Pu’er national park seeking exposure on Douyin

Like many other social media influencers, Dingding’s most popular video is his “singing” clip receiving more than 700,000 likes.

But Dingding is only a gibbon, which can disillusion many young humans who dream to be social media influencers. Now this monkey boasts more than 21,000 followers on Douyin, the Chinese version of Tiktok.

Pu’er Sun-River National Park is home to this gibbon and many other inhabitants. This account is only part of the park’s successful marketing strategy.

Animals with special appearance and character are well accepted online by young people. Their wide popularity is the outcome of many wild animal parks’ efforts to distinguish themselves when domestic tourism market is reviving since the beginning of this year.

A hoolock gibbon in Pu’er Sun-River National Park (Source: The Park’s WeChat official account)

Back to 2020 when tourism greatly influenced by travel restrictions, many zoos struggled with a lack of revenue. But Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo, a park on the verge of bankruptcy, went viral online as the most animal friendly zoo in China because of its daily livestreaming on social media platform. Supports poured in and it survived the most difficult time.

Wu Benhang, deputy manager of the company operating Pu’er Sun-River National Park, mentioned that his team has been investing more on social media to attract individual travelers.

“Too much investment on offline marketing cannot deliver many satisfactory outcomes now,” he said.

Wu underscored their work on routine livestreaming, a marketing approach widely used in Chinese ecommerce.

In livestreaming, a host would often interact with an animal. For example, Dingding and Ah Piao, a beautiful female worker in the park, is one of the successful cases. There have been short clips on the park’s official video accounts titled “Gibbon Dingding and Sister Ah Piao” in reaction to the audience’s enthusiasm.

Gibbon Dingding and Sister Ah Piao on Douyin

According to a list provided by Wei Zhengda, director of the park’s marketing department, the number of followers ranges from 60 to more than 70,000 among the park’s various Douyin accounts, displaying the efforts at multiple levels.

According the Wei, livestreaming has been held for 89 times in the first half of this year, attracting more than 6,400 new followers. In the same period of time, the number of concurrent viewers peaked 12,000, the maximum number of viewers in one livestreaming exceeded 200,000, and the cumulative number of viewers reached 1.4 million. All listed numbers have broken the historical records of the company.

Apart from the accounts of animal influencers operated by the park, the park also resorts to experienced human influencers. Wu said that Instagram-like Little Red Book is the most effective platform for the park to gain exposure.

“We spend about 60 percent of our marketing fees on Little Red Book and 40 percent on Douyin,” Wu broke down their marketing cost.

The park has established long-term relationships with many influencers who are willing to share their good reviews to their followers. Among these external partners, parents who like posting kids’ daily life online really make a difference since adorable children and animals could create a harmonious picture.

In one example provided by the marketing department, a mother has posted a group of photos of her children feeding egrets and caressing a little red panda, attracting more than 100 likes on Little Red Book.

An influencer posting her review on parent-child tour in the park

The pool of external influencers on various social media platform has reduced the company’s selling expenses, since the park does not have to incubate new accounts from the ground up. These influencers simultaneously increase online sales. Statistics shows that in the first half of this year, all influencer partners have helped sell over1,200 packages of services and created the total income of over 430 thousand yuan.

Wei also briefed on their marketing cost in the first half of the year.

“The cost of the accounts operated by our internal workers is close to negligible, while it has taken us about 100 thousand all together to invite those external influencers to advertise the park,” Wei said. He also remarked that the advertisement’s high conversion into sales is the outcome of niche marketing with carefully selected influencers. The market environment is also good for the business.

The reason why the park values the online exposure also marks the shift of business focus from package tour to individual tour. It once valued the great number of visitors supported by package tours in the past, but this outdated mindset could no longer adapt to the new trend of tourism consumption.

“Individual travelers are now more likely to introduce our park to their family and friends,” Wu explained the park’s consideration to accommodate diversified needs to improve the business.

The tourism sector is witnessing consumption’s revival in China. China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism has published a series of guidelines for boosting consumption in cultural and tourist activities in March. According to the document, one of the major tasks is that governments at different levels should guide enterprises in tourism sectors to drive online exposure to offline consumption through creative marketing strategies.