How Chinese products can be exported to other countries: lessons from the success of beauty products

In recent years, the rise of Chinese cosmetics has been witnessed by all. With the development of economic globalization, more and more Chinese cosmetics brands have gone abroad and targeted overseas markets. In 2020, the "first year of cosmetics going overseas", Chinese cosmetics collectively "went overseas" to grab the huge overseas market.

We enter the beauty keyword "makeup" in Amazon's operating tool Amz Chart , and we can find that the traffic of cosmetics-related keywords and long-tail keywords is still very good, and the CVR (purchase rate) is also the highest. Although Amazon's dividends are getting smaller and smaller, if you grab the long-tail keywords with high traffic, the income will still be considerable.

(Data source: Amz Chart )

One of the most representative brands of Chinese products going overseas is Perfect Diary . The brand has achieved good results in the Southeast Asian market. Taking its performance on Shopee, the largest cross-border e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, as an example, in April this year , Perfect Diary topped the sales list of makeup products in Singapore and Vietnam, and ranked first in the lip makeup category in Malaysia, and ranked first in the loose powder category in the Philippines.

There must be a reason why Perfect Diary has achieved such success. So what can Chinese brand sellers learn from it?

1. Determine the first market based on data and research results

It is usually difficult for Chinese DTC (Direct To Consumer) companies to expand to the global market in one step, so they usually choose one market as a pioneer.

For example, the fast fashion brand Shein targeted the Middle East market in its early stages because of the high income of the Middle Eastern population but the low level of development of fashion categories; the established domestic sports brand Huili targeted the lower-end market in North America in its early stages because of the pragmatic consumption needs of middle- and low-income groups; and Huaxizi, also a beauty brand, chose the Japanese market as its first stop for expansion due to its similar culture and skin types.

The first choice for Chinese DTC products to go overseas must be a careful conclusion after user research and data analysis. One of the main reasons why Perfect Diary chose the Southeast Asian market as its outpost for going overseas is that Southeast Asian users' understanding of beauty products is still very immature.

SellerCenter, a tool that focuses on monitoring functions for AliExpress and Shopify, investigated the sales trends of new cosmetics and personal care products in many Southeast Asian countries on the AliExpress platform and found that many new products will show a clear upward trend in the early stage of listing, but usually will fall rapidly in less than a month, such as the nail polish in the picture below:

(Data source: FindNiche)

On the one hand, this reflects the curiosity of local buyers, and on the other hand, it is because consumers are still very " ignorant " about beauty products themselves . Through effective KOL and community guidance, it is easier to establish their recognition and dependence on the brand, and the cultural proximity will not make the product obviously "unsuitable" in the local area, which is the main reason why Perfect Diary chose Southeast Asia as the first stop for its overseas expansion.

2. Platform selection: everything is centered on the brand

Despite its success in the cross-border overseas market, Perfect Diary has not yet entered Amazon. The main reason is that Amazon’s logic is product-oriented, while Perfect Diary focuses on branding .

Therefore, Perfect Diary chose Alibaba's Southeast Asian e-commerce platform Lazada and Tencent's Shopee instead of Amazon when it went global. Lazada and Shopee have similarities with Tmall in terms of product and brand operation logic, and they also provide strong support for brands.

As of now, Perfect Diary’s Shopee store has 34.88K fans, and the number of comments has reached 28.26K.

In addition to the platform, Perfect Diary chose Shopify to build its own overseas brand website. This is not difficult to understand. In the overseas market, consumers are very tolerant and receptive to self-operated websites. Although Shopify itself does not bring its own traffic, with the help of social media, it can better attract users and convert them into its own private domain traffic.

From the figure below we can see that after two or three years of intensive cultivation in social media, Perfect Diary currently has 255K fans on Instagram and 1.82K fans on Facebook.

(Data source: SellerCenter)

3. Celebrity Effect + Evaluation-based Social Media Advertising Marketing

As mentioned above, most users in Southeast Asia are still "ignorant" about beauty products . In fact, this situation also existed in China several years ago. Chinese users' understanding of beauty products is largely due to the extensive popularization of KOLs.

As one of the earliest domestic skincare brands to adopt the KOL promotion route , Perfect Diary has extensive experience in KOL promotion. At the same time, many of its collaborations with celebrities can be directly replicated in the Southeast Asian market.

As of the end of 2020, Perfect Diary has reached cooperation with 15,000 KOLs at home and abroad, and more than 800 KOLs have more than one million fans.

In addition, Perfect Diary is actively looking for celebrity endorsements . For example, it invited Vietnamese pop singer AMEE to become Perfect Diary's first Vietnamese lip makeup brand ambassador and Malaysian local star Charlene Choi to recommend Perfect Diary's lucky carp product series, allowing the brand to reach more local young women.

(Image source: Internet)

In addition, Perfect Diary keeps pace with the times - reviews and product recommendations are products of the times, and Perfect Diary strives to seize the traffic trend.

On the one hand, Perfect Diary has also put a large number of evaluation or unboxing-style ads on Facebook and other channels. From the actual display effect, it has reached 60K+ displays in a month, which is relatively successful. On the other hand, with the increasing social attributes of e-commerce, beauty consumers also need a community platform to share comments and experiences with other beauty enthusiasts. At the same time, consumers need correct information to help them make purchasing decisions.

Perfect Diary has a "content creator team" among its fan base at home and abroad , who recommend products to users and share skin care knowledge, etc. Some content sharers are directly presented as staff members, and there are also sharers who "disguise" themselves as ordinary users.

After several years of social marketing in China, Perfect Diary has built a system from sharing to product promotion to sales and services, which can achieve a certain level of user stickiness and remarketing efficiency.

Overseas, this social marketing model has been slightly adjusted, with the help of Messenger, changing from question and answer to promotion and then to sales and service .

First, Perfect Diary set up automatic reply questions in Messenger, such as "How to place an order?", "How to track package information?", etc. Users can get automatic replies after selecting common questions. This mode is not unfamiliar to domestic users who often visit Taobao.

At the same time, if you have interacted with Perfect Diary on Messenger, the official will also proactively push the latest activities or product links to users. This model is similar to domestic social marketing, which completes secondary marketing through the method of planting grass.

(Data source: BigSpy)

Of course, in recent years, more and more domestic products have been exported. This is not only the integration of world trade, but also the trend of e-commerce. If domestic manufacturers want to seize the opportunity of going overseas, they must start to research the market and prepare their brands.

The article comes from a cross-border small internet celebrity submission

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