In the post-epidemic era, the luxury industry is facing many changes and challenges. The slowdown in global business growth has forced luxury groups to start exploring new directions.
Although business growth in the Asia-Pacific region and the Chinese market is relatively stable, the landscape of luxury marketing in China is quietly changing.
Luxury brands face three major marketing challenges: How can they accurately identify the target audience and gain precise insights into their needs? How to effectively communicate with consumers and initiate connections quickly? How can they assess the effectiveness of online and offline omnichannel marketing? Opportunities are often present after challenges. In the first half of 2024, the GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) of luxury goods on Douyin surged by over 45%, highlighting Douyin’s emergence as a crucial business platform for luxury brands. However, success will depend on whether brands can leverage Douyin’s opportunities and effectively address these challenges.
With over 600 million DAU, Douyin has the largest user base, especially the GEN Z generation with strong personal opinions, which is the mainstay of the rapidly growing luxury consumption market, making Douyin a gathering place and birthplace of events with huge traffic. In addition, with its powerful content ecology and online and offline content linkage, Douyin easily captures the attention of young people.
In 2024, Ocean Engine Yun Tu offered more than 2.3 million audience profiles. Building on the foundation of targeting core, potential, and interest-based luxury users, it enables precise segmentation of audiences in various scenarios, helping luxury brands swiftly target their ideal customer base and achieve efficient communication and conversion.
Douyin’s super-detailed tag insight system includes more than 2.3 million refined tags such as crowd/product/content/touchpoint/industry dimensions. Through more scientific tagging logic and more refined crowd circle anchoring, brands can find the consumer groups they want. For example, through content insights, Douyin successfully customized communication strategies for brands in different circles such as subculture fashion crowd/high-knowledge overseas students/overseas tourists, allowing brands to communicate with target audiences more effectively and improve communication efficiency.These groups combine subcultures with mainstream styles to challenge conventions and play a key role in advancing freedom and diversity in fashion’s gender expression. They hail from economically advantaged backgrounds, often with international education, and seek a high-quality lifestyle. Additionally, their passion for overseas travel and curiosity about new cultures frequently lead them to make luxury purchases during their upscale travel experiences.
The next step after identifying ideal audiences is to retain consumers. According to industry data, GENZ (born between 1995 and 2009) is expected to contribute 100% of the incremental growth in China’s luxury market. They are undoubtedly the target audience that luxury brands are eager to retain. GENZ consumers have rapidly changing behavioural habits and preferences, and they demand higher content quality during fragmented time periods. This necessitates luxury brands to engage them with continuously innovative content formats.
Douyin is the premier platform for diverse content formats, including trending events, popular content, micro-series, short dramas, interactive creativity, and more. It also offers advanced technological tools to bridge the gap with consumers, such as precise facial recognition, upgraded AR/VR, and accurate tactile simulations. This allows brands to effectively engage and nurture their target audience, facilitating rapid connection and retention.
The user experience has been upgraded on Douyin
From branded content to the social scene, Douyin is constantly innovating.
Luxury brands are consistently generating buzz, with styles like Miu Miu girls and intellectual fashion gaining popularity on Douyin. High-end brands such as LVMH, GUCCI, and Cartier are hosting offline events like pop-up exhibitions while creating online “sub-events” to engage with consumers. When high-quality brand content aligns with diverse social scenarios, creating effective brand marketing environments becomes more attainable.
From the perspective of the brand, Douyin maximizes the efficiency of conventional brand content assets with the help of innovative brand advertising co-creation. The interactive advertising method makes brand content full of vitality and significantly enhances the influence of communication. In addition, Douyin has successfully created an exclusive courtesy node, making it a must-have for luxury brands’ advertising traffic. During the holiday season, when users’ attention to new products reaches a peak, it uses large exposure to attract users’ attention and then converts users into brand crowd assets.
As the annual highlight of luxury brands, the four major international fashion weeks have also become the core focus of users in the industry on Douyin. “Paris Fashion Week” and “Milan Fashion Week” have been hot search topics for 23 years. On Douyin, there is a content creation team with integrated resources covering the world, which produces creative content directly on the scene, so that users can visit the fashion week without leaving home. Powerful show ecological product capabilities, the fashion show ecological environment created for brands and users, search area, Feedlive customized component functions…Douyin provides brands with full-link cooperation opportunities for show live broadcasts.
Renewing GEN Z’s new online and offline luxury consumption posture on Douyin.
In the field of e-commerce, Douyin’s luxury e-commerce has always maintained a steady growth trend. The live broadcast room is no longer just a single “321 link”. After the continuous optimization and development of the live broadcast format and content, new business scenarios are constantly being created.
In the second half of the year, Douyin will also launch new ways to play autumn and winter e-commerce shows and create the first Douyin official fashion week. This 7-day fashion week will provide special support for big-name shows one track a day, with celebrities watching the shows and influencers walking on the catwalk, bringing an autumn and winter brand carnival.
From Data Integration to Scientific Measurement: Upgrading Omnichannel Business Opportunities through Online and Offline Synergy
In addition to audience insights and content marketing, the synergy between Douyin e-commerce and Douyin Local Services—both online and offline—has brought new omnichannel business opportunities for luxury brands. Additionally, Ocean Engine offers key scientific tools for verifying omnichannel marketing effectiveness through a holistic approach, helping luxury brands seize new opportunities.
Data shows that the rapid growth of the Douyin Local Services platform has become a new traffic pool for luxury brands, offering fresh audiences, content, and experiences. Furthermore, Douyin’s integration of product links and data has achieved synergy between online and offline business scenarios.
Integrating CRM can help brands draw in new customers from the digital sphere to their physical locations. The smooth synchronization of the product pipeline empowers the brand to conduct a complete operation,spanning user acquisition, targeted engagement, and the stimulation of foot traffic. This setup delivers an exhaustive high-end shopping experience to consumers, encompassing everything from the release of new items and in-store presentations to booking appointments. It also opens up additional revenue streams by merging both digital and bricks-and-mortar realms.
With a keen eye on the latest trends in the luxury market and potential future avenues for growth, Douyin harnesses its powerful content marketing tools and extensive data analytics to refine its marketing environment. It is dedicated to improving the production, nurturing, and progression of premium content, while partnering with brands to innovate and address marketing obstacles.
