20 million fans can’t sell products, what’s the problem?

Since the popularity of drama accounts such as "Crazy Little Yang Ge", other drama account masters have also emerged. Now, another drama account master has come out to sell goods. But why can't he sell goods with 20 million fans? This article analyzes the reasons for the failure of live streaming sales from three aspects: people, goods and places. Let's take a look.

Another drama expert has come out to promote the products.

On Douyin, the drama celebrity "Zhang Ruoyu" with 18.189 million fans started his live broadcast debut on April 21. So far, he has broadcast 16 live shows. However, according to the new Douyin data, Zhang Ruoyu's total sales in the past 30 days are only 750,000 to 1 million.

The average sales of only around 50,000 per show is not impressive compared to its nearly 20 million fans, and can even be said to be a bit shabby.

As a live broadcast expert, it is not surprising that this happened. A year or two ago, the drama account was widely considered to be one of the most difficult vertical accounts to convert into live e-commerce, because the path from content to e-commerce is long, and fans who originally paid attention to the content itself were also difficult to convert to buying products in the live broadcast room.

The appearance of Crazy Brother Yang has broken this stereotype to a certain extent. Although it is a transformation from a plot account, Brother Yang's average sales can easily exceed 10 million. According to new Douyin data, Brother Yang's sales in the past 30 days were 250 million to 500 million, which is between Douyin's top live e-commerce accounts, Make Friends and Oriental Selection.

However, Xiao Yangge’s success has not changed the overall pattern of the expert circle. From the perspective of the industry as a whole, it is still very difficult for drama accounts to sell goods.

Although the end of the universe is for sale, the door at the end is not open to everyone.

1. Where did Zhang Ruoyu lose?

Li Hao, CEO of Mars Culture and founder of Kasi Academy, told Hedgehog Commune: "Any influencer account that wants to sell goods cannot avoid two key words: one is price advantage, and the other is trust."

Zhang Ruoyu lost on both points.

Opening Zhang Ruoyu's live broadcast room, it is obvious that his selection of products does not have a unique advantage. Most of them are low-priced, high-frequency fast-moving consumer goods, such as food, beverages, and daily necessities. Although such products can often be seen in the live broadcast rooms of big anchors, they mostly exist in the form of welfare and traffic diversion, and they do not rely mainly on this to make profits.

Ten packs of melon seeds for 9.9 yuan, 30 packs of paper towels for 29.9 yuan, and 6 boxes of toothpaste for 39.9 yuan. At first glance, the prices are not high, but the same price can also be bought in other live broadcast rooms, so this cannot form an advantage, and users have no reason to "have to buy".

The reason for not being able to provide a price advantage may be related to Zhang Ruoyu's "amateur" attribute. The short videos he shoots on weekdays are mostly the daily life of his rural family shot with a mobile phone, and he rarely appears in the camera. Judging from Zhang Ruoyu's homepage, he has not signed a contract with an MCN at present, and his personal introduction clearly states "no team, no company".

However, compared with the lighter "content creation", live e-commerce is a heavy product that requires more teamwork. In mature live e-commerce companies, a live broadcast often requires the cooperation of professional positions such as product selection, operation, and lighting equipment.

Without the supply chain bonus of a professional MCN and insufficient product selection capabilities, the only thing they can rely on in the end is the brand value of Zhang Ruoyu.

Zhang Ruoyu obviously has some considerations in this regard. In addition to his own nearly 20 million fans, he also invited his good friends, Internet celebrities such as "Yamashiro Oguri Shun", "Shenqing Hangzi" and "Yongqi Ma" who also have many fans, to help out. The total number of Douyin fans of these four people is nearly 40 million.

The huge fan base did provide a lot of support for Zhang Ruoyu's debut. On the day of the live broadcast, nearly 2 million people watched Zhang Ruoyu's two live broadcasts, which is a very impressive figure. In comparison, the number of viewers for the second live broadcast of Dong Jie's live broadcast room, which was popular not long ago, was also around 2 million.

However, Zhang Ruoyu obviously does not have the ability to convert this part of the audience into consumers. The main reason is that Zhang Ruoyu's performance is abnormal, which makes it difficult to provide the audience with a sense of "trust".

Regardless of whether Zhang Ruoyu has a unique sales strategy, problems frequently occur in Zhang Ruoyu's live broadcast room in the basic product introduction, linking, and gift giving. Even Zhang Ruoyu himself is visibly nervous and often appears to be socially anxious and cramped.

When users enter the live broadcast room to consume, the first thing they value is the product, and the second thing they value is the person who sells the product. Obviously, Zhang Ruoyu is not a good "salesman". He also has no ability to sell products to those who click into the live broadcast room to watch the excitement with an attitude of giving it a try.

After the first show, Zhang Ruoyu continued to live broadcast for 15 more times and stopped broadcasting on May 4. On May 16, Zhang Ruoyu broadcast another live broadcast, but the sales of this live broadcast were only 10,000 to 25,000. As of the time of publication of Hedgehog Commune, Zhang Ruoyu did not continue live broadcasting.

2. The Dilemma of Plot Numbers

The problem that happened to Zhang Ruoyu is not an isolated case. From the perspective of the industry, Zhang Ruoyu's creative type belongs to the direction of plot accounts. As early as a year or two ago, this type of account was considered difficult to commercialize.

"Even if you have 1 million followers, you may not necessarily receive advertising." A short video training practitioner described the conversion effect of the plot account to Hedgehog Commune. CK, CEO of Ruhan Holdings, also said in an interview: "It is difficult for plot accounts to obtain accurate user portraits of accounts. A Weibo blogger with more than 200,000 followers under Ruhan can sell 30 to 50 million clothes a year. Because the users are precise and vertical, but a plot account with 1 million followers may have difficulty receiving tens of thousands of advertisements a month."

Story accounts were once one of the most popular content categories on Douyin, which was reflected in their superb ability to attract fans and the rapid speed of account creation. Together with appearance accounts, story accounts once supported half of Douyin's basic content.

However, similar to the appearance account, the commercial conversion effect of the plot account is not good. The fact that it is easy to attract fans also shows that users do not have any special inclinations. An MCN practitioner told Hedgehog Community that they now set up multiple accounts for their Internet celebrities because they can use different styles to attract fans with different attributes, which is convenient for better serving the brand and pushing them to the right people.

The vague fan portrait of the drama account has led it to the opposite direction. Many drama accounts that have reached a certain number of fans were eventually forced to disband due to high filming costs and inability to receive advertisements. Drama accounts such as "Ghost Brother" and "Wei Xidi" were once on the verge of suspension.

Transforming into live streaming e-commerce is a successful path for many Douyin content creators, but for those who are masters of plot accounts, this road is equally difficult.

On the one hand, the user positioning of drama influencers is vague, making it difficult for them to choose suitable products during the product selection stage. This dilemma is similar to the reason why they have difficulty receiving advertising revenue. Dong Jie's success on Xiaohongshu is largely due to her clear fan positioning. Only female fans with strong purchasing power can pay for Dong Jie's clothing products that cost thousands of yuan.

In comparison, drama influencers like Zhang Ruoyu can only choose some "products that everyone may need" when selling products, namely snacks, beverages, daily necessities, etc. Clothing, beauty products, shoes, clothing, alcohol, etc., which require more accurate user portraits, may not be sold in the live broadcast room of drama influencers, and sales cannot be predicted, let alone preparing product supply chains in advance.

Li Hao also told Hedgehog Community that the status presented by many drama accounts in the live broadcast room will be out of touch with their original accounts. Because the scripts of the drama accounts are pre-written, it is difficult to match this kind of personality during the live broadcast, and it is impossible to convey a sense of trust to the audience, so users will not easily pay for the anchor.

All these factors made the transformation of the plot account not smooth.

3. People, goods and venues are indispensable

The most successful drama influencer in selling products is "Crazy Little Brother Yang".

At present, the number of Douyin fans of "Xiao Yangge" has exceeded 100 million. According to new Douyin data, Xiao Yangge's monthly sales in the past 30 days are between 250 million and 500 million. His performance is even better than the "Make Friends Live Room" which no longer has Luo Yonghao as a resident. The latter's monthly sales are between 100 million and 250 million.

Although many people think that Xiao Yangge's hundreds of millions of fans are one of the indispensable factors for his success, in fact, like other drama account masters, the huge number of fans is not the key factor for Xiao Yangge's success. Most of these 100 million fans come to watch the "comedy jokes" created by Xiao Yangge, and they may not necessarily pay for Xiao Yangge's products.

In Li Hao's opinion, Xiao Yangge's success is inseparable from his grasp of price advantages and trust.

First, in Xiao Yangge’s live broadcast room, there are often price-bargaining sessions with brands. This format was proven to be very effective by big anchors like Simba on Kuaishou many years ago. Xiao Yangge not only replicated this content format, but also made it a fixed segment in his live broadcast room. On the one hand, it can be used to show price advantages, and on the other hand, it can be used to create a comedic effect and increase user retention.

Secondly, Xiao Yangge's violent tests increase the user's trust. Although many very violent testing methods may not be consistent with the usage scenarios in life, they give the audience a feeling that "this is not bad, so there will be no problem with my daily use." At the same time, this exaggerated, funny and nonsensical testing method is also the same as the character presented in his short video content, which further increases the user's trust.

Of course, as the personal account with the highest number of fans on the platform, "Crazy Little Yang" is somewhat rare and unique. Even if ordinary plot account experts want to replicate it, they may not be able to find a way to do it.

In comparison, the live e-commerce journey of the drama account expert "Sister Moon Street" may be more valuable for other similar experts. "Sister Moon Street" now has more than 6 million fans, which is only considered medium in the field of drama accounts, but in the past year, it has achieved an average sales volume of more than 1 million per game through live e-commerce.

"Sister Moon Street" told Hedgehog Commune that before she created a Douyin account, she was a clothing store owner for more than ten years. When she first started posting videos on Douyin, some people were attracted by the clothes she wore in her videos, so she and her husband opened several WeChat groups and gradually imported these accounts into the private domain through Douyin private chats.

After Douyin's live e-commerce began to mature, they also began to try to bring goods. In order to avoid the problem of unclear user attribute positioning, they opened a live broadcast account with a small number of fans. However, due to long-term persistence, the fan positioning gradually became clear, and they were able to obtain accurate traffic from Douyin. More importantly, because they control the clothing supply chain themselves, they also have unique advantages in terms of price, which allows them to grasp user needs.

In the larger field of Douyin, "interest e-commerce" is not only a slogan, but also a key point that influencers need to grasp. Therefore, many live e-commerce practitioners have broken through the siege by constructing content and attracted the attention of the audience, such as the dance live broadcast of Coconut Tree Coconut Juice, the rap live broadcast of Big Mouth Girl, and the disco live broadcast of the Beautiful Girls Group.

However, content itself can only attract people who like to read it. If you want customers to pay for your products, all content directions need to be able to lead to products, that is, "goods". Whether the product itself has price advantages and whether it has excellent supply chain support is the reason for the attracted users to place an order.

The masters of drama accounts have the advantage of "content", but they cannot sell their products, and the reasons are common.

Author: Chen Shoucheng; Editor: Chen Meixi

Source: WeChat public account "Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe)"