In 2020, live streaming sales became the biggest "trend" on the Internet.

Those who follow the trend include not only entertainment stars, business tycoons, and local/central media, but also physical stores, traditional e-commerce companies, and micro-businesses that are backed by industrial belts and supply chains and have mature sales skills.

Some netizens jokingly said: It only took the time of an "epidemic" for live streaming e-commerce to go from a niche culture to national participation.

However, as the Matthew effect on various platforms intensifies and resources move toward top anchors, Douyin has become the platform of choice for "trend followers."

The reasons can be summarized into three aspects:

1. From the perspective of the platform: compared with Kuaishou, which focuses on private domain traffic and has a more "family-oriented" anchor growth, Douyin, which lacks top anchors, seems to have more opportunities and growth potential; and compared with Taobao, Douyin's 450 million daily active users also solve the traffic diversion problem commonly faced by live broadcasts;
2. From the user perspective: With the increase in DAU, Douyin's user structure has also shown a diversified trend. Whether in terms of age or geographical distribution, Douyin is shedding the labels of low-age and first- and second-tier cities. The constantly segmented quality content can also lock in the differentiated experience of various types of users, allowing them to achieve circle aggregation and immersion based on "interest";
3. From the perspective of platform distribution logic: Douyin’s “centralized” traffic distribution can, to a certain extent, dominate the healthy development of the platform ecology, so that the traffic will not be entirely in the hands of a few anchors.

Not only that, Douyin's precise algorithm recommendation can recommend videos and live broadcasts based on users' content interests and consumption preferences. This gives many "new anchors" without a fan base the possibility to obtain precise traffic from the huge public domain traffic in a "paid" or "free" form, thereby completing a "cold start" on the Douyin platform.

Because of this, we see that there are many low-follower accounts in the ever-expanding Douyin sales team. Among them, a few have grown into the “top streamers” in Douyin sales.

I analyzed the 700 anchors ranked in the top 100 in daily sales for seven consecutive days (without deduplication), and found that 24.42% of the anchors had fans between 0-100,000, and 21% had fans between 100,000-300,000.

Kas Data believes that compared to influencer accounts with large traffic and officially supported celebrity accounts, these accounts are actually more valuable for research and are more suitable for small and medium-sized brands/merchants/individual accounts that want to "strike gold" on Douyin.

Therefore, we selected 20 low-follower accounts that repeatedly appeared on the list (note: not ranked by sales), with an average number of followers below 300,000, in an attempt to find the "people, goods, and place" logic of their live streaming sales, and to find the experience behind the explosive sales.

List of low-follower accounts that frequently appeared on the list in the past 7 days according to Kass statistics

1. Goods

To achieve high sales through live streaming, good products are a prerequisite. Goods can not only push the "people" of the live broadcast to a high position, but also to some extent help the anchor to convert the "passerby fans" who "accidentally" enter the live broadcast room into loyal fans.

From the 20 accounts we studied, we found that the sources of goods can be clearly divided into two categories:

Own goods.

Most of these anchors started out as physical businesses/wholesalers, owning their own factories and production workshops, or relying on industrial belts and sources of goods. They are able to quickly capture the minds of users and establish the impression of "good goods from the place of origin", "no middlemen to make a profit from the price difference", and "good goods at low prices", and thus are able to attract more fans because of the "goods".

From the perspective of sales categories, the majority of businesses are engaged in: clothing, jade, fruits/fresh produce, etc. For example: Tianyue Seafood Management Department and Xu Dake’s Cashmere Factory, you can tell their strengths just by listening to their names.

Although it does not have its own products, it has extremely strong supply chain negotiation and commodity bargaining capabilities.

Of course, such capabilities often need to be built on two foundations:

1) Successful personalization can attract brands to cooperate with them and get more discounts and fan benefits

Take "Zhongcaocong" as an example. Although this account has only 400,000 followers, it is an undoubted representative of high-quality accounts for promoting home furnishings/home textiles/home appliances on Douyin. This is due to the extremely successful character construction.

• Compared with the home furnishing/decoration expert accounts on Douyin with exquisite makeup, packaging and design, the natural "housewife" identity of Zhongcaocong can effectively add points to her personality. At the same time, the home environment and decoration design shown in her videos can highlight the owner's quality of life, making it easier to establish a "lifestyle expert" persona;
• Judging from the content, the videos she released can be said to be practical, down-to-earth and inspiring. Such as: How to choose the right bed sheets? How do I open a new pot? How to use a blender to make delicious and different breakfasts? From content to product promotion, users will not feel the slightest sense of "jumping out" or "betrayal";
• Judging from the product track, it is very segmented and focused, mainly home furnishings, home appliances, and home textile products that are rare on Douyin. Although it will be more difficult to increase fans, it can also accumulate more accurate fans for her.

It is observed that most of the fans of "Zhongcaocong" are people with similar identities and interests, mainly women, with more than 70% aged 25-40. They pursue the quality and ritual sense of life and can be regarded as the backbone of e-commerce consumption.

As a result, its average live broadcast sales within 30 days was 379,800, and the cumulative sales in 30 days were nearly 10 million. Whether it is "content" or "sales" capabilities, they can attract active cooperation from brands.

Planting grass

2) Most of them come from the supply chain and can directly cut into the upstream to bring goods

Most of these anchors will not be like "Zhongcaocong", who manage their personal image through a large amount of content in the early stage.

Although the number of fans is low, based on past supply chain negotiation capabilities and accumulated customer relationships, they are able to quickly obtain "branded" good products that are asymmetric to the number of fans, thereby gaining the following of the first batch of seed users.

Then, by purchasing a large amount of "paid" traffic, they will speed up the construction of their own "benchmark" cases in live streaming sales. Then, through these benchmark cases, they will replicate them with a "snowball" effect to attract more merchants (supply chains) and fans, thus growing bigger and bigger.

There are more and more such anchors on Douyin now, but to succeed, one must have a bit of "gambler's" mentality, and not many of them can truly debut as the center. At the same time, we must do a good job of "product selection". Product selection is above all else, otherwise all operations will be in vain.

In the list we studied, the most typical ones are: Zhao Kejie Yanxuan, Ye Keke, Dayu, and Star Line Good Products Alliance. They are also the most active and the most popular groups on Douyin.

Star Line Good Goods Alliance

2. People

After talking about the “goods”, let’s take a look at the “people” who bring the goods. Generally speaking, different "sources of goods" will also lead to differences in the host's ability structure.

Anchors who have their own "goods" and many years of experience in physical wholesale do not need to always wait for the public screen. They can quickly "search" users' "questionable needs" to recommend and explain the selling points of the products in a targeted manner.

Not only that, they can also find common issues that users are generally concerned about from a large number of floating comments and answer them in real time. Therefore, they are true sales players. Basically, as long as users enter the live broadcast room, there is hope of conversion, so they only need to do a good job of "paid" and "free" traffic in the early stage.

Take Haimen Pinen Textile Co., Ltd. as an example. As an account mainly selling home textile sets, its product SKUs are not as rich as those of clothing anchors. In order to increase the highlights and popularity of the live broadcast room, the anchor and two assistants are very hard-working in promoting the products. Basically, the three of them can give "high-pitched" product introductions without interruption, making you feel as if you have broken into an "interactive" TV shopping live broadcast room.

Not only that, the price of 39.9 yuan/set of 4 and the highly provocative comment area management can quickly attract users to consume without thinking.

For those anchors who are not full-time salespeople and are more of an expert type, if they want to sell goods in the early stages, here are 4 small suggestions:

1. Before the live broadcast, publish a sufficient number of professional promotional videos. On the one hand, you can promote the promotion of the product to users in advance and stimulate their impulse to buy the product. On the other hand, you can also reduce the pressure during the live broadcast and use the live broadcast room as a place to place orders and "meet" your favorite influencers.
2. The frequency of live broadcasts with goods can be appropriately reduced in the early stage (daily live broadcasts can be carried out as usual) to leave enough time for pre-broadcast preparation and warm-up work, and to achieve extreme refinement in product selection, script design, process control and interactive content to reduce the occurrence of live broadcast "rollover" incidents, improve the watchability of live broadcast content and the length of time users stay, and staying is the basis of conversion;
3. You can invite other experts/sales-oriented anchors/brand representatives who have the ability to bring goods to you as assistants to help you bring goods together. This can alleviate the situation where you are not familiar with some of the products on the shelves and the live broadcast effect is discounted due to unprofessional recommendations. It can also reduce the pressure on the expert anchors themselves and help them gradually mature and adapt.
4. Set up more welfare products and traffic-generating products to continuously increase the popularity of the live broadcast room.

3. Field

The importance of "field" is self-evident. In the view of Kas Data, the concept of field can be divided into "broad" and "narrow".

In a broad sense, "field" refers to the platform. For live streaming e-commerce, the most important thing is whether more paid and free traffic can be obtained from this "field". Generally speaking, free traffic comes more from high-quality preheating, diversion, and grass-planting video content.

It should be emphasized here that on Tik Tok, videos with high likes do not necessarily lead to high conversions.

On the contrary, the reality is often that videos that convert often have low dissemination volumes, while videos that have high dissemination volumes often do not convert well.

Therefore, it is recommended that merchants who mainly sell goods on Douyin do not need to rack their brains to figure out how to shoot short clips. Take more shots and try different angles to showcase the product’s selling points. At the same time, make good use of the emotional feel of Douyin’s popular BGM marketing videos, which may also bring in explosive traffic and thus take root through a video.

Paid content needs to be achieved through the delivery of Feeds and DOU+. After we studied 20 low-follower accounts that can really bring goods, we found that: not all of them are "paying" players, but also anchors who have good products, can bring goods, and can promote products.

Take "Hongyu Crafts" as an example. This account mainly sells straw storage baskets and currently has 214,000 followers. Compared with many anchors who "have good products and can sell them", the video content of this account is of higher quality. The content published is mainly to demonstrate straw weaving skills. In the hands of the heroine, it seems that nothing can't be achieved through straw weaving. In order to attract more regular customers in the live broadcast room - the attention of young and middle-aged women, this account has recently woven objects that are loved by women, such as a warm cat house, a picnic frame for a daughter, and so on.

Hongyu Crafts

At the same time, the heroine also shared the family growth history of "Hongyu Crafts" through the video, forging the image of an "old father" who rarely appears on camera but has superb craftsmanship and is very hardworking.

Also because of these wonderful videos, the popularity of Hongyu Crafts Live Room is also very high. According to the live broadcast data monitored by Kas, in the past 30 days, the maximum number of online people in the live broadcast room reached 7017, and the average number of online people in daily live broadcasts could reach 2000+. Judging from its live broadcast sales, the cumulative sales on the 30th also reached 7.657 million. Most users who enter the live broadcast room will directly request to put the goodies knitted by the heroine on the shelves.

If you are asking here, then are there no low-follower accounts on Douyin that are “RMB players”?

Of course there are. In addition to some accounts that sell high-end, boutique women's clothing, and jewelry accessories, the most typical target group is second-hand luxury e-commerce. Whether it is information flow or DOU+, they will be very active, such as: Fat Tiger Second-hand Luxury Goods, Angelli, Xiaohua Second-hand, etc.

Not only that, the average daily live broadcast duration of these accounts is very long, and some accounts will maintain 24-hour live broadcast. The most direct value of this approach is to make advertising conversion efficiency higher. No matter when users enter the live broadcast room, they can see the anchor start broadcasting, and through the anchor’s professional and detailed explanation, they can get their favorite things.

From our description, I believe everyone can also summarize a message, that is: RMB players are often based on "high profit margins". If the profit margin is relatively low, it is not recommended that you adopt the paid traffic gameplay model. Of course, this does not apply to those who want to create their own live broadcast benchmark case to replicate more supply chain collaborations.

Finally, let’s talk about the “field” in a narrow sense. The field in a narrow sense refers to the live broadcast scene.

The live broadcast "scene" is still helpful for anchors with a smaller number of fans. Let us think about this: Would selling fruit in an orchard give people more freshness than selling fruit in a fruit store? And selling jade in places like Sihui, Guangdong and Ruili, Yunnan, which are close to the source of jade, where one can bargain with the owner, is it more authentic than introducing jade at home? This is the natural sense of trust that the environment gives to users.

After explaining the logic of "people-goods-place", let's take a look at the 4 secrets behind these anchors' high sales.

1) Videos promote “hot products” instead of “all products”

Taking the account "Tianyue Seafood Management Department" as an example, most of the videos it posted in the early days were videos of him and his younger brother eating seafood at the beach. Because of his exaggerated eating style and the way he added condiments, it inspired many users to comment and complain, and also attracted some fans. However, as homogeneity increases, users' aesthetics become fatigued, and the number of fans decreases instead of increases.

On June 2, "Tianyue Seafood Management Department" released a "scallop meat" video. Although the number of likes did not reach a very high level, the number of fans increased rapidly. Therefore, they took advantage of the victory and released hundreds of scallop meat videos in succession, covering all content such as scallop processing, cooking, evaluation, and delivery records.

Not only that, scallops have also become the main product promoted during live broadcasts. Judging from the sales in the small store, the scallop set meal priced at 99 yuan has sold more than 120,000 orders as of July 22, far higher than the sales of other products in the store.

Tianyue Seafood Business Department

It should be mentioned here that there are many live broadcast rooms on Douyin that have become popular through a hit video or a high-selling product. The top accounts in some fields, such as @小影夫妻X施蜜皮贵妇霜, @单那个爸爸家海鲜X扇贝, etc., are the same.

2) Actively participate in platform activities and be good at creating nodes

I don't think I need to elaborate on the e-commerce industry's enthusiasm for node manufacturing.

As for merchants on Douyin, I would like to make two suggestions here. As early accounts, you must actively participate when there are official activities to participate in. At the same time, we must carefully interpret the key points of policy activities, because these activities intervened by operations often have a lot of official traffic boost. Even if they do not make money, gaining popularity will be of great benefit for later live broadcasts and video content recommendations (to precise users).

For periods when there are no official nodes involved, you can choose to "create festivals", such as: it's your birthday, so have a promotion; the number of fans exceeds XX thousand, so have a promotion; new products are launched, so have a promotion. In short, satisfy the user's desire to "get a bargain" to accelerate the cold start of the account.

3) Combination marketing: both products and marketing should be combined

The sources of traffic for the live broadcast room are nothing more than: recommendation page, follow-up page, same city page, and live broadcast page. Among them, short video traffic from the recommendation page is undoubtedly the largest source of public domain traffic for live broadcast rooms at this stage.

If you can’t produce video content like @弘宇工艺品, that’s okay. Then, please publish enough warm-up videos (mainly showcasing products, team, and product selection process) one day before the live broadcast and within 3 hours before the broadcast, and publish enough traffic-generating videos during the live broadcast (mainly live broadcast highlights, bargaining process, and low-price flash sales) to direct traffic to the live broadcast room. At the same time, we should also make good use of products such as DOU+ and Feeds flow, but this is not a necessary measure.

Taking @苏州工业园繁花壹号服装店 as an example, this account will usually post more than 5 videos to attract traffic one hour before the broadcast. The video not only combines popular music creation, but most importantly, it is very vertical: it mainly displays cheongsams, which makes it easier for algorithms to identify and recommend more users with similar e-commerce consumption interests to enter the live broadcast room. Of course, if the store owner launches DOU+ and Feeds flow during this process, it will also help fuel the conversion of the delivery.

Not only that, because the unit price of the goods sold in the store is relatively high, in order to lock in users, during the live broadcast, the boss lady will also set up some products priced at 10-20 yuan, such as earrings, scarves, etc. as welfare products and traffic-generating products to attract users to place orders for their first experience, and bring more sales conversions on the basis of building user trust, rather than blindly recommending profitable and popular items.

4) Be authentic and down-to-earth

Finally, let me share my intuitive feeling after watching thousands of Douyin and Kuaishou live broadcasts.

Whether it is Douyin or Kuaishou, the anchors who are truly capable of selling goods often have something in common: being real, down-to-earth, willing to show their lives, and even not minding sharing their privacy. Because such videos/live broadcasts tend to trigger resonance and empathy more easily, and thus attract loyal fans.

Are you someone who is willing to expose your life/privacy to the public? If so, maybe you can try live streaming!

Author: Kas Data

Source: caasdata (ID: caasdata6)