TikTok's playback volume exceeds 100 million! Chinese brands become dark horses in the market

Data shows that Southeast Asia has a large population base, a high proportion of young people, and a much higher fertility rate than many developed countries. Among them, the Philippines ranks first in fertility rate, with a fertility rate of 2.77 in 2023. Indonesia is second, with a fertility rate of 2.1.

Against this backdrop, many sellers of maternal and infant products have begun to pay attention to the huge potential of the Southeast Asian market, and many have taken action early to seize the market.

China's overseas teams create best-selling products, surpassing European and American brands

In the maternal and infant market dominated by European and American brands, the Chinese overseas brand MAKUKU was able to successfully stand out. What did it do right?

It is understood that MAKUKU was established in December 2021 and was founded by a Chinese overseas team that has been deeply rooted in Indonesia. The team has a lot of practical experience in Southeast Asia and has created many popular brands.

According to information, MAKUKU quickly entered the mid-to-high-end maternal and infant market in its early days and successfully stood out in an industry monopolized by American and Japanese companies. This was mainly due to the team founder's keen observation of the local market.

In Indonesia, the number of newborns each year can be stabilized at between 4 and 4.5 million, which creates an excellent consumption environment for the maternal and infant products market. At present, Indonesia's maternal and infant market is still in its early stages of development, and there is ample room for future development.

After realizing this market gap, the founders of the MAKUKU team took quick action, and with more than a decade of experience, MAKUKU quickly became well-known in Indonesia.

In terms of products, MAKUKU chose baby diapers, which have the highest repurchase rate and the largest demand. Although Southeast Asian consumers are not as sensitive to the differentiation and product strength of such products as domestic and European and American consumers, MAKUKU still spends a lot of energy and resources to improve product quality.

In less than a year since its establishment, MAKUKU has successively launched three series of products: Slim, Comfort and Pro Care, targeting different segments of the population with different needs in the mid-to-high-end market.

The first series launched was the Slim series, which not only helped MAKUKU establish its brand image, but also won the trust of many consumers. The Comfort series, which focused on cost-effectiveness, was then launched to quickly capture market share. The Pro Care series is a high-end diaper product launched by MAKUKU, which has a place in the Indonesian high-end diaper market.

Initially, MAKUKU mainly relied on offline distribution models to open up sales in Indonesia. Only after gaining a firm foothold did the team begin to consider developing online channels.

After entering mainstream e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia such as Lazada and Shopee, MAKUKU's product sales have been boosted to a certain extent, but its brand effect has still not been maximized.

Based on this situation, the MAKUKU team decisively chose to open a TikTok store, and this choice directly helped the brand start a new round of growth model.

Brand exposure exceeded 100 million, MAKUKU is so popular on TikTok!

In the second half of 2022, MAKUKU divided its marketing department into two independent departments: brand and e-commerce, and took the opportunity to increase its operations and investment on the TikTok platform.

At present, MAKUKU has opened TikTok stores in multiple sites. The largest and earliest one is the Indonesian store. Its official account has 1.1 million followers and its videos have received over 4 million likes.

After searching, it was found that the content under this account is mostly short family situational videos, which introduce products through conversations between two people. Although this model has long been outdated in China, it still seems to have a good effect in Southeast Asia.

In addition to operating the official account, another major way for MAKUKU to promote on TikTok is influencer marketing. By establishing connections with local influencers and sending samples to influencers with different fan bases, these influencers will shoot short videos and post them on social media such as TikTok, helping the brand to quickly achieve a cold start.

Data shows that in the early days of MAKUKU’s entry into TikTok, it reached cooperation with more than 500 influencers on average every month, and each influencer released an average of 4 promotional videos, which formed a huge brand video matrix in a short period of time, greatly increasing the brand exposure. The TikTok search page shows that the exposure of Makuku’s related topics has increased from 20 million to 100 million in a short period of time.

The person in charge of the MAKUKU site said that for small and medium-sized sellers with insufficient budgets, they can choose to cooperate with full-commission experts. Full-commission experts or bottom-level experts generally charge lower fees, or only charge a certain percentage of sales, which is very friendly to small and medium-sized sellers.

On the other hand, in order to further enhance users' sensitivity to the MAKUKU brand, its operations team also launched a brand topic challenge event and invited top celebrities from Indonesia and many KOLs in the maternal and child vertical fields to participate in the event. This event successfully helped MAKUKU increase its fans by nearly 100,000.

Recently, MAKUKU has also started official live broadcasts, which, combined with some promotional methods in the live broadcast room, can quickly convert the brand exposure accumulated in the early stage into GMV.

The person in charge of MAKUKU's Philippines site shared that live streaming has very high requirements for anchors, so when the company recruits anchors, it usually chooses college graduates from prestigious universities, or practitioners with relevant live streaming experience. The company will also conduct systematic training before they take up their posts.

After looking at a series of operations, we can find that MAKUKU is indeed good at building a brand. No wonder it can quickly become popular in Southeast Asia.

More fragrant than Europe and the United States? Southeast Asia's maternal and infant market has great potential

Although the current Southeast Asian maternal and infant market is not a blue ocean, its future growth potential is still considerable.

Data shows that the fertility rate in the Philippines will be 2.77 in 2023, while that in Indonesia will be 2.1. In addition, the proportion of multi-child families in Southeast Asia is also high, with each woman in the Philippines giving birth to 2.49 children, Indonesia 2.27, and Vietnam 2.05.

On the other hand, Southeast Asia’s mobile Internet facilities are also constantly improving, and countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have gradually adapted to the model of short videos and live streaming.

This environment is very suitable for Chinese overseas brands to take root and sprout. For those maternal and infant product sellers who have been deeply involved in Europe and the United States, they can investigate the current Southeast Asian maternal and infant market and perhaps discover new business opportunities.

TikTok

Southeast Asia

Mother and Baby