How long will live streaming sales be popular?

If there is any difference between the 2019 Double 11 and previous years, it is that there is probably no girl who has not heard Li Jiaqi's words: "All girls, three, two, one, buy it!"

The live streaming sales event has refreshed the public's perception of new consumption methods with its subversive influence and has become a hot topic of discussion among all walks of life.

Data shows that during the pre-sale stage of Double 11 this year, 117,000 brands started live streaming, with transaction volume exceeding 100 million yuan in 6 minutes and an astonishing record of 55 cars sold in 1 second.

On the night of Double 11, nearly 100,000 live broadcast rooms were broadcasting live to sell goods non-stop. The number of viewers for the live broadcast rooms of top anchors represented by Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya was 36.82 million and 43.1 million respectively.

1 hour and 3 minutes after the opening, the transactions guided by Taobao Live exceeded the entire day of Double 11 last year.

Live streaming is no longer just an embellishment for e-commerce, but a rising mainstream and standard feature of future business models.

1. Why is live streaming selling products so popular?

Zhao Yuanyuan, head of Alibaba's live streaming, said that live streaming has obvious advantages over traditional e-commerce.

He believes that the live broadcast of Borgward Automobile, which was participated by Lei Jiayin, internet celebrity Geng Shougong, and Taobao anchor Chen Jie KIKI, is of milestone significance.

"Live broadcast is a two-hour long advertisement. It can not only plant seeds, but also remove seeds. In-depth explanations of products, real-time inquiries from consumers, and interesting content from celebrities are all compressed together and burst out, and all the data is clear at a glance."

"On the surface, it's just a victory of three big stars + promotional benefits, but behind the scenes it's a successful experiment of: new brand endorsement model + innovative live broadcast content + short-chain communication + new promotion."

Doris Ke, the founder of Women's Knife Skills, thinks why live streaming is so popular? Or it is because of the high monetization efficiency.

Currently, there are two main ways for Taobao brands and merchants to play: using expert anchors or merchants to broadcast themselves.

The income of expert anchors mainly comes from listing fees and commissions, and a commission is charged for each sale. It’s more secure for merchants and feels like a win-win situation.

In addition, brands can also broadcast their own content: merchants can find anchors with sales experience based on their own stores, conduct e-commerce live sales to store fans, and build their own live broadcast platform. It can not only activate store fans, but also boost sales at the same time. It is a good own channel.

Compared with the original text, image or video carriers, the advantages of live broadcast are obvious:

Real-time interaction + video presentation make it easy for anchors to promote products, use a sense of urgency to promote products, and use visual stimulation - users will buy once they are excited.

Top anchors can help brands complete the entire process from planting seeds to understanding to purchasing; brands can broadcast themselves and then promote activation and repeat purchases for the store’s old users.

Xibei VP Chu Xueyou said that the core of social media is not traffic or reading volume, but gathering true love that is willing to interact with you.

He believes that the reason why live streaming is so popular is that the host’s personality transcends traffic.

Regardless of personal IP or brand, considering improving concentration and magnetism is a better way to accumulate brand assets than attracting traffic.

Restore the traffic into living individuals, communicate, interact and connect, establish beautiful and real connections with fans and customers, be strong and firm, and never stop.

Li Jiaqi, the "Lipstick King", is live streaming

2. What is the future of live streaming e-commerce?

Zheng Zhuoran, the owner of the public account "Communication Gymnastics", wrote clearly that Taobao Live will go through an adjustment period in the short term, but in the long run, we should not be too superstitious about the influence of the anchor.

First, live streaming e-commerce has become very popular in the second half of this year due to the promotion of Taobao Live, and it is estimated that it will enter an adjustment period.

One reason is the problem of selling counterfeit goods during live streaming and high return rates.

The second reason is that the top anchors have high bargaining power, and many merchants are clearing their stock at a loss, so merchants will not use it as the main means of selling goods.

Third, some users have begun to feel aesthetic fatigue. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has begun to regulate live streaming to a certain extent, and shocks in the industry are inevitable.

Second, live streaming sales should become the norm in the future, but it is still a promotion-oriented marketing method and can be seen as an effective advertising method that emphasizes ROI.

Third, for brand marketers, it is crucial whether the anchor matches the product. Most anchors are only suitable for selling goods below 200 yuan (impulse consumption). Once the price exceeds 200 yuan, the effect of selling goods will drop sharply.

Li Jiaqi’s promotion of men’s beauty products and Li Xiang’s promotion of mink coats both failed miserably. The difficulty in marketing is still the problem of product matching, rather than blindly believing in the influence of the anchor.

User Jasmine Guan believes that internet celebrities and factories can form a perfect complement and promote mutual benefit.

First, it is well known in the industry that online traffic is expensive and the cost of acquiring customers is high.

In an era when the cost of online customer acquisition is higher than that of offline customer acquisition, live streaming + e-commerce has broken through the bottleneck of online customer acquisition conversion, eliminated the steps of attracting new customers, promoting activation, and retaining existing customers, and directly sold goods, thus increasing product sales, which is still very meaningful for the initial brand building of the product.

Second, internet celebrities, anchors, and KOLs are actually a good complement to factories. Internet celebrities suffer from the inability to monetize their traffic, and factories have difficulty having products but no traffic. However, e-commerce live streaming is a perfect complement between internet celebrities and brands.

Third, 5G will bring the next small climax to short videos. As far as e-commerce live streaming is concerned, de-branding will be relatively weakened in the future, whether in terms of products or celebrity brand IPs. Everyone is an anchor, everyone can sell goods, and everyone is a consumer and promoter of live streaming e-commerce.

"Taobao No. 1" Wei Ya is live streaming

User Lisa L. compared live streaming with the once popular TV shopping. She believes that no matter how shopping methods develop in the future, making products with care and serving users well are the foundation of everything.

Although live streaming sales are more transparent than TV shopping transactions, what technology brings us is decentralization and a return to the essence of things.

I believe that after 5G is widely used, it will not be through the eloquence of the anchor/the effect of the star, but through VR/AR, consumers can view 360° panoramic photos of the product more directly.

Through the online environment, the offline shopping experience is truly restored, and the products can be actually touched, the defects of online shopping are solved, the advantages of offline purchases are perfectly integrated, and the entire user purchase experience is optimized.

Whether it is TV shopping, online influencers promoting products, celebrity IP communication, VR/AR shopping, etc., making good products and serving users well are the foundation of everything.

Final Thoughts

As Zhao Yuanyuan said, "If Taobao Live was creating a trend in 2018, then the trend finally came in the second half of 2019."

As for how long the live streaming e-commerce trend will last in the future and how big a storm it will create, let us wait and see.

Author: LinkedIn

Source: LinkedIn