchase, mall homepage, brand pavilion, and search easter eggs, they can capture search traffic from multiple channels including screen opening planting grass, customized short dramas, and media placement.

With this methodology of "laying out the goods well - selling at a good price - choosing the right venue", Kans has efficiently broken through the competition with a "shorter path", achieving a GMV of over 240 million in just 7 days, becoming the number one in the beauty industry during the Super Brand Day period.