Live streaming sales on Bilibili: One tree cannot make a forest?

This article will help you understand the recent situation of live streaming sales on Bilibili, and analyze the progress of Bilibili through a series of data and cases. At the same time, this article is recommended for companies or individual operators engaged in live streaming sales.

Since the second half of last year, Bilibili has continued to increase its e-commerce business and has achieved certain results. Financial report data shows that in the first quarter of 2024, Bilibili's 3C and digital product sales increased by more than 230% year-on-year, and the sales of women's clothing categories this year exceeded the full year of 2023.

During the 618 period, the number of UP hosts participating in live streaming sales on Bilibili increased by 143% year-on-year, and the number of UP hosts with GMV exceeding 10,000 increased by 236% year-on-year. Behind the growing data, is the live streaming sales on Bilibili really as optimistic as the numbers? What is the current situation of live streaming sales on Bilibili? What is the future development potential?

1. After two years in the live streaming e-commerce industry, how has Bilibili progressed?

It has been two and a half years since Bilibili officially entered the live streaming e-commerce market. In December 2021, Bilibili launched the "Yellow Car" function, which was seen by the outside world as a signal that live streaming e-commerce had officially started. After nearly a year of trialing the community, Bilibili began to focus on it.

On the eve of Double Eleven 2022, Bilibili launched the "Shopping" section to prepare for the upcoming big promotion. During the promotion, @Mr迷登's first live broadcast GMV exceeded 130 million yuan, becoming a benchmark case for live broadcast sales on Bilibili.

During the 618 shopping festival last year, Bilibili continued to increase its live streaming sales, and promoted the top UP host @宝剑嫂 as another benchmark case. At that time, Bilibili provided a lot of traffic support for this live broadcast. During the Baojiansao live broadcast, users could not only jump into the live broadcast room on the App opening page, but also swipe to the live broadcast room many times in the recommended information flow.

Image source: Screenshot from Station B

In addition, during the live broadcast, dozens of top UP hosts such as @花少北, @老西红柿, @欣小萌, @羊料理, @某幻君 and others posted "大航海" to show their support, which also boosted the popularity of the live broadcast room to a certain extent. In the end, this live broadcast achieved a GMV of 28 million, which to a certain extent increased Bilibili's confidence in live streaming sales.

In September last year, Bilibili established a new transaction ecosystem center, and the live streaming project team was incorporated into this first-level department. This means that the importance of live streaming sales on the platform has increased, and Bilibili has also accelerated related actions.

On Double 11 in 2023, Bilibili launched the "Supernova Plan" for UP hosts to sell goods. This plan is mainly aimed at UP hosts who have never sold goods through live broadcasts on Bilibili, or UP hosts who have sold goods through live broadcasts but are still in the exploration stage. The platform will provide other services including product selection guidance, quality product pool, traffic support, 1-on-1 customer service, after-sales service, etc.

The person in charge of the transaction ecology center of Bilibili said: "We hope to incubate hundreds of millions of UP hosts on Bilibili through the Supernova Plan, establish the consumption mentality of users on Bilibili, and meet the consumption needs of users."

After the launch of this support plan, it has indeed driven the growth of live streaming sales to a certain extent. Data shows that during the Double Eleven period, the GMV of live streaming sales on Bilibili increased by 186% year-on-year, and the number of live streaming sales increased by 105% year-on-year. Bilibili then further upgraded its live streaming sales infrastructure and improved product functions such as the customer service system and real-time data screen.

During the 618 shopping event this year, the number of livestreaming sales on Bilibili increased by 141% year-on-year, the number of UP hosts participating in sales increased by 143% year-on-year, and the number of UP hosts with sales GMV exceeding 10,000 increased by 236% year-on-year. Although the data shows an overall growth trend, from the user experience, Bilibili's market performance is somewhat flat, which is reflected in the fact that there are no new benchmark cases among UP hosts who sell goods through livestreaming. Bilibili also kept a relatively low profile during the entire 618 shopping event and did not make any special moves.

2. Why has live streaming sales at Bilibili failed to take off?

In fact, Bilibili’s achievements in live streaming sales are obvious to all. Last year, the GMV of sales by home furnishing UP host @Mr迷登 reached 3.3 billion yuan, which is close to one-third of Bilibili’s annual sales transaction volume last year. Looking at the entire industry, such cases are rare; the GMV of sales by fashion zone UP host @铃兀梨 in a single live broadcast reached more than 50 million, refreshing netizens’ perception of the categories of live streaming sales on Bilibili.

In addition, there are the women's clothing UP @Coco敲敲_, the top food UP @盗月社食遇记, and the life area main food and beverage @峰哥玩命天涯, @大漠叔叔, etc.

But the problem is that, apart from a few top live streamers, Bilibili has not cultivated many UP hosts who specialize in selling goods. Moreover, many UP hosts who are good at selling goods rarely broadcast live, and some even only broadcast once and then never continue. This has led to Bilibili's live streaming selling goods being tepid and not achieving explosive growth.

For example, in 2023, @鳥牡梨 only conducted two live broadcasts with goods, one was her "personal debut" in August, and the other was the Double 12 event at the end of the year. Since the beginning of this year, her live broadcast frequency has increased, but she has only conducted 6 live broadcasts with goods from March to now. After the live broadcast on June 15, she said that the next live broadcast with goods is expected to be held in September. @Coco敲敲_ and @五百﹣, who are also fashion bloggers, have each conducted 4 live broadcasts this year. @峰哥玩命天涯 and @大漠叔叔 have also broadcast a few times.

Image source: Screenshot from Station B

@宝剑嫂, who was used as a benchmark case by the authorities, suspended her live broadcast after one, and has not started a second live broadcast so far. @宝剑嫂 said in a media interview that "I was busy with other work, so I didn't do it (live broadcast with goods)." The top UP host @盗月社食遇记, who has 8.09 million fans, is in a similar situation. The only live broadcast with goods was on September 16 last year.

The reason why these UP hosts have not completely transformed into the live streaming sales track may be that they lack motivation. Live streaming sales require product selection, negotiation with brands, and preparation of sales pitches, which takes a lot of time and energy, and the sales effect is also highly uncertain. In contrast, a top UP host can earn 200,000 to 300,000 yuan or even more for a single video from an advertiser, and the creation cycle is relatively short, and there is no need to deal with after-sales issues. The appeal of two different monetization models to UP hosts is obvious.

@Mr迷登 has communicated with many UP hosts about live streaming sales. “Everyone said it’s too tiring, and the profit is not as much as the business orders. They think it’s not cost-effective. If you can live well by taking business orders, then there is no need to work so hard to enter a new track.”

Image source: Screenshot from Station B

@Mr迷登 is the leading influencer on Bilibili, with more than 1.98 million fans. More importantly, he has a team of more than 400 people to support him. He said, "retail is very tiring and demanding, and it requires a lot from the team," which is obviously even more difficult for mid- and low-level influencers.

In addition, for Bilibili UP hosts, high-quality content is the basis for maintaining fan stickiness and is also a prerequisite for live streaming sales. Engaging in live streaming sales means squeezing out a lot of time for content creation . @Mr迷登 revealed that live streaming consumes about 70%-80% of time and energy. How to maintain a stable output of content will be another big challenge.

In addition, the live streaming sales of goods by UP hosts on Bilibili are more dependent on the support of private fans. For example, @燕子堡BBQ学徒Ray’s live broadcast room mainly sells imported beef. One fan said, “I really want to continue placing orders, but I have already bought 14 kilograms of beef in the previous two live broadcasts,” which takes a long time to finish. Therefore, the maximum frequency of his broadcasts on Bilibili is once a week.

The strong private domain attribute of live streaming sales on Bilibili also determines that the only ones who can do live streaming sales on Bilibili are big UP hosts or top UP hosts in vertical categories who have grown up in the community. A service provider shared a set of data, showing that when the pure grass UP hosts they incubated did live streaming sales, the average stay time in the live streaming room was only 0.7 seconds.

3. Livestreaming on Bilibili is trapped in the community ecosystem

Generally speaking, users often have a strong purpose when opening Bilibili, which may be to browse content in a certain field to meet practical needs, and they will not deliberately open the live broadcast room. From the perspective of product design, the content presentation method of Bilibili is not conducive to cultivating users' habit of watching live broadcasts. Although Bilibili has set up a first-level page for live broadcasts, there is no live broadcast sales section. Users who want to shop live can only actively look for it themselves.

In contrast, the product interface of the short video platform deeply integrates live streaming and short videos. Users can smoothly enter the live broadcast room when watching short videos, and this process generally does not make them feel disturbed.

Image source: Screenshot from Station B

The root cause is the lack of live streaming rooms in the B-station ecosystem. An industry insider said, "It is like a new shopping mall. If the mall only attracts a few stores, and the storefronts are not particularly large, the mall will definitely not open under this circumstance. Similarly, if a user clicks on the live streaming entrance at a certain time, but finds that there are only one or two UP hosts live streaming, this will have a very negative impact on the consumer experience. Once there is no way to guarantee that there will be a sufficient supply of live streaming UP hosts 24 hours a day, then opening a separate section or channel will have limited significance, and you will have to rely on homepage recommendations."

At the same time, the community culture of Bilibili has also hindered UP hosts from live streaming and selling goods to a certain extent. When monetizing on Bilibili, UP hosts pay special attention to their reputation. Once the user experience is not particularly good, others will say that they are "taking advantage of the situation" and feel that they have deviated from their original intention.

Some users of Bilibili said that unlike short video platforms, even if a host has problems, they can quickly "set up a new business" after the storm calms down, but Bilibili users have a very long memory, and it is difficult for a host to raise his head again if he collapses. @大漠叔叔 also said in an after-sales statement that "although not many were sold, what is sold at Bilibili is not the goods, but the character."

At the fourth quarter earnings conference last year, Chen Rui, chairman and CEO of Bilibili, stated, "Bilibili is confident that it will achieve positive adjusted operating profit in the third quarter of 2024 and begin to make a profit." However, according to the first quarter financial report data, Bilibili is still losing money. Now that we have entered the third quarter, we will have to wait and see whether Bilibili can play the live streaming e-commerce card well and make a profit.

Author: TopKlout

Source: WeChat public account "TopKlout (ID: TopKlout)"