Background:

At FINN Partners, I worked with BytePlus, the enterprise arm of ByteDance, to develop an article about the role of livestreaming in the evolving e-commerce space. As part of a full-funnel content marketing campaign for BytePlus' entry into the APAC e-commerce market, this piece sat at the awareness level. I also developed a promotional email and social marketing copies to maximize reach and awareness.

Format: 

Blog article, email copy, social copy

Published August 2022 here

Livestreaming: The Rise of Live Shopping

How retailers can reinvent their business models by blending livestreaming and e-commerce.

Livestreaming is quickly becoming a cornerstone of retail e-commerce. For context, livestream e-commerce phenomenon picked up globally during the pandemic, when brick-and-mortar stores were abruptly closed, and retail brands sought alternative ways of reaching their target customers in real time.

Livestream e-commerce, or live commerce, presents a refreshing new way for retailers to directly engage with their customers, especially with younger audiences. Generation Z, in particular, has developed a taste for influencer culture — with 65% reportedly following influencers, and 52% indicating trust in influencers' recommendations.

During a live commerce session, retail brands typically collaborate with influencers, who get in front of the camera to promote or showcase a product. As opposed to having to scroll through catalogues of product suggestions, consumers now receive direct product recommendations from the personalities they trust.

Driven by the popularity of this new shopping format, live commerce is projected to increase threefold to account for $35 billion in sales — or 3.3% of all U.S. e-commerce — by 2024. This growth corresponds with the anticipated global livestream user market of 91 million subscribers worldwide by the same year.

With the global e-commerce market now comprising 3.8 billion users, retailers can consider how best to tap on the latest livestreaming technology to drive customer engagement.

Key benefits of live commerce for retailers

1. Live commerce drives sales conversions

By blending live video content, interactive communications, and the ability for shoppers to make direct purchases of the featured products, live commerce serves as a more immediate medium for retail brands to showcase their latest products to a large captive audience, encouraging quicker sales conversions.

2. Live commerce drives impulse buying

Consumers may have a higher propensity to buy the featured products when they participate in exclusive shopping events that feature limited-time promotional offerings.

3. Live commerce drives better engagement and brand awareness

Live commerce positions influencers as representatives of the brands, enabling a two-way dialogue that can help build more personal connections. Retailers can tap on the trust and regard consumers have towards their favorite influencers to drive better engagement and brand awareness.

The immediacy of live commerce holds a particular appeal to younger customers, a demographic whose spending power is rapidly rising. The cohort now holds $360 billion in spending power, more than double of the $143 billion it held in 2018. The more personal customer interactions associated with livestreaming — together with the opportunity to encourage impulse purchases — will be a crucial consideration for retailers seeking to capture this emerging market.

Technology enablers for a seamless, high-quality live shopping experience

Retailers are looking to embrace the possibilities that live commerce can offer in terms of reaching thousands of consumers in an instant, and technology quickly becomes the key to doing so.

While many retail brands have found success streaming live shopping events on e-commerce marketplaces and social media, a more viable approach is to integrate live video broadcasts directly on your e-commerce sites. Live commerce can help strengthen the appeal of the e-commerce experience, as well as increase website time-on-page among prospective customers.

Innovations in livestreaming solutions can now help retailers create interactive live shopping experiences easily and reliably without having to invest in complex, broadcast-grade video processing infrastructure. A brand can leverage livestreaming to nurture customer anticipation and interest, showcase and launch products, conduct influencer marketing, and even provide one-to-one customer support.

For retailers looking to helm a variety of live shopping events, technology is critical to closely track and monitor which livestreams garner the most interest and engagements among your audiences. Having better control over your livestream broadcasts also means that you gain deeper insights into customers that you wouldn’t otherwise obtain via conventional marketplaces or social media. Retail business can then further fine-tune their marketing strategies, optimize their livestream formats or event schedules, and even generate real-time notifications on relevant products based on audience interests.

How Retailers can Add AR to Redefine the Live Shopping Experience

73% of consumers worldwide prefer consuming video content on social media, and consumers naturally gravitate towards livestreams because they prove to be a more digestible and entertaining way of delivering promotional content.

Augmented reality (AR) technology can further complement live commerce strategies by adding new, immersive dimensions to the live shopping event experience.

1. How AR drives live shopping

With more consumers expressing interest in trying products introduced by livestream hosts, AR technology provides a useful tool that can help retail business tap on these spontaneous interests more immediately. One example is by enabling real-time visual try-ons of the showcased products while the live shopping event is ongoing.      For example, if a livestream host is promoting a cosmetic product, like a lipstick, the same lipstick filter can be pushed to the audience to virtually try it on at the same time. This boosts higher engagement, interactivity, and eventually, conversion.

63% of consumers believe that AR can improve their shopping experiences, and 35% of them express that they will likely shop more frequently if they could virtually try products on.

2. How AR drives interactions

Immersive AR effects and stickers can be effective tools for retailers to add a layer of interactivity to their e-commerce platform. By tapping on intelligent effects that increase the richness of host-audience interactivity, retailers can potentially improve stay-time, higher click-throughs, and boost customer retention for their live commerce campaigns.

The bar for live commerce is rising as audiences no longer settle for run-of-the-mill engagement. As the domains of online shopping and entertainment become more intertwined, the expectations for a fully serviced e-commerce experience will only become more apparent.

It is time for retailers to evaluate their existing e-commerce strategies against emerging demands — and adopt innovative immersive solutions such as live shopping and AR/VR technology to keep customers engaged.