China’s social media landscape is different from Europe or North America.
The “Great Firewall of China” means that YouTube and Instagram are blocked. Still, foreign companies using TikTok will be happy to know that the Middle Kingdom’s Douyin is similar to its Western cousin.
Douyin caters to a Chinese-only audience while TikTok is its international version, so companies should be aware the app works a little differently, and its ability to be used for marketing purposes may be unfamiliar too.
In this article, I will compare Douyin to TikTok, explain how to use it for marketing, and provide three examples of companies that successfully used the app. By the end, you should understand how Douyin can help your brand in China.
How Does Douyin Differ From TikTok?
As stated previously, the fact that Douyin is only for China already sets it apart from TikTok. Besides the obvious language difference, a few other differences come from Douyin having a different target market.
Demographics
Of course, if TikTok is aimed at an international audience, its videos can be shared across countries. For example, a person eating a meal in Italy can be seen by someone watching TikTok in Canada.
This CAN happen on Douyin, but it usually takes the shape of someone downloading a video from a foreign app and uploading it to the Chinese app with subtitles.
Because Douyin is focused on China, the age demographics are different too.
While TikTok’s main audience tends to be between 10–19 years old (25% of the user base), 30% of Douyin’s are 18–24 year-olds.
Type of Content on Douyin & TikTok
Some Videos Found on Douyin
Besides the difference between Chinese and international content, Douyin’s most popular content tends to be about extraordinary things or people.
- introducing their cute pets,
- trending products,
- showing off their good looks,
- performing, or
- displaying their skills.
To Chinese individuals, the app is a place for telling emotional stories, sharing knowledge, and expressing their lifestyle.
Douyin is also more about products than TikTok, which benefits brands as it encourages discussion of the products.
The app has less political content than TikTok, meaning there is more room to focus on other topics like brand products and lifestyle.
Searching on Douyin & TikTok
Douyin’s Search Page
TikTok content is prioritized and localized like Facebook’s, with local content being pushed first, and larger accounts in shared cultural regions like East Asia (e.g., Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) being promoted across multiple areas.
On Douyin, search rankings depend on keywords, follower count, and likes, with verified business accounts getting higher priority.
Content recommendation focuses on factors like traffic pools, cumulative recommendations, popularity weighting, and user psychology.
E-Commerce on Douyin
Launched in 2016, Douyin has been around longer in China than TikTok which was released a year later.
The app has been playing a role in e-commerce for a little longer too.
TikTok Shop was released worldwide in late 2023, but Douyin opened its marketplace feature in 2022. In some countries, this feature is yet to be included.
Overall, China has a bigger livestreaming culture than North America.
According to the multinational consultancy firm McKinsey & Company, “China is the most mature of all live-commerce markets. We found that 57 percent of live-commerce users in the country have used the shopping format for more than three years, compared with just 5 to 7 percent of live-commerce users in Europe, Latin America, and the United States.”
Therefore, it’s no surprise that Douyin’s connection to selling products differs quite a lot from its international counterpart.
Douyin’s User Experience
Let’s now examine Douyin’s user interface.
Douyin’s Basic Interface
Douyin’s & TikTok’s Interfaces Side by Side
As you can see, when a user first opens up either app, they look similar.
Both apps share similar buttons on the right-hand side: profile, love, chat, bookmark, and share.
The difference at the bottom is that amongst the home, friends, plus, and profile buttons, there is an “inbox” instead of an “info” button.
Another difference is that Douyin has many more buttons at the top of the screen. As well as containing TikTok’s “Following” and “For You,” Douyin has these additional options:
- Popular
- Live Videos
- Specially Selected
- Same City
- Following
- Shop
- Suggested
The app has more features than TikTok too. Any company wishing to promote on the app should consider this when setting up a marketing campaign.
For example, the “Same City” button may give companies more ability to pay attention to local news or public figures when crafting marketing ideas.
The “Shop” button on Douyin means that the app pushes product sales more than TikTok does in the United States.
On Douyin, the “Popular” button may play to the strengths of big brands and celebrities, while the “Same City” or “Specially Selected” (below) tabs offer lesser-known companies more opportunities to demonstrate their unique attributes.
As TikTok’s interface only has two choices (“Following” and “For You”), there may be more competition for users’ attention as content is not divided up as much.
Douyin’s “Specially Selected” Interface
After comparing these two interfaces, we can conclude that Douyin prioritizes user experience.
Douyin’s Search Tabs
Now that we have covered the basics of Douyin’s user experience, let’s see how the search bar works.
Douyin”s & TikTok’s Search Pages Compared
Above is a screenshot of TikTok’s and Douyin’s search pages, and similar to the main interface, Douyin has more going on than TikTok.
TikTok has suggestions based on the user’s previous searches, Douyin has this plus many other search buttons for the following rankings:
- Popular
- Livestreaming
- Group purchasing
- Brand
- Music
- Seeding
- Video
The popular tab is pretty straightforward: This shows the most popular topics overall on the app; however, there is always something related to politics or economics at the very top.
Douyin’s “Popular Rankings”
The live streaming rankings (below) inform the user of the live streamer’s name, and how many followers they have.
Douyin’s Live Stream Rankings
The other rankings work similarly.
Companies may be particularly interested in the group buying, brand, and seedling rankings.
As the name suggests, Douyin’s group buying rankings show what companies sell the most through videos or live streams. Companies wanting to market in China can pay attention to these rankings and research the methods of the brands in the upper echelons.
Douyin’s Group Buying Interface
The brand rankings are similar but are more about what companies and items are being searched for the most. What is impressive about Douyin’s layout is that everything is broken down by industry.
Douyin’s Phone &Beauty Rankings
The seedling rankings do need some explanation.
“Seedling” is an online slang word referring to how a product gets placed on social media just like a seed in the ground. Seeds gradually grow into plants and products eventually become popular through the constant media attention.
These rankings are important to pay attention to because products, not just brands, are honed in on.
In the below picture, we can see that the new Venom movie appears at the top of the rankings.
Douyin’s Seeding Rankings
The Most Recent Venom Movie
The item in particular that is highlighted in the rankings is a Venom costume being worn by the fashion blogger, Grace Chow.
Grace Chow in a Venom Outfit
This is followed by reviews of Honor’s new phone, the Magic7.
Douyin’s Search Bar
The most important aspect of the search page is, of course, the search bar.
When a user searches for a company on Douyin (Lululemon, for example), the search pulls up the name of the company followed by a list of related items.
Let’s tap on the first search result “Lululemon.”
At the very top of this page is a menu containing the following:
- All
- Items
- Shop
- Livestreams
- Videos
Below these options is another menu featuring the top items that Lululemon sells.
This is followed by Lululemon’s store and one of the most popular videos related to the company.
Search Results for Lululemon on Douyin
Scroll down some more and you’ll find Lululemon’s items and a link to a Baidu page detailing the company’s history.
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Now that we’ve gone over the basics of search on Douyin, let’s view what the app’s accounts look like.
Douyin Accounts
Above is a picture of Lululemon’s personal page on Douyin, and the company’s logo is in the upper left. The blue checkmark underneath the name means Lululemon is a verified account.
Users are wary of unofficial accounts and impersonators, so the little blue verification badge gives credibility.
Below Lululemon’s logo are all the videos the company has released on the app.
Companies wishing to appeal to a Chinese audience may consider setting up a page on Douyin to give your brand a face.
Marketing on Douyin
Now let’s cover how Douyin can be used for branding.
SEO on Douyin
When marketing on social media, understanding an app’s search engine optimization (SEO) is essential.
As we saw earlier, Douyin is more focused on selling items than TikTok, so we can anticipate that the app’s search function pushes up content related to products.
However, there are other things a company needs to consider, and in this section, I want to examine Douyin’s SEO in greater depth.
Account SEO
There are six primary aspects of SEO when it comes to how accounts are ranked on Douyin:
- Account Verticality: How well does an account stick to one topic or theme?
- Number of Followers: How many people follow the account?
- Quality of Content: How good or engaging is the content?
- Quantity: How much content on a specific account is of good quality or has been engaged with?
- Positive Feedback: How many likes, comments, or shares does an account’s content get?
- Livestream Activity: How often does an account participate in livestreams and how well do those livestreams perform?
Examining Douyin’s luxury fashion rankings, Coach is at number one, which probably means they managed all aspects of SEO well.
Content SEO
Accounts, however, are only half of the story when it comes to SEO. Companies also need to understand how content SEO works.
For Douyin, videos are ranked based on the following:
- How well content answers the needs of users
- A video’s relevance to target keywords
- How many users have interacted with the content through comments or likes
With all types of social media, keywords are an essential part of content creation, and these can help Douyin understand what your content is about which facilitates the search process.
The consensus among Doujin content creators is that longer keywords better connect with niche audiences instead of shorter, broader terms. Douyin is a competitive app and China is a large country with many companies, so detailed keywords can help a company get around this pain point.
Remember, keywords don’t only need to go in a video’s description, but it may be a good idea to include the keywords in the audio and title of a video.
You may also analyze competitors in your industry to find out what keywords they use in their videos.
Hey Tea & Starbucks Both Utilized the Same Hashtag to Promote Their Drinks
Above, for example, we see two cafe companies using the same hashtag “Who said Guangzhou doesn’t have winter?”
Think About Your Product & Target Audience
To use Douyin’s SEO correctly, a company must first brainstorm ideas for its target audience.
It is also important to conduct market research to decipher what types of products people in China are currently interested in—This will give you some ideas about what keywords to use.
Don’t forget to look into your competition and how your brand matches up with them. Sometimes, aiming for a smaller niche audience is better than trying to take on a large consumer base that already has a lot of companies vying for their attention.
As you can see from the picture above, China has many people interested in alternative fashion, art, and culture. You don’t always have to pitch your content to a mainstream audience.
Timing Matters
Another aspect to remember when making content on Douyin, or even when you choose to go live on the app, is timing.
Maybe you are a tourism company and one of the main national holidays in China is at the beginning of October. Therefore, it might be best to release a deal on Douyin at the time of the year when most people are beginning to purchase flights or tours.
A Video of a Popular Chinese Tourist Destination
Another important aspect of timing is Douyin’s events.
Super Brand Day takes place around November 11th, also known as “11/11” or “Double Eleven” (a well-known Chinese shopping holiday dedicated to singles), which is comparable to Black Friday in the United States.
This exclusive yearly Douyin event invites brands to advertise discounts and products, and foreign companies should pay attention to Douyin’s schedule to see when they can participate.
Get Users Involved With Your Douyin Campaigns
One advantage to keywords apart from its search function is that they can help you build brand awareness. By creating fun hashtags, for example, a company can push fans of the brand to post videos related to your products.
Using hashtags to create limited-time events, such as a product launch, is also an option.
For example, a brand launching a new clothing line for the winter season may want to ask customers to take videos of themselves wearing the outfits in wintery locations.
By creating a hashtag for this event, a company can encourage users to add it to their videos so others who come across the content can join.
During these events, you may give a prize to the video with the most interactions.
Brand Ambassadors on Douyin
An official account is not the only way a company can make itself appear more official on Douyin, nor is it the only way the app can be used to improve a company’s branding in China.
Considering brand ambassadors is another method.
Brand ambassadors are usually celebrities who collaborate with a company online to take pictures or film videos containing a brand’s products.
Brand ambassadors can come from any industry. Currently, however, Chinese consumers seem to prefer actors and singers the most.
Use Douyin Influencers
You may want to choose influencers instead of brand ambassadors. Companies seeking to sell in China don’t need to spend much on these collaborations.
Influencers are people on Douyin who already have a decent following.
Companies can choose influencers with millions of followers or ones with smaller audiences. The key is understanding what type of people follow particular influencers and whether their content aligns with your product.
An Influencer on Douyin Journeys into a Sam’s Club Supermarket
Ad Campaigns on Douyin
Let’s look at how a few companies have successfully utilized the app.
Lululemon’s Branding Campaign on Douyin
Despite Lululemon having been around in China for some time, Lululemon is a newcomer to Douyin (last autumn), but is a great example of how a company could use the app for branding.
Over three months, the company aired 74 livestream e-commerce events in preparation for its Douyin store launch in January of 2024, which was a tactical choice as it coincided with the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration.
Lululemon wasted no time at all.
Their first day on Douyin saw them release a new clothing line and partner with actress Michelle Yeoh to publish a short film entitled “Be Spring.”
The Short Film “Be Spring”
Their launch campaign didn’t end there.
In the weeks following the opening of their store, they advertised a new product on Douyin every day. Although Lululemon continued to use its TMall account (another e-commerce app), it released all of these items earlier on Douyin, thus incentivizing users to follow them on the app.
Lululemon made sure to use Douyin’s livestreaming feature as well.
After the company’s Douyin launch, they invited their brand ambassadors to give pilates classes while wearing the new spring-themed clothing.
Additionally, Lululemon created the #狠狠抓住春天 (Grab Spring) hashtag for this campaign where Douyin users were invited to compete against one another by wearing Lululemon clothing while doing springtime activities.
The campaign was a success.
In no time, its brand amassed 328,000 fans on the app, and by the end of January, Lululemon was ranked sixth place on Douyin’s top brand bankings despite the products being pricier than many of its competitors.
You may be thinking, “Lululemon is a well-known brand. Of course, they would do well on Douyin.” This may be true, but their methods can be recreated for success.
To show this, let’s look at a smaller cosmetic brand that used Douyin effectively.
Funny Elves
Chinese cosmetics brand Funny Elves’ Douyin strategy looks rather similar to Lululemon.
They too partnered with someone famous to get the motor moving on the app. However, instead of partnering with a famous movie star, the company aimed lower by connecting with mid-level influencers in 2022.
The company is still using this strategy in 2024, and between January and June, two-thirds of the company’s sales came from their influencers.
TikTokers Trying Funny Elves’ Products
As shown above, Lululemon’s success was partly due to the company connecting its product with the outlook of its users. As a clothing company, it is known for releasing a new line of clothing every season, which resonates with Chinese consumers who see springtime as a special time of the year.
But what can companies that don’t sell clothes do?
Funny Elves’s campaign on Douyin can answer this question.
Although the company sells cosmetics, it still follows the same strategy of understanding its customers and products. However, instead of the time of year, it focuses on answering the question, “Why do consumers not try out products from new brands?”
Such an approach may seem simplistic, but it’s important.
Funny Elves went into its market campaign humbly knowing it couldn’t compete with older brands. To overcome this, they decided to make the size of their products smaller and lower the unit price. By doing this, the company wasn’t offering a sample, but just giving customers the option of buying a smaller version of the normal product.
This strategy could be seen upon the release of the popular item “Soft Focus Setting Powder”, both 7g and 12g sizes were sold. Despite the size, the item inside and external packaging were the same.
This strategy worked because it understood that sometimes people are unwilling to buy an unfamiliar product simply due to the price.
By giving customers more choice, Funny Elves encouraged women to try out their product for the first time, earning a few new fans along the way.
One of Funny Elves’ Products
Funny Elves continued with this strategy of trying to understand the user.
For example, when it came to Douyin videos, they tried to highlight how their makeup was long-lasting and could retain its effectiveness regardless of the environment.
To do this, they had influencers use the products in different situations: outside, in the swimming pool, or in a restaurant. The company knew its customers were curious whether its makeup would still work after sweating from exercise, crying, rain, or eating hot pot.
Influencers Try on Happy Elves’ Products Doing Different Activities
Funny Elves’s determination to understand its target audience worked extremely well. By the end of 2022, the company’s monthly sales had risen from $278,963 in January to $3.48 million.
Today, its powder sells more than any of its kind on Douyin.
Auntea Jenny
The clue of what this company sells is in their name.
So far, we’ve been talking about beauty and fashion companies, so we should finish by focusing on a very different product.
The company was one of the top 10 beverage brands on Douyin in 2023. Though not in the first place, Auntea Jenny’s success here should not be overlooked.
This is China, where tea (especially milk tea among younger audiences) is huge.
Let’s examine their campaign during Douyin’s “Big Brand Day.”
Like the other two companies, Auntea Jenny began their campaign by partnering with a brand ambassador, Tian Jiarui.
Last year (2023), was a good year for Jiarui, who was earning himself the reputation as one of China’s best up-and-coming actors of the year due to his role in the hit TV series My Journey to You.
Here we see that Auntea Jenny understood their audience and the importance of timing.
Auntea Jenny’s choice of actor shows they understood their target audience. The 24-year-old (at the time) Jiarui was a good match for the tea company’s primarily young consumer base.
And what did their brand ambassador do?
To help with the campaign Auntea Jenny also launched a new peach mochi drink while promoting hashtags on Douyin to get customers to share pictures with the brand’s products.
Buying customers were given a chance to collect Tian Jiarui stickers. The company then encouraged fans to make DIY magic wands using these stickers or Jiarui’s name.
Auntea Jenny’s Products With Jiarui
Jiarui Stickers
DIY Magic Wand
To improve the reach of their campaign, they changed the wallpaper of their Douyin page.
Auntea Jenny’s campaign also went offline, with some of their budget going to advertising in shopping malls.
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Auntea Jenny stores invited influencers to comment on the company’s drinks, and some stores were even redecorated to cater to live-streaming accounts.
A Live Streamer Promoting Auntea Jenny’s Products
Lastly, Auntea Jenny used Douyin’s 11/11 event to offer membership deals, which resulted in a 72.9% increase in membership.
Overall, Auntea Jenny’s campaign led to $10 million in sales, 4.3 million short video posts, and 2.5 billion exposures.
Contact Nanjing Marketing Group
Hopefully, the above three examples highlighted how companies in different industries used Douyin to improve their branding and sales in China.
Each company knew its target audience and products before contacting celebrities or Douyin influencers to help promote campaigns but wasn’t afraid to get creative with these marketing events.
If you want to get set up on Douyin and connect with the right resources to improve your branding, please don’t hesitate to contact us.