Please read this section with these questions:
1. Why do Chinese people have more potential in content?
2. Why can you find more high-quality and low-cost products in China?
3. What are the advantages of doing TikTok in China?
TikTok has a large market, a lot of traffic, and competitors all over the world. This is an opportunity and a challenge for us. But what I want to tell you in this section is that after I led my team to repeatedly explore TikTok and went through countless closed loops of product selection and sales, I found that Chinese people have three natural and exclusive advantages when doing cross-border e-commerce and TikTok: content potential advantage, product strength advantage, and labor cost and time advantage.
1. Chinese people have the potential advantage of content in TikTok
TikTok is a platform that uses content as a lever to leverage traffic. Whoever can produce content that suits the preferences of platform users has the core ability to obtain platform traffic. We have more advantages than foreigners in making vertical screen short video content.
Let’s first look at the current status of TikTok’s four contents to better understand where our content potential lies.
First, the picture precision of many TikTok works is not high. If you have ever tried to watch TikTok, you will feel that TikTok’s videos are rougher than Douyin, a bit like Douyin three or four years ago, and there are relatively fewer polished short video works.
Second, many works on TikTok are personal displays of creators, which are less difficult to shoot and shorter in duration. The proportion of videos with carefully planned content on the entire platform is very small. Compared with YouTube, TikTok is like a circle of friends that users shoot and post casually, which is very casual; while YouTube is a large-scale production with carefully planned scripts.
Third, the works of many creators are scattered and unsystematic. They shoot whatever they think is fun and post whatever they think is interesting. The internal connection between works is also relatively weak. Compared with those domestic Douyin accounts that are specially systematized to create “series works” and vertical content, there are not many accounts with systematic content in TikTok except for merchant accounts, landscape accounts, and pet accounts that purely display their own products.
Fourth, there are fewer mature TikTok short video MCNs (Multi-Channel Networks) overseas than in China. MCN can provide information value, efficiency value, resource value, etc. to talent creators. Many Internet celebrities have embarked on this path after being incubated by MCN. TikTok started later than foreign YouTube and domestic Douyin, and its commercialization process is even later. Although American MCNs started earlier, there are relatively few mature TikTok MCNs.
Now let’s take a look at why Chinese people have more advantages than foreign creators in content creation and improvement with our understanding of TikTok video content.
1. Chinese people’s advantage in online sense
I like to say the word “online sense”. My definition of it is: the ability to quickly and accurately understand things related to specific platforms, groups of people, and markets, and to conduct targeted mining and follow-up, so as to be able to judge and output good content that meets the preferences and needs of this group of people.
To cultivate a good online sense, you need a lot of content accumulation and conscious review and summary, and analyze why the accounts or content that rank high on this platform are so popular. After watching more and more, you will have the awareness of summarizing and analyzing. After practicing for a period of time, you will find that your judgment of content has improved a lot. Of course, if you want to improve your ability to create content, it is far from enough to just watch. You need to continuously output, continuously see real feedback, continuously summarize and improve, and then continue to output. Only by constantly optimizing in practice can you quickly improve your sense of the Internet.
TikTok is the international version of Douyin. ByteDance is a company with strong Chinese genes. As Chinese, it is easier for us to understand the design ideas of this platform than to understand foreign platforms. We have a lot of time and opportunities to use Douyin every day, and it fills our lives. Before many foreigners came into contact with TikTok, we had sufficient contact and practice opportunities with domestic Douyin, and had more opportunities to watch, feel, actively produce and get feedback from the audience. This is the natural advantage of our Chinese sense of the Internet.
Tips
Immerse yourself in the online environment of TikTok, and you will definitely have a better sense of the Internet than others.
2. The advantage of Chinese people in systematic learning of short videos
Domestic Douyin short video e-commerce courses and reference cases are endless, with various practices. If you want to learn, you can immediately search for a lot of courses. Chinese “players” are very hardworking and good at research and summary. Whether it is their own cases or the analysis of other Internet celebrities, they can extract the experience of success and failure, and then practice and summarize repeatedly. Not only did they create many big accounts themselves, but they also made them into professional courses and taught them to students who want to make short videos and live broadcasts.
If you want to learn these practices professionally and systematically, you can analyze and summarize them yourself, or you can spend money to buy professional courses on the market (the quality of courses on the market varies, so be cautious when choosing paid courses). It can help us understand more quickly how domestic short videos and live broadcasts obtain traffic and realize cash. As long as we are willing to learn, whether it is content scripts, shooting equipment, or editing methods, there are very professional courses for us to learn.
After laying a solid foundation, you will find that there are many ways and paths to obtain traffic and realize cash, and we can choose the appropriate strategy according to our products. Compared with foreign creators, we are not at the same starting line at all. So in commercial competition, we have a strong first-mover advantage.
In 2020, I led my team to explore TikTok from scratch. At that time, there were no ready-made TikTok courses and books, so I settled down to study domestic Douyin, learn why Douyin accounts can be established, what elements they have, and what practices can be used as reference. My team members and I listed many Douyin operation methods, tested them one by one on TikTok, and soon found the correct practices suitable for different products. This is also the reason why I was able to lead the team to quickly explore a set of exclusive practices at the beginning of the new platform. This is equivalent to honing your content power in China and then migrating to TikTok.
2. Product strength and supply chain advantages
1. China has a richer variety of products
The competition in the Chinese market is very fierce, and products in various industries are facing great challenges. In order to find a combination of innovative products to occupy the minds of users, merchants racked their brains to split products in various industry categories into smaller vertical categories. For example, the condiment that every household has – soy sauce, has been split into a new small category: baby soy sauce. Adjust the ingredients, change the packaging and advertising slogans, and you can quickly get mothers to buy it. Or combine several vertical products to create a new category, such as tablet + electronic ink + e-book function + online notepad + voice transcription function = smart office book.
Chinese merchants continue to innovate in such a competitive environment, find new categories to put into the market. Many categories may never have been thought of overseas, but they have been perfected in China. When I was in the United States, I often couldn’t buy what I wanted to use, so I opened my mobile phone Taobao, bought a bunch of good things in China, and then shipped them to the United States. In the four years I was in the United States, I shipped hundreds of things from Taobao, such as exquisite mobile phone cases, uniquely designed high heels, diamond-studded wearable armor, multi-functional electronic socket strips, etc. These things not only made Chinese classmates envious, but also made foreign classmates’ eyes light up, and they came to ask me where I bought them.
Therefore, our products have very strong advantages in variety and innovation. In the past, foreigners sold their new things to us at very high prices, and we had to snatch them; now we sell products that they can’t think of or have never seen to overseas, so that they pay for our domestic products.
2. Chinese products are of better quality and more refined workmanship
In China, we often see a word: roll. I often joke with my friends that we can always feel the merchants’ fancy rolls of products, referred to as “flower rolls”. Every aspect of the product, such as raw materials, formula, packaging, style, and fineness, can roll out a flower. For example, the new domestic beauty brand Hua Xizi has made the paste of lipstick into a very fine relief, and even made the packaging as a handicraft. There are many merchants and factories like Hua Xizi who work hard on their products in order to stand out from the competition. So in China, it is not difficult to find products with top-notch craftsmanship, materials and quality.
We sell these high-quality and finely crafted products overseas, and the competitiveness of the products will be stronger and the premium space will be higher. After purchasing, customers will find that the products are good, and they will actively repurchase, refer and share our products and become a loyal user. Once when I was chatting with “Private Domain Xiao Factory Manager”, he said something that impressed me deeply: “Product power is the basic power of all our entrepreneurship. If the product is not good, good marketing and advertising will only accelerate the death of the product.” This sentence works whether it is used at home or abroad.
Traffic marketing is important, but we also need to improve product power first, which is like the foundation of a high-rise building. If the foundation is not solid, no matter how much traffic and marketing are used to build a high-rise building, it will collapse because the foundation cannot support it. In China, it is really easier to find a good factory and make products with exquisite craftsmanship and excellent quality. This advantage is worth grasping for everyone who wants to do overseas markets. 3. The average cost of Chinese products is lower and has more price advantages. Most of the cost of the products we choose to sell overseas is composed of raw material costs + operating costs, and the prices of these two costs in China are cheaper than in the United States and other countries. Let’s look at the cost of raw materials first. The raw materials we commonly use to produce products, such as wood, have an average cost of US$157/cubic meter in China in 2021, while the average cost in the United States is US$254/cubic meter, which is about 61% higher than the cost in China; the average cost of hot-rolled coils in steel is US$815/ton in China in 2021, while the average cost in the United States is US$1,612/ton, which is basically double the price difference. Let’s look at the operating costs. Operating costs generally include rent, labor, water, electricity, property, etc. The rent in the United States converted into RMB is several times higher than that in China in cities of the same level, location and area; labor costs are notoriously expensive. Once labor is involved, prices will immediately rise a lot; the same is true for water, electricity and other expenses. Although it is completely affordable for local people who earn and spend dollars, these costs are placed in China, the products are produced, and then sold to the United States, which can reflect the low-cost advantage.
Therefore, Chinese products have the advantages of high quality and low price in overseas markets represented by the United States. We only need to calculate whether there is still a price advantage after adding logistics costs. If so, we can leave more profit space when selecting products and make longer-term plans for the company.
Three, labor costs and time advantages
The labor cost is easy to understand. The salary cost of recruiting employees in a country like the United States is much higher than that in China. When I talked about product costs above, I mentioned that low labor costs, that is, low wages for employees directly hired by the company, will reduce the price and cost of the product. The average salary of all full-time employees in my company in the United States is 3,000 to 4,000 US dollars per month, and they must be paid on time every two weeks. For the same position, the average salary of employees in my Chinese company is 5,000 to 8,000 yuan per month. If I put all of TikTok’s business segments in the United States, it will cost more than 600,000 yuan more in labor wages per month than what I am doing now (putting the headquarters and main force in China, leaving only a part of the anchors and operations in the United States to work with the Chinese headquarters).
Time advantage is something I have felt deeply in the past year. There is a time difference between China and abroad. Arranging anchors to live broadcast alternately and staggered in China and the United States is more conducive to creating TikTok’s “sun never sets” live broadcast room. 8 to 12 o’clock in the evening abroad is the golden time period for live broadcasting, but the competition is also more intense at this time. After repeated tests, we found that live broadcasting in the middle of the night abroad is actually very effective. At this time, the anchors overseas are already asleep, and we can easily roll them up in China.
The above points are all unique advantages of being Chinese. Although there are language problems and other relative disadvantages of Chinese people in the process of doing TikTok, these can be solved and compensated by selecting corresponding talents or other means. We need to make good use of and give full play to these unique advantages.
After reading this section, you must be very clear why Chinese people are suitable for TikTok and cross-border e-commerce!