Luo passed the baton of exceeding 200 million GMV in a single live broadcast to Lei Jun, which also made Douyin live broadcast, which had been criticized for several months, the focus again.

In fact, for the e-commerce operators of Party A brands, they simply don’t care about the external noise and are continuing to grab the dividends of Douyin live broadcast. To recover the losses caused by the epidemic.

As a former e-commerce practitioner and long-term observer of short video marketing, I discovered a phenomenon:

There are more and more success stories in the circle, but few people actually tell you the huge efforts behind every success, especially the pitfalls and tuition fees paid before creating a hit product.

On the other hand, we must avoid many pitfalls of live streaming e-commerce before we can truly create a hit product.

Through the "Decoding Traffic, Riding the Wind of Growth" column of Bytedance, the uncle summarized 5 pitfalls that you can easily fall into from interviews with 9 popular operators of Douyin e-commerce marketing.

Pitfall 1: You must find a celebrity to promote your products

This should be the most common problem faced by live streaming e-commerce.

Everyone wants to find a celebrity, but they are worried about the high placement fees and the lowest price on the entire network, and they cannot recover the cost of a single placement. Then they see a lot of failed cases, such as Wu Xiaobo’s three cans of milk powder, and the clients start to feel confused.

So the question is, is it necessary to find celebrities for live streaming sales?

After signing stars such as Wang Zulan and Zhang Baizhi, Wei Hanyu, the operation director of MCN agency Yaowang Network Short Video, told me that starting this year, he has signed and incubated a large number of mid-level anchors:

"We have seen that a lot of traffic is still concentrated on the top anchors, but the market is relatively large now. Mid-level anchors can accelerate industry iteration and provide more possibilities. When the traffic and brands of the entire industry are preferentially directed to the top anchors, we mid-level anchors are a better choice from the perspective of content and cost-effectiveness."

Wei Hanyu gave an example. @喻大公子 joined Yaowang as a beauty blogger in 2019. We have accumulated 5.77 million fans from scratch, including his beauty promotion in early June, with sales exceeding 5.1 million in a single event, which is also a relatively impressive figure.

In fact, when brands choose to collaborate with celebrities, KOLs or KOCs, they need to match their own strategies.

Evan, the founder of JiChuangMeiao, believes that celebrities have enough exposure, but after all, they are not professionals in this field, so their ability to sell products is relatively limited. Therefore, we generally see that when celebrities sell products, they often have a professional anchor to increase the sales efficiency of the products.

Top KOLs who sell products like @朱瓜瓜 need to pay attention to the live broadcast data of the influencer. If every user who comes in from Douyin stays in the live broadcast room for more than four minutes, then the anchor is very suitable to use Douyin's massive engine AD background for scale leverage, and buy more traffic for the influencer with very strong abilities through the commercial entrance, and leverage more sales. This is the KOL's strategy.

The professional ability of KOC itself is significantly different from that of professional live broadcasters. If the live broadcast room of a live broadcaster who has not received professional training cannot retain traffic, Evan recommends that brands broadcast themselves. "We have run many cases. It is OK in the skin care industry, home textiles category has also come out, and jade jewelry category can also run out."

Pitfall 2: Selecting influencers based solely on their fan base

The number of fans has become an important criterion for many clients to choose to cooperate with influencers in special live broadcasts to sell goods. The reason is very simple. The larger the number of fans, the greater the absolute value of traffic entering the live broadcast room if the conversion rate is the same. But people often overlook another key indicator, which is the length of time users stay in the live broadcast room, which is actually more important than the number of fans. Why?

Evan, the founder of JiChuangMeiao, told me that when brands select influencers for special shows, they must refer to the influencers’ historical live broadcast data, of which two data are the most important:

The first reference indicator is the length of time the audience stays in the live broadcast room. This is very important, representing its ability to carry public domain traffic. We will select influencers with a duration longer than 4 minutes, as they are relatively stable.

The second reference indicator is GPUV, which is the GMV that can be generated by each viewer entering the live broadcast room. Usually when this indicator is greater than 2, there is a possibility of large-scale buying. If it is less than 2, it is not recommended to choose this anchor to do a special show.

Evan believes that a live broadcast with a GMV of over 10 million cannot be completed by just one anchor, and it requires a very strong team to carry out every link in the most meticulous manner. Of course, before selecting influencers, three things need to be clarified: product selection, the matching degree between products and people, and traffic purchasing.

Product selection. At the top of the entire chain is the supply chain and product selection. Your gross profit in the supply chain, your profit structure, including whether your products are mass-market products or non-standard products, have the greatest impact on the overall results.

Matching degree, does the influencer have similar professional qualities? For example, Zeng Zhiwei and Yang Kun brought wine in the live broadcast room some time ago. A middle-aged man who knows wine, this logic is very self-consistent. If the influencer has many stories related to wine, he can describe this product very well when describing this product.

There are different approaches to traffic purchasing for different events. A show with a spend of less than 50,000 yuan is a small event, and we can use one method to provide accurate traffic to the brand owner. If the spend is more than 500,000 yuan, advertising alone is not enough, and a combination of methods is needed to match them, including strong control of the overall rhythm, to ultimately achieve the result of maximizing profits.

Pitfall 3: New brands are not suitable for live streaming

In Luo Yonghao’s first Douyin live broadcast, the sales champion was not a 3C digital product, but a crayfish called Xinliangji. At that time, it had just been a year since the company switched from 2B to 2C, and its Tmall store had just been opened, when it encountered the huge dividends of live streaming e-commerce. Through Lao Luo’s first e-commerce live broadcast, he not only became famous, but also had a GMV of over 20 million in a single show, which can be said to be "both fame and fortune."

Are new brands suitable for live streaming sales? It has always been controversial in the circle, and I have always been a staunch opponent. My reason is very simple. For those companies that do not want to continue to invest in building a brand and just want to take shortcuts and make a fortune by taking advantage of the live broadcast boom, there will definitely be no good results!

Through communication with Gao Yang, CEO of Xinliangji Food Technology Co., Ltd., the uncle's previous views have slightly changed. He recalled that Luo Yonghao’s live broadcast completely exceeded expectations. Before that, brand owners would fall into a problem: they could only get sales through the live broadcast channel, but it was impossible to enhance the brand!

"Our goal at the time was sales, but Mr. Luo's live broadcast completely changed the landscape of the entire live broadcast channel. It can help you build a brand and increase sales, and even help you increase your average order value."

From the outside, it seems like a great success in both brand and sales, but from the perspective of Xinliangji, some discounts have to be made because they are facing great challenges.

The first is the stability of supply, the rhythm of delivery and the pressure of customer service reception. In just 4 minutes, all the orders and supply pressures came together. We needed to relieve this pressure in a very short time and fell into many traps.

The second is brand reputation. We have also encountered certain negative issues. At this time, the company needs to respond as soon as possible.

As I understand it, there are at least three reasons why Xin Liang Ji has gained both fame and fortune: first, the crayfish category naturally has the attributes of an internet celebrity; second, the attention that Luo Yonghao’s first show received; and third, Xin Liang Ji’s internal strengths, including supply chain, logistics, customer service, and public relations. This also makes us look at it the other way around: how can a new brand achieve fame and fortune through live streaming? The above 3 points still need to be met.

Chen Na, director of the new media business department of Zhenshi Yafeng, is the operator of the barley tea that became popular on Douyin. She strongly agrees with the importance of product selection. Now as long as people see barley tea, they know that it can remove dampness, and their instinctive reaction is, oh, it’s the barley tea that is very popular on Douyin.

However, the marketing approach of Xiuzhen Barley Tea is different from that of popular online products. Xiuzhen is endorsed by a traditional pharmaceutical company. The product packaging tends to be classic and old-fashioned, and the raw materials used are also natural materials without secondary processing. It lacks many new concepts and cannot be marketed in a high-profile manner. What to do?

Chen Na pointed out that mature products and emerging products have different strategies. If it is a mature product, its acceptance and conversion are relatively OK. My delivery logic is from feed flow to KOL and then to KOC. At this stage, my most core demand is traffic acquisition.

For the promotion of new products, the logic is the opposite of the above. It is done from KOC to KOL and then to the feed flow.

First, when a new product comes out, we will use KOC evaluation to see how the product is accepted and converted. If it has the potential to be a hit, we will ask celebrities or influencers to promote it.

In the second step, we will use Star Map’s traffic generation method to promote these products through in-depth content;

In the last step, if we measure the conversion of hard advertisements in the information flow, we will reuse the popular videos of KOCs or influencers and reuse these videos for marketing or mid- to long-term conversions.

After cooperating with many brands, Wei Hanyu of Yaowang believes that many brands now want to enter the live broadcast field, including some new brands, such as brands with relatively low brand capabilities. His suggestion is: "If your brand is not well-known and you still need to have such a product to market, live broadcast can be used as a channel to reversely build the market through sales capabilities."

Pitfall 4: Hot sales and single-game sales of tens of millions are all accidental

All nine traders mentioned their own experience in creating hit products, but they also admitted that there is currently no complete and fully replicable methodology for creating hit products because live streaming e-commerce is changing too fast.

So the question is, are the hits and live broadcasts that gross tens of millions per show just a coincidence? Of course not. It’s just that everyone has their own unique abilities. Although the core still revolves around the three dimensions of “people, things, and places”, other people’s successful experiences may not necessarily become your advantages.

Liu Xiaokun, chairman of New Skin Mystery, believes that the secret of New Skin Mystery to create best-selling products is just one word - try. Best-selling products must be "tested" out!

"To create a hit product, of course, it must basically meet its demonstrative requirements, because in just one minute, you must be able to explain the characteristics of the product, and let the customer see and touch this feeling, so that he may make a relatively quick decision. After meeting this basic requirement, it will enter the product selection library. We will do some tests in a small range, such as offline and in WeChat Moments, and will gradually launch it after receiving relatively good feedback, and continuously optimize the short video, and finally create a hit product."

@祝晓涵 had a live broadcast in March this year, which attracted over 13 million viewers. As the manipulator behind the live broadcast, Lu Yunjin believes that behind a successful live broadcast lies extremely sophisticated operations. Zhu Xiaohan’s live broadcast team has a total of 20 people, with different divisions of labor before, during and after the live broadcast.

How to choose products? First of all, based on Zhu Xiaohan’s own fan portrait, the age distribution of fans and a review of his past live broadcast data, we will decide his product category distribution next time, including how many snacks, how many beauty products, and how many household and personal care categories. In addition, we will also consider the overall quality of the product based on its popularity in the market, its selling points, market share, and conversion rates in other live broadcast rooms.

How to attract traffic? "On the day of the live broadcast, we will post three to five warm-up videos to attract more users to the live broadcast room. If we calculate based on Zhu Xiaohan's Star Map advertisement, which costs 400,000 yuan per advertisement, the three warm-up videos alone are worth 1.2 million yuan. In the end, the two lead-in videos were viewed more than 120 million times, which is why the live broadcast room attracted 13 million viewers. I think that in addition to their own short video content, influencers should also prepare some very high-quality videos to attract traffic to the live broadcast room during each live broadcast to ensure the number of viewers in the live broadcast room."

Whether it is product selection or traffic generation, Lu Yunjin has always emphasized the importance of big data research and review of user portraits. When planning each live broadcast, it is necessary to understand in advance the user groups covered by the product, and the anchors themselves need to understand the user portraits of their fans. "Through the review after each live broadcast and based on the user portraits of the short video account, we can infer the user characteristics, needs and pain points of our own live broadcast room, understand the needs of our fans, and form a greater bond and better interaction with fans, so as to do a better job of live broadcast sales."

Pitfall 5: The benefits of Tik Tok live streaming are gone

In recent times, many media have been pessimistic about Douyin live streaming. The most frequently cited example is that Luo Yonghao’s live streaming data has dropped by 90% since the first show, so much so that many friends who want to join Douyin live streaming have come to ask me: Is there still any benefit?

The answer is obviously yes.

Let’s first look at some official data. Among Douyin’s 400 million daily active users, nearly 60% of users watch Douyin live broadcasts every day, among which 58% of users “watch live broadcasts at least once a day.”

Let’s take a look at the opinions of other traders.

Chen Na believes that from the perspective of the entire social media marketing trend, Douyin short video is still in a stage of high growth. In the relatively long period of time in the future, Douyin short video will exist as a state of maintaining market growth.

Gao Yang values ​​​​TikTok's algorithm and efficiency more. It can segment the portrait of the entire consumer group detailed enough, which is very important for accurate brand delivery. In addition, all of us who run businesses know that efficiency is king. The delivery link on TikTok is very short, and we can quickly reach consumers to achieve our goals.

Li Liangjie, general manager of Yanziwu's e-commerce, told me that during the 618 period, 80% of Yanziwu's new product categories came from Douyin. These 80% of people have never been exposed to bird's nests or have never bought bird's nests. This scale is very large. From this we can see that Douyin can not only help brands gain more exposure, but also has a strong ability to attract traffic and realize monetization. Whether it is bringing goods or delivering value, I believe more brands will choose Douyin and find a strategy that suits them.

Lu Yunjin, chief planner of Zhu Xiaohan's e-commerce operations, believes that Douyin can achieve accurate content distribution through personalized recommendation mechanisms and labeling of each user group portrait, which can enhance users' browsing, immersion and interaction time. Therefore, Douyin's DAU has been increasing steadily, and Douyin's user groups are at all age levels, in different urban areas, and in input areas, covering an increasingly wide range of people.

Liu Xiaokun, chairman of New Skin Mystery, also told the uncle that live streaming is still the trend for creating new brands. The core of his brand's growth from 0 to 1 and then to its current performance is to seize the two dividends of live streaming and Douyin.

Zhan Junfei, deputy general manager of domestic marketing at Minwah Holdings, said that as one of the earliest brands in the furniture industry to focus on short videos and live streaming, Chivas has built a live streaming team of more than 40 people. At the same time, it has also established a short video production team of more than ten people. In the first half of the year, it produced more than 200 videos, which were played more than 200 million times in total. It was the resolute investment in live streaming and short videos that helped Chivas achieve a record of 70 million live streaming transactions across the entire network during this year's 618.

Finally, I will give a brief summary.

From the three dimensions of people, goods, and places, Douyin has prepared "people" and "places" for all companies.

"People" is divided into two dimensions: users and influencers. With 400 million DAU, the total viewing and likes ratio of users born after 1990 has reached more than 70%, and there are more than 1 million influencers with more than 10,000 fans. "Venue" is divided into influencers and content. From December last year to June this year, the number of influencers with shopping carts on Douyin increased by 101%, short videos with shopping carts increased by 173%, and live broadcasts with shopping carts increased by 876%.

Although the combination of "people" and "place" can ultimately transform content power into consumer power, it is important to remember that not all "goods" can become a hit on Douyin, and there are still many pitfalls to avoid.

Today's article cost you at least 1 billion yuan in tuition fees, so please save it and cherish it.

Author: Almighty Uncle

Source: Wannengdedashu