Highlights:

1. Behind the crazy live broadcasts, most bosses complain of huge losses. How can they do a good job of live broadcasting to sell goods ? – A detailed explanation of the golden marketing combination for successful live streaming sales.
2. There are more and more platforms, and each platform has different gameplay. Which platform can meet the core demands? - Comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the top 10 live streaming platforms and their core functionalities.
3. With the industry experiencing rapid growth, how can we find, identify and choose the right people (anchors/self-media) to communicate with users? - Create intelligent marketing methods across the entire chain from KOL to channels to gameplay.
4. Live streaming e-commerce is gradually stabilizing. Should brands join in or get trapped? What are the future opportunities and challenges for live streaming e-commerce? – The Growth and Evolution of Live E-commerce in 2020

The correct channel is the foundation for a correct brand live streaming strategy.

After the excitement, live streaming sales have been divided into three teams: e-commerce platforms, short video platforms, and social platforms. Each platform has its own focus and differences in its position, goals, and methods. Based on the core goals and underlying logic of different platforms, this article will comprehensively analyze the gameplay of the top 10 live streaming platforms, review the 618 cases, and future development trends from the perspective of the platform.

1. E-commerce team

Taobao leads, JD.com upgrades, Suning tries new things, and Pinduoduo is more of a tool. Purpose: The cost of acquiring customers for e-commerce remains high, and live streaming is used to empower e-commerce.

Advantages: Abundant goods and merchant resources.

Differences at a glance:

1. Taobao Live

As the leader in the field, it has achieved leapfrog development in all aspects including scale, anchors, and scenarios.

Taobao Live has three advantages:

1. The user base is large and the stickiness is high. As of the end of 2019, consumers could watch more than 350,000 hours of live content every day and purchase 600,000 products.
2. The scale of goods sales has achieved leapfrog development. In 2019, the annual guided transaction volume exceeded 250 billion yuan, with a growth rate of more than 150% for three consecutive years. In 2019, the annual GMV of 177 anchors exceeded 100 million yuan.
3. The live broadcast subjects are more diverse and the scenes are richer. During the 618 period, 300 celebrities, 600 presidents, more than 10,000 offline stores, and more than 50,000 salesmen gathered for live broadcasts. The live broadcast scenes have also expanded from the live broadcast room to factories, fields, stalls, shopping malls, streets, markets, etc.

Currently, Taobao's live broadcast ecosystem is overly dependent on top anchors, which will increase the proportion of merchants' self-broadcasting and mid- and low-end anchors. In the future, the proportion of transaction volume guided by store live broadcasts, top anchors, celebrities, and small and medium-sized anchors may reach 4:3:3.

Merchants from different industries on the Taobao platform have joined the live streaming craze, which is more friendly to traditional industries. Mass high-consumption categories and niche industries (pets, gardening, etc.) are improving their competitiveness through exposure and special live streaming.

Based on these advantages, Taobao live streaming sales have triggered a situation where consumables with strong experience, high repurchase rates and low return rates shine on the platform. Taking the 618 data as an example, the fashion channel was the most popular and the conversion rate was also very gratifying.

In 2020, Taobao will fully upgrade its live streaming methods for both the host and product ends, optimizing the entire chain of e-commerce live streaming from the perspectives of content, traffic, and circles. These include increasing PGC content and celebrity support, launching the first C2M special edition live broadcast, and integrating three major entrances and two major gameplays. The specific content can be viewed in the report.

2. JD Live

Through 618, we have comprehensively upgraded and established the core position of live broadcast strategy.

JD.com has strong control over suppliers, combines the strengths of multiple platforms, integrates content resources, and highlights the platform's supply chain capabilities. Its advantages are:

1. High traffic exposure. Through search recommendations within the main venue or linkage outside the site, a full-scene live broadcast with high traffic exposure can be formed; work with Kuaishou, Douyin, Weishi, Bilibili, etc. to create a live broadcast and sales ecosystem, forming a lively scene of full-area live broadcasts.
2. Diverse and rich live broadcast content. Taking the 618 live broadcast as an example, there were more than 300,000 key live broadcasts, and brand executive live broadcast columns such as "President's Price" and "Executive Live Show" were opened; 100+ celebrities took turns to live broadcast; hardcore concerts, Strawberry Music Festival and other content helped to attract the attention of diverse users.
3. Product-side service upgrade. It highlights its strong supply chain integration capabilities and encourages merchants to release new products through live broadcasts. During the 618 period, the "Ten Gift Packs" helped merchants accelerate their post-epidemic operations. The entry of its social e-commerce platform Jingxi enriched JD.com's live broadcast ecosystem in emerging markets, industrial belts, etc.

Maximize the advantages of the supply chain and create a win-win live broadcast ecosystem for all three parties. By subsidizing and empowering merchants, anchors, and users, help live broadcasts quickly establish an ecological scale.

3. Suning Live

As an early adopter of live streaming, we leverage our supply chain advantages to create live streaming of quality products that are affordable to the people.

As a large-scale domestic e-commerce platform, Suning is also building its own ecological chain through in-app live streaming, focusing on creating more people-friendly and entertaining live streaming of good products. We enter the live broadcast market through four major live broadcast formats: store/place of origin live broadcast, good product discount live broadcast, celebrity live broadcast, and e-commerce variety show live broadcast.

4. Pinduoduo Live

The live broadcast tool positioning helps merchants improve user stickiness and high conversion rates.

Pinduoduo Live provides merchants with a "cash red envelope" marketing tool. Through WeChat, it can guide consumers to invite friends to enter the live broadcast room, helping merchants to increase traffic and exposure, thereby achieving store conversions.

The inherent characteristics are:

1. About 80% are store live broadcasts.
2. With Duoduo Farm, live broadcasts by county governors, and celebrity endorsements, Pinduoduo is supporting agriculture in multiple dimensions.
3. In terms of traffic acquisition, it mainly relies on private domain traffic or public domain advertising.

In the recent product promotion categories, Pinduoduo has clearly seen new strategic changes, targeting high-level customers.

During the 618 live streaming sales event, the first live streaming sales show was conducted through celebrity recommendation officer Zhou Tao. The scope of the official 10 billion yuan subsidy has been continuously increased. It is not only limited to big-name high-end products or mid-to-high-end electronic products, but the scope has been expanded to daily necessities, mid-to-high-end electronic products, department stores, etc. Calculated based on the subsidized price and the bottom price of the entire network, the subsidy range is about 20%.

In subsidies, high-end users are targeted, and profits are given mainly to attract middle-income consumers.

2. Short video/content community team

Douyin has wide traffic, Kuaishou has its own market, Xiaohongshu adopts the B2K2C model, and Bilibili is testing the waters internally with the goal of increasing e-commerce through live streaming.

Advantages: rich talent resources, large traffic, and strong planning capabilities.

Differences at a glance:

1. Tik Tok Live

In 2020, we will focus on building a live broadcast ecosystem of "traffic + support + monetization".

There are many previous contents analyzing the trends of Douyin live broadcast. You can click on the album to view them. The focus of Douyin live broadcast in 2020 is to put e-commerce live broadcast on the agenda and improve its own ecological closed loop. The short video content of the Douyin platform is rich, and it is also the foundation of its commercial development. The platform encourages content self-media to try the integration of live streaming and selling goods to form a monetization model with a virtuous cycle.

At the same time, celebrities and influencers have set up live streaming rooms on Douyin to sell goods, further promoting the popularization, normalization and large-scale development of "Douyin live streaming".

Douyin, which focuses on content promotion, focuses on the trendy and individual life attitudes of young people. The platform's tone makes content promotion + live streaming the best combination to integrate brand quality and effect.

2. Kuaishou Live

Breaking the circle and reshaping the industry, branding and source-based products are the two major trends in Kuaishou’s product upgrades.

Kuaishou has been active recently, and its overall brand has been improving, thereby enhancing the platform's commercialization capabilities. For detailed information, please refer to Weibo's previous content "Kuaishou subverts Kuaishou" and "Uncovering the six major families of Kuaishou: How brands communicate with their friends."

Through its celebrity layout and corporate collaboration with Kuaishou celebrities for live broadcasts, Kuaishou has gradually expanded its circle, increased the types of top celebrities, repackaged its family anchors, and weakened its grassroots flavor.

Many brands have entered Kuaishou's live broadcast room not just as a channel to clear inventory. With the increase in new product releases, brands have begun to recognize Kuaishou's unique charm in reaching the lower-end markets and attracting new customers, and Kuaishou's branding process has accelerated.

At the same time, based on the existing characteristics, the supply chain capabilities of the anchors on the site are demonstrated, and based on the place of origin, the upgrading of the white-label product industry chain with extremely high cost-effectiveness is driven. At the same time, we have reached a strategic cooperation with JD.com. Users can use the anchor as a channel to purchase JD.com products and enjoy JD.com's after-sales service through recommendations and experiences.

3. Xiaohongshu Live Broadcast

During the exploration period of live streaming sales, the B2K2C model helps brands to deepen the sharing-based sales.

Develop KOL/KOC into seed users, influence ordinary users through their sharing, accumulate word-of-mouth and complete the original accumulation of brand value.

At the same time, special attention is paid to sharing experiential live broadcasts. Take a recent event as an example: on June 22, the founders of eight major domestic brands made their Xiaohongshu live broadcast debut, promoting products on the same stage with the anchors, and deeply sharing the brand concept through the method of "the brand speaks for itself, and the anchor experiences it."

Xiaohongshu Live is currently in the cultivation process from 0 to 1. Although there are precedents of celebrities joining and live streaming, it has limitations such as shallow entrance, limited openness, and being limited to Xiaohongshu Mall, and further ecological improvement is needed.

However, for the Xiaohongshu platform, which has a strong ability to promote products and has extremely high user stickiness, live streaming is not just an experiment, but also a way to open up a more direct sales link to brands. Now is also a good time for brands to enter the market.

Bilibili's live streaming is currently in the internal testing phase. For Bilibili, which has a strong presence in 2D live streaming, game live streaming, and show live streaming, how to integrate its characteristics and reshape Bilibili's sales "place" from the perspective of goods and people will become the key to Bilibili's challenges and easier breakthroughs.

3. Social Platform Team

Weibo exposure focuses on traffic diversion, while Tencent’s purpose is more tool-oriented: traffic aggregation and conversion into commercial value.

Advantages: social advantages, wide coverage, and the ability to mobilize private domain traffic.

Differences at a glance:

1. Weibo Live

The largest public opinion field for e-commerce fission marketing and an excellent place for exposure.

If Weibo live streaming is to achieve significant results, it needs to integrate the “Weibo showcase + live streaming + activities”.

Weibo Showcase is a high-traffic product display window on Weibo. In addition to directing traffic to Tmall, it will also be fully open to Weibo users for JD shopping.

The live broadcast page on Weibo is mainly based on the live show broadcast of "Yizhibo" (a live broadcast platform), but in the field of e-commerce live broadcast, it is connected with Taobao and distributed on two platforms, providing full-range e-commerce services through exposure on Weibo and product display on Taobao live broadcast.

2. Tencent Live

It is more of a tool-based model, connecting official accounts + mini programs + live broadcasts, and private domain e-commerce has great potential for development.

At present, Tencent Live appears as a tool in the WeChat ecosystem of merchants themselves, and the entrances mainly include three parts: official accounts, communities and WeChat advertising.

For methods such as merchant stores + celebrities/internet celebrities or low-price sales, mobilize all known inventory and stimulate online consumption of inventory. This means that customer acquisition and traffic diversion in offline stores are important ports for traffic, and through effective online and offline linkage, the brand's online sales channels can be opened up.

Disadvantages: It is not friendly to niche brands or brands without private domain inventory. The cost of cultivating live broadcasts is high. It is only suitable for establishing channels but not for efficient exposure.

Based on different platform attributes and future development trends, the following suggestions are given for different focuses of brand live streaming:

In terms of brand size:

Merchants with a large user base and extremely high offline store coverage who hope to integrate the supply chain and expand sales models are suitable for tool-type live broadcasts such as Tencent Live and e-commerce platform store self-broadcasts such as Taobao, Pinduoduo, and JD.com. White-label or emerging brands are suitable for high-traffic exposure and quickly bring products to the market, such as live broadcasts by celebrities on Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc. Adjust your platform to suit your brand based on its current stage and purpose.

From the perspective of live broadcast purpose:

If you want to sell products quickly, live streaming will be more effective on e-commerce platforms with higher conversion rates or on seeding platforms such as Xiaohongshu. If you want to focus on exposure, you can integrate live streaming with other methods such as Weibo celebrity showcases and Douyin seeding.

From the perspective of advertising budget:

The mid-level self-media/anchors on Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Kuaishou have a higher cost-effectiveness ratio, but they need to be accurately matched with anchors that match the brand tone for advertising. Taobao's top anchors and merchants' self-broadcasts are more friendly.

From the perspective of brand building:

Top anchors have strong bargaining power and offer extremely high discounts on goods. Without the prelude of content, users will have less awareness of full-priced goods. Experience-based live broadcasts and marketing-based live broadcasts have strong brand protection capabilities, but sales may not reach a surge. Before launching a live broadcast, brands can use short videos to influence users’ minds and form brand memories. At special nodes, they can use strong sales anchors from Douyin, Kuaishou, and Taobao to quickly sell products.

Author: Micro Broadcast Easy

Source: Weibo