Strategic Thinking on Douyin Marketing for Consumer Brands | Code Brain No. 12

Code Brain

Issue 12

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During the pandemic, Douyin's data and traffic kept climbing. Short videos became the go-to information window and entertainment choice while people were in isolation, and under the "everything can be livestreamed" trend, Douyin became the premier stage for live commerce, lecture sharing, and virtual parties. To tap into what is now the most important traffic platform, you have to understand the algorithm behind viral Douyin content. How should top-level brand promotion logic on Douyin evolve? How can you achieve low-cost, high-conversion results and find the Douyin promotion strategy that best fits your brand?

On the evening of March 15, Code Brain invited Kang Le, founder & CEO of Bafu Technology, former head of Douyin's Brand Studio department, former brand director at NetEase Yanxuan, and core creator of NetEase Yanxuan and NetEase's "One-Yuan Treasure" campaigns, to deliver an online talk titled "Top-Level Thinking on Consumer Brand Promotion on Douyin."

Regarding brand building on Douyin, Kang Le shared his thoughts and recommendations from two angles: strategic logic and practical execution. He believes Douyin is currently the best domestic platform for traffic and efficiency, so brands should firmly commit to building their presence through both content and paid promotion.

Only Videos Users Love Go Viral

Many CEOs and CMOs ask: how do you actually build your own brand on Douyin? First, we need to understand Douyin. Its algorithm is extremely powerful — it will always recommend the right content to the right users. Roughly speaking, the algorithm has two components: first, a layered funnel that progressively pushes the best content downward; second, collaborative filtering that matches appropriate content to appropriate users. This second part is based on shared preferences among similar people recommending videos to each other — it's actually not that related to content tags. I just said Douyin's powerful algorithm will always recommend the right content to the right users. There are two key points here, but too many people focus on the "right content" part, racking their brains to plan and imagine their content, while ignoring the "right users" part that comes before it. They don't have a strategy, don't spend enough time thinking about top-level logic, or defining their brand's persona. Too many people discuss tactics — today I want to talk strategy with you.

The ultimate conclusion of this algorithm is that only videos users love go viral. Many people ask how to do well on Douyin — are there any insider tips, like internal resources or traffic boosts? Unlike some websites where a banner directly drives traffic, Douyin is algorithm-based. Bad content can't artificially gain more traffic and therefore can't go viral. Only videos users love go viral.

Authentic Persona, Useful Content,

and a Beautiful Life

Internally, Douyin talks about three keywords: authentic persona, useful content, and a beautiful life. Building a brand account on Douyin means creating an authentic persona, useful content, and a beautiful life. It sounds vague, but it's actually quite concrete.

An authentic persona serves to attract and lock in your target users over the long term — this is quite important. Some content creators like to chase trending topics and randomly shift their persona, which can directly lead to an account's decline.

"Useful content" reflects users' purposeful, efficiency-driven pursuit of information. Humans actually seek efficiency in information consumption — they don't like the noise of useless information. Based on the algorithm, content users don't like won't go viral. So pay attention to making short video content rich and useful. "A beautiful life" means most consumers prefer positive, life-adjacent content. "Useful content" and "a beautiful life" are less content operation directions for Douyin than they are Douyin's qualitative insight into Chinese society and users as a whole. Chinese users — or Douyin users — like "useful content" and "a beautiful life." That's why Douyin has so many book clubs, movie explainers, and similar videos — useful and efficient, very popular. There are also many positive-energy videos that fully express "a beautiful life," racking up countless likes.

Under Douyin's algorithm, "authentic persona, useful content, beautiful life" may be the top-level logic of content operations on the platform. Brand content on Douyin should also be strategized based on this logic.

Speaking of brands, many people confuse brand with brand image. Actually, brand consistency matters far more than aesthetics. A brand as a recognition system is more like a person's name — its core purpose is being "recognized," not "found beautiful." Seeing that red ribbon, you can pick out Coca-Cola among many drinks in a vending machine and press the button — that's the greatest meaning of Coca-Cola's brand, not seeing the red ribbon and thinking it's incredibly beautiful. For consumers to recognize a brand, it must achieve "complete consistency inside and out" and "persistent effort over time" — that is, having a fixed foundational persona. Every commercial brand has a persona. One theory states that all commercial brands in the world have only 18 personalities. Once a brand clarifies its target users, defines its positioning, and summarizes its persona — once these points are clear — and it "is itself" on Douyin, it will likely achieve good results.

Positioning Means Contrasting with the Inherent Flaw in Your Competitor's Greatest Strength

To build a good persona, a brand must first establish good positioning. How do you do positioning? Positioning means your place in the market relative to competitors. If you say you have no competitors, there are usually two reasons: one, you haven't figured out what you're doing — you're so broad that everyone and no one is your competitor; or two, many have tried this before and failed, so naturally there are no competitors. Both outcomes are equally disastrous. Positioning means your place relative to competitors in the market. You need to find your difference from competitors, but note: don't contrast with competitors' weaknesses, because your competitors didn't become competitors through weakness. You need to contrast with the inherent flaw within their greatest strength.

Take NetEase Yanxuan as an example. When we first positioned NetEase Yanxuan, we chose Taobao as our competitor. In fact, at that time, any website or app completing transactions online had Taobao as its competitor, whether you were a brand or a platform. We needed to find the most fundamental difference between NetEase Yanxuan and Taobao, giving users a reason to download NetEase Yanxuan even when they already had Taobao on their phones. Here we couldn't contrast with Taobao's biggest weakness, because Taobao didn't become NetEase Yanxuan's competitor through weakness. We had to find our difference from Taobao's greatest strength. Taobao's greatest strength is being "universal," and "universal" has an inherent flaw. We found that regardless of spending power, users shopping on Taobao couldn't "buy with eyes closed" — consumers had to complete the actions of searching and comparing.

So if NetEase Yanxuan could enable consumers to buy with eyes closed, it would be completely different from Taobao and have its own positioning. "Buying with eyes closed" meant not expensive, not too many choices, not bad quality — so NetEase Yanxuan was minimalist and restrained rather than luxurious. This was also the starting logic for NetEase Yanxuan's entire cool-toned UI design. After launch, NetEase Yanxuan performed well across metrics. Especially during its first 618 promotion, "Three-Piece Life Aesthetics," the overall traffic-to-revenue conversion rate reached 84% — a lifetime peak for me.

Later when we reviewed the industry, we found it interesting: during that period, it seemed all e-commerce was about "buying with eyes closed" — NetEase Yanxuan and Xiaomi Youpin where you "couldn't buy bad even with eyes closed"; Pinduoduo where you "couldn't buy expensive even with eyes closed"; influencer e-commerce where you "couldn't buy ugly even with eyes closed" — all created strong differentiation from Taobao's "universal" positioning. That's why these e-commerce platforms survived.

Second, clarify your brand's target users. This is why emphasizing authentic persona on Douyin matters. NetEase Yanxuan's target audience was very clear and specific: new middle-class users. We hoped that one day when new middle-class users suddenly needed something, they'd just open NetEase Yanxuan and buy with eyes closed. Although we positioned for new middle-class users, in reality both lower and higher spending tiers could extend upward or downward, creating a very broad consumer base.

Information Equality Brings National Brands

Since I mentioned brands, I want to share an encouraging phenomenon I've observed on Douyin regarding consumer brands: information equality. Looking at street fashion content from young people on Douyin, whether from Xining, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Urumqi, or overseas Chinese communities, clothing and video aesthetics are actually converging. China's post-90s generation has information equality — there's no information gap due to geography. This is because the post-90s generation differs from previous generations: as long as you have a phone, the information from Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, and Weibo is the same. So on Douyin you see young people from Lhasa, Qinghai, and Xinjiang checking in at HEYTEA in Beijing and Shanghai, while young people from Beijing and Shanghai travel to Changsha to check in at ChaYanYueSe — this "reverse check-in" phenomenon would have been unimaginable among the post-80s generation.

What impact does this information equality have on consumption? This situation resembles the United States in the 1960s, when television became the medium that eliminated America's information gap. Within five years, over 90% of US households owned a TV, causing information on both coasts to become completely aligned. Most well-known American national brands were born or strengthened during this era. Take Marlboro — rather than saying the cowboy ads were so powerful, it's more accurate to say that in an era of information flattening, they happened to choose television, the medium of information flattening, for their advertising.

Information equality produces two results: first, the emergence of national brands. Because aesthetics converge, consumption behaviors converge, information dissemination becomes more efficient, and expansion becomes more efficient — so the probability of national brands emerging greatly increases. Second, the previous era was channel-dominated, but in the next era of information equality, brand efficiency will improve dramatically, and thus brand importance will rise. Regardless of business model — B2C or B2B, brand or platform business model — brand importance will become more significant.

Content and Paid Promotion — Do Both

"Should I build my own Douyin account, or do paid promotion?" People always ask me which to choose. I ask back: why not both? I've seen many brands use very low-cost in-house teams to create excellent content. Some clever brands achieve great results with minimal investment by finding very suitable KOCs and KOLs to drive sales. Why not do both?

Is it still a good time to build on Douyin? There's really only one logic: as long as you're communicating information to consumers and users, go where the traffic is, go where the people are. Under China's current media landscape and market environment, Douyin's efficiency remains very high, so commit to Douyin firmly — and ideally do both content and paid promotion.

However, there should be strategic differentiation. If you're creating your own content, it should follow long-term brand building and consumer communication logic, rather than pursuing a single video that goes viral everywhere. For example, a certain luxury brand once spent heavily on a 15-second video on Douyin, and the traffic was extremely disappointing. For the paid promotion side, you should instead push in an event-driven way. The overall state of paid promotion on Douyin is more like 002027 — better suited for event-driven or scaled campaigns. You may gain some awareness-level benefits, but the conversion part remains quite difficult.

On Content: Persist with Persona, Persist with Matrix

Persist with persona, and the algorithm will bring suitable consumers. But if your persona shifts, it may correspondingly bring unsuitable consumers. Your persona needs to be determined by positioning and overall logic, but if you're targeting young people, here's a basic framework to share: the post-90s generation appears to have collectively ascended one level in the needs pyramid, arriving overall at the social and recognition layer. Four examples:

First, young people believe that "becoming beautiful" can realize personal value, so it should be shown off. After getting braces, minor cosmetic procedures, or double-eyelid surgery, post-90s continuously film videos to document the process.

Second, pet-related content is always very popular on Douyin. Post-90s passion for and identification with cute pets is based on their need for control and companionship. But post-80s are more driven by love for cute things — the motivation differs, and you can see this from comment differences on Douyin.

Third, so-called circle-ization and socialization. You buy NIKE shoes, I buy NIKE shoes — we're the same kind of people, and correspondingly Douyin content should be the same kind too. Clarify which circle your consumers are in, and turn the little secrets of that circle into content to share.

Fourth, the social joy of being part of a group. Videos with very strong content nature tend to spawn excellent extended content on Douyin. POP MART content is a very popular theme on Douyin — you can check it out.

Regarding matrix strategy, let me share something interesting. In 2019, you probably all saw "home-grown" Douyin content — an old man with a tearful voice saying the fruit he grew himself was rotting in the field because no one would buy it. This organization ran hundreds or thousands of accounts, using certain methods to avoid duplicate detection, resulting in very high account survival rates. Then they used A/B testing to buy Dou+, with multiple accounts posting videos simultaneously, using the one with faster data growth as the core account to invest Dou+ in. They also consciously used these accounts to drive traffic and complete transactions, achieving very high ROI — though avoiding duplicate detection is now impossible. But this account's approach still illustrates several things:

First, matrix-driven promotion is definitely important;

Second, when we push matrix strategy, the actual return of each individual video or account matters far more than how viral that account's content becomes;

Third, every video has its own recommendation and algorithm; the follower count of a single account isn't the most important thing. An overall matrix-driven approach is what matters most.

Three Recommendations for Douyin Paid Promotion

First, product selection. Douyin has seen many viral products: hats where pinching the ears makes them wiggle, Peppa Pig watches, the Starbucks cat paw cup, and so on. If you want to create a viral product, simply looking for the right KOCs or channels at the tactical level won't work — you need holistic logic, and this starts at the product selection stage. So-called viral products on Douyin share these common characteristics:

One, an interesting, dynamic usage process. For example, cat ears that wiggle when pinched, or the Starbucks cat paw cup where pouring white milk slowly reveals a white cat's paw. A dynamic usage process is the core driver for consumers to post videos.

Two, based on our statistical data from a normal distribution, there's a price curse for products — pay attention to pricing. Overall don't exceed 200 RMB, ideally under 100, with 69 being a peak value.

When doing paid promotion on Douyin, first note that you should approach it in an event-driven way. The mindset to create is "this thing is hot, if you don't buy it you're OUT" — not how good this product is or how to use it. After the cat paw cup sold out, we called people who bought the cup but hadn't received it yet, asking why they bought it. The initial answer was "because the design is cute," but when we further asked "is the cat paw inside or outside the cup," most respondents couldn't answer. Studying this carefully, we found their real mindset was: they saw the cat paw cup three or four times on Douyin, it looked like the cat paw cup was going viral, and they thought — if I don't buy it, how will I chat at work tomorrow, how will I show off?

Second, should you choose KOLs or KOCs for promotion? First, you need to do both — it's just a matter of proportion. Specific needs matter: if you need an impressive number in the near term, you can find a KOL to drive a large sales volume. But from a long-term, sustained promotion perspective, I don't really agree with simply finding a top KOL to solve the problem. If a brand does KOL-focused promotion, the data often shows a peak, but in follow-up awareness surveys, consumers only remember the KOL's name — they have little impression of the brand, and it doesn't help much with subsequent sales growth. However, with scaled, matrix-style KOC promotion, you often achieve better step-by-step improvement. Consider the 80/20 principle: 20% of budget can go to a major KOL to set the tone, while the remaining 80% goes entirely to KOCs to create the phenomenon that this thing is hot.

Finally, how specifically should you evaluate paid promotion on Douyin? Look at two things: overall ROI and GMV metrics. Douyin is a place for planting seeds — you don't need to force harvests. At its core, on Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and similar promotion or marketing channels, user mindsets undergo subtle shifts. Douyin is like a movie theater where you're immersed in content; Kuaishou is more like channel-surfing TV; Weibo and similar are more like magazines. Users watching Douyin are like watching a movie in a theater — if they see a phone or dress five times in one movie, their immediate logic isn't to buy right away, but to search on Taobao. Therefore, you need to look at overall data. For example, a certain shampoo brand did a large KOC campaign on Douyin, core message being "amino acid shampoo." Consumers saw it several times, felt amino acid shampoo was trending, then went to Taobao to search "amino acid shampoo" and the brand name. If you only looked at Douyin ROI it seemed low, but they harvested organic traffic, and ultimate overall ROI was high. The logic is: we need to more carefully observe the entire consumer behavior chain, planting seeds where we should plant seeds and harvesting where we should harvest. If you can't achieve overall ROI measurement, then GMV as a metric — specifically GMV per thousand impressions — is worth recommending. This is a metric we internally evaluated and consider relatively fair and impartial. You can use this metric as a benchmark for future campaigns.

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