Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 深火 (ID: shenrancaijing), author 丨 金玙璠, editor 丨 魏佳
The year 2021 of live streaming is destined to be chaotic.
The anchors who once stood at the top of the industry pyramid have come to an end. On November 22, 2021 and December 20, 2021, Taobao anchors Sydney and Wei Ya were reported for tax evasion and disappeared into the Internet overnight. On December 28, 2021, TST, a cosmetics company founded by Douyin head anchor Zhang Ting and her husband Lin Ruiyang, was investigated and punished by the Yuhua District Market Supervision Bureau of Shijiazhuang City for suspected pyramid schemes, and the assets frozen under their names amounted to 600 million yuan.
Live streaming with goods, originated in 2016, broke out in 2019, in the second half of 2021 ushered in strong supervision and compliance, looking forward to 2022, there are "dangers" and "opportunities".
An industry insider judged that after the "thunderstorm" of multiple head anchors, about 50% of the traffic in the entire live e-commerce industry will be reshuffled.
During this time, what are anchors, merchants, and platforms doing?
According to the above-mentioned industry sources, in December 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, MCN will devote part of its energy to tax compliance. MCN practitioners believe that the live e-commerce industry is in the ascendant and adheres to legal compliance in order to seize the window period before the rise of new super-head anchors.
What merchants are pondering is that if they still pay too much attention to the talents with goods, they are bound to retry and invest in finding high-quality anchors, and it is better to increase their efforts to do self-broadcasting and take this opportunity to regain pricing power.
The platform is gradually promoting planning and specialization. Overall, the industry has not fallen into a "panic" mood, but the middle-waisted anchors are competing for the position, the merchants are competing for the right to speak in live broadcasting, and the platform is to accelerate the construction of a new ecology after the era of super big anchors.
Sydney "disappeared" for more than fifty days, Andvia "left" for more than twenty days, where did the traffic go? Will the beneficiaries be mid-waist anchors and brand merchants? At the end of 2021, live streaming with goods is "thrilling", will it affect the development process of the industry? This article will attempt to answer these three questions.
Anchor: Mid-waist competition out?
Recently, the most intuitive feeling of Liu Xin, a deep user of live e-commerce, is that the anchor has started broadcasting more frequently, and the amount and frequency of red envelopes and coupons have also increased. In the past two years, she has developed the habit of spending in the Taobao live broadcast room, and after Wei Ya and Sydney left, she naturally chose to go to the live broadcast room of the second echelon anchor on the platform.
Wu Xue, a senior practitioner in the e-commerce industry, recently obtained a list of Taobao anchors and said, "The second echelon has all risen." ”
Shen Ran exclusively learned from insiders close to Taobao Live that in the 7 days after Wei Ya stopped broadcasting (that is, from December 23 to December 29), the total viewing days of celebrities and merchants on the Taobao live broadcast platform increased by more than 28 million times year-on-year. In this regard, industry insiders believe that "a large number of mid-waist anchor masters and merchants not only undertook the traffic gap left by the head anchor after the suspension of broadcasting, but also created an increment." ”
At the same time, Deep Burning has also been confirmed from a number of MCN institutions, such as Mu Xiaoxiao, head of the MCN Anchor Academy, who said that recently the anchor teams are busy with the New Year goods festival and various goods, "the talent also has a fighting spirit than before, thinking that the head anchor quits, there are fewer people who divide the cake, and they have the opportunity to eat more."
This is consistent with the feelings of many merchants, the first echelon of Taobao anchors because of limited choices, the competition is extremely fierce, is bound to have a part of the traffic and goods, flow to the middle waist of the talent live broadcast room.
The person in charge of the leisure snack brand Fujihashi Live revealed that in January 2022, it was originally planned to cooperate with Li Jiaqi twice, but the current reply of the investment team is "tight pit, only one". The team chose to strengthen the long-term cooperation with The Lin Yilun team, and the recent data feedback showed that the sales growth rate was very fast, "the output of the single pit increased from 8 to 100,000 before the double 11 in 2021, and to the beginning of January, it increased to 300,000."
Huang Bo, CEO of Huameng New Media Group and chairman of Taobao Alliance Chengdu, predicted that after the Sydney, Lin Shanshan and Weiya incidents, at least 20-30% of the traffic was vacated, at present, the mid-waist talent increases the live broadcast time and enriches the play, the core is to undertake this part of the traffic, followed by the use of the New Year Goods Festival in the last wave of the New Year.
The data of the Deep Burn Inspection Diantao APP since December 20 found that the start time and frequency of many talent anchors have increased significantly.
Lin Yilun has successively opened a number of categories such as the New Year Snack Festival, The Mother and Baby Festival, the Supermarket Festival, and the Hot Pot Festival, and the average number of viewers of some sessions has doubled compared with before. In addition to the clothing categories that Lie'er Baby is good at, it has successively opened Special Sessions in Xinjiang, Special Sessions for Fashion, Special Sessions for Foodies, and Special Sessions for Cat Chao (Tmall Supermarket), and the number of viewers has doubled.
The above-mentioned people close to Taobao live broadcast revealed that a food vertical head anchor on December 28, 2021, January 6, 2022, January 8, 2022, intensively did three New Year goods festival and life festival activities, the recent average daily increase of 2500 fans, the average number of viewers per game is about 1 million. A women's clothing anchor recently lengthened the live broadcast time, consciously increased the second kill welfare money, lottery and pet powder red packets, and also did a special clearance of clothing, with more than 10,000 new fans in the past week, and the average number of viewers per game increased by 700,000 compared with the daily average.
A cargo expert with nearly one million fans revealed that the company recently reported to the anchor training class for the goods experts. Chen Dong, head of live broadcasting on an e-commerce platform, also noted that MCN is more motivated to disperse traffic to its mid-waist anchors, while paying attention to improving marketing plans.
Chen Dong judged that the departure of some head anchors will only divert traffic and will not affect the live streaming industry itself. At present, the traffic will be dispersed to the middle waist anchor, and it can be predicted that in the first half of 2022, the anchor echelon will continue to show a state of blooming flowers. In the future, there may be a new super head rise, but before that, the mid-waist anchor team is bound to bite this wave of opportunities.
After calculation, the Tianfeng Securities team believes that the transaction volume of the live e-commerce market will reach 6,915.6 billion yuan in 2025, referring to the proportion of GMV of the TOP1000 anchors on each platform in 2020, and it is expected that the proportion of GMV of head anchors and waist and tail anchors will reach 3:7.
Merchants: Shop broadcast opportunities are coming?
Merchants are a group of people with more fighting spirit.
In the past month, the competition between merchants has not only competed for high-quality talents, but also in the live broadcast room of the store. Many merchants estimate that Taobao Live will open some public domain traffic to stores with strong traffic capacity, so they are actively planning store broadcasts.
Mu Xiaoxiao revealed that there have been more brand merchants who have recently recruited professional category anchors and formed store broadcast teams. According to him, a brand has recently recruited 20 anchors.
Fujihashi is currently preparing for the New Year Festival, hoping to seize the most popular and profitable nodes in the food industry. The live broadcast of the store was extended from 8 hours per day to 16 hours per day after New Year's Day, and all the anchors were cancelled in January.
In Huang Bo's view, the state of self-broadcasting by merchants is more invested. From the background point of view, the live broadcast data of the merchants who are good at doing store live broadcasting and traffic delivery have increased significantly compared with before.
Fujihashi, who set up a store broadcast team in May 2021, used to regularly find head anchors and star anchors to bring goods, but in order to let users pay attention to the store, he tried many conversion methods, such as targeted coupons, new reminders, etc., with average effect. Now in the store live broadcast room, the benefits such as seconds, coupons, and gifts are very effective for users to stay long, accumulate the number of members, and repurchase conversion rate.
Its team also found that the repurchase cycle of the old users of the store broadcast is about 20 days, so some member mechanisms are used to guide the old users to repurchase according to this cycle, and the effect is doubled. At present, there are 4 full-time anchors and 2 part-time anchors, so that the sales of Fujihashi store broadcasting account for about 1/4 of the overall.
A person in charge of a women's wear brand told Deep Burning that at this stage, the merchants have the highest cost performance, which is equivalent to seizing the market. "When we do live broadcasting in our store, we don't even actively seek to maximize traffic, but try to make traffic acquisition more accurate." Even if we always have forty or fifty people online in the live broadcast room, we can sell nearly 100,000 yuan a day. ”
Wu Xue said that in fact, Taobao Live launched the store broadcast live broadcast from 2019, when there was official support, and the competition was not fierce, but Li Jiaqi was just out of the circle at that time, and most merchants only noticed the live broadcast of the talent in the sky. Today, that has changed. "If the merchant continues to focus on the live broadcast of the talent, it needs to continue to trial and error, consume huge economic costs, time costs, why not increase efforts to do store broadcasting, take this opportunity to take back the pricing power of the merchant?"
For example, Fujihashi has decided to reduce the budget for the live broadcast part of the talent accordingly, and in 2022, a part of the cost will be diverted to the live broadcast of the store.
Lin Qi, the relevant person in charge of the health care brand, believes that the investment determination for self-broadcasting is actually not directly related to whether there is a head of the anchor fall, some categories are naturally suitable for live broadcast display, no matter how to invest manpower is worthwhile, now the self-broadcast start-up cost is low, basically has been the brand standard, therefore, their own team or outsourcing two forms have.
Huang Bo noted that a new trend has emerged in the self-broadcast of merchants: merchants who are proficient in e-commerce at the waist and above the waist have begun to "take back" the live broadcast of Taonei from the hands of the agent operator. A Taobao women's clothing hot brand, in the past two years, self-broadcasting has ranked among the best in the industry, but at the end of 2021, it also took back the store broadcast to do it itself, and began to pay attention to cultivating its own anchor and operation team, and laid out the store broadcast in a matrix and systematic manner.
"In the internal organizational structure of some enterprises, the store broadcast team and the team that connects the talents will be packaged into a live broadcast division." He stressed that behind it is the logic of the merchant looking at the store broadcast has changed, no longer regarded as a customer service position, but defined as a sales position.
To put it bluntly, some businesses have a misunderstanding of live broadcasting, when there are not many people in the live broadcast room, the team is not motivated enough, but in fact, returning to the retail scene, no matter how many people there are in the live broadcast room, they need enthusiastic service; at present, the algorithms of the major live broadcast platforms also need businesses, even if there are only 5 people in the live broadcast room, they must have the ability to convert 5 people.
In the past, many merchants positioned Taobao store broadcasting as "stock conversion", which belonged to the customer service position, and was more restrained in marketing and preferential mechanisms. Nowadays, some brand merchants take the store broadcast as a sales position, combined with the accurate delivery of Taobao and other platforms, each person who comes in has a potential shopping demand for the product, and in order to improve the conversion of the sales position, the price mechanism and welfare must keep up, I believe that in the future, there will be more and more brand live broadcast room discounts greater than the talent live room situation.
The above-mentioned respondents agreed that in 2022, more and more merchants will tilt their resources to the store broadcast business as a throat. From the perspective of the focus of the head platform, 2022 will also be the year of opportunities for merchants to broadcast themselves.
The Tianfeng Securities team expects that the proportion of GMV of brand self-broadcasting will reach 30% of the overall live e-commerce GMV by 2025, that is, more than 2 trillion.
"When more merchants do not want to put their fate in the hands of the anchors of the people, it is not impossible that the perfect diary and huaxizi of the store broadcast era will appear in the future." Chen Dong said.
Platform: Who is the main front for industry change?
"In 2022, about 35-50% of the traffic of the entire live e-commerce will be reshuffled." Huang Bo judged.
In other words, the industry will be turbulent in the second half of 2021, but anchors, merchants, and platforms agree that in 2022, the wind of live e-commerce will still blow. The middle-waisted anchors compete for the position, the merchants want to regain the right to live broadcasting, Taobao, Douyin, Kuaishou and other platform players all increase the code, no one wants to miss the vast market that will reach 7 trillion yuan in 2025.
The anchor of the middle waist is competing for the flow pool in the short term, but it is far from enough. Huang Bo believes that in 2022, there will be many anchor teams that will transform from talent thinking to supply chain and generation operation service thinking, either to improve the ability of anchors to cultivate and copy, or to improve supply chain management capabilities, so as to achieve diversified monetization of business models.
In his view, the ability of merchant stores to compete is more comprehensive. In addition to the pallet, it is also necessary to focus on testing the live broadcasting ability, conversion efficiency, and ability of content and traffic acquisition of the anchor and operation team. In particular, diversified live broadcasts that are in line with brand positioning, such as live talk shows that are not sold but sincerely carry goods, cosplay drama live broadcasts with goods, etc. will have room for display.
Lin Qi has not yet seen the live broadcast of the store that is too brilliant, and in 2022, he is looking forward to the surface of some popular and popular special anchors.
The person in charge of Fujihashi Live also said that the current form of store broadcast live broadcasting is generally old-fashioned, in a confined space, behind a KT board or TV screen, the anchor sits in front to explain. For the category of brine snacks, its team has planned to try the live broadcast of the source factory and the central kitchen in 2022, so that consumers can be more assured of the product through self-broadcasting.
All three platforms have new moves at the end of 2021. Taobao organizational structure adjustment, good for live broadcasting and small and medium-sized businesses, Douyin launched an independent e-commerce APP, Kuaishou support industrial belt merchants, all intend to give the middle waist anchor more traffic support, encourage businesses to broadcast themselves.
While decentralization, the platform is also gradually promoting planning and specialization. "Before 2021, the mainstream live broadcast room will mostly be individuals as the core, and by 2022, there will be more and more industry live broadcast rooms led by industry platforms, industry institutions, and industry big V/industry media." Huang Bo said.
He predicted that in the future, each platform will give birth to a professional industry live broadcast room, that is, the platform will hold hands with high-quality merchants, talent anchors, and stars in a certain industry, and it will become a trend to create an industry live broadcast room together. "Its compliance, professionalism, resource integration ability, and bargaining ability are not inferior to the super head anchor."
Taobao Live may be the first platform to take the lead in doing industry live broadcasting, and it will be the main position. According to Huang Bo's analysis, "from the perspective of e-commerce infrastructure, conversion rate, and service results, the more Tmall head merchants, the more they will choose to start the first round of change from the Taobao live broadcast position, and emerging platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou will follow the next round of changes." ”
"In fact, the large-scale industry live broadcast room co-created by the head brand merchants and the platform has appeared." He told DeepIncen that Tmall's largest jewelry live broadcasting base with a brand will be announced in early 2022.
Next, it is likely that the platform will infiltrate the industry live broadcast room into more industries and a wider range of brands and merchants. At present, two or three industries have begun to dock with the Huang Bo team to participate in the operation of the industry live broadcast room, and it is understood that the annual GMV target has reached 1-5 billion.
2021 is a year of ups and downs in live e-commerce, and it is also a year of standardization and regularization in the process of rapid development. In the eyes of practitioners, the industry has briefly tightened, but they all believe that with the gradual standardization of the industry, live e-commerce will be closer to the talents, MCNs and brand merchants, into the daily life of ordinary people, and become the infrastructure of large e-commerce and the standard of the Internet.
2022 will be a turning point for live e-commerce to diversify and mature, with practitioner analysis, personalized talent broadcasting, and the proportion of professional store broadcasting and industry broadcasting, which will undergo qualitative changes from April to May 2022.
"The industry is still in a stage of rapid growth, and it is still far from the second half." Chen Dong said.
Note: At the request of the interviewees, Liu Xin, Wu Xue, Chen Dong, Lin Qi, and Mu Xiaoxiao are pseudonyms.