Can live streaming really save the offline crisis?

Recently, due to the impact of the epidemic, most offline industries have been hit. In order to reduce losses and resume operations as much as possible, businesses and enterprises have flocked to online live streaming. However, can live streaming really save offline activities?

The live streaming field, which had been settled with the listing of several leading players, is boiling again this spring.

Live disco, live house selling, live fitness, live sleeping...

Overnight, it seemed as if everyone was a broadcaster and everything could be broadcast live.

“A saleslady’s 3-hour live broadcast is equivalent to 6 months of work”, “The boss takes the lead in live broadcast and sells 400,000 goods in 2 hours”. Looking at the various headlines about live broadcast sales , it seems that we see the hope of clearing the haze and reviving sales.

But can live streaming really save offline operations? After studying the following areas, I think it may not be that simple.

1. Cloud disco is no longer popular

Cloud disco can be regarded as the first sub-segment of live streaming to become popular in 2020.

Cloud disco, which has become popular because of millions of tips, refers to the audience watching the DJ's live disc playing and the MC creating the atmosphere online in real time through various live broadcast platforms, listening to music online, and "discoing" at home offline.

In the eyes of those who are optimistic about cloud disco, this way of playing is justifiably popular: because of the epidemic, young people who stay at home can experience the disco atmosphere in their pajamas without having to dress up; also because the funny contrast of Solo disco at home is very topical.

However, before the epidemic was over, cloud disco had faded from our sight in just one week.

After online users joined in the fun of cloud disco a few times, they quickly lost interest in this kind of gameplay that lacked real interaction, and the number of viewers watching the cloud disco live broadcast dropped "steeply", from the initial peak of 100,000 people in the live broadcast room to the current minimum of only 500 people online.

On the live broadcast side, the heat is slowly fading. Shanghai TAXX Bar, the first initiator of cloud disco, quietly transformed cloud disco into "TAXX ERAA" music class on February 18, popularizing electronic music-related knowledge on the Douyin live broadcast platform; One Third, which once set a record of 2 million in revenue from a single live cloud disco, also changed the frequency of daily broadcasts to live broadcasts on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings.

According to "Baokuanfaze", some platforms that followed the cloud disco industry received very poor reward income, which was basically only around 1,000 yuan. There were even platforms where the lowest reward for a single game was only 40 yuan. At present, Douyin, which was the first to launch the Huoyun Disco, has also taken down its previous cloud disco special page.

An industry insider told "Hot Product Law" that the guaranteed income for DJs on some platforms is now 200,000 yuan lower than before the New Year: "For DJs, if they don't broadcast and stay at home, there will be no other business, so naturally there is no room for bargaining."

As mentioned in the "Hot Product Law" before, in the cloud disco model, the online tips received by the Club cannot be compared with the profit level and stability of offline alcoholic beverages. In the absence of a willingness for continued investment on both the supply and demand sides, it is naturally impossible for the platform to continue investing.

The absurd cloud disco came and went quickly. After the artificial hotspot wore off, the crowd dispersed.

2. Live streaming does not solve the gym’s problem

In addition to dealing a heavy blow to the entertainment industry, the epidemic has also put the fitness industry in trouble. Most gyms have had to close down just as the "golden period" after the New Year was about to begin.

So gyms also started live streaming, and fitness coaches launched videos and live courses on major platforms. Everyone stayed at home and started cloud fitness to maintain the enthusiasm of members.

Super Monkey was one of the first businesses to start cloud fitness, and the initial results were good. Once it was broadcast on the Yizhibo platform, the maximum number of online viewers reached 70,000.

Leke Sports and Douyin jointly launched the topic #宅家体育会#. The videos related to the topic have been played 1.3 billion times, attracting the participation of many celebrities such as Zhang Ting and Lee Da Hae, and the traffic is also quite high.

However, judging from the live broadcast effects of merchants who followed suit, they did not have such strong traffic-attracting ability.

SpaceCycle, a popular online gym with a "nightclub style", has teamed up with JD.com to launch the #JD.com Home Guide#. While JD.com is live streaming, links to related sports equipment will appear at the bottom of the screen, and users will not forget to sell goods while exercising in the cloud. However, at most, there are only a few hundred people online at the same time during the live streaming.

Keepland has launched a new live training camp section on the keep app, and has also launched a separate parent-child sport called "Parent-Child Family Sports Field". Although it is sold at a package price of 29.9 yuan for 6 classes, it has only attracted 300 families to participate.

In addition to the rapid decline in traffic performance, gyms are ultimately offline businesses, and operating costs such as rent and employee salaries still need to be borne by the companies. Live cloud fitness cannot solve the existing problems in the fitness industry.

For offline gyms, during the epidemic, they have to extend membership periods to retain users, and courses cannot be redeemed if they do not attend classes.

But at the same time, cloud fitness live streaming has almost no income and can only refresh the "exposure" for the brand and barely maintain the activity of member users.

In such a situation, live fitness broadcast cannot save the current embarrassing situation of gyms, and offline business still needs to be developed offline.

3. Is it really possible to sell houses through live streaming?

"Hengfangtong" is probably the biggest "Internet celebrity" in the real estate industry in recent times.

On February 16, Evergrande Group held an online press conference on the full implementation of online sales. At the press conference, Liu Xuefei, vice president of Evergrande, introduced that 47,500 units were subscribed online in just three days, with a total value of 58 billion yuan. More than 600 properties of Evergrande across the country have been subscribed, and the property with the most subscriptions has 870 units. Evergrande’s online sales are carried out through the “Evergrande Homes” platform, with a total of 10 million users.

In addition to Evergrande, Beike, which has been promoting VR house viewing, naturally also chose to sell houses online during the epidemic period. On February 18, Shell VR Sales Office was officially launched, providing one-stop online housing purchase services including house viewing, house selection and house purchase, opening up the last mile of online housing purchase.

On February 22, Beike teamed up with Xi'an Sunac Yuheyuan to launch the sale online, restoring the actual situation of the property in 720° through VR+ video. At the same time, multiple brokers and property consultants were connected on the same screen to interact with each other, providing explanations throughout the process. After locking in the property, contracts and payments can be signed online.

However, in contrast to the excitement and novelty of online live streaming of house selling, there is the offline attribute of real estate transactions that cannot be ignored: buying a house is not like buying cabbage. Such a large asset investment affects a family's quality of life for several years or even decades. Most home buyers still have to visit the house offline to confirm transportation, surrounding convenience and other conditions before they can really make a decision.

The current popular online live broadcasts and VR house viewing appeared a few years ago when VR was just emerging. Since 2015, off-site VR house viewing has been operated in many real estate projects. But in terms of actual effects, the roles of live house viewing and VR house viewing are basically the same as those of sandbox, which can only give customers a general concept of a property. Ultimately, it is still necessary to organize a house viewing group to lead customers to view the property in person.

What really drove Evergrande's online sales this time was probably the 25% discount on home purchases and Evergrande's brand effect, rather than live streaming.

Evergrande’s online sales strategy includes a series of policies to promote home purchases, including a minimum price lock-in period, no-reason room return, and home purchase and referral rewards. Evergrande even stated that home buyers will enjoy the right to purchase the property at the lowest price from the date of signing the "Commercial Housing Sales Contract" to May 10, and will be compensated for the difference if the price of the property is reduced.

The limitations of selling houses online cannot be ignored. This time, Evergrande’s live broadcast of selling houses was more like a marketing gimmick. Mobilizing all employees to sell houses and earn commissions made Evergrande attract a lot of attention - in the end, no matter what the conversion rate is, Evergrande will be the final winner.

4. Who else is live streaming?

Compared with cloud disco, cloud fitness, and cloud house selling, simple live streaming sales are more reliable.

Amid the epidemic, the demand for e-commerce live streaming is very strong. According to data released by China Securities, over the past 14 days, the average number of viewers for Taobao Live broadcasts has increased by 43.13%, and the average number of views has increased by 30.05%.

During the epidemic, the ones who really benefited from live streaming were the agricultural product e-commerce companies that gained a lot of traffic under the "agricultural assistance" plans of various platforms. Platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Suning, Meituan, Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua Video have recently launched agricultural assistance plans to drive the upward trend of agricultural products and speed up the circulation of agricultural products in order to cope with the problem of agricultural product backlogs caused by road closures and logistics suspensions during the Spring Festival.

Except for merchants who have received active assistance from project resources, for merchants who originally focused on offline channels, transitioning to live streaming sales is still a huge challenge.

In the era of live streaming, consumers expect to interact directly with merchants to answer questions and communicate instantly so that they can understand the products more intuitively and comprehensively. Merchants also hope to better stimulate consumer decision-making through real-time feedback mechanisms. But whether it is the switch in communication or transaction methods, even long-term user retention and conversion thinking, changes are needed.

The "explosive product law" is also mentioned in "2020, National Micro-Business". The online routines and core strategies have long been summarized, and even have been tooled by various platforms. All that is needed is a change in thinking - but this is often the most difficult. It is not difficult to reduce inventory pressure by selling goods through live streaming at special times, but in the long run this should not be a one-time deal, but requires long-term operation and planning.

Since the rise of mobile live streaming in 2015, the listing of several leading companies in 2019 and the full-scale attack on live streaming by e-commerce, live streaming has undergone several rounds of changes. But most fundamentally, live streaming itself is just a form of content, and what it changes is only the traffic channel - it may accelerate user decision-making, but it does not change the essence of the business.

Author: endlishted

Source: endlishted