Deconstructing the live streaming methods of e-commerce anchors

Can small-base accounts and white-label merchants sell good products on Douyin?

Cass discovered that an account had been created recently. @奥普丽娟娟's small account (which starts broadcasting in the afternoon) has only 34,000 followers, and its GMV in the past 30 days is expected to reach 25.938 million. The average unit price of the Opry products it sold was 328.81 yuan, and the average conversion rate was as high as 53.49%.

@奥普丽娟娟小号 (broadcast in the afternoon) TikTok video screenshot

The host's real name is @奥普丽娟娟, who has accumulated 352,000 followers. She has hosted five events in the past 30 days, with an estimated GMV of 2.474 million. In other words, the total GMV of the two accounts in the past 30 days is approximately 28.412 million.

It is surprising that such results can be achieved when the brand is not well-known and the average customer spending is relatively high.

This article attempts to analyze the live broadcast method from the perspective of an observer.

1. The big and small accounts have the same name and are broadcasted in turns every day

Before we figure out who’s paying for Opalé, let’s look at how it’s broadcast live.

In the past six months, @奥普丽娟娟 has live-streamed 164 times, with each live broadcast lasting more than four hours on average. Her popularity has gradually increased, and she has accumulated 352,000 followers for the account.

The anchor who often appears on the show is Juanjuan, who is the CEO of Aupree. After observing the live broadcast room for a few days, Kas discovered that at the scene level, the room did not have any unnecessary tricks.

Juanjuan’s personality tends to be straightforward and sincere. Her live broadcast style is usually one person telling stories to the mirror, as casual as chatting with a good sister. Most of the time, only the host speaks, and the assistant only speaks when uploading links and adding orders.

When introducing the products, the host gave the main products nicknames, such as "Fairy" and "Herb", to make them easier to remember.

Kas summarized his common words:

(1) Low price

The products in its live broadcast room are advertised to be of the same quality but cheaper than those sold through the brand's official channels. Furthermore, the anchors use gifts such as "buy one, get three" to highlight the cost-effectiveness of its products, which can stimulate consumers' desire to shop.

The anchor often said, "If I don't sell it here anymore, you can only buy it from the official website. The official price is more than 800 yuan per bottle" and "This is the price that I have lowered for you with great difficulty."

(2) Explain the usage and efficacy

For example, "Use more 'Fairy' on places with wrinkles and depressions, and you will be pleasantly surprised," "Use it for people over 18 years old," "If you are constipated in the morning, put it on your belly button, and you will feel better later, 5g each morning and evening."

(3) Use consumer feedback to stimulate conversion

For example, when introducing a herbal skin cream, the host said: "One customer bought more than 600 bottles. I'm not exaggerating, her whole family is using it." After the discount, the price of this cream is 450 yuan for 3 bottles.

In terms of product selection, the brand has streamlined the merchandise in the live broadcast room, with the number of products on the shelves for each live broadcast rarely exceeding 10, all of which are Aupres products, with the main function being to improve skin condition.

The order of explanation will be based on the established sequence and will not be changed arbitrarily due to fans' questions. In this way, we can focus on explaining the hot products and improve the efficiency of delivery.

After live streaming at a high frequency for more than half a year, @奥普丽娟娟 has attracted 350,000 fans, and her store’s reputation score is as high as 4.99.

The turning point came after the breach. Because the host’s language violated the rules, the live broadcast room was banned for a short period of time, so Opry opened a new account.

The fact that the new account @奥普丽娟娟小账号 (launched in the afternoon) was able to quickly overcome the cold start-up is also related to the fact that the large account attracted a group of loyal consumers.

In the original account and live broadcast room, Juanjuan mentioned many times that the weekdays (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday) will be transferred to the small account live broadcast. Many users said in the comment section: "Beautiful Juanjuan, wherever you go, I will follow you." After changing the location, the traffic in the live broadcast room did not decline.

In the first three days of its premiere, the total number of viewers exceeded 400,000. Within one month of its launch, the small account attracted 34,000 followers. The number of people online at the same time during daily sessions is also quite considerable, usually around 800-1300 people.

@奥普丽娟娟 (live broadcast on March 12) video screenshot

The difference is that the anchor has started to be more cautious in what he says and does. When encountering efficacy-related words that are inconvenient to mention, the anchor will use lip movements to prompt, and ask old users to reply in the comment area to prompt new fans.

The live broadcast time has also been adjusted. At the beginning, the main account broadcast live on Saturdays, and the live broadcast time of the two accounts was fixed from 8 am to 4 pm.

Now, the main live broadcast time is from 8 am to around 3 pm, and the small live broadcast time is from 1:30 pm to 11 pm. Obviously, there are more sufficient manpower and they can devote more time to attract a wider range of users.

Judging from the user portrait, 87.5% of the audience in the live broadcast room are women. In terms of age distribution, people aged 41-50 accounted for the highest proportion, reaching 27.16%, followed by people aged 50 and above, accounting for 25.85%, and people aged 31-40 accounted for 21.58%. These age groups are exactly the target group for functional skin care products, and many of them have plenty of free time to watch live broadcasts.

It is also with the support of these women with high spending power that the estimated GMV of Opry’s small account reached 25.938 million after only one month of broadcasting. Among them, the live broadcast on March 10 contributed the most, with a GMV of approximately 5.246 million.

It is worth noting that neither account has carried out refined operations on short video content .

The main account mainly updates live broadcast clips and a small number of single-background spoken videos, with no signs of post-editing and processing. A total of 3,911 videos have been released, while the small account has only 5 public short videos. It can be said that all sales conversions come from the live broadcast room.

2. Can white-label beauty products continue to be popular?

Although Opry's small-sized brand has emerged as a rising star and has a high level of fan stickiness, it remains to be seen whether it can continue to generate strong sales.

Judging from the data, white-label beauty products are developing rapidly on short video platforms and still occupy a certain user market.

According to the cosmetics industry vertical media "Jumei", in the Douyin 2021 "Double 11" beauty merchants' self-broadcasting list, Kelaini ranked first and Betty Bonnie ranked fifth. In between the two are well-known brands such as Huaxizi, Winona, and PROYA.

The strategy for white-label beauty products is roughly the same, that is, to operate their own account to sell products.

For example, 90% of Kelanie’s sales on Douyin come from the founder’s account @小菲菲和大冰冰 (Kelanie), and she did not look for top anchors to collaborate with her to sell products. Data shows that there were 22 live broadcasts in the past 30 days, with a total GMV of approximately 55.085 million.

However, this advantage is not solid. With competition in the beauty market becoming increasingly fierce, the living space for white-label beauty products seems to be getting narrower and narrower. In layman's terms, it is "becoming increasingly difficult to sell."

First of all, more and more emerging brands and international brands are pouring into short video platforms, and are paying more and more attention to the operation of live broadcast rooms, and the length of time that merchants spend broadcasting themselves is growing rapidly. According to Douyin's official battle report, during this year's 38th Festival event, the total live broadcast time was 20.02 million hours, of which 8.94 million hours were broadcast by merchants themselves, accounting for 45% of the total live broadcast time.

In addition, as consumers have more choices, small brands lack marketing budgets and brand voice, making it increasingly difficult to acquire loyal users.

In the TOP50 Douyin beauty and skin care brand sales list in February this year, only 6 white-label beauty products made the list , namely, Keline ranked 5th, Zhixiang Fuyu ranked 11th, Delaixi ranked 25th, Qianrujiao ranked 27th, Betty Bonnie ranked 39th, and Mu Nian ranked 40th.

The top four spots on the list are all occupied by brands with relatively high public visibility, namely Huaxizi, Ulike, Yameng and Hanshu.

Kas believes that white-label merchants who are not well-known to the public are not necessarily at a disadvantage when broadcasting on Douyin, but they will inevitably face the difficult survival of "internal volume" this year.

Let’s take a look at Aupre’s live broadcast experience. In February, the live broadcast room was temporarily banned due to violations by its big anchor, which was a risk factor and a lesson.

At 3 pm on March 17, when Kas was observing the live broadcast room, the anchor was reminded by the platform again for violating regulations.

It is not easy for white-label merchants to gain trust, as product quality is closely related to repurchase rate. In the later stage, when the business is expanding and facing diversified consumer groups, it is far from enough to rely solely on the host's explanation to accumulate trust.

Let’s take Opry as an example. It still faces a lot of doubts on Xiaohongshu, a community for recommended products where young female consumers gather. These doubts need to be resolved by relying on product strength and content strength.

Screenshot of Xiaohongshu users' discussion on "Opperley"

However, as mentioned earlier, Opry did not actually operate short videos on these two accounts. However, as a powerful external assistant for the live broadcast room, short videos have always been an important link that anchors cannot avoid before live broadcasting and selling goods.

The live broadcast room focuses on sales performance, and it is difficult to take all aspects of the content into consideration, while short videos can take on the responsibility of content dissemination.

It can be said that operating short videos well can effectively improve the sales conversion efficiency of the live broadcast room.

Based on past experience, the path that brands should take is to focus on marketing from the four dimensions of product strength, appearance strength, topic power, and grass-planting power, use short videos to tell good brand stories, and then use professional live broadcast rooms to attract traffic and achieve "product and effect integration."

Author: Bi Shisan

Source: Kas Data