When major promotions no longer compete on who shouts the loudest, what do merchants rely on to win?
The data of the 618 shopping festival is being released one after another.
For the e-commerce industry, it is not only a performance summary of the "mid-year exam" over the past month, but also the best opportunity to clarify the operation logic of platforms and the growth path of merchants.
Compared with previous years, this year's 618 shopping festival has presented many new features: the entire promotion cycle covers multiple consumption nodes such as 520, the World Cup, and the Dragon Boat Festival, which more accurately matches the shopping needs of consumers in different periods.
At the platform level, the rules of "instant discount / direct price reduction for one item" and "simplified gameplay" are becoming increasingly clear. Subsidies are no longer distributed extensively, but place more emphasis on precise reach and conversion efficiency.
At the merchant level, an increasingly clear consensus is that the operation capability of brands is becoming more and more important, gradually replacing the position of traffic skills. Whoever can do more solid work in products, content, price and services will be more likely to achieve growth.
The performance of Douyin E-commerce in this 618 event has precisely confirmed this change.
According to the closing battle report released by the platform, this year's Douyin E-commerce 618 Good Goods Festival has achieved significant growth in multiple dimensions.
For example, the total transaction volume of more than 120,000 merchants' live broadcasts doubled year-on-year. The transaction volume of over 570,000 KOLs increased by 100% year-on-year. The transaction volume of nearly 30,000 new merchants participating in the 618 promotion for the first time exceeded 1 million yuan. Small and medium-sized KOLs contributed more than 80% of the total transaction volume of KOL-led sales.
What is more noteworthy than the data is the driving force behind the growth. Around the goal of "optimizing supply and securing stable good business", the platform's layout in the three major dimensions of product supply, content supply, price and services is providing merchants with a more certain and replicable growth path.
After the gameplay is simplified, competition enters a new track
The environment of this year's 618 event has undergone obvious changes.
The promotion rules have been significantly simplified, and the operational burden has been reduced. In previous 618 events, merchants needed to deal with multiple rules such as full reduction, deposit, balance payment, flash sale, and category coupons at the same time, and the operation team often had to start preparations one month in advance.
Many merchants reported that this is the most hassle-free 618 event in the history of Douyin E-commerce. Teams no longer need to spend a lot of time calculating accounts, and can focus on product selection and content creation.
The logic of transaction improvement is more transparent and more dependent on supply quality. This year, the platform has conveyed a clearer signal in traffic allocation: merchants with attractive content and guaranteed services will get more conversion opportunities. This mechanism gives merchants a clearer direction for optimization.
Users make more rational decisions, and pure low prices are gradually losing their appeal. In the past, "50% off for all products" could trigger a buying spree, but now users will think more rationally: do I really need this product? Is this price really cost-effective? Is the service of this store reliable?
During this year's 618 event, users' decision-making cycle has been significantly extended, which means that merchants need to provide more value beyond price, whether it is the differentiation of the product itself, the sense of identity brought by content, or the sense of security brought by services.
These three trends all point to one conclusion: after the gameplay is simplified, supply capability has become the core barrier for merchants in the new round of competition.
Those Douyin E-commerce merchants who achieved high growth and strong outburst in this year's 618 event are precisely the group that have done extremely solid work on the supply side.
New direction of content supply: from "hawking" to "connection"
In the context of simplified gameplay, the role of content has been amplified instead. This is because, when price and rules can no longer create strong differences, content is one of the few tools that merchants can independently create differentiation.
In this year's 618 event, a number of merchants have made effective explorations in content supply. They no longer regard content as a simple "traffic diversion tool", but as a core carrier to build user trust and convey brand value.
For example, during the "Super Brand Day" of Douyin E-commerce 618, the beauty brand Mao Geping held a live broadcast of "national IP co-branding × AI interaction entering live room", launched 7 new products in co-branding with the panda "Huahua", and upgraded the image of "Huahua" to an AI digital character in the live room.
This cross-dimensional content innovation upgraded the sales scenario to a content event. The average viewing duration per person in the large-scale store live broadcast exceeded 4 minutes, the GMV of a single live broadcast exceeded 1 million yuan, the daily average outburst coefficient of the whole store's sales exceeded 890%, and it ranked first in the sales list of beauty Douyin stores. More than 200 KOLs supported the Super Brand Day, the daily average sales of new customers increased by nearly 2.5 times, and the daily average sales of members increased by more than 3.5 times.
Mao Geping's attempt shows that when a brand can transform product selling points into attractive content experiences, users are not only willing to stay, but also willing to actively spread. This content-driven growth does not rely on one-time traffic purchase, but can be precipitated as brand assets.
When promotion gameplay tends to be homogeneous, innovation in content form can become the key for brands to break through. Especially for merchants with a large user base but needing to update their brand image, making the live broadcast room a "fascinating program" can impress users more than simply emphasizing low prices.
The outdoor sports brand Salomon demonstrated the possibility of combining content with technology. During the "Super Brand Day" of Douyin E-commerce 618, they invited top KOL "Mechanical Ji" to join hands with Unitree Robotics to form a "robot dance troupe". Combining AI technology with brand genetic aesthetics, they created a live broadcast scene with a futuristic sci-fi style.
When brand spokesperson Bai Jingting walked into this virtual-reality integrated live room, the peak number of online viewers surged 1000 times, and the average viewing duration per person increased by 200%. Bold innovation in content directly boosted sales: the XT-6 RECUT series was exclusively launched for the first time on Douyin and sold out immediately, 6 single products achieved GMV of over 1 million yuan, and the single-day GMV of store live broadcast refreshed the historical peak.
If the above cases focus on creating effects in the virtual space, then Supor and DJI chose to move the live broadcast room offline to impress users with a sense of reality.
Supor cooperated with the Douyin E-commerce IP "New Launch! Street Press Conference" to set up a street live room at the Bailan Plaza next to the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai. There is no exquisite studio set, only the "three tallest landmarks in Shanghai" as the natural background. Food KOLs made pancakes and stir-fried sugar coloring from the first-person perspective, and even staged a hardcore test of "stirring steel nails over high heat" to prove the sturdiness and durability of the titanium pot in the most intuitive way.
This kind of content full of everyday life atmosphere increased the natural traffic burst by more than 20 times compared with daily store live broadcast, and the interaction rate of the live room doubled. The new titanium pot is priced at 999 yuan, combined with platform consumption coupons and exclusive gift mechanism, the GMV of the new product exceeded 8 million yuan, and the GMV during the new product launch period of the brand increased by 202% year-on-year.
It is more noteworthy that the large-scale live broadcast materials of this street press conference were directly reused in daily store live broadcasts, the click rate of new products increased by nearly 50%, and the GMV of the live room increased by 70% at the same time.
DJI cooperated with the Douyin E-commerce IP "New Launch! On Douyin" and tried outdoor walking live broadcast for the first time. Top KOLs walked out of the live room to complete Vlog challenges and capture cute pets on the street. The product selling points of "small, light, stable, and easy to shoot high-quality images" were verified one by one in real shooting scenarios.
Before that, DJI had built a complete content matrix: celebrity travel records, top KOL evaluations, and mass coverage of pan-category KOCs, combined with splash screen ads and targeted traffic diversion through content marketing contracts. This combination of "full brand and celebrity traffic diversion + layered content marketing" made the new product achieve explosive results right after launch, the search rate after viewing increased by 62%, and the ranking of mind keywords such as travel shooting, imaging, and intelligence all ranked first.
The common enlightenment of these cases is that the quality of content supply is becoming the key to determine the upper limit of promotion growth. The live broadcast room is no longer an efficiency tool for "quickly introducing and selling products", but a place for brands to talk to users. Merchants who are willing to innovate in content forms and put thought into user experience often get returns far exceeding expectations.
New logic of product supply: good products can promote themselves
If content makes users interested, then products are what make users feel worth buying.
The past traffic logic was that as long as the exposure was large enough, even ordinary products could generate sales. But under the supply logic, the competitiveness of the product itself is becoming more and more important. Because users have too many choices, only good products that truly meet demand can get continuous repurchase and word of mouth.
An obvious signal of this year's 618 event is: more and more brands choose to exclusively launch new products on Douyin E-commerce, which is no accident. For brands, users' attention is the most concentrated and their willingness to purchase is the strongest during the promotion period, which is a golden window to make new products a hit. The platform mechanism of Douyin E-commerce "from content marketing to search support and then to live broadcast conversion" just provides a complete infrastructure for the rapid cold start of new products.
The deeper reason is that the freshness brought by new products is a strong supply advantage. During the promotion period, when a large number of products are on discount, users are prone to aesthetic fatigue. A new product with unique design, innovative functions, or co-branding attributes can attract users to place orders even if it has no obvious price advantage, just because of its freshness. In other words, new products do not need to fight in close quarters in fierce competition, they have their own value that can be discovered by consumers.
From the actual effect, the brands that launched new products exclusively on Douyin E-commerce during this year's 618 event generally achieved a growth curve higher than the industry average. The new products of these brands contributed the vast majority of the store's GMV, and drove the sales of other products in the store. This shows that new products are not only a sales increment, but also a traffic engine, which will attract users to browse the store and then drive the conversion of related products.
For example, the 7 new co-branded products with Huahua of Mao Geping mentioned earlier achieved a new product completion rate of over 200%, and the sales of co-branded new products accounted for more than 90% of total sales; DJI's new product launch combined with the matrix live broadcast horse racing mechanism achieved a payment GMV of over 170 million yuan; with the dual support of street press conference and consumption coupons, the new titanium pot of Supor achieved a new product GMV of over 8 million yuan; multiple new products of Salomon were launched on the entire Douyin platform for the first time and sold out as soon as they went on sale, with the sales of popular models exceeding 10,000 pairs.
The performance of Beneunder illustrates the value of key industry support. During the "Super Brand Day" of Douyin E-commerce 618, Beneunder created a 10 million-yuan level sun protection clothing product ts402 mountain-style zero-feeling sun protection clothing, the same style worn by the star Chen Yao. 2 hours after the live broadcast started on Big Day, the inventory was sold out, and the GMV of a single live broadcast exceeded 4 million yuan.
But it is more noteworthy that the brand also made more than 20 million-level products a hit at the same time, ranging from wide-leg pants, sports pants to sunglasses, face masks, backpacks and hats, realizing the outbreak of all categories.
This is no exception, but the result of the platform providing industry-exclusive traffic packages, channel exposure positions and category day activity resources for key categories such as outdoor sports. When a category is systematically supported, good products will promote themselves like a snowball.
Another noteworthy trend is the role change of the search field in promotions. In the past, search in interest e-commerce was regarded as part of the "shelf field", which mainly undertook users' query behavior after they had clear purchase intentions. But during this year's 618 event, "search after viewing" has become an important bridge connecting content and business. After users are inspired by watching short videos or live broadcasts, they often directly search for relevant keywords on the platform.
When users take the initiative to search, it means that they have completed the psychological transition from passive browsing to active purchase demand, and the conversion efficiency at this time is much higher than that of passive recommendation.
Product supply is no longer a passive behavior of "putting on shelves and waiting for sales", but a systematic strategy that needs to be actively designed. New product launch can become the engine of promotion, the search field is a stable increment worthy of deep cultivation, and "implicit supply" such as spot goods and delivery speed are playing an increasingly important role in user experience and platform traffic allocation.
Smoothing the "last mile" of transactions
The combination of price and services is