Last year, we shared 3 ways Bilibili can help to grow your business; Bilibili has grown tremendously since then. In 2021, one out of every two young people under 35 use Bilibili, which is 86% of 237 million monthly active users on the platform; this includes 20.9 million monthly paying users. There was a 62% increase in the user base since Q2 of 2020. Users spend more than 80 minutes per day on Bilibili generating an average of 4.7 billion interactions monthly.

Bilibili is not just an ACG (Anime Comics Gaming) content platform, and this is reflected in the company’s new slogan “All the videos you love are on Bilibili”. The company aims to cover all content aspects with this newly established direction. It has expanded to fashion, lifestyle, recipes, and educational content. Bilibili also has an extremely balanced user base of 51% male users and 49% female users. Therefore, it is considered to be the Chinese video platform most similar to Youtube. However, Bilibili is differentiated from YouTube with its own “Bullet comment feature” and its own core subculture communities and hashtags. 

How can brands integrate e-commerce with Bilibili?

Since Influencer marketing is the biggest marketing trend right now, collaborating with KOLs on Bilibili is becoming much more common. To support the KOLs on the platform, Bilibili launched “Huahuo”, an official KOL selection platform. Also, brands can track e-commerce conversion driven by Bilibili KOLs if brands go through HuaHuo to set up the collaboration campaign. 

There are 2 official ways to promote your brand and measure performance on Bilibili, these 2 ways help to facilitate sales-driven collaborations between brands and KOLs:

1. Yaoyue: It is a verb meaning “invite” in Mandarin. Brands can pick KOLs suitable for their brands and confirm the collaboration through Huahuo. The product is shown as an ad tag on the video screen and also as a clickable caption below the video to drive traffic to online stores. Brands could measure the clicks and sales coming from the campaign and assess the marketing effectiveness of each KOL campaign.

2. Xuanshang: It is a noun meaning “reward” in Mandarin. Brands can upload their products on Xuanshang platform so KOLs can opt-in to select products they want to promote and get a commission of 20% - 50% (Cost per sale). Yet, this option is only open to KOLs with 10K+ fans on Bilibili.

What kind of organic content should brands create to promote themselves

Since Bilibili is a very interactive platform and most audiences are Gen Z, posting excessively post-produced and professionally edited commercial content is definitely a no-go. Gen Z loves brands that are real and fun, and they love connecting with brands that have character and personality. Brands find success when they adopt Bilibili’s content strategy for a younger user base. 

A new Chinese ice-cream brand, Chicecream created a Bilibili account, “I am Chicecream”. It attracted 347k followers by making creative content, interactive videos, and using “Gen-Z language” to increase closeness with its target users. 

On the other hand, Dior created an official account on Bilibili and even posted videos that featured Chinese artists and culture, but the engagement rate is still very low. Dior’s videos on Bilibili received 100-200 views and almost 0 interactions on average (including comments and/or bullet comments). 

It could be complicated for a luxury brand like Dior to maintain its premium brand image while adapting to Bilibili’s ecosystem. Therefore, brands should test out if their products and services are suitable for Bilibili’s audience with KOL. If the response is positive, brands should consider creating their own official accounts and implementing tailored marketing strategy on this special platform. 

How to select the right influencer on Bilibili

As we mentioned in our previous blog post, engagement rate is the most crucial factor in choosing an influencer if you are looking for conversions. The following of an influencer is important but it does not dictate the selection criteria of an influencer for a brand. The calculation of the engagement rate of Bilibili KOL is average Video play / Followers. The average Bilibili KOL gets 20% of their followers to view at least 1 minute when top KOLs get above 50% of their followers to do the same.

The price tag is also a key criteria in selecting the right influencer on Bilbili. Most influencers in the west are okay with providing marketing services for the products or services they promote. Yet, influencers in China mostly prefer monetary rewards, a campaign with an influencer with 100k followers starts from around 3000 USD but the number varies depending on the engagement rate, popularity, and positioning of the influencer. 

Need our help on Bilibili?

If Gen Z is your target customer and you want to expand your business to China, Bilibili is one of the ideal platforms to do so. Do you have any further questions on what you’ve read today? Or are you ready to take your brand to the next level? Send us an email at info@catalystagents.com or fill in the contact form below and let us help you get started.