If you are a business owner and want to use TikTok to develop an overseas project, you should have a clear idea of the entire process and planning of the project: how many stages the project is divided into, what the main tasks of each stage are, how to configure the budget and team, etc. You cannot just take it one step at a time because you are not familiar with the overseas market.
In this section, I mainly help you divide the project into two major stages: MVP testing and expansion. You can continue to make subdivisions based on my underlying logic and the situation of your company, but these two stages cannot be omitted.
1. Phase 1: MVP Testing Phase
1. What is MVP?
MVP (Minimum Viable Product), the concept of minimum viable closed loop was first proposed by Eric Ries in “The Lean Startup”: MVP refers to the product version that an enterprise develops at the lowest cost and can express the core concept, making its functions extremely simple but able to help the enterprise quickly verify the concept of the product, so that the enterprise can continue to iterate and optimize the product after obtaining customer feedback and constantly adapt to the market environment. The MVP concept has been recognized by many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and has provided useful guidance for many Silicon Valley companies to carry out product innovation.
For cross-border projects and TikTok, we need to sell in a brand new market abroad. Before investing a lot of money and resources to promote the project, we need to complete the MVP test of the product in the target market. According to the results of the test, adjust and iterate the product and the corresponding marketing strategy, and enter the main expansion stage after reaching the expected value.
2. Why test MVP?
First, products that are popular in China may not be popular overseas. Overseas, the degree of demand and user education in different countries will vary. It will be difficult to sell without MVP testing. Not to mention overseas, different provinces and cities in China will have such problems. In 1999, my father brought Xinjiang Shennei carrot juice to Chengdu to sell. It was freshly squeezed from the best sweet carrots in Xinjiang, and thick pulp was added. It tasted mellow and full of nutrition. In Xinjiang in 1999, this was a high-end beverage, and parents were willing to pay a high price to buy it for their children. My father thought that such a good thing should be sold very well in Chengdu, so he spent millions of yuan on promotion (this amount of money was really a lot in those days) to put the product on the shelves of major supermarkets such as Hongqi Chain, and also carried out many promotional activities. But after two years, he found that sales had not increased. Later, he surveyed many customers and found that they all thought that carrots were vegetables, not fruits. Although they were nutritious, they would definitely not taste good when squeezed into juice. Although it tasted good when you drink it, there was too much pulp, and it was sticky and not refreshing, not as good as the taste of fresh oranges. Faced with this result, in addition to complaining that “I don’t know the goods”, I could only reluctantly end it miserably. The more time and money you spend on it, the more reluctant you are to give it up. If he had spent 20,000 yuan to do an MVP test, and if it was feasible, he would have invested more than 1 million yuan, there would be two results. This is the case in China, and it is even more necessary to test unfamiliar foreign markets.
Second, the sales volume of the same product in different sales channels will vary greatly. I talked about the difference between search e-commerce and interest e-commerce in the first chapter. The sales of many products on these two different e-commerce platforms will be very different. In the United States, what sells well on Amazon may not sell well on TikTok. So when you want to use the TikTok platform and its traffic to develop overseas business, you need to test the performance of your selected products in this channel separately.
Third, for products of the same category, the specific SKU (minimum stock unit) or style is different, and there will be great differences in traffic and conversion. For example, for the same high heels, some styles have low traffic and no one inquires, while some styles will have explosive traffic. We have to test their traffic, inquiry, conversion rate, etc. one by one, and we can’t show all styles together at the beginning. If you show unpopular styles when the traffic is the best, it is a waste of traffic, which is a pity. So even if the category has been tested, if you make products with many SKUs or styles, you must do MVP testing.
If the test method is correct and the adjustment is timely, it is not a problem to complete a complete MVP test in three months. You can arrange a reasonable test cycle according to your product features and the number of SKUs. So how can we build a good MVP to help us test our products and marketing methods?
3. How to build the TikTok project MVP?
The first point: clarify the test goals and standards.
Before we do MVP testing, we need to set the goals and standards first, otherwise it is easy to do it and not know whether it is the testing stage or the main business stage. Moreover, without clear goals and standards, it is easy to delay the testing process, which will eventually affect the advancement of the main business and the growth period of the entire project.
The elements of setting the MVP goal of the TikTok overseas project include time period, sales, and profit margin. In other words, how long do you need to test whether this product can achieve the sales volume you expect in your mind, and at the same time combine the cost calculation to see whether the profit margin is consistent with the project establishment, where the deviation is in the middle, whether it can be reduced due to scale, and whether it can be optimized.
If the data is not ideal after a round of testing, you will be entangled in whether to test again. Therefore, a traffic standard is needed to help us judge whether this round of MVP meets the standard: for example, whether the number of people online in the live broadcast room can be stably more than 50 at the same time, and effectively interact and trade.
Combining the money goal and the traffic standard, it helps you to judge whether the test has been completed and whether the main business stage can be started.
The second point: only spend the necessary cost, fast, accurate and ruthless.
MVP is the most simplified path test, so the unnecessary time, energy and money spent on some links should be cut off: LOGO and VI design can be done after MVP is completed; independent website can first build a simple template, and spend more money to decorate the independent website after the test; product supply chain can take a few more samples back first, because it has not been tested which traffic data is better, and then optimize the supply chain after the test; and so on. We should also pay attention to efficiency in the preparation of each link. For example, only give yourself two hours to prepare the live broadcast script, and don’t delay it for a long time.
MVP cannot be delayed. Once it is delayed, there is no point in testing, and many opportunities will slip away because of your delay. So I need to emphasize the importance of the trader again. The trader must quickly and accurately promote the entire MVP process and strive to complete the complete test as soon as possible. Time is a very scarce and precious resource. Only when we learn to say “no” to some things that are not so important can we say “yes” to those meaningful and valuable things.
Third point: short video and live broadcast synchronous testing.
Short videos mainly test products, content forms and fan tags: how many people inquire about the price or reveal obvious purchase intentions after releasing the product video, which content form has obviously better data, whether the fan tag has been formed, whether the account has passed the “black hole period”, etc. Obtaining these data feedback through short videos helps us adjust product and content strategies. The live broadcast room focuses on testing product traffic and closed loop transactions: the traffic of different products in the live broadcast room varies greatly, and the same is true for different styles of products. Test and count the data of each product in the corresponding period separately, and select the best products or styles as traffic models and hot models. There may also be problems in the process of customers placing orders. Use the test period in advance to find out and solve the problems, otherwise it will be a big loss to find that the ordering link is stuck when a large amount of traffic comes.
The fourth point: MVP test in the after-sales link.
For companies that are not familiar with overseas business, when testing MVP, they must be familiar with various after-sales issues: How long does it take for the supply chain to ship after the customer places an order? Will there be any mistakes in the shipment? What is the actual logistics cost of each order? How many days is the actual transportation time? Is the return rate high? Where do customers return the goods? What is the cost? What is the product’s praise rate? How can customers who do not actively give good reviews ask them for good reviews?
These problems are the most common after-sales problems. For those who have not gone through the test closed loop, they will be stuck when they really encounter these problems. So when doing MVP testing, you are using the first few orders to help your team practice, get through these problems, and have the methods and ability to solve such problems, so that you can take on the large number of orders for the main business.
Build MVP according to these points. If you fail the MVP test, change the product and strategy in time and retest. Sunk costs are not costs. When MVP has proved that this approach does not work, withdraw in time and conduct the next round of MVP testing. When the test goal is achieved, you can enter the matrix expansion mode.
2. Phase 2: Live Matrix Expansion Phase
After the MVP test is completed, the product and after-sales closed loops have been completed, and the product has a solid foundation, and the process is also clear. At this time, enter the main business stage, concentrate energy and resources to deeply penetrate the tested MVP, and replicate the successful model. I will give you a combination of punches: vertical play + horizontal play.
1. Vertical play
Vertical means to go deeper. Increase the intensity of each link in the closed loop of the successful MVP test, and match the good team and resources to make this closed loop bigger and stronger. For example, enhance anchor training, select good anchors, purchase professional live broadcast equipment, extend live broadcast time, strengthen supply chain and even customize products.
I recommend that you choose the vertical approach after just completing the MVP test, because you will get good returns after doing one thing well and specializing in it, and you will have a better foundation for horizontal replication after repeatedly polishing and reviewing each link.
2. Horizontal approach
The horizontal approach is to copy the mode and live broadcast room. On the basis of mastering the vertical approach, you can copy the current successful closed loop. There are two ways to copy: the first is to copy the current product live broadcast room exactly, add one more live broadcast room to obtain additional traffic for this account, and simply increase the traffic of the new account; the second is to copy the live broadcast room, but the product is other small categories under the same large category. For example, if the main live broadcast room sells 18K gold jewelry, then the newly copied second live broadcast room can sell various colored gemstone jewelry, and the third live broadcast room can sell pearl jewelry, etc. This requires you to choose according to the characteristics of the product. You can try to meet the second type, so that you can obtain customers with similar large tags, and several live broadcast rooms can also attract fans with overlapping interests.
Combining these two practices, you can continuously optimize the business scope, sales and profit margins, and achieve new development goals for your company with overseas business segments.
In the process of your company’s overseas projects, MVP and matrix expansion are two indispensable elements. Without MVP, there is no way to ensure whether the direction of resource investment is correct; without matrix expansion, sales and profits will be more limited like personal TikTok entrepreneurship. So combining them to do your company’s overseas business can not only ensure the correct direction, but also make the project bigger and stronger.
Tips
Even if you sell the same products as in China, you must complete the MVP+matrix expansion model again when entering the overseas market. The test results may be completely different from what you imagined.