The caption | Visual China
In the just-started Double Eleven pre-sale, e-commerce live streaming sales hit a record high. Compared with previous years, the integration of live broadcasting and e-commerce is still continuing. However, the other side of "wild consumption" is the frequent occurrence of e-commerce live broadcast "overturning" incidents, and problems such as incorrect goods, poor quality, shoddy charging, and exaggerated performance have become high-frequency words for users to complain and protect their rights.
Since the explosion of popularity in 2019, the e-commerce live broadcasting industry has experienced a stage of development from barbaric growth to initial rationality, and now, with the fading of the market bubble and the establishment of regulatory standards, some MCN institutions and platforms that try to "make quick money" have begun to be eliminated by the market.
When consumers start to come back from juggling-like theatrical performances and words, which platforms and institutions can prove their worth? Without taking advantage of the human weakness under the impulse, can we still do a good job in e-commerce live broadcasting?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="56" > e-commerce live broadcast urgently needs rationality and professionalism</h1>
"Buy it and you're done", "Rush it right" and other words bombardment, countdown and flower character full screen special effects, exaggerated performance of handsome men and beautiful women to set off the atmosphere... From the very beginning of the hot debut, the impression left by e-commerce live broadcasting to consumers has been mixed.
In the early days, e-commerce live broadcast rooms were filled with a lot of teasing and exploiting human weaknesses, and consumers often only had a simple thought in their hearts - "if you miss this village, there will be no store". This way of promoting is no different from street hawking, and has been repeated many times in human business society. This is also why some consumers regard e-commerce live broadcasting as a replica of "TV shopping" and scorn it.
According to the "Online Survey Report on Consumer Satisfaction of Live E-commerce Shopping" released by the China Consumer Association, some anchors exaggerate publicity and guide consumers to bypass the platform for private transactions when carrying goods, and some consumers encounter counterfeit and shoddy goods, after-sales service is difficult to guarantee, and the relationship between sellers and platforms, live broadcast platforms and e-commerce trading platforms is complicated, resulting in consumers' right to know, fair trade rights and reasonable rights protection demands greatly reduced.
Brands have also found that the return on expensive pit fees and commissions is very low, or even no revenue, which is not only of no help to the brand's reputation, but also has limited sales and high return rates, which makes them afraid of this emerging channel.
Therefore, if the emerging sales channel of e-commerce live broadcasting wants to go further and more stable, and get more recognition and respect from rational consumer groups, it is necessary to eliminate the rotten part of the gene, and can no longer "kill the chicken and take the egg" to squeeze the user value, but to improve, upgrade, iterate, and return to rationality and professionalism. Since the beginning of this year, almost all platforms have been actively contentizing e-commerce live broadcasts, hoping to establish a new model of carrying goods.
On the other hand, the e-commerce live broadcasting industry has always had a tendency to adhere to quality.
During the epidemic last year, the Jingdong "Science Lab" live broadcast room invited P&G scientists to do live broadcasts of public welfare content such as disinfection and protection, teaching users how to scientifically prevent epidemics and return to work safely. This activity is carried out in a professional way of science popularization, no price war, no dramatic performance, no hysterical "forced sale", only laboratory experts in the calm, objective introduction of killing protection knowledge and product strength, although there is not too much product sales, but led to the collateral sales of related products, and pulled up the brand favorability.
Similarly, when offline activities were largely suspended, JD Live launched two activities of the Strawberry Music Festival, including live performances and interviews with musicians, and the interview content was completely centered on the music itself. 814 tons of alcohol were sold during the live broadcast, which was not in the form of "carrying goods".
From this, we can see how e-commerce live broadcasting moves in the direction of quality - to truly seek the convergence of user needs and products, and provide long-term value.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="60" > bring e-commerce live broadcast back to content attributes</h1>
The above two e-commerce live broadcast cases are from JD.com. As early as 2016, Jingdong began to do e-commerce live broadcasting, but unlike the industry's "only GMV theory" orientation, Jingdong chose the idea and play of "quality" at the beginning.
Specifically, in terms of landing implementation, it is reflected in two points: the high degree of specialization of IP and content in the solidified live broadcast room.
Most of the industry's e-commerce live broadcasts take the anchor/celebrity as the core of the IP, but the IP matrix of the live broadcast room launched by Jingdong is mainly the brand of the "live broadcast room" itself. The purpose of this is to strengthen the user's mind, deepen the understanding of the platform's official IP, and build a long-term sense of trust.
Choosing this model is related to JD.com's business model. JD.com's strong supply chain capabilities solve the core elements of the live broadcast room - the selection and pricing problems. To put it simply, the official live broadcast room of Jingdong ensures the matching of people and goods, and also ensures the quality of goods, while providing logistics services based on the Jingdong distribution system, and after-sales service also has a set of standardized processes. JD Live's strong control of "goods" and "prices" and perfect service system are incomparable to those of traditional promotional live broadcasts.
Since it is the officially endorsed live broadcast room IP, the transparency, professionalism and trustworthiness of the live broadcast process itself becomes crucial, because once there is a "rollover" event, the damage is not the reputation of a certain anchor, but the user's trust in the entire official live broadcast room and even the platform.
"Behind the phenomenon of a large number of live broadcast rollovers, the essential reason is that there are problems in the selection and personnel."
Zhang Guowei, head of JD's retail content ecology, said in an exclusive interview with Tiger Sniff that JD.com ensures the quality of live broadcasting from four dimensions: product selection specialization, content specialization, anchor specialization, and operation specialization.
In terms of anchors, even if the stars appear, it is also necessary to see whether they can provide professional explanations in the process of "bringing goods" to avoid the situation that an anchor pushes thousands of categories and there are knowledge blind spots. In categories such as beauty, which have large individual differences, the anchor provides a role similar to that of the traditional counter guide BA, making in-depth introductions around products and brands to help users choose the most suitable products for themselves more concisely and clearly.
The purpose of solidifying IP and professional operation is to provide users with decision-making basis and shopping direction through high-quality content in the live broadcast room, reduce information noise, and improve consumption efficiency.
This is related to JD.com's user attributes. Most of the high-quality users on the Jingdong platform, their shopping needs on Jingdong, one is to clearly know what they want to buy, can get more product information through specialized content, the focus is on "efficiency"; the other is not clear what you want to buy, you need to assist shopping decisions through content such as "planting grass", focusing on "interest". High-value content leads to high conversions and retention.
From 2020 onwards, JD.com's global traffic resources have been opened to live broadcasting, guiding public domain traffic to settle into store fans, the purpose of this is to hope that merchants will use live broadcasting as a long-term marketing tool, not just a one-time promotional means, under this positioning, merchants have the motivation to produce high-quality content.
In addition, JD.com's advantages in the supply chain can also create synergies with live broadcasting. In addition to in-depth online co-construction with business brands, even offline omni-channel stores can provide users with instant store-to-home services based on live broadcasting and "hourly delivery" services, which greatly shortens the shopping link and improves the user experience.
"Let e-commerce live broadcasting return to content attributes, return to channel value and marketing value", this is the core concept of JD.com's layout of e-commerce live broadcasting. Zhang Guowei said that e-commerce live broadcasting is not only to provide cheap promotions and shopping guides, but also to provide merchants with new infrastructure and new channels under new consumption scenarios, create a more scenario-based and immersive content experience for users, and continuously improve the satisfaction of content consumption.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="63" > promote the ecological construction of e-commerce live broadcasting</h1>
From the perspective of the entire e-commerce industry, JD.com's layout is not only beneficial to consumers and merchants, but also promotes e-commerce live broadcasting to return to a healthy long-term development track.
According to data from the China Consumers Association, consumers' satisfaction with JD.com Live ranks high, reaching more than 80 points. Consumers' shopping satisfaction through live streaming channels can rebuild the market's trust in e-commerce live broadcasting on a larger scale.
Of course, to promote the overall quality of e-commerce live broadcasting, the construction of content ecology is indispensable. Specifically, e-commerce live broadcasting mainly relies on two ecosystems, the merchant ecology and the talent ecology.
The most pressing issue for merchants at present is to obtain traffic and operational capabilities. JD.com's official live broadcast room IP provides a new entry model. In terms of common new product releases, brands can pass through and "New! "JD" cooperation, the maximum use of JD public domain traffic and off-site resources, and the traffic into the precipitate to the brand store. At present, most of the release of digital flagship new products such as Xiaomi, OPPO, Intel, and Apple adopt this model, integrating the resource advantages of JD.com and the supply chain, and setting a model for the release of new products in the industry.
In terms of the ecology of talents, Jingdong's many official IPs provide more opportunities for waist anchors to objectively reduce the situation of the Matthew effect and build a healthy "head and waist" structure of the talent ecology; at the same time, Jingdong will also adjust the development of different categories of talents through operational means such as traffic tilt and commission doubling, so as to avoid excessive competition in one category and the situation that other categories are "uncastable". The balance of the ecology of institutions/talents can, in turn, solve the problem of difficulty in broadcasting on behalf of merchants, and adjust the supply and demand relationship between merchants and institutions.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="66" > upgrade content e-commerce and create new consumption scenarios</h1>
On the basis of promoting the upgrading of live broadcast quality, JD.com is also thinking about how to provide users with new scenarios for more immersive consumption through the overall business upgrade of content e-commerce in addition to live broadcasting.
This is the direction in which the entire e-commerce industry is exploring and upgrading. The Ministry of Commerce pointed out in the "China E-commerce Report 2020" released not long ago that compared with traditional e-commerce, the new e-commerce "new" in the integration from a single scene to multiple scenarios, pay attention to social attributes, pay more attention to the all-round needs of users; this is related to the changes in consumer groups, "Generation Z consumer groups, as a generation born and grew up on the Internet, not only buy goods because of use value, but also pursue trust, emotion, values, social, entertainment and other multi-faceted experiences." ”
Zhang Guowei believes that content e-commerce is a typical ecological business, which can be compared to "live broadcasting is a big tree, short video is a bush, and graphics are grassland", and different content forms bear different efficiency. Live broadcast "from planting grass to harvesting" has formed a perfect closed loop, with natural e-commerce advantage attributes; the performance of short videos is more three-dimensional and flexible, and the production cost is lower, and it can also warm up and distribute long tails for live broadcasts, amplifying the value of live broadcasts and short videos; and the list of good things, evaluation of singles and other graphic content can create a professional shopping guide grass atmosphere at a lower cost.
Therefore, JD.com put forward the idea of "content ecological integration" this year, and is committed to promoting different content on the platform to break the formal boundaries and achieve mutual circulation. Therefore, on the eve of this year's "Double 11", Jingdong upgraded the original "Discovery" channel to "Shopping", as an immersive new content field, emphasizing "playable and buyable, interesting and material". Zhang Guowei explained, "To provide users with more professional shopping decisions, more uncertain shopping becomes certain, which is the essential value of content e-commerce." Therefore, although there is a difference between the product form and other shopping sectors of Jingdong, the landing of "shopping" is also for efficiency and experience.
Not only consumers, but also for merchants, JD's content ecology also provides a channel to reach users more efficiently. "At present, JD.com's live broadcast, short video and graphic content ecology is helping more brand marketing to break the circle in an all-round way, reach our users with more forms of high-quality content, and break the barriers of shopping in different consumer circles." Pan Xiaoliang, director of operations at MCN, TCL's e-commerce business center, said.
In addition, this year's "Double 11", JD Content Ecology for the first time released a Z Generation consumption trend report with the theme of "Decoding Generation Z, Content is in the Right Tide", sharing JD.com's practice and insights on young consumer groups with the industry, and promoting better interactive relationships between merchants and young consumers.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="69" > conclusion</h1>
The experience of JD Live has proved that without taking advantage of the weaknesses of human nature, it is also possible to do a good job in e-commerce live broadcasting. Only by respecting the law of business value and content and seeking a path to create long-term value can we achieve a win-win and healthy development for all parties.