Summary of Taobao Live in 2019: Where are the opportunities for live streaming sales?

I often hear some bigwigs say that 2019 is the most difficult year in the past five years and the best year in the next five years. The main reason why the bigwigs are pessimistic about the future is that they are being driven off the stage of history by their younger successors.

The times have never been bad, it's just that they are bad now.

I didn’t think as much in 2019 as I did in 2018, because many parts were already thought through and the general direction was decided, so I spent more energy on argumentation and execution.

There is a lot of noise from the outside world in 2019, which is a good thing, because there are often moving melodies in the noise. Thank you to all our media friends. With you guys around, I don’t have to be alone.

Content e-commerce can still be played for another 5 years. After 5 years, it will become a mature and complete entity, and integration into the main economy will become the norm, and an angel will fall to the earth.

The basic theory of this industry cannot be too profound and complicated. Practitioners have only a basic elementary school education, so there needs to be a simple theory like "beat the landlords and divide the land" for everyone to understand. At present, the basic theory is still "people, goods and places", so I will still write according to this structure today.

01 About “People”

The vast majority of e-commerce live streaming experts are actually online shopping guides with weak personalities and high replaceability. Their biggest challenge in the future is: a large number of short video experts who have control over the supply of goods.

As long as a live broadcast room has multiple categories and a buyer model, then no matter it is a store account or an expert account, it is essentially an expert live broadcast room.

Grass-planting bloggers can transform into e-commerce anchors the fastest, and their fans have their own purchasing attributes.

It will gradually become the norm for celebrities to endorse products, and the era of putting on airs just to earn advertising fees is coming to an end. Selling goods is not low at all, it depends on how you do it.

Being an internet celebrity does require talent, and this talent can actually be summed up in four words: likable.

Internet celebrities can be mass-produced, but the question is whether MCN agencies are willing to do so. After all, Internet celebrities will go solo when they become big, and the husband-and-wife model currently seems to be the most solid business structure.

Incubating internet celebrities, from selecting talents to creating popular content, the basic ideas are actually very clear. There are only a few tricks that can be used over and over again. It is not difficult to reach the middle level and have over a million fans. As for achieving the top, you need a push from the platform; to reach the top, you need to catch the annual big trend; to reach the super top, you need to burn incense and pray for the right time.

The birth of a top star at the right time, Tik Tok’s temporary support for e-commerce experts (now gone), the salary cap that left stars with nothing to do due to a shortage of dramas, the decline of online variety shows, and the year of the lipstick economy all together gave birth to Li Jiaqi.

Viya is essentially the first generation of artificial intelligence anchor. Her operations team, investment and product selection team, and marketing planning team are almost all engaged in data operations, which is very rare in the field of content creation. It is equivalent to a science student breaking into the math examination room for liberal arts students.

Simba is a very magical existence. It can be said that he is the most knowledgeable among entertainment anchors, and the most knowledgeable about entertainment among e-commerce anchors. He combined "physical rewards" and "warehouse distribution and sales" together, which is very advanced.

Being an influencer or internet celebrity is not easy. It’s not like Dou Jingtong has inherited fans from her ancestors, nor does she have a G-Class that can drive into the Forbidden City. The hardships they endure are far beyond imagination. If you want to master extraordinary martial arts, you have to endure pain that ordinary people cannot endure. I hope that reporters will no longer ask whether this industry is developing healthily. If we ordinary people want to succeed, we have to exchange our lives for money.

02 About “Goods”

I saw a brand new clothing wholesale market in Guangzhou, which was designed to serve e-commerce live streaming from the beginning.

1-3 floors are wholesale stalls, 4-6 floors are live broadcast rooms;
Photo wall, catwalk, studio;
There are also training centers and shared office spaces.

From selecting products, to live streaming, shooting videos, online new product launches, and celebrity endorsements on online variety shows. Then you can attend gatherings and training, and there will be resident e-commerce platform service staff to synchronize policies. This one-stop wash, cut and blow-dry service is really great.

At the current stage, live streaming e-commerce is indeed difficult to help brands achieve premium, and it is more about achieving efficient sales conversion. But in the future, with the further enrichment of live broadcast content, more diverse scenes and more new products, it is inevitable that it will help brands to increase their premium and visibility. In a sense, live streaming can be seen as Tmall repeating its development path.

The overall marketing level of brands in my country is low, with little brand innovation and a love of price wars. Many small brands hold promotions during festivals and holidays, which basically hurts the enemy by a thousand and hurts their own brand by fifteen hundred.

Many American brands have strong marketing capabilities. For example, Lego, Disney, and Hasbro. These bastards shoot commercials that are 2.5 hours long and even sell tickets in theaters. It doesn’t cost any money to advertise and you can still make money. That’s pretty cool.

Analyzing e-commerce according to Maslow’s human needs:

The first stage is to satisfy the needs of food and clothing;
The second stage pursues safety and reliability;
The third stage is social needs.

The current trend is that “shopping environment” has become “social + shopping environment”.

What’s even more interesting is that once we enter the third stage, the Veblen effect will appear, and then more expensive items will start to sell well. Maybe one day, your Taobao profile picture will have the Cartier logo on it because you actually bought Cartier.

03 About “Field”

Technical side

Internet products for daily use are essentially not innovative, they are all about improving offline efficiency. For example, Dianping was previously spread by word of mouth, Meituan Waimai replaced restaurant flyers, Didi replaced phone calls for taxis, and with WeChat, there is no need to write letters. With group chat, there is no need to meet on the street corner to discuss things.

But in the 5G era, it is hard to say. The difference between 4G and 5G is like that between 2D animation and 3D movie.

The most efficient offline way is to go shopping in supermarkets on high streets, and the most efficient online way is to go shopping on Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo. However, it is possible that in the next era, the efficiency will be so high that you can shop by opening any app and search for related products in any scenario, and cloud stores will become widely popular.

The early impact of 5G on live streaming is: switching between multiple scenes and high-definition zooming; the mid-term impact is: switching between multiple smart terminals and trying on makeup and clothes; the late-term impact is: immersive virtual shopping.

Traffic side

The privatization of traffic did not start from the micro-businesses in WeChat groups, but from CCTV. At that time, each program group was a private traffic pool, relying on pre- and post-roll ads and mid-program ads for monetization. Now it has been renamed Feeds ads.

The decentralization of e-commerce started from the WeChat group in the community. 3-4 mothers who do WeChat business can buy all the fruits, vegetables, mooncakes and shampoo in the community.

So far, for most businesses, private domain traffic is still a pseudo concept. Even if you have tens of millions of fans, it is essentially just a channel for publishing messages, and it is still far from the fan economy.

Currently, the largest private domain traffic is in the hands of KOLs on major content platforms. Whether they are graphic and text experts, video experts, or live broadcast experts, the monetization model is basically advertising, audience rewards, and platform subsidies. More than 90% of experts have no source of goods.

Platform

Taobao live streaming is a labor-intensive industry. As live streaming tools become more popular and mature, clone stores will gradually decrease, and the era of opening a store and selling goods by simply posting two pictures is over. In addition, as the length of live broadcasts approaches the length of offline store openings, the live broadcast business will be an emerging industry.

Taobao's competitive barrier is its good after-sales and consumer protection system. This part requires heavy investment from the platform and is a pure loss, but it is very comfortable for consumers.

There is an invisible ceiling for Douyin and Kuaishou to do e-commerce live streaming: the platform is entertainment-oriented. According to the extreme deduction method, if you open Kuaishou, 8 out of 10 anchors are selling goods, and if you open Douyin, 5 out of 10 short videos are showing product showcases. The entire APP aura will change. Therefore, these two prides of the era will continue to expand the user base, increase the denominator of e-commerce, and dilute the e-commerce attributes of the platform.

The core users of Bilibili are young people who grew up watching cartoons. They will eventually become the mainstream of society, but when they put on suits and look like adults, it is hard to guess whether they will leave here and go to Xiaohongshu and WeChat for Enterprise, or continue to stay at Bilibili and don't want to grow up.

Xiaohongshu has strong competitive barriers and its content is of high quality, but the problem is that most of its KOLs are “famous for their songs but not for themselves” and there is a lack of representative figures.

The most interesting content on JD.com is actually the customer service replies. There are jokes every day and there are so many stories that are widely circulated.

The core content of Pinduoduo is social sharing copywriting. Everyone has seen the creative ability of this part, and the traffic-generating effect is very strong.

Therefore, live streaming may not be the only way to engage in content e-commerce.

Institutional side

2020 is a watershed year for live streaming organizations. A large number of empty shell organizations and free-range organizations will be eliminated. Some organizations that have done nothing wrong will also be eliminated because the needs are different at different stages. To expand the territory requires organizations that are aggressive in attracting people, while to cultivate the territory requires organizations with operational capabilities.

Live streaming organizations are becoming more vertical, with more types, such as broadcasting agencies, live streaming marketing agencies, live streaming resource docking agencies, live streaming training agencies, and live streaming data analysis agencies. Brand live event planning company.

The story of Li Ziqi and Yaowang makes everyone very excited. The A-share market has not had such a big highlight for a long time, but the entry of capital has both good and bad sides. Live streaming organizations can have a longer period of growth, but there will also be more organizations selling concepts. I will not elaborate on this.

The competitor of live streaming organizations may not be MCN organizations, but advertising companies. Advertising companies are closer to brands, understand customer needs better, and have stronger content planning and project execution capabilities. Today's advertising companies are a bit like the regular army driving cars, but once they learn to fly planes, they may launch a round of carpet bombing.

Summarize

I hope that when you look at problems in your daily life, you will have more insight, less observation, ask more questions, and make fewer sarcastic remarks. Because envy, jealousy and hatred can't help you make a penny.

Behind the obvious facts, there are often hidden opportunities. Most people are already doing the opportunities you can think of. But fortunately, the one who strikes first is not necessarily the stronger.

If you feel like you can do everything but it seems too difficult to do, the benefits are not exciting, and you always feel that there are many opportunities but none of them are very good, be careful, this is a sign of having high expectations but low skills, and it is time to learn and recharge.

To continue, content e-commerce still has 5 years of growth period. These are the 5 years when the cost of making mistakes is not so high, these are the 5 years when everyone is excited to invest, these are the 5 years of conquering cities and territories. In life, there are only a few such golden 5 years.