As scrolling through Douyin and Channels becomes part of daily life, we see more and more distributors aiming at the traffic dividend of short videos and starting their own accounts. But is making short videos really useful? What help can it bring to current business? Seeing other bosses around me filming, should I also film? After five or six videos without results, should I continue? Many distributors inevitably have such doubts when it comes to short videos. In Langfang, Hebei, there is a post-95s distributor who, over two years, used 536 short videos to leverage over 2,000 new customers, activate 42% of old customers for repeat purchases, achieve a 150% growth in new product sales, and double overall annual sales. She is Tian Miao, General Manager of Langfang Xule Trading. As a traditional frozen food distributor, how did she use new media to empower her traditional distribution business? What insights and experiences can she share with current distributors? Bringing the traditional offline ground promotion model online through short videos Opening Douyin or Channels and searching for "Langfang Xule," you can see that she already has significant industry influence on short video platforms. But little known is that Xule Trading's early stage also started from being a sitting merchant and then a traveling merchant. In 2013, Tian Miao and her husband Lao Liu took over the frozen food business from their parents. Including one warehouse worker, the entire team was only three people. "It was really tough back then. Three people sold, delivered, and unloaded goods," Tian Miao recalled the early difficulties with a smile. "I received customers and did accounting at the stall, while Lao Liu rode a tricycle for deliveries. In the following years, we gradually expanded the market, deepened channel cultivation, and continuously improved delivery efficiency." Over ten years, the small cold storage gradually expanded into a large one, and delivery vehicles grew from small tricycles to a fleet. By 2023, the company had become an agent for over 30 strong brands including Anjoy, Sanquan, and Qianweiyangchu. That same year, short video platforms like Douyin were at their peak. But Tian Miao noticed that almost no distributor peers around her were making short videos. "The few who did only talked about industry insights; no one promoted their products or company. I thought, why not try it myself, so more restaurant owners in Langfang could get to know me and choose me on Douyin?" Essentially, this was an upgrade of promotion methods: bringing the traditional offline ground promotion model online through short videos. With the goal of communication and customer acquisition, Tian Miao posted her first short video in June 2023. Based on a clear account positioning, a series of visual introductions about the company's products and services began. In the third month of daily updates, initial results appeared—a video about terminal construction suddenly gained 197,000 views! "This video brought me 4,224 followers at once. Those two days, replying to private messages from customers and manufacturers really made my hands numb!" Beyond the joy, Tian Miao also found that customers connected through short videos had higher stickiness, trust, and recognition of the company. Analyzing the reasons, she believed: when the company's products, warehousing, logistics, and other capabilities are fully displayed to customers in the form of "real shots + commentary," professionalism is the best persuasion. To this day, Tian Miao has over 100,000 precise industry followers across the internet, with total video views exceeding 20 million. Over the past two years, she has continuously fed online traffic back to offline, not only reducing customer acquisition costs by 56% but also connecting with over a dozen excellent upstream brands and reaching cooperation. In her view, distributors making short videos is definitely valuable. But to do it well, everything from team selection and content output on the video side to backend capacity building is indispensable. How Should Distributors Make Short Videos? Most distributors' understanding of making short videos is still at the simple stage of having employees film warehouse products and adding subtitles and music in post-production. Whether it has any effect is one thing; this form often stops after a dozen posts due to lack of material, and lacks professionalism in account operation and video data analysis. Making good short videos is a long-term, efficient execution task. When Tian Miao decided to try short videos, her first step was to choose the right team and lay a solid foundation.

  1. Choose the Right Team: Compare and Screen → Short-term Trial → Long-term Cooperation "I went to an external media company, spent tens of thousands to make 30 videos, and posted one per day on Douyin. After a month, I directly renewed for an annual fee." But the premise for daring to invest is seeing value. After the one-month trial period, the good account startup state confirmed the feasibility of short videos for Tian Miao, giving her the confidence to continue investing. Of course, this confidence also comes from the right team choice. How to find a truly professional team is a key issue distributors need to examine. "This industry is extremely deep; there are many who harvest 'leeks' (fool people)," Tian Miao said about finding a team. "You tell them your needs, they agree, but the final proposal is clearly copied from someone else's account, not what you want, and the price is high." After comparing multiple local and surrounding media companies in Langfang, Beijing, Tianjin, etc., Tian Miao finally settled on the current team. During the early communication, they not only understood the concepts she wanted to convey but also provided solutions that fit her needs—building her personal brand while amplifying Xule Trading's advantages, laying a solid foundation for subsequent content output.
  2. Persist in Output: The Compounding Effect of Content Creation Requires Time "In two years, I filmed 536 short videos. From the first one, I never stopped updating." Tian Miao firmly believes that continuous output is key to optimizing content. Through constant trial and iteration, she gradually understands user needs better. However, although the team can assist in building content, the material mostly comes from the company's real sharing, and the one who best understands the company's value is always the distributor themselves. Therefore, persisting in building the boss's personal IP is also a direction Tian Miao has been practicing and encouraging peers to follow. "When the boss appears in person, they can explain more clearly and thoroughly, and it's easier to win customer trust, activating subsequent repeat purchases." With Tian Miao's persistence, the account's verticality and reach gradually strengthened, and Xule Trading's core advantages became known to more people. But she emphasized, when opportunities come, distributors off-camera also need to cultivate their 'internal skills.' Returning Offline: Strengthening the Backend Capacity to Carry Traffic "When a certain video suddenly goes viral and a large number of customers flood in, you must have strong sorting, delivery, business communication, and other capabilities to carry the traffic." To strengthen the company's offline hard power, starting last year, Xule Trading positioned itself as a "New Media + Scenario-based Service Provider." New media corresponds to the short video layout, but what is scenario-based? Tian Miao gave a simple explanation. On the product side, Xule Trading has made scenario-based multi-level segmentation. For example, around the boiling scenario of frozen foods, it can be subdivided into large hot pot, small hot pot, hot pot-like, etc.; under hot pot-like, it can be further subdivided into pork belly chicken hot pot, grilled fish scenarios. From base ingredients and dipping sauces to ingredients, customers can achieve one-stop procurement at Xule Trading. On the business side, unlike traditional area division, each salesperson at Xule Trading only needs to deeply cultivate one scenario, enhancing professional track expertise while achieving precise customer service. On the delivery side, by optimizing routes, creating the delivery standard of "full Langfang coverage, delivery from one bag," has also become Xule Trading's core competitiveness. "In the past, the industry competed on price; now it's about who can make customers more worry-free," Tian Miao said. Short videos are an important promotional window, but refined offline operations and services are the important foundation for achieving 'long-term customer relationship management' in the internet era. Final Thoughts Previously, during visits, I found that many distributors commonly face problems at the store level such as difficulty developing new outlets, promoting new products, and maintaining old customers. How to do publicity and build customer stickiness is their common pain point. Through the case of Xule Trading, we can see that for distributors whose business has developed to a certain scale, laying out short videos is undoubtedly a great opportunity. As a low-cost, high-efficiency promotional tool, short videos can empower various business types. The most direct effect is reflected in the increased exposure of products and the company, opening more cooperation opportunities with upstream and downstream in the industry. For example, for distributors planning or currently opening chain stores, presenting real store operations not only helps build customer trust but also attracts franchisee cooperation. More importantly, short videos achieve a transformation in customer relationships—from going to customers to show goods, to customers proactively coming to buy. This relationship shift also promotes the upgrade of distributors' business models. How to use short videos as a tool to bring increment to existing business is a topic distributors cannot ignore today.