Preface: A popular saying these days: "Traffic is getting more expensive, and conversion is getting harder." Have you noticed that even with influencer videos and livestreams, sales still fluctuate? The biggest challenge for enterprises is not the inability to invest in content, but that content fails to resonate and influence user decisions. In this article, Professor Zhou Hongqi will guide you through a systematic understanding of the 10 business essences of "short-video + livestream linkage across the entire domain," and find business laws from these trends. I hope it brings you inspiration.
Ecology and Trends in the New Business Era
1. The Rise Pattern of New Era Enterprises Have you noticed a fundamental phenomenon... Why do new leading enterprises emerge every seven or eight years in the business world? For example, in recent years, Xiaohongshu has gradually become a key content platform for brands to create hit products and build brand awareness. It is undoubtedly a new leading enterprise. So, why can it become an enterprise and brand of the new era? I want to share with you that studying new business is about discovering enterprises of the new era, and studying new models is about discovering innovative ways of operation. We can see that even for operating platforms, innovative operating methods have emerged continuously over the past 10 years, plus innovative marketing tactics, and these tactics must have a comprehensive plan, be interlinked, and be meticulously executed. For example, the Beike Zhaofang platform launched the innovative ACN broker cooperation network years ago, breaking down the real estate transaction process into 10 sub-roles, using rules to divide work and commission sharing mechanisms to break the vicious competition of traditional intermediaries. But recently, they added the KOS marketing tactic, allowing tens of thousands of certified offline real estate store brokers to design personalized account personas and content styles based on their own characteristics, outputting content with "real listing verification codes" online, acquiring customers online, responding promptly, and completing the transaction loop offline. There are both new models and new tactics. Particularly noteworthy is that I have recently discussed with many platforms and top MCN institutions that with the advent of the "AI e-commerce" era, everyone will use their own exclusive intelligent agent to buy plane tickets, book hotels, find products... and each platform brand and factory will have its own exclusive intelligent agent for docking. What kind of operational scenario will that be, and what new operating methods and marketing tactics will enterprises adopt? In short, the essence of new business is that a batch of new era enterprises emerges every decade, an operating method innovation occurs every few years, and the tactics change every year.
2. From IP Content to Transaction Closure, MCN and Influencers Are Indispensable As shown in the figure above, look at these enterprises. Whether they use IP content operations, services, digital marketing, or innovative operating methods like DTC and UGC, they all rely on the deep participation of MCN institutions and influencers to help amplify value or further complete the sales loop. This is the current state of the livestream and short-video industry ecosystem, penetrating every aspect of new business enterprises. It is an inevitable trend of the times.
3. Dual Transformation of Consumption and Platform Models Let me ask everyone a question: In the future, from this year to next year, will there be changes in the new models of platform operations and consumer decision-making? First, look at the changes in the new consumption model, as shown in the figure below: Please look at the upper left corner. Do you notice that consumers now place more emphasis on rational price comparison, and although they are trading down, they do not compromise on quality? At the same time, do they value the sense of value, affordable design, and the shift from buying "things" to buying "experiences and services"? More importantly, they are led by the consumption views of their own circle culture and pay for values, forming a set of consumption trends. Now look at the changes in platform and brand operations in the lower right corner. Do you notice that organic traffic is becoming harder to obtain? The proportion of brand self-broadcasting is increasing, and paid traffic within livestream rooms is also increasing. AI productivity and business closure are becoming more important. I want to emphasize that brands today place more importance on the business loop. Next, let's look at the commercial evolution of MCN institutions. As shown in the figure below: Have you noticed that MCN institutions have shifted from traditional signing economics (signing or self-incubating many influencers, only knowing how to sign people but not understanding business) to livestream e-commerce (supply chain MCN, self-recommended product selection, warehousing and distribution, customer service), following the Oriental Selection model, emphasizing product promotion and supply chain management. In the past, they used matrix accounts (content factory type = standardized scripts + low-cost shooting + SOP processes, quickly batch-incubating hundreds of accounts, pursuing scale traffic and CPM revenue), but now they are shifting to self-owned DTC brands + private domain (the influencer themselves is the brand, acquiring customers in the public domain, then depositing them in enterprise WeChat/mini-programs for repurchase, improving profit margins); in the past, they focused on vertical content IP incubation (focusing on a deep field, such as beauty, maternal and infant, agriculture, knowledge popularization, etc., building sustainable IPs long-term rather than just influencers), but now they have added more vertical and professional content, including high-threshold tracks such as medical science popularization, hardcore technology, finance, and outdoor adventure; the past integrated marketing (advertising agency type MCN, acting as the brand's external marketing department, doing packaged planning, influencer placement, and effect monitoring) has now even evolved from order-taking to authorized joint venture operating partner models. Is your institution trending in these directions? We have done a lot of research and have seen these transformation trends. Now look at the commercial evolution of influencers and bloggers, as shown in the figure below: First, in the past, the basic model for influencers was to pursue high-quality content + advertising placements (advertising content type, matching brand needs with persona-based content), but now they still follow the advertising content type, but the content is more vertical and professional because content is becoming increasingly competitive. Furthermore, in the past, top and mid-tier influencers commonly used short-video traffic generation + livestream product promotion, setting up fixed livestream rooms on Douyin, Kuaishou, Taobao, and Pinduoduo. This model had high barriers and limited success; but now, a large number of regional influencers and county-level livestreams have emerged. For example, I buy fish on WeChat Channels at 5 or 6 in the morning. From the coast of Shandong to Beihai, Guangxi, tens of thousands of people are livestreaming product promotion at fishing ports. The entry barrier is low, and there are many practitioners. After I select good fish, they pack them well and deliver them to Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou on the same day. As long as the service is good, user stickiness is high, and long-tail operations are possible. Also, in the past, knowledge payment course-type influencers (with strong content premium ability) output systematic professional knowledge (such as workplace, language, musical instruments, photography, etc.) and improved retention through community operations, check-in coaching, and livestream courses; now they mostly shift to selling solutions, becoming "knowledge payment + fitness consultation content + meal replacement packs" or "home improvement tutorials + construction teams." Only by integrating online and offline can they make a profit; otherwise, they cannot earn money. In addition, celebrities in the past were performance expansion type. Have you noticed their trend of combining with diverse IPs? At the same time, the "virtual IP + cross-language overseas" shown in the upper right corner can do 24-hour cross-language livestreaming, which is also a high-potential development direction. In short, past fans are all medals, and both MCNs and influencers need to constantly think about upgrading. At the same time, maintain an extremely open-minded attitude because our industry may undergo major changes at any time due to the emergence of new technologies.
10 Business Essences of Short-Video + Livestream Linkage Across the Entire Domain After discussing the environmental and trend changes and commercial evolution, I will share the 10 business essences I see: the laws of business development for the next 1-2 years. It should be noted that from point 1 to point 6, we still need to focus on traffic and interaction in the content field, and in content creation, we should continue to improve traffic and interaction efficiency as always. However, from point 7 to point 10, we should place more emphasis on the business and closure issues that brands value today. If you blindly pursue traffic and interaction but cannot achieve business closure and help brands make money, then the past accumulation of fans can only become useless medals.
1. Business 3.0 Era: From Precise Connection to "Continuous Dialogue" First, let's talk about the first law. We are in the Business 3.0 era, and everyone should deeply understand the operational characteristics of this era, that is, everyone is online, everyone lives and works through social software, and content and communication appear in digital form. In the Business 3.0 era, individuals and the third screen (mobile phone) become organically connected, which we call the mobile social economy. Correspondingly, a new marketing mix for Marketing 3.0 has emerged, as shown in the figure below. We focus on the yellow part in the figure. Please look at an example. Many business schools like to participate in the "Xuanzang Road" Gobi Challenge. This event itself is strong content. All individuals who identify with this strong content will form communities through WeChat. The rolling growth of the community will in turn enhance the event content. To prepare for the event a year later, there are many training scenarios. In each training scenario, you might buy protein powder for the first time, hire a coach the second time, and buy other things the third time... Every strong scenario can connect to a need, and then the connection generates sales. This is the essence of this era, as shown in the figure below: From the consumption path, in the first half of the mobile internet, brands often obtained a large amount of free traffic, frequently planting grass (pre-planting) through short videos and livestreams, and attaching small yellow carts with discounts and benefits, which could likely achieve the first order conversion on the spot. This is the precise connection stage, as shown in the figure below. But have you noticed that consumers are becoming smarter? Nowadays, after pre-planting, there is an additional "deep planting" stage. For example, if a new facial mask is launched, if there are not enough notes on Xiaohongshu, especially user-generated content (UGC) notes, and if these notes cannot provoke user interaction or stimulate demand, they are ineffective content. Therefore, brands spend higher customer acquisition costs than before, naturally hoping that after users place their first order, they can achieve more interaction and repurchase through long-tail operations, obtaining the user's lifetime value. This is the business logic of the second half of the mobile internet, entering the stage of continuous dialogue with users, deeply connecting and operating users through continuous dialogue. So, what is the change in business essence? It is the shift from the past advertising model of high-frequency reach to an interactive model of high-frequency content interaction. To achieve continuous dialogue, the content strategy commonly used last year was "provocative power," which is designing content that can arouse users' willingness to interact, asking questions, provoking dialogue, and promoting frequent interaction.
This year's content strategy has shifted to "inspirational power," which is designing content that can touch readers' emotions, change cognition, generate demand, and inspire specific actions. After reading the content, readers say "I agree," "I am very inspired," "I want to share," to "I want to buy." High-inspirational content is the ultimate weapon for content marketing to achieve business closure.
Therefore, inspirational power is crucial; it is the driving force that elevates needs into real demands.
2. Seed Circles, Ripple Diffusion Next, let's talk about the second business essence. Use an example to illustrate. This year, I bought two BKT (lumbar support pad category) products. Last year, I hesitated for a long time and didn't buy. The BKT brand had sales revenue of 2.5 billion yuan in 2024, and this year it is conservatively estimated to reach 6 billion or higher. It has only taken three years from zero to now.
So, I want to ask a question: For such an ergonomic lumbar support pad with a unit price of 168 yuan, thin and portable, who should be the initial seed group? That is, which group has the most pain and is most willing to spend money? From the data volume, it must be office white-collar workers who sit for long periods, but it is not recommended to use company white-collar workers as the seed group? Because company white-collar workers usually compare and hesitate repeatedly for 168 yuan during the deep planting stage. The BKT team initially thought that parents would be willing to spend money on things for their children, so they first targeted the children's group. But the market proved that the most painful group is pregnant mothers. Later, the BKT brand corrected the seed group to women preparing for pregnancy, aiming to include BKT in the list of essential items during pregnancy. And the team discovered a super pain point and scenario: when about to give birth, the husband sees this ergonomic seat cushion and says that previously sitting caused back pain, but now with this cushion, it is comfortable. This scenario is very clear. Douyin is also a place with a larger population. Find a small group with a large market, then recommend this need to precise users, and you can sell 100 million yuan in a single month. Next is diffusion within the circle: pregnant mothers who use it well will spread it, like after giving birth in a confinement center, it is easy to form person-to-person transmission. Then there is progressive diffusion, spreading from the pregnant mother circle to white-collar workers at home, car owners, elderly parents, children's correction... This way of breaking out of the circle is called the "ripple diffusion effect."
3. Content Emotional Value Now let's talk about business essence three: content emotional value. In the field of content creation, brands should think about how to incorporate emotional value when designing any product from the start. What exactly is emotional value? Take a brand I have been following for the past two years as an example. This brand, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, was founded in 2011. Why has it become popular and increasingly favored?
You will find that they embed emotionalization in product design, which can deeply convey emotions and touch people's hearts. Specifically, at the technical level, they make body movement memory points become emotional triggers, such as the comfort brought by cushioning during running, the propulsion of the shoes triggering the psychological feeling of "progress and upward," and the lightness of the shoes bringing the surprise of weightlessness to the feet. In addition, there is ritual emotionalization. For example, the early "three and a half circles" cross-wrapping lacing design became a highly recognizable visual symbol, conveying a sense of professionalism and uniqueness. The light and shadow effects produced by the teeth part during running, and everyone adding an APP to build a community. Through the APP, runners can see real-time heat maps showing how many people nearby are wearing On Running shoes, creating a sense of belonging and community pride that "you are not fighting alone." This brand penetrates emotional value into every aspect through content.
This new brand in the Marketing 3.0 era has a market entry strategy different from the past. In the cold start stage, it first attracts and builds seed communities through high-quality content, and organizes small-scale frequent community activities. Community first, then stores. It opens flagship stores in high-tier cities, mainly as gathering points for organizing activities. Then, through deep cooperation with KOLs for social platform planting, it stimulates UGC follow-up to generate more content. Subsequently, it continuously opens direct-operated stores in mainstream cities to build a common front for the community. With momentum, it cooperates with agents to open franchise stores in second-tier cities to penetrate lower-tier markets. In addition, they generate precise user profiles based on APP running data, such as running enthusiasts or fashion dressers, for user segmentation and refined operations of different user groups.
4. Hotspot Economy Next, let's continue with the fourth essence. In the mobile social economy, attention is fragmented and scarce. Brands must have the ability to ignite hotspots, and hotspots must be continuous, with heat spreading outward. How to understand this specifically? Take Lei Jun's car manufacturing as an example. In 2021, Lei Jun announced his intention to build cars. As shown in the lower left corner of the figure above, there were all doubts, but Lei Jun and his team, over more than 1,000 days from 2021 to 2024, continuously created hotspots, maintained heat, and with the help of influencer matrix to amplify heat, the heat spilled over. After igniting a hotspot, you must also amplify emotions, create "phenomenal" heated discussions, and sustain the heat. From expectations to reveals to leaps, these hotspots, once ignited, can continuously reverse and change fans' perceptions. Finally, Xiaomi cars sold 100,000 units as soon as they went on sale, which is not without reason. What is different about doing content today? Once a phenomenal heated discussion is ignited, the response content must find differentiation in meaning, which will provoke interaction. Interaction makes the brand's social ecosystem active, and large-scale high-frequency interaction will create prosperity in the social ecosystem. You say one thing, I say another, and the snowball rolls, attracting eyeballs, bringing free traffic from sharing and searching, achieving the spillover effect.
In addition to provoking interaction, there must also be inspirational power, which is the dynamics of content. Specifically, you need to throw out content that can touch users' emotions, change cognition, and generate action. This inspirational content is real and empathetic. However, if the brand's content this year has differentiation in meaning, is real, empathetic, and can inspire co-creation and achieve business closure, but if it does not innovate in meaning differentiation next year, consumers will suffer aesthetic fatigue and become indifferent. So brands are currently competing on the ability to iterate content, and each year they need to innovate in meaning, authenticity, empathy, and co-creation in content. Next, I ask everyone: Have you noticed that this year, both Douyin and Xiaohongshu have started to talk about mind marketing, returning to using mind marketing to penetrate and accumulate user mind assets? Why? Because many internet-famous brands have been achieving transactions through hard advertising and benefits, but they have no imprint in consumers' minds, and their brand associations are blank, unable to form brand pull. What brands need to do now is to make users have clear collective associations when they think of you. For example, if your child suddenly catches a cold and you need to buy medicine on Meituan or JD.com, is the first thing that comes to mind Sanjiu Cold Medicine? This is the power of mind assets. However, mind marketing must gradually accumulate more imprints. Sanjiu Cold Medicine uses tools like Ocean Engine Insight and Lingxi Insight to continuously find more differentiated mind opportunity points, and these differences have provocative power and can stimulate the interest of target customer groups. Starting from discovering new mind differentiation points, then creating content, amplifying, and finally measuring, this is a set of operational logic.
5. Mind Marketing: Penetrating and Accumulating Mind Assets Next, let's look at the fifth business essence: mind marketing. We integrate the 5 points in the figure below into a brand story. First, at the cognitive and emotional level, that is, master the right to define the category in cognition and design super symbols. Emotionally, master persona expression and style shaping to generate emotional value and resonance. Let's use an example: When you think of cola, from a visual cognitive perspective, you might think of a red can. In terms of emotional imprint, you might think of a joyful emotional atmosphere. **Second, at the rational level, you might feel it is safe to use. Third, at the behavioral and values level. Think of the usage scenario of cola, you might think of drinking it when thirsty. At the level of values and identity, you might think of a free and self-expressive way. The inspiration from a brand like Coca-Cola, which successfully penetrates user minds, is that we need to reorganize these elements. Each element has the opportunity to explore differentiated minds. Find a set of differentiated minds and organize them into a brand story. Through content and interaction, deeply deposit them in consumers' minds. Moreover, this brand story needs to be upgraded year by year to resonate with consumers' new lifestyles. In the past, our usual practice was to list many product advantages and promote them to consumers. However, too much information is too messy for consumers to remember. Currently, operating consumer minds is about forming a set of perceived values in consumers' hearts. Remember, Less is More.
For example, take the BKT lumbar support pad. What can you remember? From the periphery of rational value: **First, the six patents are definitely hard to remember, but without this endorsement, it seems unscientific. **Second, do you think this is touching? It can relieve back pain at 1/10 the price of an ergonomic chair, without buying the whole chair, emphasizing rational cost-effectiveness. **Third, correcting body shape is also rational. Fourth, you can carry it anywhere, it's light, less than half a kilogram, etc. The scenario-based selling point is also touching. These are all rational value points. How can these rational value points be integrated into one point that can ultimately penetrate user minds? This requires extracting a sensual element in the core concept. For example, use "support you" (为你撑腰), plus the scenario of the target seed group, such as the pregnant woman usage scenario. Then invite celebrities to endorse, like Yang Mi's appearance, which can penetrate consumers' minds throughout the entire logical chain and produce a strong imprint.
6. Harnessing AI to Empower Content Efficiency Let's look at business essence six. Standing at the present and looking three years ahead, AI will penetrate strong scenarios in life and work. Everyone's phone will have an intelligent agent assistant. It will watch your activities across the internet, understand you through your social interactions, provide emotional value every day, and help you solve problems across the internet. Please look at this picture. I took it at the Osaka World Expo last month, drawn by Japanese people. As shown in the figure below: In the future world, a person drives a flying car, and inseparable from them is their own embodied intelligent agent, but the agent's "soft capabilities (executing tasks through digital means)" may be greater than "hard capabilities (executing tasks through physical means)." I want to say that we are currently in the first and second stages, where humans collaborate with each other, or humans seek assistance from intelligent agents. Many enterprises have already started human-Agent collaboration. Whether the agent is based on Stable Diffusion for video or Midjourney for images and text, essentially they are AI software interfaceized into agents. Next, once your exclusive agent appears, it will proactively find you and tell you what else it can help you with. Until the final stage, individual agents will automatically connect with enterprise-side agents. Moreover, behind the enterprise-side agents, there will be a new AI-era operating system we call AOS, which will connect all partners' agents to achieve three-dimensional collaboration. So many people ask: In the future, when AI e-commerce emerges, will traffic still be needed? Will influencer content that provokes and inspires still be needed to complete the business loop? 2028 will be the key decisive moment. The A2A (agent-to-agent) model will create a new era with many new business opportunities and innovative enterprises.
7. Interest E-commerce, Spillover Effects Next, let's talk about the seventh business essence. I don't know if you have made money on Douyin, but there is no doubt that brands must have a good layout on this largest content platform. Today, when starting a new product and cold-starting, you must first choose the main channel (usually Douyin), and then immediately think about the model, with a global and comprehensive mindset.
If the flower blooms inside the wall (Douyin planting, increasing shelf penetration, producing ripple diffusion effects, but with thin profits), then to be fragrant outside the wall, which fields outside Douyin can bring better profits? For example, BKT spills over to Tmall or offline channels to close the business loop; hearing aids spill over to offline stores; drugs spill over through O2O timely business; women's vitamin gummies spill over to online shelf e-commerce. In short, we need to think deeply about business layout in advance.
8. Stimulating Search Good content will stimulate search. Today's users search with very fine granularity. In addition to products and specific pain points, they also use usage scenarios and usage methods... for searching. These searches hide buying points. If analyzed through data, it is possible to find clues to hidden hit products under the surface. I use this example to explain, as shown in the figure below:
In this case, a brand making outdoor jackets planted a lot of grass, so consumers, especially seed users, felt touched by this planting content and would proactively search. In fact, search has buying points. Their search terms are very detailed. In the past, there were only four seasons, but now each season has subdivisions. Look at scenarios: they even distinguish between going out and taking photos, which is very important.
Secondly, sellers always think consumers buy outdoor jackets for use on the mountaintop, but they actually use them more at the foot of the mountain. For example, Shanghai consumers feel that deep winter outdoors is very cold, so they need to wear thick clothes, but indoors it is another temperature, and after taking off the jacket, they feel cold. So finally, the brand made the jacket into a two-piece set, so indoors you can take off the outer layer and keep the inner layer. This is just one scenario. Around a dozen or twenty scenarios, they produced 1,400 super small contents, each containing specific scenarios, detailed styles, and precise pain points, reaching users, eliciting searches, analyzing real needs, and then narrowing down to design precise products. Through these small scenarios, small bloggers publish 50 pieces of content weekly, continuously rolling updates, and through data rework to improve content and reinvest in traffic. Today's brands have deeply cooperated with platforms, using buying point data to reverse-engineer precise product marketing, content marketing, and long-tail operations. In addition, there is another key point: choose the right product (sexy product), find the right people (target customer group), and say the right words (right content plus matching influencers).
9. Breakout Opportunities Are Everywhere As shown in the figure above, look at this tomato brand. It achieved 1 billion yuan in sales in just 3 years. Examining its success, you will find that facing 80 million mothers, it precisely focused on 8.05 million pregnant mothers as the target users. After establishing brand awareness, the strategy became even more unique.
Observing its product positioning, the price is not cheap. It avoids the vegetable category and chooses fruit as the mind positioning to increase premium. More importantly, 85% of sales channels are concentrated offline. It uses the online reputation to successfully leverage BD offline channel cooperation. Once the channel is opened, when data is fed back, it shows differentiated needs of consumers in different cities. You see, based on the feedback data, it flexibly adjusts the products, content, and influencer scripts for each region, ensuring precise reach within a few kilometers around each store based on LBS technology. Therefore, the key to business success lies in refined operations. Only in this way can you stand out in fierce market competition.
10. Brands Compete for Traffic Take the example of Beike Zhaofang in the figure above. It turned 10,000 "sitting merchants" brokers who were originally in stores into KOS. Each person opens an account based on their own personality and outputs content with dry goods and real listing verification codes. They will deeply learn how to continuously improve their content output level, acquire customers online, respond quickly, and undertake services offline.
In its model, selection, training, and elimination mechanisms are interlinked. They have a set of continuously operating scoring and management mechanisms. Therefore, I want to emphasize that as more and more real estate brokers are continuously cultivated and cross into other labor-intensive industries, driving more service personnel to become KOS, more influencer practitioners will flood into our livestream and short-video ecosystem.
I want to point out that when various industries, such as catering and other service industries, join in, more people will enter our ecosystem, which means increasing competition.
Conclusion The iteration speed of the new business era is far beyond imagination. New leading enterprises emerge every decade, operating methods are innovated every few years, and marketing tactics change every year.
From the "continuous dialogue" of the Business 3.0 era, to achieving "ripple diffusion" through seed circles, to injecting emotional value into content, creating a hotspot economy, and accumulating brand assets through mind marketing, and using AI to empower content efficiency, these six essences focus on content traffic and user interaction. The core is to make content move from "provocation" to "inspiration," truly touching user decisions.
The four points of interest e-commerce spillover, mining hidden hit product clues behind search, refined breakout to find seed groups, and promoting practitioner transformation to KOS to compete for traffic directly point to business closure, providing a practical path for brands to achieve profit growth.
In the future, although the A2A model of the "AI e-commerce" era will bring new changes, for now, only by grasping the core of content, users, and full-domain operations, maintaining an open mind, keeping up with trend iterations, and doing refined operations can you stand firm in business competition and find your own growth code.