Year-end review丨Live streaming sales in 2023: anchor or platform, who is the super IP?

Today, the live streaming e-commerce industry has been developed and improved, and the industry threshold has gradually increased. This article analyzes the development trends of the live streaming e-commerce industry based on three phenomena: the popularity of the atmosphere live streaming feature, the rise of domestic brands live streaming e-commerce, and the new platforms such as JD.com and Bilibili joining the live streaming e-commerce field. It is recommended for students who are interested in live streaming e-commerce.

As 2023 draws to a close, the "Little Composition" incident of Dongfang Zhenxuan, which set off the last climax of the live streaming industry at the end of the year, has finally come to an end. Dong Yuhui chose to continue to work with Dongfang Zhenxuan. The former not only kept the persistence of the readers, but also became the cultural assistant to the chairman of New Oriental Education and Technology Group and concurrently served as the vice president of New Oriental Cultural Tourism Group. The latter's stock price rose by 20%, and its market value returned to HK$30 billion. A dispute was finally settled with a win-win result.

There is a lot of hot money in the live streaming industry. The bloggers "Rainbow Couple" with tens of millions of fans once said in a video that their live streaming revenue was as high as 230 million yuan, and the profit they received was up to 4 million yuan. The impressive rate of return has made the entire industry more and more crowded, whether it is anchors who take commissions or brands who want to make their mark, they have all joined the game.

After several years of development, the industry remains hot, but this year there has been a clear trend change. Knowledge-based and atmosphere-based live broadcasts are becoming more and more popular, the appeal of anchor IPs continues to increase, and domestic brands that cannot afford to enter the live broadcast rooms of big anchors have formed alliances and formed traffic pools...

All these changes are proving that the live streaming e-commerce industry is moving away from its wild growth stage. The industry threshold is also gradually increasing. Celebrities who were once keen on creating a separate stage away from the camera are also beginning to retreat. The new era of live streaming e-commerce may be quietly approaching.

1. Sense of atmosphere: "Female classmates with stories" strike down the dimension

After clearly betting on live e-commerce at the beginning of the year, Xiaohongshu has successfully launched several influential anchors this year and has also had several live broadcasts that have gone viral. At 18:00 on May 22, Zhang Xiaohui launched her first live broadcast on Xiaohongshu. After 6 hours of live broadcast, Zhang Xiaohui's live broadcast room GMV reached 600 million yuan, with nearly one million viewers. On September 6, Yi Nengjing also launched her first atmospheric live broadcast after Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui, which received a lot of praise. On the night of the broadcast, it topped the Xiaohongshu sales list, with more than 1.66 million viewers.

As consumers are becoming increasingly averse to celebrity endorsements, Xiaohongshu’s “sister-style” anchors have carved out a niche in the red ocean. Each “female classmate with a story” is sharing her or his own stories in the live broadcast room, expressing her or his own ideas, and quietly completing the task of endorsement while chatting and laughing.

In fact, there is no shortage of talented contestants in the live streaming sales game, but consumer demands are constantly changing. From hawking, plots, and ultra-low prices at the beginning, to teaching makeup, dressing, and English, and now exporting a whole set of lifestyles with personal characteristics as the core, it shows the changes in consumer demands.

After getting tired of the noise of "1, 2, 3, link up", anchors such as Dongfang Zhenxuan, Dong Jie, and Chai Biyun have emerged from various platforms one after another. Compared with the bargaining power and liveliness of previous anchors, this group of anchors with a sense of atmosphere are better at using their unique style to give different products a story and meaning.

At the same time, the advantages of the top anchors on each platform are gradually being weakened. Top anchors no longer mean "the lowest price on the entire network", so consumers' choices are no longer unique. Only anchors with more distinctive live broadcast characteristics and product selection characteristics can create greater appeal in the face of an increasingly equal pricing mechanism.

From Dong Jie, Zhang Xiaohui, Yi Nengjing to the increasing popularity of buyer-type anchors, it shows that even in such a saturated live streaming market, there are still segmented consumer demands. Different anchors will attract consumers with different preferences. As long as they can deeply cultivate the needs of the fan group, they still have the strength to become popular. Zhang Xiaohui, who has long been labeled as a professional fashion buyer, is a representative of this type, and Yi Nengjing, who enriches her shopping aesthetics with her life experience, is also a representative of this type. Due to their celebrity status, they have the natural advantage of accurately covering the audience and continuously spreading their influence.

Live streaming e-commerce is still evolving. Whether it is competing on price, atmosphere, or IP output, consumers still need to give answers.

2. National Product Alliance: A huge fortune is coming, and everyone is “picking up” fans

After the "Huaxizi incident", a 79-yuan eyebrow pencil became the focus of public opinion, triggering consumers to re-examine domestic products and live streaming. At this moment, how many old domestic products can be bought for 79 yuan without marketing costs?

For a time, domestic products that were once unable to enter the live broadcast rooms of top anchors due to cost issues have transformed themselves into top anchors.

In the face of such overwhelming wealth, the old domestic brand Fenghua can be regarded as a player who has come out on top. Fenghua, which is very good at "selling misery" and riding on the popularity, was the first to follow up after the Huaxizi incident. Its official Douyin account first attracted the attention of consumers with a sentence "I calculated that a bottle of my conditioner is equivalent to 0.12 Huaxizi". Then, the 79-yuan shampoo and conditioner set launched in the Douyin live broadcast room caused a frenzy across the Internet and was once out of stock.

Soon after, the official Douyin account of Fenghua released a video saying that its followers increased by 500,000 overnight. Now, three months after the "Huaxizi incident", Zinc Scale found that the number of followers of the Douyin account of the official flagship store of Fenghua has reached 5.388 million, and it has accumulated a group of loyal fans.

"Wild consumption" has also come to Lotus MSG, which was almost "ruined" by rumors. 79 yuan can't buy 1g of eyebrow pencil, but it can buy a full two and a half kilograms of Lotus MSG. It seems that from this moment on, consumers' consumption concept has also been overturned. What is a good and affordable product? It can no longer be judged by price alone. A higher cost-effectiveness begins to mean greater appeal.

The difference in the rise of domestic products this time is that an alliance has been formed, instead of fighting alone as in the past. Therefore, an era of "mixed broadcasting" has quietly begun. Fenghua, Lianhua, Vitality 28, Erke, Mixue Ice City, Wahaha, and Huiyuan Juice are either live streaming or on the way to live streaming. The products displayed in the live streaming rooms are also a variety of domestic products. The cohesion has turned into a traffic pool on the Internet, and the participating domestic products have all got a piece of the pie.

In fact, domestic products have never left the public's sight, but their coverage is narrow and they are more invisible in the world of traffic. After the "Huaxizi incident", consumers opened their eyes and re-recognized those honest domestic products that have never been active on the front line of the Internet. And domestic brands are also trying hard to keep up with this traffic train, fearing that they will be abandoned again under the wheels of history if they are a step slower.

The three "old men" of Vitality 28, who had just entered the new world, once mocked themselves as "people on the edge of the network". They only learned how to add other people's WeChat after being embraced by traffic. But three months later, Vitality 28, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, not only got out of the crisis, but also added 103 jobs, increased production capacity by 370%, and doubled the wages of many factory employees.

After seeing such news, many consumers have deepened their love for old domestic brands, and have also realized that after putting aside the marketing and anchor commissions, the cost-effectiveness that domestic products can provide is so high. Therefore, the popularity of domestic products’ self-broadcasting remains high.

3. Melee: New players, standing on the shoulders of giants

In addition to the ever-changing types of anchors on the stage, various e-commerce platforms have also continued to innovate and optimize this year to keep up with changes in consumers' shopping experience.

Today, those joining the live streaming e-commerce team include representatives from traditional e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com, as well as short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, which have launched a strong offensive this year. In addition, there are players such as Xiaohongshu and Bilibili who are exploring new possibilities.

This year, as these big platforms increased their investment in livestreaming, a number of unexpected situations occurred. For example, during the Double 11 shopping festival, JD.com’s livestreaming of its purchases and sales became a hit without any warning. There were no scripts, no rehearsals, no teleprompters, and only “straight shots” of really low prices. As a latecomer to livestreaming, JD.com has found the secret to “going viral” this time.

There is also Bilibili. Due to the decentralized recommendation mechanism, UP hosts on Bilibili are more likely to operate their own private traffic pools. Although the cost of producing content is higher than that of other platforms, it also makes the stickiness between UP and fans very strong. Therefore, when Bilibili tried live streaming, it gave priority to the top 100 UP hosts with a large fan base, and then created sparks by pushing traffic on the platform.

In addition, Bilibili has chosen to stand on the shoulders of giants in the live streaming sales. During the Double 11 Shopping Festival, users can see that the original “member purchase” entrance on Bilibili has been changed to the “Double 11 Shopping Festival” entrance, which displays Tmall products and supports direct purchases on Tmall. Bilibili’s recommendation page not only has Double 11 Shopping Guides, but also features live streaming sales rooms of UP hosts that users follow.

Only a small portion of the products promoted by UP hosts come from Bilibili’s own product selection plaza, and most products need to be purchased on Tmall or JD.com. Some of the product links promoted by UP hosts come from Bilibili’s product selection plaza, while most of them are external links to Tmall and JD.com stores.

This kind of gameplay has led to a 251% year-on-year increase in GMV of live streaming sales on Bilibili during the Double 11 promotion period, a 233% year-on-year increase in the number of sales videos, and a 105% year-on-year increase in the number of live streaming sales sessions.

In other words, Bilibili's strategy of leveraging other's strengths to enter the market has begun to show results.

Facing the coming 2024, I believe that live streaming will still be the focus of major e-commerce platforms, short video platforms, and social platforms. With the Double 11 as a verification window, the effectiveness of its strategies in the past year has also been verified. Where to place the next chess piece will be a new story next year.

Author: Li Jinlin, Editor: Xingwan

WeChat public account: Zinc Scale (ID: znkedu)