2021 Live Streaming Sales Routine Upgraded

In the past year of 2020, many new terms have emerged, and many industries have suddenly stood at the forefront of the times. Among them, live streaming has emerged as a new force in the new retail industry and achieved remarkable results.

The sudden outbreak of the epidemic added fuel to the fire of live streaming, the platform sought development and supported internet celebrity anchors to become top streamers, and the cold winter of the film and television industry made celebrities find new ways out by doing live streaming... In 2020, live streaming e-commerce seemed to have come into the spotlight under the impetus of these many accidental events and became the hottest trend. But in fact, this is just a specific manifestation of e-commerce moving towards content.

In the past, e-commerce moved goods from offline to online, and the traditional shelf model did not actually change substantially. Now, e-commerce has moved from shelf display to content-driven. Whether it is the internet celebrities who used to attract traffic, the short video experts who did product placement, or the current anchors and stars who do live broadcasts, the sales behind them rely on what is currently highly praised by the industry - content.

Internet business essentially revolves around traffic, and content is the most effective means of attracting and retaining traffic. This has led to e-commerce platforms that used to only need top-tier external content now having to continuously add short videos, live broadcasts and other content formats that suit user preferences. When live streaming becomes the norm and mainstream, e-commerce platforms will have to enrich their content on this basis in order to win more user time.

So, looking back at live streaming sales in 2020, you can clearly see the changes from the actions of the three parties: the anchor, the platform, and the brand: compared with the initial cramming recommendations and shouting of the anchor + assistant, the current live streaming content format is once again upgrading to content and pan-entertainment.

01 Anchors create couples, celebrities show off their talents

In May last year, Fu Peng officially changed his Weibo ID from "Li Jiaqi's Assistant" to "Fu Peng FuPeng", and he also left Li Jiaqi's team. This news has been widely discussed on the entire Internet. Many loyal users of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room expressed regret and sadness for the separation of the two, as if they were watching a couple breaking up.

For users who watched the live broadcast, the interaction between Li Jiaqi and Fu Peng in the live broadcast room was indeed one of the few interesting contents besides buying goods at that time. How the young assistant helped Li Jiaqi to save the situation and how he and Li Jiaqi had funny banter were regarded as "sweet" points by netizens, and the interactive content of the two on social media and short video platforms also made some netizens who "ship CP" particularly "addicted".

The same is true for several other top anchors. For example, Wei Ya’s husband Dong Haifeng often appears in her live broadcast room and interacts with Wei Ya about the products. At the same time, Wei Ya also posts content related to topics such as love and family on Douyin. Her "chicken soup for the soul" stories are very useful to many female users. In Xue Li's live broadcast room, her husband Zhang Heng also played the role of "atmosphere group", giving out benefits, singing, interacting with Xue Li, and making jokes.

Xue Li and Zhang Heng live broadcast at home

Although the biggest selling point of live streaming sales is the discounts on goods, it is undeniable that the interaction between the anchor and the assistant, telling emotional stories, and showing some love can actually help the anchor retain users. These contents not only act as "seasonings" in the cramming-style live streaming sales process, adjusting the atmosphere when users are tired of the live streaming, but can also help the anchors truly accumulate fan groups, changing the characteristics of the live streaming room where goods are greater than people and anchors are highly replaceable.

When live streaming sales entered the second stage - when celebrities entered the live streaming room, the trend of e-commerce live streaming content became more obvious.

In fact, celebrities themselves can be seen as a kind of added "content" that comes with high attention and topics. In July 2019, Taobao Live launched the "Morning Star Project" to introduce celebrities, KOLs, and media with over one million fans outside the site and influence in their professional fields to conduct cross-border live broadcasts.

Since then, celebrities have begun to enter the live broadcast room widely. Although their live broadcasts still need to revolve around products, sharing their own stories and interacting with anchors and fans have greatly enriched the content of e-commerce live broadcasts.

Xuan De, general manager of Taobao's content e-commerce division, said at the launch of the "Morning Star Project" that celebrity live streaming will definitely become the "star force" of content e-commerce. And this is indeed the reality. As celebrities enter the live broadcast rooms in large numbers, the content of e-commerce live broadcasts has begun to evolve from just selling goods to a combination of promoting works + interviews + selling goods.

A typical example is Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room, which is jokingly called the "mainland version of Kangxi Is Coming" by netizens. Many celebrities have appeared in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room when promoting their music, TV dramas and movies: his cousin Liu Boxin promoted her songs and new album here; Zhang Ruoyun and Li Chun, the leading actors of the hit drama "Joy of Life", made funny spoilers in the live broadcast room, and #张若昀浅正说胡说八道# quickly became a hot topic on Weibo.

In addition, Xiao Yang and Tan Zhuo came to promote the movie "The Accidental Detective"; Hu Ge and Gui Lunmei witnessed in the live broadcast room that 150,000 tickets for "The Gathering at Southern Station" were sold out in an instant. Zhou Zhennan, Lai Guanlin and Xia Zhiguang were on the same stage with Li Jiaqi to sell goods. During the period, the idols' funny or embarrassing performances quickly became topics of discussion and topped the hot search list.

During the period when celebrities’ schedules were most intensive, even Li Jiaqi himself joked that he was frequently “chasing stars”.

Just as e-commerce live streaming is advancing into variety shows, many variety shows are also beginning to move closer to and merge with live streaming. For example, when "Sisters Who Make Waves" was popular, the sisters' live broadcasts on Douyin were directly made into a series of special shows, which became a "derivative variety show."

At the same time, Hunan Satellite TV host Wang Han also co-created the live variety show "Towards a Better Future" with Taobao Live and Galaxy Stars. Mango TV stated that this is also an attempt to implement the linkage with Douyin around "variety show IP + live streaming with goods".

02 Platforms and brands fight against homogeneity

Whether the anchor takes the "emotional resonance" route or adds celebrities to make a variety show, the trend of e-commerce live streaming content is actually more due to the promotion of the platform.

The reason behind this is actually not difficult to understand. In the past, e-commerce platforms wanted to attract traffic through high-quality content. The main logic was to cooperate with social media like Alibaba invested in Weibo, and to direct traffic to themselves through external internet celebrities and product showcases. But in today's environment, as long as there is traffic, you can do e-commerce, and content platforms that have both brand marketing and conversion capabilities are more popular with brands.

Content platforms and e-commerce platforms are now on the same track, and the competition is more intense.

Among e-commerce platforms, Taobao, as the absolute leader in the industry, has been engaged in comprehensive content construction since 2016. From picture and text promotion, short videos to Taobao live streaming, the core of all these is to enhance the content's ability to attract and retain traffic, increase user stickiness, and extend user stay time.

Therefore, in order to gain a certain advantage in the context of Taobao Live’s leading position, other platforms have also begun to “come up with new ideas” in the form of live broadcast content.

JD.com once labeled its live broadcast as "quality live broadcast". The main approach is actually to attract celebrities to participate in live broadcasts to sell goods, and to choose products that are highly compatible with the celebrities themselves and that they may use themselves, while increasing the proportion of content showing celebrities' talents.

For example, in July last year, Wang Feng started live streaming to sell goods as the "Chief Live Streaming Officer of JD.com's Flash Sales." In the next few live broadcasts, Wang Feng showed off his singing skills in the live broadcast room, which could be said to be a live concert in addition to selling goods. In addition, JD.com has also invited celebrities such as actors Chen Shu, Wang Zijian, and high jumper Zhang Guowei to do live broadcasts.

Another platform with more unique gameplay and content formats is Sohu.

As a platform that entered the live streaming e-commerce market more than half a year after it became popular, Sohu adopted a unique approach in which Zhang Chaoyang himself did the live streaming. The entire show was a combination of product explanation and lifestyle sharing, which was completely different from the urgent promotional methods in conventional live streaming e-commerce. After that, Sohu also followed the trend and invited some celebrities to live broadcast, but the overall tone was still a slow-paced chat interview format with the theme of sharing good things. To this end, Sohu has also created a new concept - "value live broadcast".

It is also worth noting that in addition to the platforms, brands are also helping to promote the anchors to become celebrities and the live broadcasts to become variety shows.

Different from the platform’s idea of ​​adding celebrities and variety shows to e-commerce live broadcasts, some brands have continued to use the same approach as sponsoring variety shows – implanting products into the content.

For example, Skyworth arranged three consecutive live broadcasts across three platforms during last year’s Double Eleven. The first dialogue was with three traditional craftsmen, who implanted and emphasized Skyworth's persistence in the industry while talking about the difficulty of inheriting folk culture; the second dialogue invited singer Mao Buyi and added a cloud live scene, which reflected the intelligence of the implanted product Skyworth TV; the third dialogue was with ordinary people from various industries such as food delivery riders, founders of MCN agencies, etc., who participated in the discussion of hot social topics, so as to arouse emotional resonance among users.

The brand Liby also turned the live broadcast into a lifestyle variety show, and found a "small experimental classroom" for host Yi Yi, celebrity Wang Yaoqing and Liby's president to conduct product evaluations. It also arranged to answer several questions surrounding daily washing and care problems - of course, the ultimate answer to solving the problem is to buy the product.

As live streaming e-commerce becomes increasingly homogenized but competition among platforms remains fierce, making live streaming more content-oriented can be said to be a key way for anchors, platforms, and brands to stand out from the red ocean together.

Although the golden rule of "content is king" is true, there are problems here.

First of all, there is a contradiction in the content. The average stay time of users in the live broadcast room is very short, so selling goods must be repeated many times at regular intervals, and the time must be right to introduce the products. Adding too much irrelevant content will inevitably distract attention and reduce the sense of urgency that stimulates users to buy.

Secondly, judging from the current attempts, many variety show-based live streaming sales programs still have mediocre results. The variety show format does not necessarily lead to the sale of more products. The advancement of live streaming content is more like a way to deal with homogeneity.

It may be a gimmick, but it may not necessarily have the miraculous effect of selling goods. This is the "embarrassing" aspect of e-commerce live streaming. If we look at it from a broader perspective, this is actually a reflection of a philosophical dilemma in the marketing industry - how can we truly "grasp both" brand and effect? It is still a big challenge to maximize monetization after capturing users.

Author: Lv Yue

Source: New Marketing Engine