The rules of selling goods through short video live streaming!

In my experience of creating short videos to promote products, I have made three mistakes.

I believe that more than 50% of the people who read this article have a deep understanding of this.

The first one is to stick to originality.

In May 2020, I made a clothing issue and shot a short video with a plot.

The plot is based on the character of the proprietress. Every time a customer comes to the store to pick out clothes, she is either abused or cheated on, and the proprietress creates a positive image by saving the situation.

The video script was created by the team, and professional shooting and editing were arranged for the film. However, after one month, the video had less than 500 views.

Later, when one of my works was discontinued, I asked the operator to remake a random work, and the number of views reached 500,000.

I was completely surprised that the team's originality was so poor, which also gave me an inspiration:

If you are not an artist, don't be ashamed of imitation.

There are always people who like to innovate themselves, especially in the field of short videos.

There are obviously enough high-quality comparable works on Douyin, but they insist on being different and sticking to originality.

I don't deny originality, I even respect originality.

But for most Tik Tok entrepreneurs, when they don’t have the editing and directing skills but are eager to see results, why don’t they take a shortcut and generate data first?

We are all workers, why should we be poets?

The second type is the pointless pursuit of playback volume.

After learning from the first lesson, at the end of last year, I imitated a household account in a home account, and the overall data was very good.

As a new account that has been in operation for less than two months, nearly 20 of its 58 works have reached more than 100,000 views, and one of them has reached 8 million views.

However, although the number of views is high, the traffic directed into the live broadcast room is pitifully small.

For example, a video with 1 million impressions can only get 2,000 live broadcast views.

Others with 200,000 exposures can get 5 times as many live broadcast views as I do.

The third type is the pointless pursuit of quantity of works.

If one work has 500 views, then if 10 works are released in a day, wouldn’t that mean 5,000 views?

Calculated this way, the traffic is not bad. Many people have calculated this, but have not actually measured the production cost of shooting 10 works.

Instead of relying on works to pile up invalid traffic, it is better to let the anchors and operators save time to study the problems in the live broadcast room.

Experience is always gained through lessons.

Although I am not a professional short video creator, I have operated more than 100 live broadcast rooms using the methods I have summarized.

I have summarized my experience in creating products that promote sales into the following four steps.

Step one: We should know what constitutes a qualified product promotion work.

The ability to guide live streaming traffic is the biggest difference between works that promote products and daily short videos.

We can also understand it as:

The quality of a product that sells goods is measured by how much accurate traffic is directed into the live broadcast room.

But often in daily observations, we can see many accounts that may have good overall playback data, but are not qualified to sell products. What is the problem?

The problem is that the executor did not understand the purpose of the work during the creative process.

People just think that it’s okay as long as the work becomes popular, but in fact, qualified works that promote products have two very obvious attributes.

First, highlight the selling points to the extreme.

That is, during the shooting process, the selling point is the core, and all the details revolve around the product.

In this way, when users see this work, they are not just impressed by factors such as fun and curiosity, but they just like the product itself.

If a work like this becomes popular, wouldn’t the traffic in the live broadcast room be accurate?

I have almost developed a habit that when I am creating a work, the first step is not to conceive the form, but to follow the host to break down the selling points of the product first.

That is:

What is the product, what group of people is it targeted at, and what pain points can it solve?

For example, a multifunctional power bank, we first analyze that it is a portable charging device, targeting the 25-40 year old people who like to travel far away;

In terms of pain points, we analyzed the four major selling points of the product:

First, it is convenient and light, and it is very easy to put in your pocket when walking;

Second, it charges quickly, with a 5-minute charge providing 2 hours of battery life;

Third, multifunctional use, in addition to daily charging, the light source can be adjusted for use as lighting;

Fourth, it is cost-effective. The market price of an ordinary single-function power bank is 50-100, but this power bank only costs 39.9.

This is the analysis of the product’s selling points.

By analogy, whether it is home furnishing, personal care, beauty, or food, you can find its advantageous selling points in the products.

It can be either functionality or appearance, novelty or cost-effectiveness, etc.

But some people will say that the selling points of my products are not strong and competing products have them. How can I summarize the selling points then?

If your products have no selling points, why would you choose them?

Of course, there is another way to summarize selling points, balancing the pros and cons, which is to give the product a selling point that it does not have.

For example, in the category of mushroom soup dumplings, there is no obvious difference in specifications and materials, so it is difficult to summarize them from the selling point.

However, through creative shooting, you can give the mushroom soup dumplings unique selling points.

For example, "Don't give a 30-year-old man mushroom soup, otherwise the couple will not be able to sleep..." is equivalent to giving the product a selling point of food supplement.

There are many similar cases in the category of nourishing products. Whether it is sesame pills or donkey-hide gelatin, similar methods are used.

To summarize:

Integrating your product into the content is the first step to creating a qualified sales promotion work.

In addition to highlighting selling points, the work must also be presented in a form that conforms to the TikTok algorithm.

If a work only displays selling points but lacks vivid presentation, it will seem boring to users.

We also see a large number of works in our daily lives that only highlight the products but do not pay attention to the short video format.

The most common type is oral broadcast in the live broadcast room. The host stands in front of the display stand, holding the product and talking non-stop, and finally says, "Come to my live broadcast room."

I don't believe you at all!

The work is so bad, why should I go to your live broadcast room?

I have never seen many works like this exposed. Most of them just consume the initial traffic of the system and lie dead in the wilderness.

An excellent presentation has three characteristics:

First, match your target audience;

Second, it can combine the characteristics of Tik Tok short videos;

Third, intersperse the elements of recent popular hits.

1. The work should match the target audience.

This determines the user's sense of immersion when they see the video for the first second.

For example, when we shoot home videos, we will choose women aged 30-40 and set up a kitchen for shooting, because the target audience of the product is housewives aged 30-40.

For such a user, will she choose to hear from you how good the product is, or watch someone with the same status as her show her the product she is about to buy in a familiar usage scenario?

2. Combine the characteristics of Tik Tok short videos.

That is, it conforms to the viewing characteristics of Douyin users, adapts to the fast-paced browsing habits, and can attract users and not let them swipe away in the first three seconds.

If you want users to stay, the most important thing to do is to mobilize their emotions.

Joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, greed, ignorance and resentment are the elements that cannot be avoided in any form of work. What remains is to implant product value under the packaging of the above outer core.

3. Intersperse the recent popular elements.

That is, absorb the elements that have made Tik Tok popular recently.

Let’s take popular music as an example.

We have come to the conclusion from a lot of practical experience:

For works with the same content, one with regular music and the other with recent popular music, the user stay time is very different.

But even if they have mastered the above rules, 99% of people still cannot produce blockbuster works. What should they do?

Step 3: Copy!

Copying seems to be imitating, but in fact it is borrowing on the basis of imitation.

There are three steps from imitation to borrowing:

First, what kind of works are worth imitating?

Second, how to find works to imitate;

Third, how to imitate efficiently.

What kind of works are worth imitating?

First, look at the category; second, look at the time; third, look at the likes; fourth, look at the comments.

First, look at the category.

Works in the same category as yours are the most worthy of imitation.

Because the genres are the same, the creative ideas are similar, and the difficulty of adaptation is much smaller

Second, look at the time.

It is not recommended to refer to works that have been published for more than one month.

The Tik Tok algorithm follows the pattern of chasing hot-selling products. If the recent hot-selling works are imitated, they will be more likely to become popular.

Third, watch the playback.

High-quality products that promote products must be works with a particularly large number of views. Although you cannot check the number of views, you can infer the level of views by the number of likes.

Fourth, read the comments.

Reviews are an extremely important reference element.

How do we judge which of two equally played sales promotion works is better?

The key is to read the comments.

Comments can reflect users' evaluation of the content of the work.

If it is a high-quality product promotion work, you will see that most of the comments in the comment section are related to the product.

On the contrary, although some works have a high number of views, the comment section is full of comments that are unrelated to the product.

How to find imitation works?

With third-party data tools so advanced today, it is very easy to find benchmark works.

With the help of various third-party data platforms, you can directly click on the list of videos selling goods, search for relevant words, and then filter out qualified reference works according to the requirements of the first point.

In addition to third-party tools, Douyin also has its own manual search function.

Select Search by Video in the search box, search for relevant keywords, check the works with the most likes within a week or a month, and you can find a large number of reference works.

The rest is imitation.

Imitation is not a simple copying, but is carried out in two steps: disassembling the structure and adapting to the product.

When I get a reference, I first break it down into the following framework.

Scene: where was the scene filmed and why was this scene chosen?

Shots: what equipment was used to shoot, how were the camera movements and transitions handled;

Music: what music is used and what are the characteristics of this music;

Selling point: What is the selling point and how is it presented, visually or verbally?

Copywriting: What is the copywriting of the work, and how to integrate the selling points into the copywriting;

Character: Who is appearing on the screen and what are his or her characteristics and strengths.

There is only one purpose for disassembling a work, which is to understand why it was shot in that way, and then to find ways to learn from and optimize it.

When you know nothing about the reference work, it is natural that your photos will be copied forcefully and look like an imitation of something poorly done.

Those who learn from others well not only produce excellent results, but can even surpass the original works. There are countless similar cases.

After the work is disassembled, you can take the essence of the original work and remove the dross according to the characteristics and selling points of your own product, and finally adapt it into a qualified work to sell goods.

To sum up, regarding the imitation of works:

First, don’t be lazy and copy, but make reasonable adaptations;

The second is not to break the original framework and stray too far from the elements of the original work, which would otherwise lose the meaning of imitation.

Although effective imitation does not mean that a work will become a hit as soon as it is released, it will definitely greatly increase the probability of the work becoming a hit.

Those who are well aware of their own shortcomings should learn to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Finally, let’s make a process-based review of the creation of short videos that bring goods:

The first step is to analyze the selling points, what the product is, who it is for, and what pain points it can solve;

The second step is to find competitors. Use the data platform to find suitable imitation competitors.

The third step is to disassemble the competing products by analyzing the copywriting, music, characters and other elements of the competing products;

The fourth step is to tailor the script to the product, reorganize the script based on your own product, and create based on reference.

Author: Yin Chen

Source: Yin Chen's live streaming