5 ways marketers can take advantage of the Douyin app

Douyin is one of the biggest apps in China, with 2018 figures putting its market penetration at 30% – so whoever your target market is, there’s a good chance you can find them on Douyin. But how can marketers get the most bang for their buck on the platform?

Despite Douyin videos only being 15 seconds long, the app presents a world of opportunities for marketers. Here are five ways marketers can take advantage of the platform to engage users:

1

Create organic content

Douyin presents the perfect opportunity for brands to show off their personality by creating short videos that inform and/or entertain users and reflect their brand values. Videos that tend to work particularly well on Douyin are comedic videos, videos featuring celebrities, and videos that help users improve their lives in some way, whether it’s their lifestyle, appearance or skills.

Organic content has worked well for Adidas Neo, a sub-brand of Adidas that targets a younger audience. Their videos feature local celebrities pursuing an active and aspirational lifestyle – while of course wearing Adidas Neo clothes and shoes.

2

Start a hashtag challenge

Douyin is perfectly suited to encouraging user-generated content – it doesn’t take much effort, as users only have to make 15 seconds of content, and the platform provides all the tools they need to create engaging videos. This is why hashtag challenges are a particularly powerful way of engaging users on Douyin. Brands can further incentivise users to create content by providing prizes for the best videos.

One example of a successful hashtag challenge is Answer Tea’s, which showed how well offline and online engagement can work together. In this challenge, people sent orders for their tea, along with a question they’d like answered (e.g. “Will I get married next year?”). They then filmed themselves opening the lid of their cup, revealing the answer printed on the inside. 

As a result of this challenge, in just a few short months, Answer tea’s Douyin page accumulated 345,000 followers and their 30+ clips had been liked 1.1 million times.

3

Use KOL's

While KOL marketing can be expensive, it tends to be a lot more visible, particularly if done in partnership with Douyin, as their algorithm tends to favour endorsed content, and push it to more users. This gives a campaign much more of a chance of going viral. 

4

Purchase Ads

Douyin has both in-app banner ads and native in-feed ads, which brands are able to purchase. In-feed ads can be particularly engaging compared to ads on other platforms, as they fit seamlessly in users’ video feeds, capturing them at full attention. As videos are only 15 seconds long, most users will simply watch the ad rather than skipping to the next video.

Working with KOLs can be a good way to ensure the tone of the video fits with the platform so that users don’t just “swipe left”.

5

Link to e-commerce stores

Douyin has’ recently included links to product pages on e-commerce sites directly on brand’s pages. This feature, however, is only available to content publishers with a fan base of more than 1 million, so brands will need to put in a fair amount of work before this option becomes available to them.

But remember: Douyin is just a small part of China’s complex digital landscape.