01 Nov Why Retailers Start To Do Livestreaming?
If you are an active social media user, you have most probably viewed a live selling session, be it on Facebook, Youtube or Tiktok. Here’s my experiences on buying from a livestream. I believe a lot of us might initially think that we would never buy from a livestream. However, after a few accidental exposures on the livestream content. I admitted that I was attracted by the way they conducted their livestream. Then one day, without having the plan to buy anything, I came across a live selling that attracted my interest and I felt the sudden urge to buy from the livestream. This was my first experience buying from my livestream. You might wonder what has happened and what has made me change my mind to start buying from livestreams. As such, let’s take a look on how livestream commerce could help retailers to bring customers to their business.
Why Retailers Start To Do Livestreaming?
- What – An Additional Customer Touchpoint
- Why – Emerging Mobile Data
- How – Build Connection And Increase Customer Stickiness
What – An Additional Customer Touchpoint
To capture better market share in this new retail era, one thing that retailers do is to gain more traffic to their e-commerce stores or offline stores. Through livestream, retailers could leverage on the popular social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube and Tiktok. As these platforms have a lot of pre-existing users, retailers could expose their products or services to these users and eventually direct these traffic to their stores. Thus, retailers just have to start to develop livestream contents that would attract the consumers. Even though not all livestream viewers will immediately buy from the livestream, it still serves as a customer touchpoint that would bring your brand to the awareness of the customers. For example, especially for retailers who are developing a new brand, they could leverage the share mechanism on social media to expand their exposure towards consumers who are unaware of the brand’s existence. Hence, it means that retailers could reach more consumers with the aid of livestream commerce.
Why – Emerging Mobile Data Technology
One of the reasons why live selling is gaining more and more popularity is due to the emerging mobile data technology. As we know that people nowadays are constantly attached to their smartphone and they are always actively browsing online. When they are bored and have some time to be filled in, they will turn on their social media account to look for content that would potentially interest them. In addition, some people have even developed a habit to browse through online shops and add products that interest them in their online shopping cart. As customers now have the freedom to browse online at any time and anywhere, this means that retailers who are doing live selling would gain a competitive edge in attracting new traffic that is beyond the traffic coverage of online and offline stores.
How – Build Connection And Increase Customer Stickiness
Usually, when you purchase expensive items like electronic appliances, gadgets and vehicles, do you buy from the same sales persons or retailers? I believe that it is natural that we would like to buy from a trusted retailer or salesperson that we are familiar with. According to statistics from Fit Small Business, it showed that the top reason why retailers have started livestream commerce is to interact more with their customers. 55% of retailers have conducted live selling with the purpose to better engage with their customers on social media and 59% of the retailers have conducted livestream with the purpose to humanize their brand. As compared to retailers who do not have livestream commerce, they could only engage with customers personally when their customers walk into their offline shops; while retailers who conduct livestream will have more opportunity to engage with their potential customers and build a special connection with them. For instance, in live selling, there will always be a period of time when the livestreamer has small talks with his or her frequent livestream viewers or customers. Through constant engagement with the customers on livestream, it would help retailers to create a stronger bond between their brands and the customers, thus increasing the recency and frequency of the customers to buy from the retailers.
Ultimately, starting a livestream commerce would definitely help the retailers to boost their business in this New Retail era. Especially for retailers that reach the bottleneck on getting in new traffic, developing a livestream commerce might help you reach out to a new group of potential customers. Once the unique connections are being built during a livestream session, their customer would then naturally stick to the retailers.
To start a livestream commerce, there are a lot of key strategies that could be implemented and key metrics that have to be monitored to ensure that livestream commerce could bring in the expected return of investment to your business. Interested to know more about live stream commerce? Want a more in-depth breakdown of the strategies personalized according to your business? Wait no further! You can check out our Professional Certification in New Retail Marketing. If you’d like to check out our other programs, feel free to click here.
Written by Lim Ee Hau,
SHRA Corporate Trainer
Ee Hau is a member of the SHRA trainer team. He has a psychology background and he is passionate in assisting individuals to achieve their life goal. He loves to connect with people by initiating insightful conversation. He enjoys swimming and you can catch him bouldering in the gym during his free time.
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