Author | Lu Yao

At the end of each year, reviews and predictions for the next year are often the focus of discussions in the home appliance industry.

This year is no exception, especially in an era of rapid change where users and their needs are constantly evolving. As a major durable good, home appliances have high unit prices, low consumption frequencies, and long decision-making chains, making the business more uncertain compared to other categories. Driven by the pursuit of growth, more and more home appliance players are falling into a vicious circle:

While transitioning to omnichannel operations, both online and offline, is essential, many people are confused about how to approach it.

Everyone knows that omnichannel operations are the general trend. The integration of online and offline channels not only expands business opportunities, enhances consumer experience, but also strengthens brand competitiveness. However, when it comes to practical operations such as resource integration, optimizing traffic distribution, and achieving precise marketing, there is a lack of clear thinking and evaluation criteria.

This year's drastic changes in the home appliance industry show that companies that have done well often make bold innovations and active investments in digital marketing. They are adept at using big data to analyze consumer preferences and behavior patterns, launching products and services accordingly; they can accurately grasp the rhythm and hotspots of online marketing, attracting user attention through creative short videos and live streams; and they focus on seamless online and offline services to meet convenient, efficient, and personalized shopping experiences.

This was also the most discussed topic at this year's ByteDance Home Appliance Ecosystem Conference. Zheng Zilong, General Manager of the Home Appliance Industry in ByteDance's Local Business, pointed out an interesting phenomenon: in a saturated market, the home appliance industry will develop towards refined online operations, innovative offline dealer models, and accelerated online-offline integration.

Take this year's performance of the home appliance industry on Douyin: data shows that the number of home appliance merchants on the platform increased by 285% year-on-year, with nearly 100 brands, including Dreame, Haier, and Midea, achieving GMV exceeding 100 million. If you study these companies closely, you will find some commonalities. Their growth is directly linked to the Douyin ecosystem.

While merchants form a closed business loop through online marketing, stores can conduct more precise operations. This spillover value helps brands find more incremental opportunities. Compared with other ecosystems, the biggest difference in the Douyin ecosystem lies in its realization of a closed loop among content, traffic, and transactions. On the other hand, the platform is injecting new vitality into the future development of the home appliance industry with its unique and diverse ecological logic.

01

The home appliance industry enters deep waters

Producing quality content is a must

The transforming home appliance industry also faces new pain points.

As the industry is urgently transitioning towards intelligence and high-end products, many professional terms and technological concepts are difficult for consumers to fully understand. Coupled with increased caution, consumers pay more attention to product reputation, performance, and quality. In this context, merchants' top priority is how to use the right content to reach the right users, thereby achieving deterministic business conversions.

Officially launched in 2019 as a digital marketing service platform under ByteDance, ByteDance's (now known as Giant Engine's) development has been a gradual process. At the same time, the Douyin e-commerce business that developed alongside it has gradually built a complete commercial supporting system from content to shelves.

However, in essence, Douyin's ecosystem and all its infrastructure naturally grew based on content. In this system, high-quality content stands out, and accounts that only sell products are difficult to sustain popularity. The role of Giant Engine is to use its marketing capabilities and market insights to help merchants reach their target audiences with high-quality content, ultimately achieving conversions.

This year, many domestic home appliance brands have gained popularity on Douyin. Looking at these cases, regardless of the category, their success hinges on the refined operation of content.

Take Haier as an example. High-quality content combined with refined operations has enabled the brand to capture traffic. By collaborating with Giant Engine and Douyin E-commerce to create the "Made in China" marketing IP, and leveraging diverse content such as official announcement videos, smart product ambassadors, roundtable discussions, tech live streams, and science and technology documentaries, the related topic discussions heated up. High-quality content sparked user interest, driving broader brand attention.

Good content has become a key engine for business growth, which was emphasized at this year's Giant Engine Home Appliance Ecosystem Conference. Compared to previous methods of obtaining more exposure through bidding for traffic, the weight of good content traffic is increasingly prominent on Douyin.

In the second half of the year, the platform adjusted its original distribution mechanism of "natural traffic + advertising traffic" by subdividing traffic into three types: content-based, transaction-based, and advertising-based. In simple terms, traffic allocation is no longer solely based on advertising costs but also focuses on content quality and relevance.

For example, for the home appliance industry, the platform will accurately push high-quality product introductions and usage tips to users in need based on their browsing history, search behavior, and interest in home appliance-related topics.

Moreover, compared to previously measuring video/live stream quality mainly by click-through rate, completion rate, and like rate, the upgraded traffic rules now also consider user dwell time and long-term active engagement. Content with high engagement will receive more traffic recommendations.

The benefits of this are obvious. Under the upgraded traffic mechanism, merchants need to create more attractive and topical content, and the platform can strengthen the diversity and long-tail effect of the content ecosystem. Niche but high-quality content areas, such as custom high-end home appliances and smart home solutions, are also unleashed.

Following this logic, content-based traffic has greater potential and a higher "ceiling." As long as merchants continue to produce high-quality content, they may break through the limitations of traditional traffic acquisition and obtain traffic scales far exceeding expectations. More importantly, content-based traffic not only gives merchants more room to operate but also presents opportunities to acquire other types of traffic, achieving comprehensive growth.

Against this backdrop, to meet merchants' needs for precise user reach, personalized content creation, and hotspot capture, Giant Engine provides a wealth of content marketing solutions.

For example, usmile uses short dramas to cultivate interest and divert traffic to its own live streams, achieving an effective connection between content and live streaming. Another company, XGIMI, seized one of this year's biggest hotspots, "Black Myth: Wukong," and quickly responded with short video content related to the hot topic. It actively adjusted its product offerings and visuals during live streams, resulting in a 153% increase in GMV compared to before the event.

There are many similar cases. On Douyin, business opportunities sparked by good content extend far beyond these examples. In the home appliance industry, users still retain the habit of offline experience and consumption. Content on Douyin sparks interest among users, and as a medium, the platform diverts traffic to merchants' offline businesses, achieving a crucial leap from content diversion to direct consumption. To some extent, this is a growth solution with a truly omnichannel perspective.

02

Unlocking the secret to omnichannel growth through three major ecosystems

The concept of an ecosystem in e-commerce has always been relatively abstract until the rapid rise of Giant Engine's omnichannel business philosophy, which provided a more precise explanation.

'Omnichannel Interest-based E-commerce' is a bold innovation in traditional e-commerce models. By introducing the concept of an ecosystem into the e-commerce field, Giant Engine has broken the previous single-minded transaction mindset. At this year's Home Appliance Ecosystem Conference, the platform further refined its ecosystem approach:

From the initial content-centric 1.0 stage to the 2.0 stage of content and e-commerce integration, and now to the 3.0 omnichannel ecosystem encompassing 'content + e-commerce + lifestyle services,' these three aspects are not isolated but work like gears, jointly driving an efficient and evolving system.

Beyond content scenarios, the shelf scene has become another important component for merchants to achieve omnichannel operations and an indispensable part of Giant Engine's e-commerce ecosystem. It is no longer merely an extension of content scenarios but a crucial link connecting the platform's content and transaction attributes.

Especially in the home appliance industry, the importance of the shelf scene is increasingly prominent. Due to the high value, relatively complex functions, and diverse specifications of home appliances, consumers often need to conduct detailed comparisons and screenings before purchasing. The shelf scene serves as an ordered exhibition hall, systematically displaying various products and clearly presenting products from different brands, models, functions, and price ranges.

With Giant Engine's powerful technology and data analysis capabilities, the platform accurately diverts users' interested products from content scenarios to the shelf scene through algorithmic recommendations. At the same time, popular products and promotional activities on the shelves are pushed back to potential users. Data shows that 500 million users are reached by home appliance content every day, and 13 million users actively search for home appliance content.

The two-way traffic interchange and user conversion between content and shelves are another differentiated advantage that Giant Engine brings to merchants.

During promotional periods, the shelf scene plays an important role in display and marketing. When merchants combine good product offerings, pricing, and services with effective platform tools, it is easy to achieve conversions and explosive growth. A typical example is during the World Cup when Hisense collaborated with Douyin E-commerce for a Super Brand Day, leveraging the two-way flow of content and shelves to significantly boost brand awareness and sales. At that time, sales from the shelf scene accounted for up to 47% of total sales.

In the operation of the Douyin ecosystem, the synergistic development of content and shelves has brought significant advantages to merchants. Meanwhile, another interesting topic arises offline, which is also the focus of countless home appliance players.

At the conference, in response to brand concerns about the overlap between online and offline audiences for targeted advertising, Zheng Zilong shared data indicating that the overlap rate is only around 10-20%. This means that there is a small intersection between online and offline service audiences, and a large untapped audience exists within local service traffic—the increment that everyone is striving to reach.

From the platform's perspective, the offline dealer model in the lifestyle services ecosystem complements online transactions in e-commerce and provides more content creation materials, enriching the entire business ecosystem. Currently, group-buying models focused on offline dealer businesses are developing rapidly. For example, voucher group-buying activities for ceramic tile brands in the home furnishing industry have achieved significant verification scales, and brands like Midea have also benefited from the group-buying channel.

In this traditional industry rooted in the physical world, consumer after-sales requirements and product peculiarities determine that offline scenarios cannot be completely replaced by online channels. The platform ecosystem that integrates 'lifestyle services' fills the last gap in the home appliance industry.

This year, the Chinese government has issued a series of subsidy policies for home appliances, covering refrigerators, washing machines, TVs, air conditioners, and many other categories, directly reducing consumer purchase costs and significantly stimulating industry growth. Giant Engine also plays a crucial bridging and driving role in the implementation of these subsidy policies.

During the Double 11 shopping festival, Giant Engine increased traffic support for subsidized home appliances, providing more advertising resources to these brands, including splash screen ads, news feed ads, and other forms. The platform responded to the trade-in policy, promoting an integrated online-offline sales model. After learning about products online, consumers visit offline stores for actual experiences and purchases. This integrated model presents new growth opportunities for the home appliance industry.

Specifically, with the help of Giant Engine, merchants can expand online traffic channels and use various vouchers and diversified product combinations to meet users' diverse needs in terms of price and product types, while also addressing the issue of insufficient offline traffic. This, in turn, drives brand awareness and product sales growth across all channels.

In the new year, as the search popularity and user base of Douyin Lifestyle Services continue to grow, the platform will upgrade its ecosystem focusing on four aspects: traffic mechanisms, product offerings, scenario operations, and platform support. For example, regarding traffic mechanisms, unlike previous in-app push notifications based on user payments, the new home appliance traffic pool is determined by the actual GMV from offline verifications, focusing more on the authenticity and certainty of business value.

Many home appliance brands have stated that it is now a "unified game" for brands, online, and offline operations. After planning overall online content operations, Giant Engine also provides merchants with efficient tools such as exclusive offline customer service, marketing scripts, and private domain operations, laying the foundation for re-exploring customer value. More and more people are discovering that products that become popular on the Douyin platform also sell well offline.

Recently, Midea hosted a creative pop-up event in Luoyang Ancient City, inviting guests from all over to participate in offline check-ins. The interactive experience zone at the event cleverly integrated the selling points of its flagship products, allowing consumers to experience the convenience brought by Midea home appliances. The event was live-streamed simultaneously, providing users with an immersive experience that seamlessly connects online and offline.

Consumer needs in e-commerce scenarios are diverse. By organically integrating shopping, entertainment, and offline experiences, Douyin has created an e-commerce ecosystem that is closer to users' real lives. This is the core essence of omnichannel operations.

03

Finding definitive answers amidst uncertainty

Looking back at the changes in China's home appliance industry over the past year, they can be summarized into two parts:

First, as omnichannel operations become mainstream, accurately grasping consumer needs, optimizing marketing strategies, and achieving efficient conversions will be the biggest challenges for home appliance companies.

Take Midea as an example. Its success on Douyin is largely attributed to its deeper insight and decoupling of consumption scenarios. Midea conducted in-depth research on consumers' home appliance usage needs in different living scenarios. For instance, addressing the stuffy kitchen environment in summer, they launched a series of kitchen appliances with high energy efficiency and strong heat dissipation capabilities. Through creative short videos showcasing their excellent performance in kitchen scenarios, they precisely reached consumers in need.

Giant Engine's data analysis tools and precise marketing solutions serve as a good window for this. With the help of Giant Engine's user persona analysis, Midea gained deep insights into the age, region, interests, and hobbies of its target customer groups, allowing them to formulate targeted advertising strategies, achieve precise marketing, and improve conversion rates.

Second, the further explosion and integration of Douyin's three major ecosystems have made more and more home appliance companies realize that this is an opportunity that should not be missed, whether for traditional home appliance brands or newly established super individuals.

In the content ecosystem, home appliance companies can attract user attention through various interesting and practical live streaming plans and creative short videos; the e-commerce ecosystem provides a complete sales channel for home appliance companies, achieving a seamless connection from content cultivation to direct purchase; the core of the lifestyle services ecosystem lies in fully utilizing online traffic and various gameplays to attract consumers to complete offline transactions. At the same time, user feedback is used to further optimize products and services, forming a complete ecological closed loop.

As competition in China's home appliance industry shifts from low-quality, low-price competition to healthy competition and value competition, the authentic user experience and the certainty of business expectations will become the most critical variables.

Despite constant changes in the industry, the essence of the home appliance business remains unchanged: connecting people with products. From shelf e-commerce, interest-based e-commerce to omnichannel e-commerce, the core goal is to pursue higher efficiency among the three elements of 'people, products, and places.' Among them, using digital technology to enhance operational efficiency in every link is crucial.

For example, in the early stages of interest-based e-commerce development, although the core model aimed to drive conversions by stimulating user interest, the complex algorithms made it difficult for merchants to accurately measure the direct correlation between conversions and interest, leading to difficulties in adjusting advertising strategies and falling into a "trial and error cycle."

This is also a problem that Giant Engine has been committed to solving. Through powerful tools and technologies, it precisely insights into consumer needs (people), helps home appliance companies optimize product offerings (products), and innovates sales channels and scenarios (places). From content to shelves, from online to offline, Giant Engine brings merchants more definitive business opportunities in every link amidst change.