In recent years, omni-channel strategy has been a trend in maternal product industry. As the outbreak of Covid-19 this year, brands in baby food & infant formula industry, whose off-line sales market prevailed previously, turned bullish on online sales market and hoped to gain more new consumers via digital marketing. However, the game is different online. How to catch peoples eyes? How to increase brands public recognition and enjoy greater popularity? How to manage the costs of new consumer  acquisition and create a better conversion rate? All these need to be taken into consideration in this industry.

Recently, Mead Johnson Nutrition, a leading manufacturer of infant formula, has seleced Tik Tok Ocean Engine(tiktok official engine) as one of the key media platforms, to promote its new product launch of Mead Johnson Total grow. Short video has became a dominant format  for social content marketing in recent years. With more than 600 Million Daily Active Users (DAU) in China, Tik Tok is one of the most influential worldwide short video platforms without doubt.By deeply collaborating with Tik Tok, Mead Johnson was able to reach all the young mums in China efficiently and effectively. Within two months, this attempt paid off quite well in exposure and discoverability, attracted new consumers and achieved sales conversion via result-link practice. Besides, the cost of acquiring new users was lower than the full-channel market of maternal and child brand by 44%; overall CPA dropped by 17.5%; ROI increased by 93.2%, making it the benchmark case in milk powder market.

Phase 1 Campaign Launch | Building brand awareness and product education on target audience (TA) through mass exposure
The new brand Total grow was launched in July, this was the first stage of the campaign. By leveraging the influential power of the brands spokesperson, Lei Wu (Leo Wu), this campaign utilized the platform Topview resources to maximize exposure. Meanwhile, with big data advantage of the platform, the campaign was able to precisely reach the maternal and child (0-3) audience group and the fan bases of the celebrity. The first launch gained 74% coverage rate of the Brand TA via frequency-capping touch scheme, leaving a deep impression of the brand and successfully delivered the product benefits to the TA.

Phase 2 Campaign Conversion | First attempt to convert the reached audience to brand users and continuous to expand the user pool
After one month of mass exposure, the second stage of the campaign was set in August. This part, we utilized the content feeds bidding mechanism on Tik Tok to convert the reached audience to brand users, and continuous expanding the brand user pool. In terms of content, various types of video were implemented, including celebrity endorsements TVC, viral videos from KOLs, and word-of-mouth recommendation videos from KOCs. These videos were spreading to every corner of the platform. Under a saturated coverage mechanism, brand awareness was significantly increased among TA. Regarding the TA pool selecion, besides the repeat reach on the brand TA, a new set of user pool was selected to test the acceptability of the SKU.

Phase 3 Campaign 2nd Wave | Stimulate purchase with various recommendation message through repeat branding exposure
The third stage campaign set in September, focused on further branding education to stimulate purchase. In this stage, a new version of the spokesperson TVC was launched for repeat exposure through brand Topview. For those who already reached by the campaign in the first two stages, a new set of recommendation message was implemented in the this stage to stimulate purchase of these group of audiences. At the same time, a large number of maternal and child KOLs were used in this stage to act as supplementary reach for the content strategy. As a result, a new set of potential consumers was attracted by the contents, laying a solid foundation for the final conversion phase with reputation.

Phase 4 Continuous Conversion | Further effort to convert the target audience to brand users and  continuous optimization of new user acquisition cost
The purposes of the previous 3 phases were to find the initial core consumers, identify the interest and benefit point of TA, so that we can further optimize the audience pool selection, video content strategy, SKU benefits, to complete the sales conversion. In terms of the audience pool selection, a new dimension was added into consideration, which was the user purchase history, to better identify the potential consumers; in terms of the content strategy, TA interest and benefit points were added in to improve the celebrity/KOL/KOC video quality, and more effective SKU was used based on the feedback. Finally, all the efforts were paid out in the final phase, with a very outstanding result, the cost of acquiring new customers is lower than the all-channel market of maternal and child brand by 44%; Overall CPA dropped by 17.5%; ROI increased by 93.2%.

As a strategic product of Mead Johnson Nutrition 2020, Mead Johnson Total grow made brave attempt of effect-link marketing on Tik Tok, which finally cut the cost of attracting new customers in the industry and became a benchmark case in the industry. In the process of publicity, the brand and effect were not separated. Instead, brand and effect-link placement were well integrated in different stages. As a long-term procedure, this four-stage recommendation campaign monitored platform contents, kept track of customer minds, polished resources and contents, and optimized personas and SKU immediately. Meanwhile, effect-link placement is accompanied with its interest, reaching the goal of harvesting customers. This marketing campaign makes Mead Johnson Total grow become a successful example in effect-link strategy, offering cross-industrial reference values.

This year, Ocean Engine build the effect-link marketing chain together with diversions of Mead Johnson Nutrition, following the path, high-quality item, precise personas, resource optimization, sophisticated operations. In practices, Ocean Engine concludes three major points:

Precise audience and product: build the best conversion portfolio
In the course of recommendation, hashtags from big data platform are utilized to track target users. This high-coverage recommendation reaches multiple groups and makes the exposure of the new item a great success, from celebrities to influencers. Previous targeted users are converted during the interval and then, after a short period, the second touch reaches potential customers and chooses the best SKU test based on products.

Diverse content: word-of-mouth and recommendation marketing stimulate customers consumption
Brand building, with multi-dimensional content matric, consists of celebrity endorsements, KOL recommendation, KOL in low layer and KOC word-of-mouth marketing, etc. With this multiple content sharing, customers in a broader and deeper circle can also be reached. Meanwhile, Topview and feeds videos are leveraged to recommendation conversion, such efforts paid off with a new marketing trial, content-product marketing.

Sophisticated operation: effect-link strategy, high-conversion rate and harvest in an effective way
As for the new item, Ocean Engine owns a solid strategy, brand advertisement, KOLs recommendation, and bidding ad. conversion. The data shows multi-touch combination advertisement outweighs in conversion than single-touch ad. Reasonable purchase and placement in resources, based on different IP and business, can help advertisers cross the threshold in ROI.

Major points contribute to e-commerce influencer marketing under effect-link strategy, which are listed as follows:
Brand reach: strong connect between goods and brands + reaching targeted groups. We manage to increase recognition among maternal and child groups through marketing sessions.
Influencer marketing: goods recommendation from influencer + word-of-mouth marketing. As KOLs are knowledgeable on certain topics and have strong appeal to targeted audience, they can easily build up trust endorsements for brands.
Performance advertising: directional harvest of groups that are eager to order the must-buy goods, and make brand trendy goods take off.
Official accounts running: render single-item fans into brand followers, and speed up the pace of settlement of brand equity.

Since the year of 2020, Ocean Engine thinks in customers shoes, explore the path of effect-link placement. In the near future, Ocean Engine will develop its all-round service capabilities. While increasing exposure and user interaction, it will help customers secure steady growth in business, and will be proud to be part of the business growth in milk powder industry.