Live streaming sales trends of major e-commerce companies on Women’s Day!

Live streaming sales have ushered in the first major e-commerce promotion since the beginning of the year - Women's Day.

From the perspective of the node, with new products launched in spring and women as the protagonists, and the superposition of multiple popular consumer elements, it is naturally an important promotion node that e-commerce platforms and merchants cannot miss. However, in reality, this highly anticipated promotion seems somewhat quiet. In fact, as early as February 27, platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, Douyin, and Kuaishou started pre-sales.

So, what trends will this year’s Women’s Day promotion show? How to layout different platforms? How do the top anchors perform? Why is live streaming sales so quiet?

Key points of this article:

1. Taobao and Tmall aim to promote new products, while short video platforms are more active in increasing sales

2. Li Jiaqi sold goods worth 2.8 billion yuan overnight, and the "oligopoly era" has arrived

3. Decentralization becomes a consensus, weakening personal settings and reducing risks

4. Livestreaming is quiet, and merchants are more focused on actual return on investment

Taobao and Tmall aim to promote new products, and short video platforms are more active in increasing sales

In this year's 38 promotion, the first to get started was the short video platform. Kuaishou’s 38th session started as early as February 9th. From February 9th to February 26th, merchants can sign up to participate in the event and set event goals and strategies. February 26th to March 8th is the official event period.

Whether it is Douyin Mall or Kuaishou Store, the 38 label has been marked early on. Kuaishou launched the 38 Self-Pleasure Festival, and Douyin launched the 38 Queen's Day.

Kuaishou’s main gameplay is “collecting petals”, which promotes new customers through sharing, invitations and other means. Merchants promote the “Ginseng Fruit Plan”. If the anchor achieves the goal of attracting new customers, each new customer will be rewarded with up to 5 yuan in cash, and the use of lucky bags can also receive official product subsidies of 5-10 yuan.

Douyin’s gameplay includes live broadcast rooms for good products, industry task competitions, national task competitions, cross-store discounts, flip card interactive games, etc., with the intention of continuously extending user usage time.

E-commerce platforms such as Tmall and Taobao began accepting merchant registrations from mid-February. This is also the first big promotion held by Tmall and Taobao after the merger of their organizational structures.

The 38th big promotion new products place great emphasis on spring launches and have a strong seasonal nature. For Tmall, which places great importance on new products, the value of the 38 promotion lies more in promoting new products, combining the two labels of women and spring new products.

Li Jiaqi sold goods worth 2.8 billion in one night, and the "oligopoly era" has arrived

As for the top anchors, during the first pre-sale live broadcast of the big promotion, Li Jiaqi sold goods worth 2.8 billion yuan overnight, further confirming the arrival of the "oligopoly era" of super anchors selling goods.

The show started at 5 pm on February 27th. In a "beauty class" atmosphere similar to last year's Double 11, Li Jiaqi began pre-sales for 38 sessions. There are 280 product links, promoting the "buy one, get one free" mentality.

Many major brands have offered discounts that are comparable to or even better than last year's Double 11. The mechanism for many popular products such as MAC, Estee Lauder, ALLIE, and Bobbi Brown is "buy one get one free for full-size products", rather than the long-criticized "not enough discount, use samples"; more brands have increased the number of gifts, such as OLAY's small white bottle mask, which directly gives away 10 more pieces than last year's Double 11.

The final result was fixed at more than 77 million viewers and sales of over 2.8 billion, while the combined sales of the top male and female stars in the same period last year were less than 800 million.

Decentralization becomes a consensus, weakening personal settings and reducing risks

The live broadcast rooms of "Bee Surprise Club" and "Mushrooms Are Coming", which are regarded by the outside world as important bases of Qianxun and Chenfan, are composed of the original assistant broadcast team. It has been less than a month since the start of broadcasting. On the evening of March 6, the number of viewers of Bee Surprise Club had reached 9.89 million, and Mushrooms Are Coming also achieved more than 4.8 million traffic in the near future.

The live broadcast room has begun to move from two people, one host and one deputy, to an immersive live broadcast with "human sea tactics". From the debut of Bee Surprise Club to The Mushrooms Are Coming, they all started broadcasting with the posture of a "supporting team", and the assistants of several top anchors jointly supported the live broadcast rooms of the new accounts.

Several leading live broadcast rooms have packaged exclusive category days including snack festival, fashion festival, beauty festival, home special event, etc. into the entire 38 promotion period.

The "decentralized" strategy of the entire live broadcast room is moving from operating around the host's personal IP to category operations.

Live streaming is quiet, and merchants pay more attention to the actual return on investment

Overall, there is still room for improvement in the GMV of live streaming sales this year, but with the overall slowdown in the e-commerce market, there will not be a particularly large increase, and the GMV of expert anchors is likely to show a downward trend.

In the past two years, there has been too much water in GMV, and too many businesses have been losing money on live streaming. The anchor's slot fee and commission are not low. Many businesses lose money on live streaming, and the ROI is basically below 0.5. Once the anchor fails, the merchant may be unable to bear the losses caused by the prepaid fees and the hoarding of goods.

Compared with live streaming by influencers, the nature of self-streaming by merchants is closer to store operations, and the attention and discussion are naturally less than the former.

The rise of stores also means that the traffic concentration of live streaming e-commerce will decrease, which is also considered to be one of the reasons why live streaming e-commerce seems to be quiet this year. More and more consumers are returning to rationality, which has also caused some consumers in the live broadcast room to rethink their shopping habits.

Brand self-broadcasting becomes the core, and live streaming sales return to the basic logic of e-commerce

Regardless of whether it is a platform or a brand, reducing reliance on big anchors and focusing on brand self-broadcasting will become a new trend.

Taobao officials have repeatedly stated that Taobao live streaming is just an industrial upgrade, and the focus is still on e-commerce. In the future, stores will be Taobao live streaming rooms, and Taobao live streaming rooms will be stores. "In the future, merchants' own live streaming and store live streaming will replace Internet celebrities and become the protagonists. This trend is already very obvious."

Data shows that on Double 11 in 2021, there were more than 100,000 brands on the Taobao live streaming platform that interacted with consumers in their own live broadcast rooms. Among them, 43 brands’ own live broadcast rooms had transaction volumes exceeding 100 million yuan, and 510 brands’ own live broadcast rooms had transaction volumes exceeding 10 million yuan. More than 70% of emerging brands use live streaming as their key channel.

Douyin and Kuaishou have also launched various incentives and support policies for businesses to broadcast their own content. On the eve of this year's 616 Quality Shopping Festival, Kuaishou E-Commerce released the "STEPS" brand self-broadcasting methodology. On September 3, Douyin released the "2021 Douyin E-commerce Merchant Self-broadcasting White Paper", which clearly analyzed the FACT model of Douyin's e-commerce business methodology and the "eight capability models" required for self-broadcasting.

The live streaming e-commerce industry will return to the basic logic of e-commerce, especially shifting from traffic supremacy to focusing on retention, conversion and repeat purchases, and from a short-term harvest mentality to long-term steady operation.

In the next one or two years, whether merchants can do a good job of self-broadcasting will be the "decisive factor" for live streaming e-commerce platforms.

The era of strong regulation has arrived, and the live broadcast ecosystem is moving towards standardization

Everything can be broadcast. In the past two years, "live streaming with goods" has become the most popular hot word, setting off a nationwide craze. But behind the glamour of live streaming e-commerce lies an industry ecosystem rife with chaos and rampant fraud.

Under the huge temptation and stimulation of profits, the industry has spawned businesses that operate in the gray area, such as fake orders, fake volumes, account buying and selling, and "feed flow pitchers", and counterfeit goods have become popular.

Many anchors are not able to sell goods, so they rely on fake orders to make up for it. As the tax collection policy becomes tighter, not many anchors dare to take the risk, and the entire bubble of internet celebrities selling goods will gradually be squeezed out.

More and more top anchors are being fined, which may become a "watershed" for the live streaming e-commerce industry, ending the era of wild growth and entering a new era of development with strong supervision and strict regulations. The scope of supervision will become wider and wider, and the supervision will become more and more stringent, and the ecology will begin to evolve towards a healthier and more sustainable model.

Author: Media 360

Source: Media 360