Can the new rural "top streamer" bring goods?

In the wave of rural revitalization, a group of new "top streamers" have emerged. Let's take a look at whether this group of leaders can truly drive rural economic vitality.

At 9 am on January 12, @八零徐老佬’ family appeared in the Douyin live broadcast room as scheduled.

Unlike the short videos released daily, Cheng Cheng, a video shooter who rarely shows up, became the "main force" of the first live broadcast. He was responsible for chatting with netizens, introducing and promoting products in the live broadcast room. His mother and grandmother sat aside in large flowered jackets as "mascots" and did not speak much most of the time.

The dark circles under Cheng Cheng's eyes may prove how much he has paid for this live broadcast. Data shows that on that day, @八零徐老佬 account had 4 live broadcasts with a total duration of more than 9 hours, with an estimated GMV of 10 million to 25 million, and many product links were sold out. Compared with the performance of other rural influencers in their first live broadcasts, @八零徐老佬's performance is still quite good.

As a popular track in short videos, many rural celebrities emerge every year, but in sharp contrast to the high traffic, the road to monetization of accounts has not been smooth. Rural celebrities are like "walking on a tightrope" in monetization, and the probability of failure is much higher than that of other tracks.

Can Xu Laolao’s debut, which grossed over 10 million yuan, bring confidence to more creators of the same type?

01. Become popular quickly and sell goods quickly

From short videos to live broadcasts, Grandma Xu and her family have not taken a slow step.

The first video of the account that can be verified was posted in January 2023. At that time, Cheng Cheng, who was still working in Shanxi, drove 1,305 kilometers back to his hometown in Liaoning to celebrate the New Year, and casually recorded his "daily life back to the village". When the grandma first appeared on camera, she looked much thinner than now, and Cheng Cheng was still a good grandson that the grandma "rarely" loved.

In order not to make his grandma work hard, Cheng Cheng simply asked for a fried egg. When his grandma sat in front of the stove and cooked eggs for him with an iron spoon, the old kang and the kitchen piled with firewood in the picture made many users fall into nostalgia for their hometown.

@八零徐老佬TikTok video screenshot

After the Spring Festival, @八零徐老佬' account had no new material and entered a "stop updating period". The turning point occurred in May last year, when Cheng Cheng suddenly returned home and told his family that he had quit his job and decided to stay at home to take care of his grandmother full-time.

At the same time, Cheng Cheng "restarted" his Douyin account, clearly focusing on his grandmother, and specifically releasing various rural short videos shot with her as the center. At this stage, a certain number of users had already paid attention to this lovely Northeastern grandmother, and the account also accumulated the first batch of fans.

In September, a video of making canned yellow peaches posted by @八零徐老佬 went viral on the platform, and the account quickly became popular, gaining 2.93 million followers in a single month, ranking top 3 on the monthly follower growth list. In the following months, the account has maintained its strong ability to attract followers, gaining more than 6 million followers in three months. Currently, the total number of its fans has reached 9 million, and Xu Lao Lao has become the most popular grandmother on the Douyin platform.

From becoming famous to today, only three months have passed, and Xu Lao Lao's family has already started the transformation from short videos to live broadcasts, which is not a small span. In order not to appear abrupt, the product categories of its first broadcast were selected from agricultural and sideline products that are consistent with its own positioning, such as pickled cabbage, sweet potato flour, canned yellow peaches, etc. Many of the products are "old faces" that have appeared in past videos.

@八零徐老佬TikTok live broadcast screenshot

In addition, Cheng Cheng repeatedly emphasized during the live broadcast that his family was very careful in selecting the products this time. They may not be the cheapest, but they definitely guarantee the quality. He cited the example of sweet potato flour, which was selected by his family from many samples and selected after a field investigation.

Data shows that the peak popularity of the live broadcast room reached 194,000 on that day. The best-selling item was boneless chicken feet, with a unit price of 36.9 yuan, a total sales volume of more than 50,000 pieces, and total sales in the range of 1 million to 2.5 million yuan. Sour cabbage, Qingdao ham sausage, durian lasagna and canned yellow peaches followed closely behind, ranking in the top 5 sales of the live broadcast room.

In terms of the staffing of the live broadcast room, this premiere can be said to be a "family mobilization". At the beginning, grandma, grandpa, mom and Chengcheng gathered in front of the camera to greet everyone and chat about family matters, which livened up the live broadcast atmosphere. The number of people online in the live broadcast room instantly exceeded 100,000. Afterwards, grandpa, who was shy to face the camera, left the live broadcast room first, and Chengcheng officially started the rhythm of bringing goods.

Frankly speaking, Cheng Cheng was a little unfamiliar with the skills and words when he was live streaming. After all, this was his first time as a live streamer, so it was understandable that he was not smooth during the live streaming. However, he had a very detailed understanding and introduction of the products. He would patiently answer questions raised in the comments, and would immediately ask his grandmother about some unclear food knowledge. The atmosphere in the live streaming room was very similar to what they showed in their daily short videos. His mother and grandmother did not hesitate to criticize Cheng Cheng.

For example, when introducing Qingdao sausages and boneless chicken feet, in order to better show the audience the taste and details of the products, Cheng Cheng "had to" eat one after another. The grandmother next to him soon couldn't stand it anymore and directly said in the live broadcast room, "You keep eating with such a big face", which immediately made the audience regain the feeling of watching short videos.

Generally speaking, whether it is the layout of the live broadcast room, the personnel or the product selection, you can see the intentions of Grandma Xu and her family. Although there are still some shortcomings, it can also be regarded as an excellent live broadcast with goods.

02. The red and black of rural experts

Live streaming e-commerce has been developing for many years, and it is not uncommon for short video influencers to transform into live streaming sellers. But if you focus on the rural market, you will find that the road to live streaming for many rural influencers seems to be not smooth enough.

The first to "turn over" was @牛爱芳小春花. On October 30, 2021, this account with nearly 20 million fans ushered in its first live broadcast of selling goods. Data showed that this live broadcast was a special show for kitchen appliance brand Wahson, with an average price of 60.24 yuan and total sales of 26.408 million yuan.

Although the results were good, negative comments about the live broadcast continued to be heard after the live broadcast. Netizens' dissatisfaction can be roughly summarized into three points:

First, the influencer had previously publicly stated that he would not promote products. This high-profile live broadcast made some netizens feel that he was going back on his word, as if they had been deceived, which was emotionally difficult to accept ; second, the unit price of the products sold in the influencer’s live broadcast room was not low, and some commodities were even priced higher than the market price , which was very different from his "simple and sincere" image in the short video, as if he was cutting leeks from fans; third, and most importantly, the male and female protagonists were accused of fake personalities, and the plots in the video were all scripts. In fact, they are not farmers, but just pretending to live a hard life for traffic.

After the live broadcast, the account lost followers at the speed of light, with a total loss of more than 1.5 million followers in two weeks, and the reputation of the two influencers also plummeted. Kas observed that @牛爱芳's Xiaochunhua has not continued to live broadcast and sell goods, and there has been a long period of "gap" in her short video works. The videos between June 2022 and December 23 have all been deleted by the influencer.

In June 2022, @张同学, a farmer from Northeast China who became famous for his "technical flow" photography, also presented his first live show with goods. Data showed that the maximum number of people online at the same time during the live broadcast exceeded 200,000, and the GMV of goods brought reached 325.8W.

With over 18 million followers, this result is obviously not good enough. Even if @张同学 has not been exposed to negative news like @牛爱芳的小春花, fans are not very enthusiastic about his live streaming sales. The average UV value of this live broadcast is only 0.39 yuan, which is lower than the industry average; the sales conversion rate is 0.97%, which is also lower than the industry average.

To this day, @张同学 still maintains a certain frequency of live broadcasts. In the past 30 days, he has broadcast live 6 times, with an average GMV of only 250,000 to 500,000 yuan per broadcast, which is a certain gap compared with other influencers with the same level of fans.

@东北雨姐, who became popular in the second half of last year, did not escape the fate of "crashing" in the live broadcast room.

At the end of last year, some netizens exposed that the "99 yuan big goose" sold in @东北雨姐's live broadcast room was actually African geese. Not only were there suspicions of mismatching goods and false advertising, but the actual goods received also contained a lot of ice cubes, and it was suspected that they had been "injected with water", and the product quality was worrying.

To this end, @东北雨姐 specially held a live broadcast to prove herself, responded to online doubts, assured the audience of the reliability of her own big geese, and took out a "Quarantine Certificate" to indicate "three times the compensation if it is fake."

But later, some netizens found that there were inconsistencies in Yu Jie's words through the certificate of conformity. First, the standardization shown on the certificate of conformity was not truly certified. Secondly, it showed that the manufacturer was a company in Shandong, but the place of shipment of the goods in the live broadcast room was Jilin.

At present, Yu Jie has not made any new response to this matter. After the "fake big goose" incident, she only broadcast live once, with an estimated GMV of 500-750W, which is almost "halved" compared with the previous live broadcast.

Why do rural influencers always fail in their promotions? Kas believes there are three main reasons:

First of all, most rural celebrities start out with a “low potential energy” persona. Although fans can rationally understand that their income will increase greatly after they become famous, it is inevitable that they will feel a psychological gap when they see them earning more and more money through the live broadcast room, which is emotionally unacceptable.

Secondly, it seems that it is always difficult for rural celebrities to find a suitable time to bring goods. Because objectively speaking, most rural celebrities do not have the ability to bring goods through live broadcasts, nor do they have the corresponding inventory. If they want to give the audience a good shopping experience, they need a certain amount of time to prepare. However, as time goes by, the account traffic is also declining rapidly, and the results achieved are definitely not as good as when they were at the peak of their popularity. @张同学 is a good example.

However, if influencers want to strike while the iron is hot and promote products when traffic is high, there is a high probability that problems will arise with product quality and supply . For example, the most popular product promoted by @八零徐老佬 this time was actually canned yellow peaches, but due to the team's incorrect estimation of sales, there was no way to meet fans' demands even though they requested to place additional orders and for a return.

Finally, due to the frequent failures of their “predecessors”, short video users are now generally pessimistic about rural influencers bringing products, and even have a resistance to it. Current and future rural influencers will indeed face more severe tests.

Author: Jiangbei

WeChat public account: caasdata (ID: caasdata6)