Youzan's surprise attack: More than half of the top medical beauty bloggers on Weibo use Youzan for live streaming sales, with a single GMV exceeding 0.3 billion.

With the rise of the 'beauty economy,' becoming more beautiful is becoming a new 'must-have' for young women. Beauty and medical beauty are being accepted by more and more women. Riding this trend, internet celebrities collaborate with medical beauty service institutions to recommend beauty products to fans on traffic platforms dominated by weibo, which has become a trend.

According to Guoji's '2021 H1 Medical Beauty Industry Social Media Marketing Analysis Report,' the medical beauty industry's presence is concentrated on the weibo platform, with the highest number of weibo-related content, associated bloggers, and total likes ratio compared to the sum of other platforms including WeChat public accounts, WeChat video accounts, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and more.

It is worth noting that on the operation marketing stronghold Weibo platform in the medical beauty field, medical beauty KOLs using Youzan's tools for live streaming, attracting fans, and promoting products has become a standard configuration. Currently, more than half of the leading medical beauty category influencers or stores on Weibo are using Youzan. Among them, Chongchong chonny and Quan Shaoye have consistently ranked in the top 5 on the Weibo e-commerce list, with Chongchong's single-event GMV during the 618 festival reaching 0.318 billion yuan.$YOUZAN (08083.HK)$

Why are medical beauty KOLs starting to use Youzan? What new trends are emerging in the marketing of the medical beauty industry?

Social e-commerce is ushering in the golden age of the medical beauty industry.

China's medical beauty industry is currently in a high-growth phase. According to data released by Sullivan, the total revenue of China's medical beauty service industry reached 121.7 billion yuan in 2018, and it is estimated that the industry's revenue will reach 360.1 billion yuan by 2023, with an average compound annual growth rate from 2018 to 2023 increasing to 24.2%.

The rapidly growing market demand has attracted various businesses and institutions to enter, further stimulating innovation in marketing methods.

The promotion and marketing methods of medical beauty institutions have evolved from traditional media display ads to search engine bidding, and then to directing traffic to medical beauty e-commerce platforms. Currently, it has gradually developed into the era of social e-commerce with "KOL recommendation + e-commerce conversion".

According to Guo Ji's "2021 H1 Beauty Industry Social Media Marketing Analysis Report", discussions about the medical beauty industry are concentrated on Weibo. Therefore, more and more internet celebrities and medical institutions are being attracted to Weibo, starting their journey of promoting products and commercialization.

Chong Chong Chonny, Potato Fancy, a chicken thigh, Quan Lord, Amy Susu, frank beauty aesthetics, deep blue beauty research institute, beauty station, beauty diary... A large number of medical beauty internet celebrities and merchants have quickly risen on Weibo, breaking the old pattern, ushering in the era of medical beauty social e-commerce. Among them, Chong Chong Chonny and Quan Lord have long been in the TOP5 of Weibo e-commerce rankings, with Chong Chong's medical beauty single-event sales reaching as high as 0.318 billion yuan, with an average exceeding one hundred million yuan per event.

Apart from live-streaming sales on Weibo, these top medical beauty KOLS on Weibo have another common point worth noting, which is the monetization process, they all choose to access Youzan. These internet celebrities and merchants who use Youzan account for more than half of the medical beauty verticals on Weibo. Among the top 9 medical beauty sales KOLS in the Weibo live-streaming sales rankings, 7 of them use Youzan.

Why?

The fears and loves of the KOLS

For Weibo KOLS, fan attention is no longer a problem, the biggest challenge lies in monetization.

Weibo KOLS who use the platform for medical beauty sales can be divided into two categories: one is bloggers with popularity but do not control the source of goods, the other is medical beauty merchants with mature supply chains. After opening a Weibo store, both categories of KOLS can choose to access platforms such as Taobao or third-party platforms. The key to choice lies in whether the commission and service charges are reasonable; and whether the platform provides sufficient services and resources. For bloggers who do not control the source of goods, services and resources refer to whether they can provide a "one-stop" service to avoid dealing with different service providers separately for product selection, listing, marketing, and after-sales services. For merchants with abundant sources of goods, services and resources refer to whether they can provide a variety of convenient distribution tools.

According to many internet celebrity KOLS, the reason for choosing to access Youzan stores on Weibo is twofold: firstly, considering the use of a variety of marketing tools (such as group buying, red envelopes, lucky draws, distribution staff, etc.) to promote purchase conversion. Secondly, Youzan, as a store opening tool rather than an e-commerce platform, can ensure that fans do not flow to other stores after purchasing goods, thereby achieving better private domain traffic operation.

Thirdly, medical beauty institutions and bloggers can also achieve sourcing integration through the Youzan platform. Bloggers can use the Youzan ecosystem to find more high-quality goods, reducing the energy consumed in the supply chain. In addition, Youzan's merchandise on-shelf review is more efficient and can provide one-on-one guidance services.

In addition to having good and complete solutions, reasonable service fees, the ability of service providers to provide full-process "accompany running" is also within the considerations of influencers.

Key Vlogger "Chong Chong Chonny" deeply feels the importance of the monetization process. In March 2021, Chong Chong officially opened a Weibo store, starting to utilize his influence on Weibo to sell products to fans. Chong Chong Chonny's first live stream sales did not generate high GMV, just crossing the 1 million mark. After understanding the situation, employees from Youzan immediately set up a dedicated service group to help the Chong Chong team analyze the reasons, solve problems, and quickly get through the rookie period. As a result, in the second live stream, Chong Chong's GMV smoothly exceeded 0.1 billion yuan. Since then, every time Chong Chong does a live stream sales, Youzan employees are on-site to provide service, becoming an indispensable "assistant" for Chong Chong.

Direct Beauty Aesthetics believes that for the monetization process, the fans' purchasing experience and whether the whole scenario is on Weibo are extremely crucial. Due to frequent communication between Youzan and themselves, it can ensure a good fan experience, minimize conversion loss, and make sales easier.

Two methods for Weibo medical and beauty product sales

Youzan's live e-commerce director, Ji Xin, expressed that the fans of Weibo medical and beauty product sales influencers are mainly female, aged between 80s, 90s, and 2000s. The trend of their consumption of light medical and beauty products is becoming more common, and they have a strong repurchase intention. Since Youzan opened the Weibo e-commerce channel in April 2020, the medical and beauty category is one of the Youzan's high and stable categories in terms of transaction volume and growth rate on Weibo.

For key opinion leaders who use Weibo for product sales, whether bloggers or merchants, those who have been relatively successful all have their unique operating methods.

According to relevant persons in charge from Youzan, generally, most successful medical and beauty influencers will schedule live streams and start selecting products for endorsement a month in advance, conduct product experience, offline store analysis, produce promotional blog posts, in order to benefit the fans. Finally, they will either promote sales through blog posts, endorsements, etc., or conduct live stream sales, combined with Weibo's appointment feature, to engage fans in advance with product introductions.

As for medical and beauty merchants, the key to operation lies in collaborating with multiple influencers to expand the audience reach. One approach is mainly through influencers' "pictorial endorsements" from the perspective of fans to showcase products, and combine Youzan's product functions such as group purchasing and flash sales for conversion. The second approach is through collaboration with influencers for live stream sales.

As a service provider that helps merchants with full-domain marketing and private-domain operation, Youzan emerged from the WeChat ecosystem and gradually extended its tentacles to a broader range following merchant demands. Currently, Youzan's presence can be seen on almost all major traffic platforms, including Weibo, Huya Inc, Momo, Kugou, and nearly 20 other traffic platforms. Weibo is a new virgin territory for Youzan.

Youzan's sudden attack on the medical beauty category on Weibo may just be the beginning.

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