The brand marketing secrets behind e-commerce live streaming

The article analyzes e-commerce live streaming from the two aspects of "impulsive consumption" and "rational experience", and summarizes the industrial situation and value behind it to share with everyone.

Taobao joined the e-commerce live streaming in 2016, but it was not very popular at the beginning. It worked silently until 2018 when Taobao live streaming emerged with internet celebrities such as Wei Ya. By 2019, live streaming had become an important strategy for major e-commerce companies. In particular, during the Double Eleven shopping festival, Taobao vigorously promoted live streaming, with more than 50% of brand merchants seizing the new opportunity of Taobao live streaming. All-day live streaming generated nearly 20 billion yuan in GMV.

Kuaishou and Douyin, two short video platforms, also joined the battle. Within two days, Kuaishou's live shopping carnival attracted millions of sellers and more than 100 million users to participate, bringing in more than 50 million orders. During the same period, the number of users who activated the Douyin shopping cart function exceeded 2 million, the number of live broadcasts of product sharing reached 500,000, and the total number of views exceeded 2 billion.

In 2020, Luo Yonghao teamed up with Douyin to carry out the first e-commerce live broadcast, once again igniting the flames of war in the industry. For a time, e-commerce and content platforms were confused. One side was looking for traffic with monetization, and the other side was looking for monetization with traffic. In e-commerce live streaming, they both ended up in the same place. This article will take a look at this track where many giants from different fields are vying to enter.

01 Create impulse consumption

E-commerce live streaming and fashion show live streaming both guide rational and impulsive consumption. The impulse lies in allowing users to consume without thinking through the guidance of the live streaming scene, and the rationality lies in making consumers feel that this transaction is cost-effective.

1. Psychological motivations for e-commerce live streaming consumption

In order to create an impulse buying experience, we first tried to explore the consumption psychology of users in e-commerce live streaming. An article titled "Immersive: The Consumer Psychology Behind E-Commerce Live Streaming" attempts to use the high social presence of live streaming to explain live streaming consumption behavior. Social presence is defined as the degree to which a person is seen as a “real person” and feels connected to others when communicating through content.

In other words, if the sense of reality of a certain communication through a certain carrier is stronger, the sense of social presence is higher, then there is no doubt that live streaming is the most mature carrier with the highest sense of social presence. During e-commerce live streaming, users can directly interact with the anchor and feel the enthusiastic participation of other buyers, turning what was originally shopping alone into shopping with a group, thus turning individual consumption behavior into socialized consumption behavior.

Simply increasing the sense of presence only awakens the user and makes the user more impulsive. But users may not necessarily pay for impulse purchases. Think back to when you were a little interested in a product on TV shopping shows and how they made the final push. At this time, the sounds of words may ring in your mind: “Not 9,800, just 998”, “Ding ding ding, another customer called in, only the last 100 pieces are left”, “Customers who call in now can also receive XXX worth 998”, etc. The psychology that stimulates users to actually pay is "the herd mentality with a sense of urgency driven by interests." The core corresponds to three key words: herd mentality, sense of urgency and profit-driven .

(1) Herd mentality

When users are not familiar with a product, they tend to refer to other people's reviews. Comprehensive consideration of the reviews of experts and ordinary users can make consumption decisions more confident. In addition, people want others to accept rather than reject them, so they expect to receive positive comments, which makes them appear more "social". So sometimes, even though you think the experience of a certain product is not good, if most people say it is good, you will be shaken and wonder if there is something wrong with you or if you are just unlucky.

Internally, consumers want to make purchases with confidence and also want the approval of others. These two mentalities are externalized as herd consumption. The more realistic display of products in live broadcasts and timely comments from other users can give users confidence in their purchasing decisions; active responses or even rush purchases by other buyers (the host’s fans may even be agents) can make the audience “obedient,” automatically internalizing themselves as group members, significantly promoting herd consumption behavior.

(2) Sense of urgency and profit drive

Live streaming is real-time and fleeting, and inherently carries a strong sense of urgency. In order to increase the user's sense of urgency, merchants will also use many strategies: such as setting smaller inventory limits to make consumers feel that the opportunity is not to be missed; reporting sales progress in a timely manner to create a tense atmosphere of rush buying; setting a countdown, as if the product is only a second away from being available; letting the user's purchase records scroll by, as if the user is rushing to buy, etc. This sense of urgency further amplifies the user's impulse and confidence. If seemingly valuable gifts or discounts are provided to create an interest-driven environment, it will not be so difficult to promote consumption.

In short, live streaming creates a sense of social presence through interactions and strategies among all parties, and then the host’s recommendations and fans’ support initiate the first wave of consumption among core users, enhancing the purchasing confidence of non-fans. Various strategies are used to form users' herd mentality and make them stand on the side of the anchor ideologically. Then, we need to continue to create a sense of urgency to push users to the brink of buying. Finally, the purchase is made through coercion (if you miss it, you will lose money) and inducement (driven by interests), which is the last straw that breaks the camel's back.

2. Anchors with personality

In e-commerce live streaming, each live broadcast room is a shopping mall. If a shopping mall has no characteristics, it will obviously be difficult to survive in the fiercely competitive market. The luxury of Beijing SKP, the fashion of Taikoo Li Sanlitun, the quality of life of MixC, etc., almost all famous shopping malls in the country have their own outstanding characteristics. Creating a personal IP for an anchor with personality and charm is obviously also the key to building a good anchor mall.

(1) Simple, professional and reliable personality

There are two steps to building a persona. The first is to establish a simple, professional and reliable persona. The purpose of this is to narrow the distance with consumers and gain their trust. It is not easy to do a good job as a shopping guide if you have an image that is too superior like a celebrity. After selecting a persona, you need to continue to shape it. In marketing, there is a concept called integrated marketing. This means that all internal and external aspects such as production, design, marketing, public relations and even corporate management must be consistent in order to ensure the authenticity of the product image.

The character of Wei Ya, the queen of Taobao live streaming, is a fashionable mom. This setting makes users feel ordinary and real and is not likely to cause disgust. Who doesn’t love a stylish housewife on a budget? She also put a lot of effort into shaping her character. For example, she often mentions her daughter and husband during live broadcasts, and all products are said to be "for my own use", "my daughter is also using them", and "my husband is also using them". Things that she and her family use must be trustworthy. Wei Ya’s lottery code has always been “Viya’s woman”, bringing users and the anchor together at every stage.

Li Jiaqi is a "beauty expert" and is famous for trying lipstick colors on his hands and lips during his live broadcasts. It is said that excessive application and rubbing of the lips once caused problems with the lip skin. He objectively evaluates each product from the perspective of a male professional makeup artist, even those from wealthy sponsors. For example, "The color of this one is average, it may not be suitable for ordinary girls", "This one is very common, you can choose not to buy it if there is a similar color", etc. When recommending products, he will select a small number of styles based on the color testing results. This not only makes his image appear more objective and professional, but also makes it easier for consumers to choose. Often the recommended products become best-sellers. Through his painstaking efforts, he successfully became the "exquisite male best friend" in the eyes of many women.

(2) Private domain traffic dominated by people

Driven by capital and consumers, e-commerce live streaming has achieved rapid development in the past three years, and major platforms have also successively cultivated their own top anchors. In the course of their operations, these anchors have gradually accumulated a large number of fans who can be monetized, forming huge private domain traffic. The so-called private traffic simply refers to channels that can directly reach users at any time and frequency without paying. The most intuitive private traffic is fans. Loyal fans will follow the anchor on different platforms, which is also one of the greatest values ​​of the anchor's IP.

Take Li Jiaqi as an example. He has done live broadcasts on Douyin, Taobao and Xiaohongshu, all of which have high views and order volumes. A large part of the audience follows him as he moves between platforms. The platform can help anchors build private traffic to attract more anchors to join, while also reducing the risk of anchor loss.

3. Passionate experience

The so-called passionate experience is the shopping presence mentioned above. By creating a real shopping experience, consumers can continue to be in an impulsive and excited state, paving the way for completing transactions. There are many ways to improve the sense of presence in live broadcasts. Here are some common solutions in chronological order:

(1) Psychological expectations before live broadcast

Giving users psychological expectations before the live broadcast can help consumers who are interested in related products prepare. Consumers may refer to information in advance to make more prudent decisions during the live broadcast, or share it with friends and family who have the same needs. A common way to notify consumers is through live broadcast preview. An e-commerce live broadcast lasts about 3 hours, and most users will not stay in the live broadcast room for that long, so the anchor will generally preview the next main product at the beginning, during and at the end of the live broadcast, or in other public locations such as personal updates, fan groups, etc., so as to lock in users who are interested in these products in advance.

In addition to broadcasting various categories of goods every day, anchors can also have specific theme live broadcasts every month and cooperate with activities related to hot e-commerce festivals, such as Food Festival, Double Eleven, Christmas, etc. This can increase the freshness of users' viewing experience and also facilitate brand cooperation. The picture below is the live broadcast preview made by Wei Ya on Douyin.

(2) Real interaction during live broadcast

When it comes to the official live broadcast, the focus is to create a "real" shopping experience. The biggest challenge is to make full use of the real-time interactivity of the live broadcast. A successful e-commerce live broadcast has both inevitable and accidental factors. Life is like a play, it all depends on acting skills. Every live broadcast has a script planned in advance. How to do a good live broadcast within your own personality is a question worth thinking about.

What products do you sell? What is the order? How long does each product take? How should such products be introduced? How to interact with the audience? What kind of emergency plan is there if any problem occurs? It is not even necessary to have a venue control to manage order, create atmosphere, etc. It is not an exaggeration to treat every live broadcast as a performance. The more thorough the preliminary preparations, the higher the factor of inevitability and the higher the corresponding probability of success. Careful preparation is a respect for consumers and a respect for one's own profession, which is also the core point of live broadcast presence.

Li Jiaqi's Oh My God has become his signature catchphrase

For the platform, training and efficient tools can be provided to anchors to improve their ability to create a sense of presence in live broadcasts. For the audience, more interactive methods and more intuitive experiences can be provided, such as more interesting comment and interaction methods, more conspicuous product display methods, more discount methods, etc. Going further, in order to better present products, the platform can provide specialized hardware, such as VR display technology, background switching technology, etc.

(3) In-depth communication after the live broadcast

The end of the live broadcast does not mean the end of the live shopping experience, or in other words, the live shopping experience will never end. Where there is sales, there is after-sales service; where there are products, there are problems. As mentioned earlier, the key to e-commerce live streaming is to create a trusting relationship between the host and the user. The time for live streaming is limited, and only by doing a good job in after-sales service can you stay with the user all the time. What questions and opinions users have about the products, how to choose products, what opinions and suggestions they have about the live broadcast process, etc. are all good interactive topics. It’s okay to make mistakes, but you must take the initiative to communicate. The communication after the live broadcast is an opportunity to turn passers-by into fans, and haters into fans, but if it is not done well, it may also be a deep pit that turns fans into haters.

02 Return to rational experience

Saint Seiya said that he “will not be defeated by the same trick a second time”, and the same goes for consumers. If e-commerce live streaming is only for temporary gains but does not bring real value to consumers, it will certainly not last long. After using it many times, consumers will certainly return to rationality. What other value does live shopping have besides being more intuitive and the host having better product selection? (These two points themselves can be reasons for users to consume and are also the key to the growth of small anchors) Is shopping here really affordable?

1. A truly affordable experience

So how can we make users feel that they are getting real benefits? I think there are three directions: first, to provide more affordable prices, as price is a catalyst for sales; second, to sell exclusive monopoly goods, where there is only one product with such characteristics, and as long as the product is good enough, consumers are willing to pay for it; third, although there is no discount on the price, there are more gifts, better services or more upgraded products, which can also make consumers feel affordable.

In order to achieve the above-mentioned discounts, the anchor’s team needs to negotiate with the brand. If the brand wants to sell goods in the live broadcast room, it needs to provide additional discounts, gifts or limited edition products in the live broadcast room. The bargaining chip is the host's traffic. The sales brought by a live broadcast by a big host can sometimes even equal the sales of a medium-sized brand nationwide for several months. For brands, the income can be very substantial by selling designated styles at low prices and in large quantities in the live broadcast room. Brands are even willing to sell live broadcast styles at a loss, because the creation of a hit style will also help expose other products in the store. In addition, the subsequent sales and reputation of hot-selling products are also sources of profit. Therefore, such cooperation is a win-win cooperation, and the brand also enjoys it.

Luo Yonghao claims that his live broadcast does not make money, but the goods sold in it are indeed very discounted

This is even more true for non-brand products. Brands sometimes consider market price balance and will not make too many concessions on price, while non-brand products do not have such concerns. The anchor team can often find the source of the goods and negotiate the price directly, or even create a brand specifically for the anchor, turning it into a brand factory store, truly realizing "no middlemen making a profit from the price difference", so affordable goods are naturally a piece of cake.

2. Reshape the industrial chain, without middlemen making a profit from the price difference

The rise of a new sales form must be because it reduces the cost of consumer purchases, including monetary costs and decision-making costs.

A huge traffic entrance can often reshape the industrial chain and improve the efficiency of production and sales. In 2015, Pinduoduo entered the sinking market, and the tsunami-like traffic saved a group of producers without brands. They had production capacity but suffered from lack of traffic and had been living a miserable life. When the grassroots factories and low-end consumers came together, a chemical reaction occurred. Factories opened stores on Pinduoduo one after another, and consumers were able to directly purchase low-priced goods, which was a perfect match. With the growth of e-commerce live streaming, which has massive demand, it also has the ability to reshape the industrial chain. It shortens the entire industrial chain, speeds up the overall shopping efficiency, and brings people and goods closer together.

One of the effective approaches is to set up a live broadcast base in an industrial base, such as the footwear and clothing industrial bases in Guangzhou and Jinjiang, Haining Fur City, Puyang Cashmere City, etc. Live streaming has brought demand and traffic to the industrial base, to the point where the goods sold in the live streaming room are just samples, with factories directly producing based on live streaming sales. The entire chain consists of only producers, anchors and consumers. If the factory does the live broadcast itself, only the producers and consumers will be directly connected. Factories have the opportunity to directly face consumers to obtain orders and even build their own brands. Consumers can buy affordable goods, the platform also makes sufficient profits, and the anchors also earn ideal income, creating a win-win outcome for all parties.

The simple product logic of e-commerce live streaming is shown in Figure 2. Live streaming attracts user traffic and consumption by creating a real and impulsive shopping experience. The anchor then uses the traffic and orders to negotiate with producers, asking them to provide greater discounts. With discounted products, live streaming can turn users’ impulsive purchases into rational and repeat purchases, which in turn generates greater traffic to promote cooperation with producers and form a virtuous circle.

E-commerce live streaming product logic

03 Originated from life and higher than life

Art comes from life and is higher than life. This sentence is summarized from the views of Russian literary theorist Chernyshevsky. The original meaning is that artistic creation is based on everything in life. Then, through artistic means, such as concise language, wonderful storylines, exaggerated performance effects, etc., the artwork becomes more vivid and thought-provoking than daily life. Returning to e-commerce live streaming, it is easy to find that the anchor is actually a shopping guide who serves many customers at the same time. He serves more customers than in reality, and his shopping guide methods are more exaggerated, but he is still in the stage of life.

If there is a shopping guide that is above and beyond life, can it further stimulate users' desire to shop? Back to show live streaming, it is the most developed and mature live streaming method. It can make users pay just by relying on performances, so in fact, shows can stimulate users' senses better in terms of interaction and pure experience. If we can borrow the right parts from live shows, we may be able to achieve a shopping experience that is better than life. Below are four e-commerce live shopping guide methods that I have come up with in combination with live show broadcasts.

1. Live broadcast: A common link in TV shopping is the telephone connection. The anchor selects a viewer to connect via video or voice, and then communicates with the anchor about the product. In fact, this user represents a group of users. If the anchor can solve the problem of the audience on the spot, it is actually equivalent to solving the problem of a group of consumers, so the efficiency is still very high. In addition, for live broadcast rooms with average popularity, microphone connection may ensure the atmosphere of the live broadcast room to a certain extent;
2. PK: In real life shopping, we often say to compare prices from three stores. Have you ever thought about putting salespeople from two competing companies together for a competition? Debates like "The Rap of China" are extremely stimulating to the audience's senses, and there is indeed a need for comparison when buying important or large items. And two anchors PKing together can create such a surreal scene. Turn shopping guide into a debate. Whoever has more reasonable and powerful opinions will get more orders.
3. Replay: Human memory is limited, and previous memories will be overwritten after a period of time. If the scene recommended by the anchor can be reproduced when buying and comparing two similar products, it will be very helpful for decision-making. In addition, if a live broadcast lasts more than three hours, users may miss a lot of products, so it is meaningful for interested users to keep the relevant parts of the product.
4. Lucky draw: Lucky draw can be used as a key means to attract new users, activate and retain members in the live broadcast room. For example, sharing a lucky draw is a means of attracting new users, scheduled lucky draws, building lucky draws, shopping lucky draws, etc. are active means, and paying attention to the lucky draw or checking in for the lucky draw becomes a means of retention. The lottery mechanism provided by the platform focuses on fairness and flexibility. Fairness makes people feel that they can try it purely based on luck, and flexibility mainly allows the anchor to configure different lottery methods by himself to maintain freshness.

In short, e-commerce live streaming is not as simple as moving shopping guides to online live streaming, but a reshaping of the industrial chain. The team needs to conduct in-depth research on traffic, live streaming and e-commerce, and be able to combine them organically. Welcome everyone to discuss and exchange ~

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Author: Content Hacker

Source: Content Hacker