How to use Douyin live streaming marketing?

As a complex project with many difficulties in implementation, there seems to be no standard answer to this question. But through certain data analysis, we can still find some general rules that can be used as reference.

How to select anchors?

01. When choosing a live streamer, is it better to use a celebrity or an influencer?

As we all know, on Douyin, hosts of different identities and types form an extremely rich broadcasting ecology, including stars, celebrities, experts, media, etc. They have their own characteristics and advantages in different dimensions. Brands should combine these characteristics and advantages and make choices and combinations based on their own broadcasting goals.

Taking celebrity anchors as an example, their biggest advantage is that they bring their own topics and traffic, and have unparalleled natural influence among the user base. When selecting celebrities to promote products, it is recommended to comprehensively examine the celebrity’s recent exposure, interaction, and fan growth data to achieve a strong brand promotion goal;

As for the experts, since they are rooted in the platform, have a deep fan base, and are familiar with the content and skills of live broadcasts, they are better at creating a live broadcast atmosphere and stimulating users' consumption enthusiasm . The click-through rate of products and the shopping cart click-through rate in the live broadcast room are the key points to be assessed when selecting experts.

When launching a live broadcast, there are three launch strategies based on different marketing purposes:

① Brand + Celebrity: Use the large traffic of celebrities to drive brand attention, and then use the strong endorsement ability of the brand to promote the combination of brand and effect;

② Celebrities + influencers: Through the dual effects of the two, the popularity of the live broadcast room is ignited, and sales are driven through promotional content;

③ Brand + celebrity + influencer: triple linkage, through strong promotion and deep interaction, multi-dimensional interpretation of brand connotation, and promotion of deep connection between users and brands.

02. What are the differences in value expression among different types of talents? How to choose a brand?

The influencers on Douyin often have the dual abilities of creating short videos and selling goods through live streaming. Judging from the content labels, influencers can be generally divided into general entertainment influencers and vertical influencers.

Pan-entertainment experts refer to high-follower anchors and authors without obvious industry labels, such as @代古拉K, @大狼狗郑建鹏&言真夫妻, etc.; while vertical experts are "experts" from various vertical fields, such as maternal and child experts @育儿女神小姐懂, @斯坦福德妈妈; and in the automotive field @虎哥说车, @大狼狗郑建鹏, etc.

These two types of experts have their own characteristics and advantages. Pan-entertainment influencers often have characteristics such as good looks, youth, large number of fans, and stable data. They generally have a relatively good starting base and sales efficiency, can adapt to the needs of customers in various industries, have strong exposure, and are suitable for customers who do not have high professional requirements. Vertical influencers are highly professional, their fans are often accurately labeled, and are more suitable for pushing professional products, and are likely to reap good grass-planting effects.

03. Are top influencers necessarily good at selling products?

What characteristics do anchors of different sizes show in terms of sales effects?

We can see that the influence of the anchors on Douyin also shows the 80/20 principle. Although the anchors above the mid-level (more than 1 million fans) account for less than 15%, they contribute more than 50% of the viewing and conversion. But this does not mean that the effectiveness of live streaming with goods is absolutely positively correlated with the number of fans of the anchor. In addition to the number of fans, what we should understand more is the characteristics and stickiness of the anchor’s fans.

By analyzing the data of live broadcast rooms that have been broadcasting for a long time, it can be found that live broadcasts with good sales effects are often divided into two categories:

The first is the live broadcast room dominated by mid-level anchors. There are more medium and heavy users in the live broadcast rooms of these anchors. In other words, GMV mostly comes from the contribution of medium and heavy users . Therefore, it is recommended that mid-level anchors should pay special attention to product selection in order to explore and activate the consumption needs of medium and heavy users. At the same time, they should also strengthen fan interaction and operations to maintain the fan economy.

Another type is the live broadcast room dominated by top anchors. They are not as dependent on medium and heavy users as mid-level anchors and are more likely to convert shallow users. More than half of their live broadcast GMV comes from new users. Therefore, it is recommended that when cooperating with this type of anchor, more attention should be paid to video preheating and traffic diversion in order to achieve a wider effect of attracting new customers. In addition, this also means that top anchors will be more conversion-friendly for new brands.

Note: Light users refer to users who placed orders once in June 2020; moderate users refer to users who placed orders 2-3 times in June 2020; heavy users refer to users who placed orders 4+ times in June 2020.

04. How can a brand choose an anchor of corresponding size based on its own characteristics?

A brand’s popularity, influence, number of fans, stage of development, etc. will all affect how it selects influencers. When it comes to selecting influencers, the Manual believes that the more reasonable approach is for the brand to first position its own field and then match it with corresponding influencers.

Taking the beauty industry as an example, we can find three representatives at different stages of development:

(1) Local brands that are transforming towards younger consumers, such as Pechoin. Such brands tend to be highly dependent on anchors, and the number of anchors’ fans is generally positively correlated with their sales efficiency.

(2) For international brands with great influence, such as Estee Lauder, it is recommended to cooperate with top brands to achieve the best sales effect;

(3) For emerging brands that already have a certain influence and unique tone, such as Huaxizi, because they have their own topic popularity and traffic, as long as they choose mid-level influencers whose tone is consistent with the brand, they can achieve better sales results.

05. Is there any clear path that can help my brand match the right influencers as quickly as possible?

Before answering this question, we must first clarify two understandings: First, in e-commerce live streaming, the overlap between the influencer’s fans and the brand’s target fans is a key factor affecting the sales effect. The higher the fan overlap, the more likely the sales effect will be . Second, for brands with less experience in live streaming, paying attention to the influencers used in competitors’ live streaming can also help brands quickly lock in potential influencers, and then combine the analysis of fan overlap to accurately select anchor space.

Based on these two cognitions, we introduce a way to quickly match brands with suitable influencers to bring goods - 3C analysis method:

1. Competitor - locate the recent broadcasts of competing products and the talents selected by the competitors;

2. Capacity – Analyze the sales performance of competitors’ influencers and identify the influencers with the strongest sales performance;

3. Coincidence: From these influencers, select the influencers with the highest degree of fan overlap with the brand itself

Taking a certain beauty brand as an example, suppose through analyzing the influencers selected by competitors, it is found that influencers D and E perform well in terms of sales ability and fan overlap, especially influencer E. While having stronger sales ability, the fan overlap is also better than that of influencer C selected by the brand itself. In this case, influencer E can be included as a key selection target for the next live broadcast.

In addition, there are two key points that brands should pay attention to when choosing a live streaming anchor to sell goods.

First, try to choose celebrities and influencers who have the intention to bring goods in the long term . Such anchors will have a deeper understanding of the matching of live broadcast content and goods, and will also focus on improving their skills in bringing goods, which will have a significant positive effect on improving long-term conversion effects;

Second, hosts or actors with strong variety shows and good eloquence will generally have a better sales effect , and brand owners can use this as a reference when making a choice.

How to select products and design product listing strategies?

01. What are the key factors that influence users’ purchasing decisions?

Here we summarize the three key factors that influence user purchasing decisions: demand level, live broadcast price and brand awareness.

As can be seen from the above figure, the possibility of triggering a purchase gradually increases from bottom to top, that is to say:

1. The stronger the user's demand for the product, the more likely it is to promote purchase;

2. The lower the price and the more generous the gifts, the easier it is to promote conversion;

3. The higher the brand awareness, the easier it is to reduce user purchasing decisions.

Therefore, ByteDance provides brands with a universal product selection formula, which makes it easier for everyone to adjust their product selection strategies during live broadcasts, namely: Simple product selection formula = (price advantage or high discount) x high visibility x strong demand

02. What kind of products are more popular on Douyin?

In the inventory and analysis of Douyin’s commercial live broadcasts in the first half of the year, it was found that three categories of goods sold best.

Category 1: Products that capture the “foodie” attributes of Douyin consumers;

On Douyin, the number of payment orders and GMV of food and beverage products have long been high. For example, convenience foods, nut biscuits and other products can not only make life more convenient but also satisfy your appetite. In addition, most of them are not expensive, so it is easier to complete the conversion.

The second category: household appliances that are both easy to use and novel;

Novel and unique products have always been very popular on Douyin, and small household appliances are also very practical, which makes them very popular on Douyin. A small item can not only add freshness to life, but also improve the quality of life. It is the first choice for young Douyin users to place orders.

Category 3: Quality products with competitive prices;

This type of product has two characteristics: price and quality.

First, it is reflected in the competitiveness on the price side. In other words, buying on Douyin will be much cheaper than buying through daily channels. This is most prominent in the category of fresh fruit and produce. Buying freshly picked agricultural products at wholesale prices at the place of origin during live broadcasts is much cheaper than buying them in offline supermarkets or online.

In addition, quality is also an important factor in the competitiveness of Douyin products. Douyin users' pursuit of quality products is also particularly obvious, especially female users who are very enthusiastic about buying international brand beauty products and will not hesitate to place an order.

03. Which category of products is easier to attract new customers and acquire more early adopters?

What kind of product is most likely to encourage users to place their first order in your account? According to the data of Douyin live broadcast project in the first half of the year, products with large discounts and high cost-effectiveness are most likely to attract new customers because of their low cost of trying them out.

Among them, daily necessities have the highest new user acquisition rate, and 60% of users choose daily necessities as their first consumption item on Douyin live streaming. Because the use of this type of product is most easily scenario-based and can actually solve problems in life. Next in line are household appliances and food and beverage products, which are moderately priced and offer a wide range of choices, and therefore account for about half of users’ first orders.

04. How should we design product strategy for a successful live broadcast?

Through the above questions, we know what kind of products are more popular, but which products are really suitable for your own live broadcast room? What is the specific order for putting goods on the shelves in a single event? Here are two key points for you:

1) The products must conform to the anchor’s characteristic labels;

The products sold in the live broadcast room should be consistent with the account content and the anchor’s personality label, so that users who have accumulated experience in short video content will have a stronger sense of trust in the products sold in the live broadcast room; and new users attracted to the live broadcast room from the public domain will be more interested in and confident in the recommended products after learning about the anchor’s professional background , and are more likely to be converted.

2) Differentiated product selection to cover a wider range of users;

Consumers’ demand for the same type of products is limited, so if only one type of product is sold in the live broadcast room, it will inevitably lead to saturation of user demand and a decline in interest. Therefore, differentiated product selection is crucial.

The product selection structure can refer to the principle of cross-listing of "flash sale-driven products + popular potential blockbuster products + high-priced limited-edition and scarce products". This kind of product design can distribute categories, prices, and applicable groups in an orderly manner, making it convenient for people with various consumption power and needs to place orders in the live broadcast room, and can cover all types of users in a wider area.

Of course, this differentiated product selection can also allow users to feel the ups and downs and climaxes of selling goods in the live broadcast room, and experience the pleasure of grabbing goods during the live broadcast, and get an immersive shopping experience.

05. What’s the secret to hot sales of high-priced goods?

For products with long decision cycles and high average order values, more attractive and useful gifts will provide additional sales momentum.

When faced with products that they are unfamiliar with or that are priced high, users can easily leave the live broadcast room. At this time, it is necessary to use highly attractive gifts (such as scheduled draws) and products (such as low-priced flash sales) to keep users in the live broadcast room . According to Kas Data Insights, there is a positive correlation between user retention time and conversion effect.

For example, in the 816 Xiaomi live broadcast that just ended, a product combination of [low-priced flash sales + new products] was adopted. Low-priced flash sales were used to quickly increase traffic and ignite user enthusiasm; then new products were put on the shelves when user interest peaked to quickly build awareness. This method uses flash sale products to prolong user concentration and successfully draws user attention to new products. Even if there is no conversion in the final stage, it has a good seeding effect.

How to do a good job in preheating, traffic diversion and script planning?

01. How important is preheating?

When many people do live streaming, they focus all their attention on the live streaming and ignore the powerful traffic-generating effect of short videos.

According to data from ByteDance, the warm-up video on the day of the live broadcast can contribute 70%-80% of the attention to the live broadcast room ; and from the overall data, the contribution of fans of the account in the live broadcast room is also much higher than that of non-fans . For example, 71% of product clicks, 66% of shopping cart clicks, and 50% of UV viewers in the live broadcast room come from fans. In terms of sales conversion rate, fans are more than 15 times higher than non-fans.

It can be seen that fans are the main force of live broadcast monetization, and short video preheating can deeply activate them. Not only that, preheating can help the account effectively attract new fans, and the impact of new fans on data results is greater than that of old fans.

02. When is the best time to start broadcasting? What are the requirements for the broadcast duration?

According to the statistics of the live streaming sales project on the Douyin platform in the second quarter, the click-through rate and payment rate of the products in the live streaming room performed best in the time period of 18:00-21:00, so it is best to start the broadcast during this time period. The peak sales usually occurs within 1 hour after the broadcast starts.

There are two modes to choose from regarding the length of the live broadcast:

1. Short-term live broadcast. From the three typical live broadcast room UV curves in the figure below, we can see

In curve 1, generally speaking, the live broadcast room will reach a traffic peak 2 hours after the broadcast, and after 4 hours, the traffic begins to show a clear downward trend. So from the perspective of short-term strategy, it is possible to end the broadcast in time. The overall recommendation is to control the broadcast time to between 3-4 hours;

2. Long-term live broadcast. You can refer to curves 2 and 3 in the above figure and use long-term strategies to continuously and rhythmically operate traffic after the two-hour natural peak, such as advertising, interactive draws, guest appearances, etc., which can re-attract and aggregate the audience's attention and maintain the popularity of the live broadcast room for a long time. The live broadcast time can last for more than 10 hours.

03. Live streaming to attract traffic: What are the channels?

What are the combination ideas for the three major warm-up rhythm resources?

There are three main channels for live streaming traffic:

First, the business domain, such as TopView/TopLive, Feedslive, information flow, DOU+, etc. This type of traffic is highly controllable and has quick results. It is ideal for live streaming, but the cost is high;

Second, the public domain, such as live broadcast square, local city, and in-site push, has relatively low traffic controllability and unstable drainage effect, which requires comprehensive testing of content materials and anchor live broadcast and control capabilities;

3. Private domain, represented by: avatar breathing light, other people’s homepage, attention. This type of traffic takes the longest time to accumulate, but is highly controllable and has the highest conversion rate, but the premise is that the brand has done a good job of fan interaction and operation.

So, how should brands produce advertising materials and differentiate their advertising strategies based on different promotional rhythms? The suggestions are as follows:

If it is a long-term dragnet-style promotion of about 7 days, you can choose to use pure short video materials and cooperate with TopView to gradually accumulate fans . However, this strategy has high requirements for short video materials and quality, and is more suitable for brands with a small fan base to complete the early accumulation of loyal fans;

If it is a short-term close battle of about 3 days, it is recommended to use the "short video + live broadcast" material dual-channel drainage method. At the same time, cooperate with TopView/TopLive delivery and Feed direct delivery to the live broadcast room to deeply awaken the brand's own fans and achieve passers-by to attract new users, so as to maximize the attraction of interested users;

If it is a short-term, frequent and fast traffic-generating strategy on the day of the live broadcast, you can use live broadcast materials alone and cooperate with FeedsLive/DOU+ direct broadcast rooms to complete the traffic generation. This method has great advantages for live broadcast rooms that have already formed a fixed broadcast awareness and a high fan base.

04. What are the copywriting skills for warm-up videos?

Above we know the importance of preheating, but how should we shoot a preheating video? How to cleverly reveal the information points of the live broadcast without boring the audience?

For live broadcasts of product promotion, the focus should be on highlighting the watchability of the live broadcast, using endorsements from celebrities/famous people to warm up the live broadcast and convey the brand value. But be careful not to use hard brand advertising, as Douyin users are unlikely to be impressed by this type of content that fails to demonstrate the brand’s sincerity.

For example, Infiniti’s pre-heating video featured many opinion leaders including host Chen Ming, spokesperson Zhang Ruoyun, automotive opinion leader Chen Zhen, and design industry insider Liang Zhaohui, who testified for the launch of the new car. From celebrities to vertical category bigwigs, they covered fan groups at all levels, achieved refined coverage of the automotive audience, and the final drainage effect far exceeded the market average.

As for live streaming with goods, the broadcaster must be good at integrating with users, and show users benefits such as low prices and discounts in the live streaming room through jokes, skits and other content. In addition, the broadcaster must control the high-quality goods in the live streaming room, so that users can generate a strong motivation to place orders from emotional stimulation to rational planting.

For example, Luo Yonghao’s live broadcast warm-up video has grown from immature to mature, and now he can be said to be at ease. For example, the warm-up video he produced for the Douyin Wonderful Goods Festival has the illusion of a video being scrolled over created by technical special effects, as well as video clips and laughs created by the exposure of the "Thousand-Armed Guanyin" behind him, and artificial barrages that add a bonus of complaints, which is very interesting.

05. How to design live broadcast content scripts and interactions?

This question still needs to be answered based on the purpose of the live broadcast.

First of all, for live broadcasts with the purpose of brand promotion, we must focus on user experience and rhythm control, and deepen the live broadcast content through three elements.

Storytelling: By setting up segments, the watchability of the live broadcast is enhanced, thereby deeply conveying the brand value.

For example, at the Land Rover new car launch conference, 30 guests were invited to talk about their relationship with Land Rover. A rich content dimension was set up, which not only provided storytelling but also fully explained the performance of the vehicle.

Rhythm: By controlling the rhythm of the live broadcast room, the degree of comprehension of the content by users who enter the room for the first time can be reduced, so that users can integrate into the room as quickly as possible. If a user comes in and watches for 5 minutes without knowing what you are talking about, he or she will definitely choose to leave. Therefore, you can split the regular live broadcast into multiple small units, with self-contained content and independent segments, which reduces the cost of understanding and makes it easier for users to integrate into the live broadcast atmosphere.

Interactivity: The interactive part is definitely a powerful tool for retaining viewers in the live broadcast room. Setting attractive interactive rewards with clear time nodes can greatly increase the viewing time of users.

As for live streaming selling goods, the focus is on creating atmosphere and stimulating hot spots. A standard live streaming script for selling goods is provided below for your reference.

From the above picture we can see that there are detailed plans for the live broadcast room settings, specific duration, lottery benefits, interactive gameplay, etc. Formulate a detailed strategy before the broadcast and strictly implement it during the live broadcast without procrastination, in an orderly manner and with highlights. Such a live broadcast environment is conducive to users' immersive shopping and can create a sense of excitement for grabbing goods, making people reluctant to quit for fear of missing out on any quality products.

Author: Kas Data

Source: caasdata6