5 tips for brand live streaming marketing!

Marketing should go where consumers' attention is. This is the basic principle of the attention economy, and this principle has been reflected more quickly in the era of mobile Internet.

In 2019, when live streaming sales just became popular, many companies began to try it.

This is enough to show how big the live streaming trend is. Although live streaming marketing has become a major trend, most of the current live streaming is actually focused on selling goods, as if selling goods has become the only way and purpose of live streaming marketing.

But as I have said repeatedly before, the role of brand marketing in live streaming is actually underestimated.

In my article "CEOs do live streaming not to sell goods", I compared the differences between Taobao Live and Douyin Live. Simply put, Douyin and Kuaishou are e-commerce platforms with content genes, while Taobao Live is an e-commerce platform with promotion genes. The conclusion is to create branding where you create content, and do promotion where you create sales. Brand content determines the upper limit of live streaming marketing.

Looking at a longer timeline, only by combining high-quality content with an attractive brand can we reach the target user group efficiently and long-term, complete marketing and conversion of the user group, and promote brand growth.

It has not been long since companies fully embraced live streaming marketing, but in this short period of time, some typical models have emerged. I think if you summarize, absorb and apply these models, you may be able to do a better job of live streaming marketing in the long term in the future.

01 Live broadcast with celebrity endorsement

Celebrity endorsement is one of the most commonly used marketing methods in traditional advertising. The brand pays a fee to the spokesperson, and the spokesperson gives his or her own personality and label to the brand. At the same time, the spokesperson uses the celebrity's fame to quickly open up the market and establish influence.

There are two key points to traditional celebrity endorsements: one is long-term, which allows celebrities to give their own personality to the brand; the other is repetition, which allows the brand’s characteristics to occupy the mind.

Nowadays, many celebrities do live streaming to sell goods, which is fine from the perspective of selling goods. From a brand marketing perspective, the problem is that celebrities have to promote dozens of products in one live broadcast, which means that their labels are spread across dozens of brands. As a result, no brand truly has the characteristics of the celebrity.

The solutions given by some brands are special live broadcasts and phased long-term live broadcasts.

For example, when Bestore released new children's snacks, it invited the emoji sister Liu Mintao to conduct a special live broadcast. Her identities as a celebrity and a mother make her temperament consistent with the brand appeal of Bestore's children's snacks. In an hour and a half, Liu Mintao gave the new product a "healthy and caring" tone, and also allowed more than 3 million viewers who participated in the live broadcast that day to form a preliminary impression of the new product.

The number of followers of the Bestore Douyin corporate account used for live broadcast on that day increased by 32%. Obviously, the brand will continue to influence these fans in the future.

Another case is Perfect Diary, which invited eight celebrities to live broadcast for eight consecutive nights from May 24 to 31. They were Luo Yunxi, R1SE Yan Xujia, Zhu Zhengting, Qin Niu Zhengwei, R1SE Zhai Xiaowen, R1SE Zhang Yanqi, Zhang Meng, and Lou Yixiao, all of whom are young and fashionable traffic stars.

As mentioned above, long-term is an important factor in endorsement. The fact that celebrities of the same type live-streamed with Perfect Diary for 8 consecutive nights has given Perfect Diary its own brand image to a certain extent. At this level, these live broadcasts are not just about selling goods, but also have elements of brand building.

02 IP-based live broadcast

The popularity of live streaming has attracted many CEOs to enter the live streaming room. Zhang Jiayin, CEO of McDonald's China, Sun Laichun, President of Lin Qingxuan, Wang Cheng, CEO of TCL Industrial, Liang Jianzhang of Ctrip and others have jointly added fuel to the fire of live streaming sales.

But I think that compared to selling goods, what is more important is the creation and influence of the IP of corporate leaders. Jack Welch, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have always been the spokespersons for General Electric, Microsoft and Apple. Their strong business management capabilities and unique personal charm have become important IP and brand logos of the companies.

CEO live streaming is an opportunity for companies to build their leader’s IP. A charismatic CEO can demonstrate his or her affinity, professional ability and personal charm by directly facing netizens, thereby promoting the company’s brand awareness. In the long run, the performance of Liang Jianzhang and others is an important symbol of corporate brand IP.

Of course, IP creation is not limited to CEOs.

For example, Yichan Little Monk, a big IP with tens of millions of fans on Douyin, was incubated by the MCN agency Dayu. According to reports, Dayu is planning for Yichan Little Monk to do live broadcasts. If this is realized, Yichan Little Monk will occupy the entire chain of content business, from writing texts, publishing books, short videos to live broadcasts.

Many brands have their own virtual IPs, and after years of development, they have a strong mass base. Allowing these IPs to broadcast live can also drive brand marketing. For example, if the following pair of brothers were to broadcast live, would you be looking forward to it?

03 Creative content live broadcast

You have only seen live streaming selling goods because live streaming marketing has just begun. There will definitely be more forms of live streaming marketing in the future.

Yang Tianzhen, the founder of "One Heart Entertainment", is preparing to start live streaming. In an interview with 36Kr, she said, "She wants to do 'live streaming with content', to do real sharing, dramas, variety shows, interviews... and present these contents in the form of live streaming." It can be seen that what Yang Tianzhen wants to do is not live streaming to sell goods, but "live streaming content."

On April 15, the new Infiniti QX50 held a live cloud launch conference on Douyin. Chen Ming served as the host and brand spokesperson Zhang Ruoyun appeared as a guest. The entire live broadcast adopted the "Battle Show" mode and was a "challenge and answer questions" variety show, showcasing the various technologies and configurations of the QX50.

This live broadcast has nothing to do with selling goods. It is actually an online "micro variety show" whose core purpose is to expose the brand and interact with the user group. As live streaming marketing gradually deepens, there will definitely be more and more forms of content live streaming.

04 PUGC-style live broadcast

PUGC marketing has been an important way to co-create content with users and complete marketing since the era of Weibo and WeChat.

In the era of short videos, due to the lowered threshold for video production and release, brand-celebrity collaborations often receive a large number of works, many of which are highly excellent and professional.

Brand live streaming can also realize PUGC live streaming, tap into the potential of users, let users write live streaming scripts for products, create live streaming content ideas for products, and even directly recruit amateurs to enter the live streaming room to do brand live streaming. These are all good marketing methods.

Many people know that Li Jiaqi was previously a makeup artist at the L'Oreal counter, and later grew into a live-streaming anchor. From this perspective, every offline promoter has the potential to become a brand anchor. Yili Guliduo’s PGC started by recruiting live streaming experts, but they used the resources of the branch company.

Yili Guliduo selected the "Li Jiaqi" of Yili Guliduo for its offline branches through open auditions. They encouraged branches to try live streaming to sell goods, and worked with e-commerce experts to provide guidance on sales skills. A total of 16 anchors were recommended by national branches to live broadcast and sell goods for three consecutive days from 7 to 10 pm every day. The final winner will be awarded the title of "Sales King" of GuLiDuo.

Of course, what is important is not how much goods are sold in the end, but the entire process of dealers and employees participating in brand marketing.

05 Fan-operated live streaming : An important task for branding is fan operation. It is very important to know what content and value you can provide to your fans. Nowadays, many live broadcasts are eager to get the user base to buy a large amount of goods as soon as the broadcast starts.

Before you want users to buy something, do you think about what valuable things you have provided to users before?

When PUMA operates its official account, it is not just a shoe seller. The key is to establish connections with sports users and bring more value to potential users.

During this special period, PUMA teamed up with Tik Tok to create the "PUMA Living Room" series of live broadcasts with the innovative model of brand-native live broadcasts, bringing professional "cloud fitness" solutions to users and increasing user stickiness and favorability. With these, there will be no worries about bringing in goods in the future.

Make Up For Ever’s live broadcast, as a cosmetics brand, provides makeup courses, which is much more valuable to users than blunt sales of products.

The above are just five forms of live streaming marketing, and most of them are still in the early stages because the live streaming marketing model has just begun. What I can think of but haven’t seen so far include live streaming by ordinary employees, brand joint live streaming, live streaming with fans, etc. I believe there will be more forms of live streaming marketing in the future.

Summary: Don’t just sell products, bring marketing creative thinking into live streaming

With the advent of the mobile Internet era, the marketing industry has entered an era of dramatic changes. But what has changed are the carriers and forms of marketing; the core of marketing - strategy and creativity - has not changed.

When it comes to live streaming, we should not only focus on selling goods, but also look beyond that from the perspective of brand marketing.

• Apply content creativity thinking to live streaming.

The greatest advantages of traditional marketers are strategy and creativity. They come up with all kinds of creative ideas on a daily basis, such as creating stories, producing artworks, writing jokes, organizing fun activities, etc. These ideas can all be applied to the live broadcast room.

Publishing brands talk about reading in the live broadcast room, movies are discussed in the live broadcast room before the movie is released, mobile phone brands do reviews in the live broadcast room, travel brands do live broadcasts of the scenery of special destinations, and milk brands teach fans "100 ways to drink milk" in the live broadcast room...

• Apply IP operation methods to live broadcast.

As mentioned above, many brands have their own IPs, such as Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Haier Brothers, Want Want’s Wangzai, Diaoxiong of Diao Pai, etc., all of which are IPs with a certain mass base. Making good use of live streaming is a means of building and operating IP. It can enrich the image of IP, give IP distinct personality traits, and at the same time allow IP to approach users and bring IP closer to users.

Two years ago, KFC created a KFC hipster uncle in the United States, which caused a sensation. If he could do a live broadcast, the shock would probably be even greater.

• Apply fan management strategies to live streaming.

The key to fan management during live streaming is to provide users with valuable things. These things may be skills, such as Make Up For Ever teaching users how to put on makeup; they may be good content, such as Infiniti creating micro variety shows; they may be rare benefits, such as Perfect Diary giving away autographed photos of brand spokespersons...

Brand provides value - fans gain value - fans develop goodwill - fans continue to pay attention - fans generate consumption. This is the path for fans to go from paying attention to the brand to generating consumption. What needs to be done here is the long-term operation of the brand for fans.

• Apply integrated marketing techniques to live streaming.

Integrated marketing is a marketing method to cope with media diversification. A live broadcast is just a single event, but if the technology of integrated marketing is applied to live broadcast, it is more than just a live broadcast.

For example, the vivo S6 5G Free Carnival new product launch on Douyin included social media warm-up, live broadcast, and short video marketing. It was an integrated marketing. The entire marketing may last for a week, and the live broadcast as one of the links only lasted for a few hours.

New media and new marketing models will always bring about new marketing booms. As for live streaming, it has just begun. Although live streaming with goods is very popular now, I think it is more important to drive the brand through live streaming marketing, to build the brand through long-term live streaming, and to integrate traditional marketing methods into live streaming to bring about a longer-term brand effect.

Author: Xunkong's Marketing Revelation

Source: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation (xunkong2005)