In 2020, is selling products the top priority for brand live streaming?

2019 is considered the first year of live streaming sales, and Li Jiaqi and Viya have completely made Taobao live streaming popular. The most intuitive impression of live streaming in everyone’s mind should be the hosts who are as excited as chicken blood and sell hundreds of millions of dollars in one hour. In any case, it is strongly associated with selling goods.

In 2020, with the entry of platforms such as WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili, live streaming sales will still be very popular. But it is precisely because of the respective advantages of these platforms, such as the social advantages of WeChat, the entertainment genes of Douyin, the circle cultural foundation of Bilibili, and the leading position of Taobao Live, that the result is that live streaming’s contribution to brands will not only be limited to selling goods, but much more.

Especially under the epidemic in Q1, the trend of “live streaming is more than just selling goods” has begun to emerge.

1. Live streaming will become an important content carrier for brand communication

When it comes to content carriers for brand communication, we are too accustomed to common forms such as “WeChat, Weibo and Douyin” content, short videos, H5, offline pop-up stores, and posters. However, in the future, with the rise of 5G networks and the development of users' habit of watching live broadcasts, live broadcasts will also become an important content carrier for brands to communicate with consumers.

Let’s first look at a more “incredible” case:

On February 8 during the Spring Festival epidemic, Shanghai's well-known nightclub TAXX Bar quietly started a live broadcast on Douyin. What was the purpose of the live broadcast? Dance! It topped the Tik Tok live streaming charts for 4 hours.

On the second day, One Third bar live-streamed the disco on Douyin for 5 hours, with a total of more than 1.213 million people online. This has ignited a craze for online "cloud disco" in major nightclubs across the country. Many leading nightclubs and labels from first- and second-tier cities such as Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Changsha have settled in the two major short video platforms, Douyin and Kuaishou, to conduct "cloud disco" live broadcasts, which are scheduled every night.

Before this, we might have taken it for granted that these mainly offline service industries would all be shut down during the epidemic. However, these nightclub brands, through the form of live broadcast of disco dancing, not only have a good way to get young people who stay at home to participate, but also have considerable actual profits.

(It is reported that the total reward income of TAXX Shanghai Douyin account exceeded 700,000 in 4 hours, and the One Third bar account received more than 2 million in rewards in 5 hours)

If these nightclub and bar cases are a bit too crazy. In fact, there are a series of brands from all walks of life that have opened up communication with users through live broadcasts during this period, such as:

• Luxury brands start broadcasting to impart elite knowledge and brand and product stories related to their own fields;
• Gyms and sports brands have launched online live courses. Super Monkey’s Douyin account “Super Monkey Homestay” had 190,000 online viewers at its peak. NIKE, as a sports brand, took the lead in launching a series of live broadcasts on WeChat called “Practice at Home”.
• Food and catering brands teach you how to cook delicious food at home through live broadcasts, resulting in everyone becoming a "Chinese chef". The circle of friends is full of photos of rice cooker cakes, homemade milk tea, and hot pot.
• Beauty brands have every reason to teach you makeup tips and product knowledge through live streaming, and how to create a movie-worthy look at home.

…

All of these live broadcast cases, compared to the various shouting-style sales we have seen in the anchor room in the past, are more like a category of brand communication content.

Even after the epidemic is over, the trend of live streaming becoming an important content form for brand communication will continue.

In addition to the development of 5G networks mentioned at the beginning and the cultivation of users' mentality of watching live broadcasts, more importantly, live broadcasts further provide a vehicle for two-way interactive communication between brands and consumers.

"Two-way communication with users" should be the most politically correct consensus in the marketing industry since the emergence of new online media. However, whether it is H5, social communication, or offline activities, the two-way communication mechanisms under these communication forms are not sound.

Think about it: a brand releases an H5, and then users click in to interact. It seems that two-way communication is achieved, but this two-way communication is actually a program that the brand has already set up, and it does not essentially allow consumers to express their communication freely. Think about it again, when it comes to live streaming, don’t you think this kind of two-way communication is much stronger?

Of course, if live streaming is to become a form of brand communication, the most important thing is to return to the content itself: whether your live streaming is interesting and informative enough to capture the attention of target consumers. This is also the most challenging aspect for a brand’s content creation and overall communication planning capabilities!

In this regard, a case of Starbucks can be used as a reference for everyone.

Starbucks holds a "Member's Night" event near Christmas in December every year, where it invites some senior members and coffee lovers to get together to spend Christmas Eve. In the past, this activity was mainly held offline, by choosing a more distinctive store from among many stores. But if it’s only done in one store, the impact is actually very limited.

Starbucks began to think: Can we move this member night event online in the form of live broadcast? In this way, all the star fans can join this members' night carnival!

Therefore, the brand first took a series of actions to promote this "Members Night" live broadcast. For example: through the "Light up the Star Wishes" H5 interaction, let everyone make a wish that you want to realize during the "Member Night". The result of the interaction is that you will receive an online live broadcast invitation letter full of ceremonial sense, and reserve your time for that night on your mobile phone calendar. Li Jiaqi was also invited to shoot a "star chasing" video for promotion, calling on fans to come to the live broadcast room to receive various surprise gifts.

After sufficient warm-up and promotion, the official event arrived as scheduled, and the venue was still held in an offline store. However, the content and rhythm of the live broadcast have been carefully arranged. In addition to the sharing of professional and interesting coffee knowledge, there are also many surprise welfare links, such as scattering 1,000 stars in the live broadcast room (9 stars can be exchanged for a cup of coffee) and drawing the #365-day Starbucks free drink# right.

Due to the good accumulation of water in the early stage and the layout of the rhythm of the live broadcast content, the total number of viewers for the entire store live broadcast should be considered to have set a record for store broadcasts on Taobao Live. It not only completed the output of Starbucks brand communication content well, but also performed very strongly in guiding people to enter the store and make payments.

2. Live streaming will become a “human version” of product details pages

With Taobao’s vigorous promotion and resource support for store self-broadcasting, more and more brand stores have started store live broadcasts lasting several hours every day. Therefore, the most intuitive experience brought to consumers will be like the pictures I have captured below.

These are the product details pages of several stores I randomly visited one morning. I found that there was a floating layer on the page called "The shopkeeper is broadcasting." Then, click in to see the daily store broadcasts of these brands. The hosts are amateurs selected by the brands. They introduce and demonstrate their own products, and answer and respond to customers' questions in the comments in real time. Of course, they will also insert some current store promotions from time to time.

At the time, I was thinking: Isn’t this just the “human version” of the product details page?

Think about it, in the past, if we wanted to know the information about a product before purchasing it, we would go to the product details page, look at the product showcase pictures from top to bottom (of course, in recent years more and more showcase pictures will use more intuitive short videos), core selling points, usage scenarios, product specifications, detailed displays, etc.

Although brands feel that this information is comprehensive enough, consumers at different stages still have many questions about the product or shopping itself.

At this time, when you see a real person explaining all kinds of information about the product in a live broadcast, and you can also ask questions and get answers in real time, doesn’t it feel much better than just reading text and pictures by yourself?

Live streaming is the 2.0 version of the e-commerce product details page. It is extremely helpful for brand products that require professional knowledge thresholds or scenario-based demonstrations.

For example, when it comes to some maternal and child products, mothers are extremely cautious in choosing diapers, milk powder, and complementary foods. Some new mothers do not have enough professional knowledge in this area. If the host is an experienced mother, she will tell you in the live broadcast room what suitable diapers to choose for babies aged 3-6 months and babies over 12 months old, and demonstrate to you on the spot how their own products are soft, skin-friendly, elastic, and easy to absorb water, etc. I believe this is extremely helpful for promoting new mothers' awareness of the brand and purchase conversion. For example, the same principle applies to some 3C products, clothing, and beauty products.

Following this trend, brands will invest more time and manpower in store live streaming in the future.

For example, in terms of time, can a "real-person version" of the product details page be available online 24 hours a day? In terms of manpower, a group of people who not only understand the products but can speak well can be selected; it is even possible that the store will arrange different anchor candidates according to different needs. For example, when there is a big sale and goods need to be sold, Li Lei may be the one who creates the atmosphere. On a daily basis, the focus is on the comprehensive introduction and display of products, so Han Meimei, who understands the products better, is needed.

3. Live streaming will become a “new track” for brand crowd assets

Let’s review first. I have actually introduced a concept in my recent articles, called “brand crowd assets”. This is actually the most important foundation for growth to enter the era of refinement. In the field of e-commerce, we used to say: [GMV=traffic*conversion rate*average order value], which is a kind of traffic operation thinking. But now the formula becomes: [GMV=total population assets*population turnover rate*average customer unit price].

For the so-called "crowd assets", many platforms have their own set of models. The most widely accepted one should be the combination of Alibaba's "AIPL" and "FAST".

Now that we have made clear the general concept of brand crowd assets, it will be easier for us to understand: Why will live streaming become the “new track” for brand crowd assets?

On the one hand, e-commerce live streaming, with Taobao as the main platform, can itself achieve the effect of increasing the brand’s total population assets in the e-commerce environment and accelerating population progression.

For example, the accumulation of live broadcasts in stores can not only increase the direct purchase and payment population, but also increase the collection and purchase population, fan population, and member population. In addition, some mechanisms can be set up to allow them to progress to the population in the back link. For example, the simplest anchor tells everyone to follow the store to receive no-threshold coupons, which can allow the population to progress from A to I; guiding everyone to join the membership to enjoy what discounts, which may allow the A/I population to progress one step further in the back link...

Another reason is that, as we mentioned earlier, live streaming will become an important content carrier for communication between brands and consumers, which can help brands gain recognition and interest to a great extent.

Especially for content platforms like WeChat, Tik Tok, and Bilibili, which already have strong user activity, if brands can continue to create interesting live content on these platforms, it will undoubtedly be an opportunity to overtake others in the accumulation of assets of the front-end link population (such as exposure, number of fans, number of favorites and purchases, etc.).

For example, let’s just give an example: a brand teamed up with TikTok to launch the first live sitcom. The specific approach is that the brand launches a one-hour live broadcast on Douyin every day. The first 20 minutes explain the product, call on fans to pay attention, preview the plot, etc., and the last 40 minutes perform a situational drama that combines the brand's selling points, just like a live drama, allowing online users to watch it through the live broadcast and interact immersively with the scene through real-time comments. Of course, this is just a brainwave, and it will largely test the brand's ability to create content.

4. In the future, advertising companies may kill MCN companies

Finally, based on this theme, let’s make some bold predictions about future trends in the marketing industry.

In recent years, with the rise of internet celebrity economy and live streaming sales, and the increasing attention paid by Party A to how much revenue the marketing expenses invested can produce, similar remarks in the industry such as "advertising companies are dead" and "MCN will replace advertising companies" were once rampant.

To a certain extent, some MCN companies that have a large number of celebrity resources and content production capabilities have indeed "stealed" a lot of business from advertising companies, because they can directly connect with the client without going through the "middleman" link of the advertising company. But this is only a small part of all MCN companies. Most MCN companies have only signed or maintained some celebrity resources and acted as talent agents. They do not have the ability to produce high-quality creative content and probably do not plan to be involved in this area for a long time.

Based on our previous analysis of a series of trends in live streaming, the most important conclusion can be drawn: live streaming will pay more and more attention to the creation of the content itself.

There will be live broadcasts that rely solely on hawking, but it will only be one form of it. In the future, brands will need to make long-term content plans for live streaming like the “two Weibo and one Douyin”, and they will also need to plan creativity and communication rhythm like a wave of campaigns.

And this job seems to have returned to the "old business" of advertising companies. After all, compared with most MCN companies, they have more advantages in brand communication planning and content creativity. Therefore, in the future, advertising companies may in turn eliminate MCN companies.

Of course, judging from this sentence alone, there may be some clickbait elements in it. A more rigorous statement should be: In the future, advertising companies may eliminate a number of MCN companies that have neither the ability to produce high-quality content nor sufficient strong resources. After all, the business environment is one of constant updates and iterations, where only the fittest survive.

In 2020, brand live streaming : more than just selling goods. Let’s look forward to it together!

Author: JS Planner

Source: JS Planner (powerpluspoint)