Please read this section with these questions:
1. What are the advantages of enterprises going overseas with TikTok?
2. What are the pitfalls of enterprises going overseas with TikTok?
3. If you want to go overseas with your enterprise, how can you make the best use of your strengths and avoid your weaknesses?
Enterprises doing TikTok business are generally divided into two types: cross-border e-commerce companies specializing in cross-border business and companies whose main business is in China to develop overseas business sectors. The team structure and resources of cross-border companies are completely prepared according to the logic of cross-border products. They are also familiar with the sales and delivery links of products. Doing TikTok is just to expand a marketing channel for themselves. In addition to learning the content logic and traffic logic of TikTok, you must also be very familiar with the understanding of overseas products, operation processes, international logistics and other issues. Therefore, this chapter focuses on how companies whose main business is in China can better use TikTok to expand overseas markets. If a cross-border company is doing TikTok, you can do it based on your business logic and combine the contents of Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 of this book.
1. Why do Chinese companies use TikTok to expand overseas markets
In recent years, many Chinese companies have begun to seek to export their products to foreign countries. Once, as the Chengdu president of the Forbes Global Alliance of Innovative Entrepreneurs, when I organized a private board meeting with Forbes entrepreneurs, I received a message from many entrepreneurs: They said that the company’s situation in the past two years has been more difficult than in previous years. The boss and CEO also learned advanced practices such as new media and private domains for the company, and also began to study how to sell their products abroad. However, because many companies have not been exposed to overseas markets, they don’t know how to market or how to go through the after-sales process, so they either haven’t started yet, or they have paid a lot of “tuition fees” by themselves.
These Forbes entrepreneurs have talked about the current situation of many companies and business owners: they want to develop new ways out, but they don’t know how to implement them and how to operate them. After studying the content of the previous six chapters, I will analyze for you why companies should choose TikTok to expand overseas markets.
First, TikTok has many users, is developing rapidly, and has a learnable methodology to help us obtain a large amount of traffic. Many companies choose to sell their products overseas through Amazon or Alibaba International Station. As long as your products are suitable for sale on these platforms (for example, they meet the characteristics of search e-commerce), it is also a good choice. However, the traffic acquisition methods, transaction paths and traffic costs of these platforms are very different from those of TikTok, and the cycle of acquiring traffic is also different. Using the methods I described in Chapters 4 and 5, along with TikTok’s vigorous development layout for global e-commerce in recent years, there is a chance to achieve great results.
Second, TikTok’s testing cost is low and the cycle is short. In the third section of this chapter, I will tell you what strategies companies should adopt when going overseas. The first part is to test MVP. Whether you choose TikTok or other ways to expand overseas markets, you need to conduct MVP testing. However, TikTok’s MVP testing cycle is shorter and the cost is lower. You can quickly test whether the product, content, and marketing methods are effective, and make adjustments quickly.
In addition to the above two reasons, you can also make good use of your advantages on TikTok (I have done a detailed advantage analysis in the third section of the first chapter) to help your company sell its products overseas. As a company going overseas, you may feel that using only one TikTok is not enough. Don’t worry about this. I will explain to you in detail in the next section the brand independent station ecosystem that companies need to build when going overseas. In this ecosystem, TikTok will occupy multiple ecological niches and serve as a powerful entry point for obtaining traffic and transactions.
Second, the advantages of enterprises doing TikTok overseas (compared to individuals doing TikTok)
1. Systematic advantages
No matter what business an enterprise is doing, it has its own team and management system and can make good use of management leverage. Big success depends on the team, small success depends on the individual. As the saying goes, there is strength in numbers. Some departments (such as the design department, the human resources department, the finance department, etc.) can be shared, and the new people recruited for this TikTok project can also be quickly incorporated into the management system of the entire company, and will not stagnate because they don’t know how to split and execute the tasks of this project.
2. Financial advantages
The budget for enterprises going overseas is often much more sufficient than that of individuals. With a budget for the project, not only can capable employees be recruited in each sector to accelerate the project process, but also medium- and long-term brand layout can be made. Every strength of TikTok that I mentioned in Chapter 2 requires the entire team to do refined operations and improvements to achieve good results. Enterprises have the strength to carry out this simultaneously, unlike small teams, which can only do one thing well first and then slowly develop others.
3. Supply chain advantage
If the company’s own products are very suitable for overseas export, then the supply chain is in its own hands, which saves costs and can be supplied at any time. If you are looking for a supply chain yourself, then the foundation of the domestic market has already made you and the team very familiar with the supply chain, and there has been a very mature cooperation in terms of price and stocking. Even if you are re-selecting products and re-finding supply chains for overseas export, each factory will directly give you the best conditions because of your company’s scale and sales volume.
I have a friend who is a purchasing manager of a large company. He purchases a lot every year. Once he told me a word called “big customers bully the store”, which simply and clearly explained the advantage of companies with large purchases on the supply side. I have incubated many companies to carry out overseas projects. They can always quickly find good and cheap products and supply chains and quickly move to the next step.
4. Content production capacity advantage
TikTok and overseas projects require high content capabilities. If it is an individual or a small team, it is very dependent on the content capabilities of core members. However, for enterprises, the improvement of content capabilities can be finely divided: SOP, and the dependence on individuals is relatively not so strong.
Not only can enterprises recruit more employees because of more budgets, but they can also manage part of the content power in a process-based manner. For example: centrally find benchmark accounts and videos, centrally analyze several dimensions and record data, centrally do category shooting and editing, the editing quality should meet the standards, publish video test data, set data testing standards, and so on. As long as the trader himself knows why these standards should be set and how to play the role of the team, then your company will have its own exclusive competitiveness in the content power sector, laying a solid foundation for closing orders.
3. Pitfalls that enterprises may encounter when doing TikTok
In the process of incubating enterprises’ TikTok overseas projects, I can clearly feel that although enterprises have many natural advantages, they may also step into some pitfalls due to these innate conditions. The most common pitfalls are the following three.
1. [Pit 19] It is easy to use the sales ideas of Chinese enterprises to do overseas markets. Some enterprises have more B-end businesses, and their core source of income is also B-end projects, so they will naturally use B-end thinking when doing overseas markets. This idea is actually very good, because the volume of B-end is large and more stable. If you have several B-end customers, you don’t have to worry about C-end marketing. But when it comes to specific implementation, problems will arise: Why do foreign companies choose to purchase goods from our company? Are there any companies in their local area that can supply goods? Why do they trust us? Whose fault is it if there is a problem during international logistics transportation? If it is not a company specializing in B-end international trade, it will be stuck for a long time on each of the above issues. Another thing is how to find B-side customers abroad. Unless you directly hire sales staff for major foreign customers, it is difficult to arouse the interest and trust of customers by just online email communication.
Some companies are accustomed to using advertising strategies to expand the market. This is fine in itself, and it is a symbol of a company’s strong ability to gain traffic. However, before launching in the overseas business sector, you need to cultivate your own network sense for the target market, be familiar with the platform rules for our marketing, and know what the users here like before launching. If you don’t understand these points clearly and advertise a lot, you can only rely on luck. This is why I say that sometimes past successful experiences often become obstacles to continued development. Foreigners have very different aesthetic points from ours. If the results of the launch are very poor, it is just a waste of money. You still need to calm down and do a good job of the basics first, and you can’t spend money just because you have money. What puts us in trouble is not those things we don’t understand, but those things we think we understand.
2. [Pit 20] The project leader is usually an executive, not the boss, and there will be a difference in mentality
Enterprises will treat overseas projects as a department or a separate project. In many companies, the boss does not personally take charge of the project, but a manager or executive takes charge. There will be some differences in mentality between these roles and the boss, and the autonomy and learning in the process of project management may also be affected. At the same time, if the boss does not understand the overseas business and just gives it to the executives to do, even if the project is not done well, it will be difficult for you to intervene in this part of the business. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Of course, there will be very excellent executives and project leaders. If your company has such capable people, it is really very lucky.
3. [Pit 21] Long process and slow progress
Generally, large companies have more and longer processes than small companies. This is a management need, but it will also lead to poorer mobility in the decision-making and execution of a small problem, and the efficiency cannot be improved. Once, I asked an incubation project company to prepare live broadcast scripts. What my employees could do in two hours, they, a big company, hadn’t solved in two weeks. When I asked about the situation, they replied to me: We are still writing, optimizing, and going through the process. For the employees who actually execute the work, they don’t have the urgency to push the project to produce results as soon as possible. They just think “I’m waiting for feedback on xx things” and “xx things I need haven’t been done yet”, so they keep dragging the progress, resulting in more people delaying efficiency.
To avoid this problem, the role of the trader is crucial. As a trader, you must clearly understand the core goals and stages of TikTok and the project, as well as which things need to be done step by step and which things need to be done vigorously and not delayed. At the same time, pull your team to solve these problems one by one according to your rhythm, and then plan a new route for them. The trader determines the success or failure of the project, so your role is crucial.
Tips
Whether it is a large company or a small team, you must believe that the deadline is a very important driving force. I have tested it many times, and the efficiency difference between setting a deadline and not setting a deadline is more than 40% on average. Therefore, when I named my company, I used the Chinese pronunciation of this word: Dai Delan.
The things that companies need to consider and plan for going overseas are more complicated than those for individuals or small teams to do TikTok, so they also need to make full assessments and preparations before starting a corporate overseas project. This section is to provide you with more information and perspectives to help you make better decisions.