With the popularity of the live streaming industry, live streaming sales have also emerged and developed rapidly. People from all walks of life, whether celebrities, internet celebrities, actors or ordinary people, have all participated in the live streaming sales craze. Under such fierce competition, live streaming has become increasingly difficult. How to attract audiences and achieve goals is a big problem. The author of this article has summarized these 6 live broadcast methods for us by reviewing live broadcast cases.

Who are the protagonists of live streaming sales?

Li Jiaqi, Viya, Simba, Luo Yonghao, Dong Mingzhu... In everyone's concept, experts and internet celebrities have become the standard for live streaming sales. However, in this smoke-filled war, a powerful force is rapidly rising - corporate live streaming.

During the Double Eleven period in 2019, Taobao companies’ self-broadcasting sessions accounted for 90%, becoming the absolute main force. Among the 15 live broadcast rooms with over 100 million views during Tmall’s 618 event in 2020, 9 were corporate live broadcast rooms.

The tide of corporate live streaming sales has arrived. Whether it is well-known brands or thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises, they are all scrambling to grab market share through live streaming sales and competing with live streaming by celebrities such as Li Jiaqi and Viya.

So, what are the characteristics of live streaming for corporate sales? How is the gameplay different from live streaming by celebrities and experts?

We have analyzed in detail three live streaming cases of companies with classic strategies and outstanding results, including the leading cotton and linen women's clothing brand Inman, the first duck neck stock Huang Shanghuang, and the national children's content IP "Uncle Kai Tells Stories", and summarized six strategies to quickly improve the conversion rate of live streaming sales.

I. Case 1: INMAN, a leading cotton and linen women's clothing brand

600 stores were live streaming at the same time, with the sales of a single store exceeding ten thousand in one hour.

Let’s first take a look at the results of Inman’s two important live broadcasts: At the end of April, Fang Jianhua, Chairman of Huimei Group and Founder and CEO of Inman, visited Inman’s Taobao live broadcast room. It attracted 540,000 viewers in two hours and sales reached 1.25 million yuan.

During the Guangzhou 66 Live Broadcast Festival, Inman’s 14-hour live broadcast attracted nearly 100,000 views and 21,000 comments. In addition to high conversion rates, it also attracted more than 3,000 people to offline stores.

During the epidemic, Inman relied on live streaming to attract traffic to its stores, and its performance recovered by more than 85%. With the offline store opening rate of less than 10%, it achieved a 140% increase in store sales. The secret lies in the following three points:

1. All employees are anchors, and the CEO personally promotes products

The three most important words in live streaming: people, goods, and venue.

People rank first, which shows the importance of anchors in selling goods. Especially for clothing and skin care products, good-looking anchors seem to have become the standard. However, Inman does not follow the beaten path. It trains its own store owners and CEOs to be anchors, creating an atmosphere of "everyone promoting products together."

1) Store owners from all over the country join the battle

From February to March, Inman mobilized all 600 store owners across the country to do live broadcasts, which spread everywhere and quickly replicated the experience across the country. Even if customers want to see clothes, the store owner can directly try them on through one-on-one video.

Among them, the INMAN Shangqiu Liangyuan District Zhonghuan Plaza store live broadcast for one hour and achieved sales of over 10,000.

Live broadcast of INMAN Shangqiu Liangyuan District Central Plaza store

2) The overbearing CEO personally promotes the products

Fang Jianhua, the founder of the INMAN brand, personally walked into the live broadcast room to talk with users, and distributed "fan-pampering" benefits such as clearing shopping carts, big-brand lipsticks, and millions of subsidies. Many fans posted comments and messages, shouting "Come one more wave".

Without inviting any big hosts, the event attracted nearly 540,000 viewers, successfully delivering a great performance. Coming from the masses and going to the masses will make it easier to capture the hearts of consumers.

2. Activate private domains with strong relationships and expose public domains with large traffic volumes

As a clothing retail brand founded in 2008, Inman has long created a traffic pool of more than 10 million fans on platforms such as Taobao, WeChat, and Douyin, and has used both public and private channels to divert traffic for live broadcasts and ignite live broadcasts.

In the private domain, Inman’s gameplay mainly has two points:

1) Shopping guide personal account, community, mini program, public account 4 major private domain omni-channel traffic diversion

According to Qu Jing, vice president of Huimei Fashion Group (Inman), when Inman first opened its stores, it realized that WeChat public accounts/personal accounts could be effectively integrated into the offline ecosystem, and actively added users to WeChat, thus establishing the prototype of a private traffic pool very early on.

Private domain users have a stronger sense of trust in stores and brands. Although their numbers are small, their conversion rates, average order values, and willingness to consume are much higher than those of ordinary users on public domain platforms. Inman conducts marketing through the private friend circles and communities of 600 store owners, launches specific products every day, and drives traffic to live broadcasts.

During the live broadcast, video materials are output while the broadcast is being broadcast, and these video materials are spread in the circle of friends and communities, attracting more fans to watch the live broadcast in the live broadcast room or go directly to the store to experience it.

At the same time, Inman previewed the live broadcast on private channels such as the mini-program store page, public account tweets, and store posters, reminding fans to make reservations in time or enter the live broadcast room to watch.

Inman Mini Program

Inman official account live broadcast preview

2) Full-staff marketing + social fission

Employees from senior to middle to grassroots levels are all promoting the brand and clothing. Inman also recruits 10,000 "Inman promoters" from the society, allowing external promoters to work together to promote Inman and obtain their own corresponding benefits.

In the public domain, Inman mainly uses Taobao stores, Douyin accounts, Weibo and other channels for live streaming to attract traffic.

First: Taobao store notifications and fission activities

When users enter the mobile store homepage, they will see a preheating reminder. If the store is live, there will be a floating entrance on the mobile homepage and product details page.

Taobao stores remind users to push Weitao messages before and during live broadcasts, while using Taobao fan groups to directly reach users. At the same time, there is a sharing button in the lower right corner of the live broadcast room. When users recommend their friends to shop, they and their friends will receive red envelopes at the same time, triggering fission propagation.

Second: Strong exposure on platforms such as TikTok and Weibo

Reach Douyin fans in multiple ways through official account profiles, dynamic push notifications, and avatar tags to drive traffic to the live broadcast room. Weibo fans follow and repost, hold lucky draws, and attract attention to the live broadcast room.

Promotion on TikTok (left) and Weibo (right)

3. Fan welfare combination to stimulate users to place orders

In e-commerce operations, there is a common formula: GMV (gross merchandise volume) = traffic * conversion rate * average order value. In addition to paying attention to traffic, companies also need to start from the latter two data to increase overall sales.

In terms of the welfare gameplay of live streaming with goods, Inman also has strategies for different users.

1) Set up membership red envelopes for new fans and give them discount coupons;

2) The anchor guides new fans to follow the live broadcast room and set it as their favorite, so that they have the opportunity to participate in the lucky draw. They will also give new fans cosmetic bags to promote the first order.

3) Send large coupons to old users to increase the average order value;

4) Limited-time discounts, such as "25% off for 4 items in the first 2 hours", "15% off for 1 new item", etc. In addition, the model’s height and weight will be displayed on the right side of the live broadcast screen to help fans make reference decisions and promote orders.

Inman drives the conversion rate of live streaming sales from multiple aspects, including the host, traffic, and welfare, to improve the body shape of the models in the live streaming room. In the live streaming e-commerce arena for enterprises, the national children's content brand "Uncle Kai Tells Stories" has also delivered a good answer.

2. Case 2: National children's content IP Uncle Kai tells stories

Mastering private domain live streaming, sales reached 11.68 million in 3 hours.

"Uncle Kai Tells Stories" live-streamed sales on Children's Day this year, achieving sales of 11.68 million in 3 hours. It has been reported by mainstream media such as People's Daily, 36Kr, Titanium Media, and Interface News. This live broadcast was mainly conducted in the "Uncle Kai Tells Stories" APP and was a highly private domain live broadcast.

As the private domain live broadcast technology provider of the "Uncle Kai Tells Stories" APP - Polyway, we interviewed Wang Zhiwei, the technical vice president of "Uncle Kai Tells Stories", and broke down 3 unique ways of playing. Next, let’s take a look at how they play.

1. Refined services retain users, three major rules trigger the explosion of private domain

The earliest private traffic pool of "Uncle Kai Tells Stories" was deposited on the WeChat official account. It attracted a group of highly loyal users through the four dimensions of content: listening, reading, playing, and classes.

By 2015, the number of fans of Uncle Kai's storytelling public account had grown to 4 million; in July 2016, Uncle Kai's storytelling launched its own APP to better meet the user experience; on the eve of Children's Day, "Uncle Kai's Storytelling" planned a series of live broadcast activities with the theme of "June 1st Happy Children's Day", and greatly increased the number of live broadcast viewers through three participatory tactics.

1) Open participation nodes in advance to allow users to participate in event planning

In the tweets of the "Uncle Kai Tells Stories" public account, children's holiday wishes were collected, and it was announced that the wishes would be fulfilled on Children's Day by giving away "a million free gifts", which successfully mobilized users' enthusiasm for participating in the live broadcast.

2) Design exclusive interactive methods to enhance user expectations

In the official account, we announced the release of new key IP works during the June 1 live broadcast to continue to build user expectations. At the same time, some user messages were selected from the tweets for comment and display, and users were asked to collect what they wanted to say to Uncle Kai. It was announced that Uncle Kai would read it out on the spot during the June 1 live broadcast.

3) Continue to create an atmosphere and spread the event reputation

We planned a content special "Happy Children's Day Daily" for the live broadcast, and pushed out one article every day, covering live broadcast previews, event content, user message interactions, etc., to continuously build momentum for the live broadcast and create communication events.

For users entering the traffic pool, Kaishu’s team has also designed tiered operation services and adopted different operation strategies. This ensures that users can quickly locate the content they need, improving retention rates while also accumulating highly active private domain traffic.

When the live broadcast starts, traffic is continuously drawn from the traffic pool to the live broadcast room to achieve targeted audience communication.

2. Focus on details and polish the live broadcast content to perfection

As a well-known brand of children's audio content, Kaishu's team is committed to polishing the content with excellence.

1) Each profession has its own specialization, and the division of labor of the live broadcast project team is highly refined

The entire live broadcast project team has dozens of people, including the chief director, executive director, screenwriters, and stage management. A team of this size can fully polish every process node of the entire live broadcast, highly refine the content, and provide an extremely smooth user experience.

2) Fully polish the live broadcast script to ensure user experience

When promoting products, Uncle Kai’s team considers needs from the user’s perspective rather than simply shouting about buying and selling. For example, when selling the product “Thousand Characters”, the team will make a very detailed self-checklist, which includes but is not limited to:

• What is the selling point of the product?
• Why would children/parents buy our product?
• What can users gain after purchasing?
• What is the difference between our products and similar products on the market?

After the sorting is completed, the host will be familiar with the characteristics of each product and will be more comfortable recommending products to users.

3. Customize visual elements to showcase brand image

The layout of the online live broadcast room of "Uncle Kai Tells Stories" fully considers the brand tone and audience preferences. There is a floating advertising bar above the live broadcast screen, which displays the current main products, which is equivalent to an advertising banner.

At the same time, various like styles such as hearts, likes, applause, flowers, etc. are customized to make the visual effect of the entire live broadcast richer.

With the help of Polyway's live broadcast technology, Uncle Kai and his team have completely embedded the live broadcast into the "Uncle Kai Tells Stories" APP, enabling them to customize and develop any desired visual effects in the live broadcast according to the brand style. This is difficult to achieve on public live streaming platforms.

3. Case 3: Huang Shanghuang, the No. 1 Duck Neck Stock

Innovative live streaming of selling goods, cross-border virtual anchor with 7 million fans.

When talking about live streaming sales, the first impression is always about flash sales, super low prices, and how many pieces can be purchased in a certain number of minutes. However, long-term price-based sales can easily damage the brand image. Many companies have also realized this and started to try other ways to sell products besides low-price promotions.

In May, Huang Shanghuang collaborated with the virtual anchor "Sun Jiaojiao" with 7 million fans across the entire network to promote products. This was the first time that the virtual IP "Sun Jiaojiao" appeared in 3D. As soon as the live broadcast started, fans continued to pour into the live broadcast room, sparking heated discussions in the real-time barrage.

This is the first time that Huang Shanghuang has tried to link up with a virtual anchor. With the continuous development of technologies such as VR, AR, and 5G, live streaming of goods will extend to more fresh and creative cross-border combinations in the future.

Different from Inman and "Uncle Kai Tells Stories", Huang Shanghuang mainly takes the route of cooperating with external influencers and KOLs. It has previously cooperated with influencers and celebrities such as Luo Yonghao, Li Jiaqi, Wei Ya, and Liu Tao, and used online live broadcasts to increase brand awareness with "low prices and explosive volume".

In addition to the novel cross-border virtual anchor gameplay, Huang Shanghuang also adopted private domain + public domain traffic diversion, announcement of fan discounts and benefits and other exposure and communication methods in its operations. Through the analysis of these cases, we have distilled 6 reusable live streaming sales methods for enterprises.

4. 6 reusable gameplays to create high-conversion live streaming

1. Cultivate internal anchors to maximize marketing effects

The anchor is the core of a live broadcast selling goods. Companies can look for cooperating anchors externally or incubate employees internally to serve as anchors. However, finding external talents not only requires support such as pit fees and live broadcast commissions, but companies also have to give discounts on products, which compresses the profit margin to a very small level.

If you plan to make live streaming a regular practice, it would be a better choice to train your own internal employees to become live streaming hosts who sell goods.

During the epidemic, Inman directly mobilized store owners of 600 stores across the country to sell goods through live streaming, and used the store owners' personal accounts + community private domain traffic to quickly restore sales performance and achieve counter-cyclical growth.

In the matter of incubating internal employees to become live streamers, Lanju Group, which has been deeply involved in the home care industry for 38 years, has summarized a systematic method:

1. Invite external senior lecturers to conduct training, set up a professional live broadcast room internally for practice, and call on the company from senior executives to colleagues in various departments, front-line shopping guides, and dealers to sign up for the event;
2. After a one-month training incubation, live broadcasting clock-in, operation guidance, interview selection, live broadcasting training camp and other multi-level screening, the top ten anchors were finally born;
3. In the final stage, the top ten anchors will broadcast live with the cooperating brands, and the top three gold medal anchors will be selected based on their performance and results.

The entire process of selecting anchors is no less than that of a professional MCN agency. It not only creates a cultural atmosphere in which everyone in the company participates in live broadcasts, but also maximizes marketing effectiveness.

2. Public and private domains combine to boost live streaming traffic

Traffic will directly determine the success or failure of a live broadcast selling goods. Companies can jointly attract traffic from multiple public channels and private traffic pools.

1) Public domain customer acquisition

You can attract new fans from mainstream live streaming platforms such as Douyin, Taobao, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, etc., and make good use of the push and notifications on the platforms to remind fans to watch the live streaming, such as Weitao, store homepages, fan groups and other channels on Taobao.

During the live broadcast, the broadcast function of the Polyway live broadcast platform can be used to synchronize the live broadcast to more than 20 mainstream platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Xigua Video, thereby gathering a large amount of popularity for the live broadcast room.

After the live broadcast, you can use Polyview's cloud editing function to edit 15-second WeChat Moments videos, 30-second Tik Tok short videos, and 5-minute highlight videos, and distribute them for the second time to attract more potential users.

Inman's TikTok video edited after the live broadcast

2) Activation of private domain traffic

Private domain traffic is an indispensable digital asset for enterprises. It is generally deposited in APPs, public accounts, WeChat groups, and personal accounts. At the same time, its activity and conversion rate are higher than those of public domain platforms, making it a must-have choice for live streaming sales.

Before and during the live broadcast, companies can push previews in social groups, mini-program stores, apps, and WeChat public accounts, and attach products participating in flash sales, discounts, group purchases, and other activities during the live broadcast to attract more users to participate.

According to the "Uncle Kai's Story Telling" team, the sales of live broadcasts on the private domain of their own APP will be more than 10 times higher than that of mainstream public domain platforms.

At present, very few products can meet the needs of enterprises for live streaming and selling goods within apps, unless the enterprises develop them themselves. However, considering the development costs and long time cycle, this is often difficult.

Our private domain live streaming sales solution is completely built in the enterprise APP, providing a vertical screen live streaming SDK, a chat room interface, and connecting the enterprise mall and data system. It supports functions such as enterprise customized live streaming room brand vision and multi-dimensional live streaming data tracking, and can be launched within 1 week.

3) Paid promotion

Companies with sufficient budgets can consider paid promotion on major public domain platforms.

1. Kuaishou can directly purchase "live broadcast promotion";
2. Tik Tok attracts traffic to its live streaming room by promoting short videos;
3. Taobao Live can not only promote products during live broadcasts, but also post short videos introducing products (live explanations) after the live broadcast.
4. WeChat Moments ads can be precisely delivered based on audience age, region, interests, and other dimensions to quickly reach target users.

3. Finely divide products and optimize pricing strategies

The "goods" in live streaming are an important factor that can help live streaming stand out. It is difficult for companies to retain customers simply by engaging in price wars. This requires a certain level of care in product selection, dividing products into different levels, and developing different ways of playing.

The mainstream product types include new models, main promoted models, flash sale models, live broadcast room exclusive models, traffic-generating models, profit models, and even lottery models.

• Traffic-generating models: low price, high click-through rate, which can attract traffic to the store and also boost sales of other models;
• Exclusive for live broadcasting: users can enjoy discounts by taking photos with the note "live broadcasting", which attracts users to watch;
• Flash sale: mainly used to increase users' viewing time. For example, Inman will offer free orders at different times of the day, such as 11:00, 15:00, and 20:00;
• New models: mainly used to stimulate old users to buy, combined with new discounts, to increase customer unit price and repurchase rate;
• Lottery prizes: Prizes in the live broadcast room can only be won through lottery and are not allowed to be purchased. During the live broadcast, people kept asking in the comment section whether they could buy the prizes, which greatly increased the scarcity of the products.
• Gift stacking: Companies can give gifts to users when they make a purchase, and repeatedly emphasize: including the value of the gift, this xx is equivalent to a 30% discount, thus achieving a "disguised discount."

4. Use marketing combinations to easily increase conversion rates

Enterprises or businesses can directly promote conversions in the live broadcast room by making good use of different marketing methods.

1) Coupons, flash sales, and group purchase benefits

There is no threshold for new users to receive gifts, and they can quickly place their first order; old users can receive large discounts and fission coupons to increase their average order value.

Scheduled flash sales can increase users’ viewing time, group buying can bring more traffic to the live broadcast room, and some companies will also use the platform’s “10,000-person group” gameplay - the more people join the group, the lower the price of the product.

According to the cases provided by Taobao, one company increased its live broadcast transaction volume by 5 times compared to usual on the same day by using this method.

2) Like the lucky draw game

For example, if the number of likes reaches a certain value, the anchor will announce a screenshot prize draw. At the same time, the host repeatedly guided people to click likes - only 1,000 likes left to reach 270,000, and the lucky draw would be held soon, so everyone should like it quickly.

3) You can also set different gifts for fans of different levels

In this way, core fans can feel more "dignified" and thus be more "loyal" to the live broadcast room. In addition, it can also motivate low-level fans to improve their levels.

5. Carefully polish the anchor's words to encourage fans to place orders

For corporate or business anchors, their presence is not as strong as that of influencers like Li Jiaqi and Viya, and users generally go for the companies or businesses. In this case, how does the anchor promote conversion?

1) Familiarity and expertise with the product

For example, every time Inman changes her clothes, she can tell the matching style, suitable groups of people, and material characteristics of the clothes. Such professional commentary makes fans feel more trusting.

2) Actively interact with fans

For example, welcome new fans when they enter the live broadcast room, and call out the old users by name when they enter the live broadcast room for interaction. If you have any questions in the message area, you can get detailed answers from the administrator or anchor.

The administrator of the live broadcast room is answering questions from fans. In the Huang Shanghuang live broadcast room, the anchor will constantly select and answer questions in the barrage, and tell fans information such as purchase methods, discounts, taste, etc. in a friendly tone, just like a friend recommending something to you, cute and trustworthy, making people unable to help but place an order.

"My dears, link No. 54 is a gift box set. It looks very nice and contains a variety of products, including 6 rice dumplings and 4 salted duck eggs. It is perfect. You must watch it and take a picture of it..." In this way, users not only have a better understanding of the products, but also have a doubled favorability towards the anchor, and placing an order is a natural thing.

6. Set up a professional live broadcast room to enhance user trust

The layout of the live broadcast room belongs to the "venue", and enterprises have a great advantage in this regard. Whether it is an online live broadcast room or an offline live broadcast room, it needs to be carefully designed. For offline live broadcast rooms, there are two points:

1) Exclusive brand LOGO and background wall

In offline scene layout, companies can use their LOGO as the background of the live broadcast room, or they can create a special live broadcast background based on the brand tone.

For example, the entire live broadcast room of "Uncle Kai Tells Stories" has warm and fresh tones, and the background is decorated with stickers of various patterns; the table in front of the host is filled with various dolls and building blocks under Uncle Kai.

It not only showcases the corporate brand tone, but also creates a cheerful and lively atmosphere, allowing children to fully enjoy the live broadcast.

2) Show the source of goods and enhance the sense of reality

Some companies or businesses will broadcast live in their own stores, wholesale markets, or even factories, so that users can directly see the physical products. For online live broadcast rooms, the main focus is on customized visual design.

Companies can display live broadcast information by setting up live broadcast room logos, sidebars, floating ads, etc. Especially in private domain apps, Polyway also supports customized reward icons, cool styles, chat windows, etc., so that the brand vision can be fully reflected.

A high-conversion corporate live broadcast is not achieved overnight. Behind it is the integrated marketing of "people, goods, venue", traffic operation, product classification, differentiated positioning and other operational means.

If companies do not delve into the underlying logic behind it, it will be difficult for them to gain a head start in the live streaming e-commerce battle and gain a bonus advantage. Live streaming for selling goods is gaining momentum, so it is better to go head-on than to wait for the wind to come.

Author: Polyway Video Cloud

Source: Polyway Video Cloud