Please read this section with these questions:
1. What is the impact of taking the brand path on TikTok?
2. How to build an overseas e-commerce brand on TikTok and obtain long-term brand power bonus?
3. How would you rate your brand power? What is the next brand strategy?
Brand power is the last of TikTok’s five core powers. It takes a lot of time, a lot of budget, and a lot of accumulation of refined operations to slowly form. It is a time-consuming and laborious thing. But once the brand is formed, it will form a barrier for you and become an asset, and you can always enjoy the dividends brought by the brand. The brand is very important and it is worth our ten years of hard work.
1. Why does TikTok e-commerce take the brand path?
Brand power can greatly improve users’ decision-making efficiency and make purchase decisions faster. At the same time, brand power can also increase product premiums, natural search traffic, customer repurchase rates, etc.
When we talk about brands, we all know that brands are very powerful, and we hope that we can become a strong brand one day. But when we do specific projects, we will be discouraged by the cost of branding. This is a trade-off between the present and the future, but it has stumped many people: those who don’t do branding have no stamina, and those who do branding will not survive until the day when the brand adds to the project.
In recent years, our company has focused on brand independent stations, and has also used brand as the main idea to make strategic plans in TikTok and other channels. One of the brands has been in business for 2 years and 3 months. Once, the epidemic in Chengdu was serious. Our company was closed and marketing staff were isolated, which led to the suspension of all marketing and operations for 18 days. We relied purely on EDM and natural search traffic. Dozens of users took the initiative to come to our door every day to place orders. I really experienced the feeling of “passive transaction”. I checked the background data and found that many users directly entered our brand name on TikTok, searched to our homepage, and then made a purchase. This “forced modification of variables” method made me clearly feel the power of the brand.
I have also received complaints from users many times: “I saw another TikTok account and independent website imitating you. They even found me from your live broadcast room, hoping that I could place an order with them because their price is 30% cheaper than yours. But I rejected them and decided to buy from you. Because I like your attitude towards products, your attitude towards customers, and your original intention of doing this project. But you must be careful that they come to you to poach customers. This behavior is too bad!” We have received many similar messages and have encountered peers trying their best to poach our users. But when our brand power gradually becomes stronger, user loyalty will also increase due to the increase in brand power. All the hard work you put into the brand will be reflected at this time.
We often say that we should create “passive income” for ourselves, but we must also know that all “passive income” is not for no reason. Behind it is either painstaking efforts and accumulation, or huge risks.
2. Six elements for building TikTok’s overseas brand
Whether it is TikTok or an independent website, I have been leading the team on the brand road. Because of insisting on the brand road, I have felt the darkness before dawn. It is really difficult to persist, but when I see the positive results brought by brand power, it is so exciting. This has further strengthened my determination to take the brand road.
I have summarized the six elements of building an overseas brand, hoping to guide you on the brand road.
1. Product reputation
I talked about how to improve product strength in the first section of this chapter. When the quality of the product received by the user is good, the impression left by the brand will be added. Quality is the best guarantee for maintaining customer loyalty. If you want to build your own brand, product reputation is a very basic factor. Here I need to mention again that when we select products, we should pay attention to the profit margin part, taking into account both product quality and profit margin, so that we can maintain the product reputation while also having a part of the budget to support the project to go the brand road.
2. Distinctive real-person IP
This real-person IP is generally selected from the founder and initiator. Abroad, people also prefer real people with flesh and blood and style, and have more desire for interaction and social interaction. So when we make an account, we usually launch an “entrepreneur” image IP based on the merchant, and let him talk to fans, tell everyone why he does such a thing, tell the brand story, and then tell everyone what his vision is. During the live broadcast, I also told fans in this capacity that I am willing to give benefits to my fans today. I decided to take out xxx gifts for the comment area lottery, which will make fans more convinced and support our products.
With a popular real-life IP, often telling brand stories, and establishing your own three views and personality, fans will pay for it. And the fans attracted in this way will definitely be more sticky. The only thing to pay attention to is: Is this IP stable? Will he want to run away just because he is famous? You can talk more about this with your friends who work in MCN (multi-channel network) agencies.
Tips Whether it is a large company or a small entrepreneur, accounts with real-life IPs can usually increase product premiums and fan stickiness. There are many accounts where small bosses make things in their own small workshops, but they are very popular.
3. Deeply rooted content
Sometimes we are deeply touched when watching an advertisement, such as the slogan “Mom, wash your feet”. I still remember that picture after so many years. When encountering touching advertisements, users will empathize with us in their hearts because we are speaking for them. At this time, we have narrowed the distance between us and the users, which is also what we often say: occupying the user’s mind.
In the first chapter, why should we learn TikTok, I mentioned that the four points of laughter, tear, cool, and inspiration can “stimulate” users more. When you are creating content, you can combine these four points according to your product situation to create deeply rooted content.
Generally, laughter and cool points are more likely to cause users to like and forward; tear and inspiration points are more likely to cause collection and comments, and quietly place orders. I have made two videos that have been played over a million times, which directly led to the conversion of more than 1,000 orders, increased the number of fans by more than 200,000, and attracted many Internet celebrities to actively seek cooperation and endorsement with us. Both videos are tear-jerking, depicting the regrets in emotions to the extreme, and then using our products to make up for the regrets.
For example, this is the synopsis of the script I wrote: “My husband’s mother passed away. Her biggest regret before her death was that she did not see our child being born. Now our child is 2 years old. My husband often holds him to look at the photo of his grandmother and tells him that this is his grandmother. I know that this is also the eternal regret in my husband’s heart. Today is his birthday, and I prepared a special gift for him: a custom oil painting. The painting shows his mother holding our child. I hope this painting can make up for the regret in his heart.” The moment her husband opened the gift, he burst into tears because he never thought he would see his mother holding her son.
In the video, her husband cried hard while holding the painting, and said to his wife: “This is the best gift I have ever received in my life, I love you.”
With such tear-jerking and deeply rooted content, users will have a stronger recognition of the brand. This is why I just said that tear-jerking is easier for users to remember. With more such content, the brand power will be rapidly improved.
4. Service, experience, and delivery
Pre-sales transactions are very important, and after-sales experience is also very important. If we work harder on packaging and service, foreign users will have a deeper impression of us. The labor cost of overseas local brands is very high, and there are few matching customer service staff. When I was in the United States, I wanted to consult a bank, and I called the customer service phone for two hours before I got through. The experience was very poor. Many cross-border companies pay more attention to pre-sales transactions and ignore after-sales service. So we want to go the brand route, and put more effort into this part, which will make it easier for customers to have a good experience.
Such services are very common in China. For example, the diet meals we buy will be matched with a nutritionist to tell us how to eat, how much to eat, take photos and check in, etc. But such services are either rare or very expensive abroad. We can provide customized services to customers based on our own products and deliver them regularly. This will not only give customers a strong sense of service experience and delivery, but we can also cleverly make secondary transactions during regular delivery; this can not only enhance the brand, but also promote sales. Consumers are not really paying for the cost of the goods, they are paying for the sense of value of the goods.
5. The breadth, depth and continuity of reaching customers
In the traffic acquisition part, I mentioned several ways to obtain traffic, and these are the channels through which we can reach users. We will continue to reach customers with the content in the top ten content libraries, which can greatly add to brand power. The core of this is persistence. If you insist on doing it for a long time, it will definitely form a strong force in the hearts of users after a long time.
There is a very typical analogy. Before I went to the United States, a person who sold international air tickets added my WeChat. At that time, I ignored him and bought the ticket on Air China’s official website. But he would send me messages every short period of time. Later, I blocked him, but I would have a vague impression. Sure enough, one time when I couldn’t find a suitable ticket on the official website, I found him from the address book and bought the first ticket from him. At that time, I knew that he had been doing this for at least three years, at least he would not be a liar. After the first purchase, I found that his tickets were cheap and the service was good, so I locked in to buy from him.
When you first do something, you won’t be able to gain the trust of others all at once. But as long as you can persist, even if it is a small thing, you will gain trust because you have persisted for so long. Trust is the brand. You can think back to the people around you who have been doing the same thing for many years. Do you have stronger trust in them? Do you tend to look for such people when you need them? The best way to convince others is to keep sticking to what you originally did.
It is the same on TikTok. We will definitely go through a “black hole period”. Not only do accounts need to be slowly identified and labeled, but our fans and customers also need time to trust us. Of course, in addition to persistence, I have also prepared for you how to better survive the “black hole period” (in the third section of the third chapter).
6. Brand name and LOGO and other elements
I only talked about brand name and LOGO at the end because I have seen many teams that only focus on visual work and do not spend their energy on improving content and transactions. When I asked them if they had any improvement in recent orders, they used “I spent all my energy on designing brands and LOGOs” as a good excuse. So I put it last. Brand name, LOGO, homepage decoration, and decoration of the follow-up page need to be carefully done on the brand road. The longer the time, the more obvious the difference in effect will be. The biggest and most obvious difference in effect is the brand name. With the same exposure, a good brand name can make fans remember it and increase the probability of being searched. I usually use words with a sense of picture as the brand name of TikTok or an independent website, such as animals, or something that everyone will recognize.
But the name of a car rental company that I remember most clearly so far is “FOX RENT A CAR”. Although it is a bit long, it is too visual, so I can remember it. Therefore, when I choose a brand name, I will choose a matching picture in combination with the product, and then choose an interesting image to add together to determine the brand name.
Then make a LOGO based on this image, put it on our product pictures, at the end of the short video, as a social media avatar, etc., every time our content reaches customers, it can refresh the brand’s presence. The LOGO with a picture will make it easier for users to remember our brand name. Over time, after tens of millions of exposures, you can slowly see the results from the brand’s search volume.
3. Brand Power Evaluation Criteria
The following is my scoring rule for TikTok’s brand power. You can see how many points you and your team can get in terms of brand power based on your different levels at each stage.
1 point brand power: no brand power, no brand awareness, no brand name and other brand settings;
2 points brand power: there is a brand name and LOGO, and there is also a plan to accumulate brand power, but the brand accumulation effect cannot be seen for the time being;
3 points brand power: there is a complete brand strategy, and more than three of the six elements of the above brand have been achieved;
4 points brand power: become TikTok’s big IP in this track, users can rank in the top three when searching for product keywords on TikTok, and become the benchmark for other new accounts in this track;
5 points brand power: become the top stream of industry brand realization, the brand word search volume reaches the top of the industry, and becomes a brand business case.
Please record your score, I will take you to analyze the comprehensive score at the end of this chapter.