Image source @ Visual China
Text | Wang Zhiyuan
In 2021, the double 11 and double 12 just passed, many talented stars have rushed to the beach to live stream goods; in just two years, many people have questioned "will live e-commerce be a gust of wind"?
A number of platforms represented by Kuaidi and Taobao have submitted a very beautiful report card, such as:
The total transaction volume of a single live broadcast in the Douyin Festival reached 150 million yuan, the transaction volume of 60 merchants in the live broadcast room on the first day of Taobao Double 11 was as high as 10 million, and the turnover of Kuaishou Double 11 was as high as 8.8 billion; the million sales volume of each platform was also countless.
At this moment, the answer has been very clear, live streaming has become the mainstream marketing form, any business or channel brand needs to keep up.
Businesses that are not willing to do live broadcasting today are like those who did not want to do online business ten years ago and did not do social media marketing five years ago, and they have to risk falling behind the times.
However, the controversy in the industry about "whether to do live e-commerce" has ended, and it is definitely to be done; now there is more controversy about "how many roles does live e-commerce play", or how high is the ceiling of "live e-commerce"?
With the continuous exploration, there is a way to carry goods that has been excavated by people, and "merchants broadcast themselves".
That is to say, merchants use their own brands or store accounts to continuously broadcast live streams in their own live broadcast rooms; on the one hand, they can cultivate their own anchors, on the other hand, they can sign up for talents, which should not be underestimated.
The reason why the brand is in a hurry to bring goods
Self-broadcast is also called store broadcasting, saying that before you think about it, why should brands cooperate with talents to do live broadcasting? There are three purposes: 1) to clear the goods, 2) to promote explosive products, and 3) to create brands.
Over the past two years, the relationship between the three has been progressive.
At the end of 2019, the epidemic incident changed many traditional brands and retail models, and the "home office, isolation economy" forced users to shift from offline consumption mode to online.
During the special period, offline scenes are restricted, and brands have to explore channels in a new way to show their products to bored consumers at home, so as to complete the task of stimulating consumers to buy.
Li Jiaqi, Via, Simba and Sandako and other live streaming KOLs have fully educated the market by using the early advantages and platform dividends, so that brands have the most original cognition of carrying goods, that is, they can sell goods through live broadcasting, and even hundreds of millions of dollars.
Therefore, the brand found that the competitors sold a lot through live broadcasting, and they generated great interest, so everyone was immersed in "finding talents and busy bringing goods" in 2020, that is, the brand used the short video platform as a link to accelerate the rapid turnover of its own cash flow.
From the perspective of the entire short video market, the needs of consumers are relatively simple and clear, that is, "cheap + good goods"; is there such a commodity? Of course there are but not many.
KOLs with goods agencies need to accumulate a certain number of fans, in addition to the interaction with consumers through the appearance of the content, there is no doubt that low unit price, high discount explosive products are the best choice; on the one hand, the low value of goods can cause impulse consumption, on the other hand, discounts can meet the compensation psychology.
Without these two conditions, early live broadcasting could not have risen.
It's like you've basically never seen a well-known brand shopping on TV, because you pay expensive costs in advertising, and then discounts will definitely lose money, so those brands that participate in live broadcasting are "not for the name of the amount".
Then, with the development of more and more brands that introduce goods channels, coupled with the imperfection of the platform and market supervision system, there are countless rollover incidents, such as:
A celebrity's 32nd live broadcast with goods 1.2 million, the next day's return of up to 1.16 million, a KOL and a star joint special session was exploded data fraud, etc., the overall can be seen that the depth of the live broadcast is difficult to grasp.
So brands don't all bet on how much a single KOL can sell, and start to borrow them to achieve brand exposure and promotion, which is similar to the purpose of advertising.
With so many questions, why don't brands sell their own in 2021? The summary is divided into two aspects: 1) marketing lag, 2) quick success
The former many company brands are relatively backward in the marketing innovation layer, whether it is online stores or social e-commerce, private domain traffic, this set of logic in the beginning of the play is relatively clear is basically "personal" or "small agency".
They can make small steps and iterate quickly.
On the contrary, big brands face organizational bloating, complex reporting relationships, and when they start to pay attention to the operation of online malls, they find that new channels have been opened, so they often only consider a way out when growth declines.
Therefore, the same is true for live streaming with goods, especially in the 2020 epidemic, the response speed of individual sellers is much greater than that of the brand side, and the adaptability to live broadcast gameplay is also relatively strong, and brands are more inclined to find mature institutions or agent operations to reduce risks when the industry is not clear.
The latter capital pushes live e-commerce to the outlet, and there is inevitably an exaggerated effect of publicity, such as: you can always see some head anchors down a million GMV, which leads many merchants to fantasize that as long as they can spend money to rank the anchor's pit, they can express the explosion and ship a few dollars.
The result is that the merchant has misled the anchor's operational logic.
Generally speaking, the brand that finds a talent to cooperate with takes the cost of the marketing department's budget, rather than the logic of selling goods directly; this makes some brands prefer to lose money and go to the big anchor live broadcast room, or even lose the wallet mail.
To put it bluntly, the money for the brand to carry goods is from the overall market cost budget of the through train or external publicity in the delivery station, and it is not a part of it used as a separate release.
It is just to turn part of the budget into product costs and then appropriately take out some pit fees, and then do a wave of sales and exposure improvement based on the talent to bring goods, which can ensure the cost advantage of doing low-price strategy.
In short, the lagging marketing of enterprise brands and the mentality of quick success and quick profit, coupled with the "uncertainty" of the rapid development of the industry, have the basic form of "clearing goods, pushing explosive products, and creating brands" in three stages.
Based on this development ladder brand side in the return rate, data fraud and other issues, everyone sobered up, realized that the budget to the third-party company is not as good as "self-built account", improve the self-broadcast system is the most long-term, the most stable sales.
Behind these problems, on the one hand, the enthusiasm of merchants for live broadcasting is indeed the first choice for channels with goods, on the other hand, it reflects helplessness, KOL masters and other frequent overturning, they need to control higher channels, but the development of the entire industry is in a benign development.
However, in the process of self-broadcast operation, merchants found that the investment of ROI did not match at all, so some brands tried to find "agencies" to cooperate, but also stepped on many pits.
Unstable agencies
What is a broadcast company? Generally refers to the live broadcast service provider that provides operation, anchor, venue and other services for the brand live broadcast, in the three elements of live broadcast "people and goods yard", the broadcasting company is responsible for "people and field".
According to the "Analysis Report on the Development of Live Broadcasting Bases", most provinces actively open live broadcast bases and embrace the new model of live e-commerce, but the overall development is unbalanced.
In 2021, the number of bases exceeded 2,000, an increase of 100% year-on-year, specifically distributed in Yunnan, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and other places; enterprise investigation data shows that there are currently 17,000 live e-commerce companies in China, Guangzhou ranks first, and Zhejiang Shandong ranks among the best.
A large number of "gold diggers" poured in, after rapid growth is now the de-bubble stage, although it seems to be lively, but the agency service providers are becoming the first batch of out of the industrial chain because of cost, competition and other reasons.
From the perspective of the industry chain, the entire live e-commerce includes 5 types of participants, brand parties/merchants, anchors, MCN institutions, platforms and service providers.
《Live E-commerce Industry Chain》
There are clear differences between MCN and the broadcast company:
Most of the institutional anchors are carried out in the "pit fee + commission" model, and the price of the pit is determined according to the number of anchor fans; merchants look for anchors that meet the demands of goods and brand tone through MCN to deliver, and obtain publicity and sales benefits.
The agency broadcasting company charges according to the "service fee + hourly wage", agrees on the length of the live broadcast every month on the basis of tens of thousands of service fees, and pays hundreds to one or two thousand per hour.
Compared with the MCN agency's live broadcast of tens of thousands of pit fees, the minimum hourly wage of service providers is only 300 yuan, so it is more cost-effective for brands to cooperate with the latter, in fact, this way of earning labor fees will often fall into an embarrassing situation.
The similarities between the two are the "intermediate links" grown in the live broadcasting ecology, and even the functions overlap, but in fact, they are two different businesses, the most obvious difference is "the ownership of the live broadcast account".
McN's operating account is the anchor number, has a certain number of fans, and the live broadcast mainly relies on personal IP influence.
The account used by the broadcasting company is the brand's own account, and the anchor is more like the professional shopping guide hired by the brand, which is highly fungible and has almost zero personal influence.
Institutions have brand selection and bargaining power in their hands of traffic, and can strive for price advantages for themselves; while the anchor of the operation does not have the benefit of fans, the price of the live broadcast room follows the brand activity, and the main product is determined by the brand, so it does not have the bargaining power.
Therefore, the embarrassment of the broadcasting company is that the project is done well, the brand side will choose to open its own live broadcast department, the project is not done well, and it is often withdrawn in a short period of time.
From this point of view, the agency broadcast service provider is more like a link and a bridge between MCN and the live broadcast of the merchant; the sustainability of value comes from its own team learning ability on the one hand, and whether it can bring increment to the brand on the other hand.
What are the pitfalls for brands in cooperation? There are three dimensions to consider: 1) infrastructure, 2) soft services, and 3) contract terms
Agencies have their own live broadcast bases or professional live broadcast rooms created by rented offices, and institutions will also decorate, light, provide cameras and microphones for the requirements of the brand.
Then, from a professional point of view, the lighting, radio and other equipment in each live broadcast room will directly affect the live broadcast effect, and different live broadcast rooms will also be equipped with relevant decorations, and the "new generation operating company" is easy to suffer losses in this regard.
Soft services are the biggest pitfalls, including whether the company has successful cases of cooperation, planning for live broadcasts, training of products, planning scripts, live previews, cover design, data analysis, A-S level assessment standards for anchor live broadcasts, and whether weekly reports are SOPed.
The regular live broadcast room generally has multiple positions such as field control, operation, assistant, and selection; according to the survey, the basic salary of the anchor with about one month's experience is about 8K, plus 20%-30% of the sales commission.
However, most of the anchors of the broadcast agencies are part-time, unless the basic salary will be given to 20,000 yuan, plus about 30% of the commission, taking Hangzhou Binjiang District as an example part-time at 150 ~ 200 yuan / hour.
Therefore, from the perspective of the brand, the anchor of the institution should explain the product clearly, and it is very important to plant grass for consumers or improve the conversion rate of the product, and if there is no standard for the professional "mercenary", it will directly reduce the quality of the whole field.
In the contract, it should be clear whether the agency broadcast company is required to help launch the through train, DOU+, and assist in in-depth data analysis and operation work.
It should be known that the profit model of the agency operating company is the fixed cost of service and hardware in addition to labor services, and the only thing left without service support is labor, which will inevitably cause treatment like completing tasks.
To sum up, for medium-sized brands, the cost of time and money communication in the early stage of finding a rotating agency is not as good as personally entering the game.
There are many details that are completely beyond the control of the agency, such as operational power and the ability to compete with the platform for resources.
Isn't that bad? not necessarily.
The brand will do a good job in infrastructure construction, when the store slowly forms an export with sales power, and then throw more budget to the "broadcasting company" and MCN company to cooperate with the implementation, which is the best strategy, which is also the business model recommended by the head platform.
Watch the merchant live broadcast from the perspective of the platform
The big theme of the industry in 2021 is to shift from "speed" to "compliance", and the Douyin e-commerce and Kuaishou e-commerce that have just completed the ecological closed loop are under relatively heavier pressure.
If you do not rely on new ways to win, but are forced to fight the foundation and fight the position war, the impact on Tmall Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo will be greatly reduced, and on the contrary, their difficulties in doing a good job in e-commerce business will also be doubled.
On the one hand, the advantage of the head anchor lies in the traffic, but when it comes to professionalism, it is certainly not as good as the brand itself, and the influence is not a good thing for the platform.
On the other hand, anchors with strong voice can even affect the formulation of platform rules, and the brushing orders and tax evasion of Internet celebrity anchors have also caught the platform off guard.
Well, behind this is bound to be around the "brand side", as we all know, the brand is suffering from the "lowest price of the whole network" and "the theory of expensive traffic", you think, the traffic is in the head, the pricing power is naturally weakened.
What to do in the melee?
Platforms and merchants are more willing to take the chips in their own hands, the platform encourages brands to layout their own store live broadcasting, through store broadcasting to find new growth, retain private domain; last year's hot Hongxing Erke, Bee Flower also proved that store broadcasting is capable of converting users.
So you see, consumers may pay because of the IP and image of the anchor, but as consumers' awareness of live e-commerce matures, the overall upgrade will still return to the product itself; to study its attributes, whether the ingredients meet my needs.
Such questions can only be answered by professionals.
From this point of view, it is necessary for the platform to encourage brand self-broadcasting, and the brand can also penetrate various professional knowledge; from the perspective of competition, store broadcasting is also the "winner and loser" of several e-commerce companies, why?
Under the traditional development perspective (Taobao, JD.com, PDD), the priority card slot is the "supply side", the number of merchants directly determines the position of the market, and the status directly determines the choice of users, which is the previous development path.
From the perspective of the new rising platform (Kuaishou, Douyin), priority card slot content channels, after several years of rapid development, although the content ecology has been consolidated, but to do e-commerce supply chain, logistics, POP settlement system, but there is a lot of homework to make up, the only chance to win is to "stabilize the brand".
With the analysis of development vision, all this coincides with the incentive policies launched by many platforms for merchants last year, such as:
The relevant person in charge of Taobao has repeatedly said that the focus of Taobao live broadcasting industry upgrading is still in e-commerce, and even last year's double 12 launched the whole people to help the big promotion sprint.
Kuaishou released the "STEPS" brand live broadcast methodology, providing entry guidelines based on merchant experience and its own advantages; Douyin did not stop, and the 2021 Douyin E-commerce White Paper directly analyzed the FACT business model.
It can be seen that the live streaming with goods shuffle drives the orderly development of the industry, providing more opportunities for merchants; avoiding them from falling into various pit fees, brushing data and other black middle-class, which can also improve the overall performance efficiency and experience for users.
Therefore, the platform wants to play the trump card of good odds, and store broadcasting is a war that cannot be avoided.
Behind this is kuaishou, douyin two in the accumulation of the number of merchants at the same time can also seize the enrichment of their own ecological construction capabilities, for Taobao, Pinduoduo just have time to improve the ability of information circulation, align with the content ecological level.
Some tips for merchants to broadcast themselves
Brands are in between, how to enjoy the opportunity dividends of the platform? Because each platform has different rules, here are some general-purpose lessons to refer to:
1) About basic hardware facilities
Live broadcast rooms generally need to implant brand elements to make professional background walls; but some brands cannot form a fixed way due to various complex elements, and third-party software can be used to operate on major platforms.
On the device, the basic mobile phone can be completely completed, and high-end brands can also use high-definition cameras; fresh, kitchen, jewelry bias detail demonstration scenes require green cloth backgrounds and fill light equipment to support, if you use software to push stream high-end computers are essential.
The sales price of professional full sets of equipment on mainstream e-commerce platforms ranges from 1500 yuan to 20,000 yuan, which in my opinion can basically meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.
2) About positioning and matrices
As far as the Kuaishou and Douyin platforms are concerned, from the perspective of the market, most brands will form a "matrix" store broadcast state, that is, brand numbers and IP numbers, and take turns to maintain a high duration online.
The advantage of this is that it can fully undertake the platform and users who enter the live broadcast room at different times, no matter what interesting content they see, they have the opportunity to enter the live broadcast room that is being broadcast, thereby improving the probability of transaction conversion.
We must have a clear understanding that the push stream obtained by "each account and live broadcast room" on the platform is limited, the account matrix can get more exposure for the brand, and like short videos, the live broadcast room of the fast jitter has the concept of traffic pool.
That is to say, the system will make the next recommendation according to the initial exposure obtained in each live broadcast room, click rate, user stay time, interaction indicators and other aspects of the assessment.
Of course, brands can also carry out differentiated positioning operations in combination with their own products and businesses, so that they can import more accurate people through different accounts.
In addition, the single account model is compared to the matrix, which has the advantage of "trial and error space" and increases the probability of explosion.
Fast shake is to stimulate user interest through content, content is the key to obtaining a hit, which is a huge challenge for most merchants who like the traditional e-commerce model.
There are many such cases, such as:
Domestic second-hand luxury goods platforms "Fat Tiger", Jiuxian Network, etc., all use the matrix play of brand + multi-person IP to form a scale effect.
The store number focuses on brand promotion, and the IP number focuses on the high-quality content output and accurate person setting position with people as the core, which is suitable for the company's team with professional content output and strong sales genes.
On the one hand, through the daily release of multi-account content, enhance the brand's voice and sales on the platform, on the other hand, create differentiated people to precipitate users with different preferences, so as to solve the problem of obtaining users in a single account.
3) About products and stores
Midea, Xiaomi and Jack Jones live broadcast operation methods are completely different, Midea based on different product business lines, build matrix accounts, such as: life flagship store, home flagship store, washing machine, etc., to meet different potential purchase needs.
This matrix-based account building, diverting users to segment the live broadcast room to promote conversion, is suitable for brands with complex business lines.
In addition, Xiaomi's approach is completely different.
Through the creation of independent live broadcast rooms to integrate various business lines and product lines; on the one hand, the advantages of this are to focus on SKUs and enhance the viewing points of live broadcast rooms; on the other hand, to focus on marketing resources, hold high and expand the entrance to live broadcasts, thereby driving efficiency.
Jack Jones is the best reference case for self-broadcasting of offline stores; with more than 2300 stores in China that can cover 80% of the stores in a short period of time, they have official "self-broadcast numbers", and it has been observed that most of the Jack Jones numbers use regional plus store names.
The company only needs to formulate a good standard SOP, as well as a multi-dimensional training system, to empower the demand for live streaming in stores, and it is also used for franchise stores, is this not the best choice?
In addition, what about a single brand with few SKUs?
For the scene of brand segmentation, use different content to cut in, such as cream, the live broadcast room can share the knowledge of cleaning, skin care, maintenance and so on according to the time schedule, and can also be connected to the wheat KOL, guests and so on.
To summarize:
Brand store broadcasting is a long-term and correct path.
In the early days, you need to constantly try and make mistakes to find the best path, and once the basic skills are solid, you can open up the traffic dilemma through content differences, thus driving sales.