Will “grass-planting live streaming” be a turning point for live streaming e-commerce?

This article starts with Dong Jie's popular Xiaohongshu live broadcast room, and gives an answer to the question "Has Xiaohongshu found a suitable live broadcast path for itself?" It is recommended for those who want to learn about the new form of live broadcasting.

The sudden popularity of Dong Jie's live broadcast room surprised many people, because it is truly an "atypical" live broadcast room.

The high customer unit price and soft-spoken style are completely different from the live streaming sales we usually see. Dong Jie sat in the live streaming room decorated as her own living room and sold goods in the same way as chatting with friends.

This kind of peaceful live broadcast may be out of place on Douyin, Kuaishou and Taobao. It may be difficult to retain users and achieve efficient conversions, but it is true on Xiaohongshu.

In February and March of this year, Dong Jie launched two live broadcasts on Xiaohongshu to sell goods, with single-game sales of more than 30 million and more than 60 million respectively, ranking first on Xiaohongshu's sales list.

What the outside world is most interested in regarding Dong Jie's live broadcast room is not its performance, but a possibility revealed behind it - that live broadcasting can be done well without having to compete on low prices or follow the crowd.

Of course, this is also inseparable from the official support of Xiaohongshu. On March 6, Xiaohongshu held the "E-commerce Live Fashion Partner Conference" in Shanghai and announced the launch of the "Fashion Spark Plan"; on March 10, Xiaohongshu was exposed by the media that it would upgrade its live broadcast business to an independent department, with the person in charge of the community ecology to uniformly manage the live broadcast content and live broadcast e-commerce and other businesses.

Looking at the entire live streaming e-commerce industry, big anchors have gradually retreated behind the scenes, and traffic and gameplay have become increasingly "rigid". After Xiaohongshu "grew" a Dong Jie, some industry insiders asked, "Has Xiaohongshu found a live streaming path that suits itself?"

01 Dong Jie's live broadcast, a new style in the live broadcast sales circle

Many people use keywords such as quiet and healing to describe Dong Jie's live broadcast style, because her live broadcast room does not have the shouting of "321 link" or the urging of "9.9 free shipping, it depends on your hand speed". She just sits in a corner of the living room, drinking tea while introducing, which is more like a large-scale "daily favorite good things sharing".

But this style is just superficial. To understand the logic behind her live broadcast on Xiaohongshu, we need to break it down from the methodologies of product selection, explanation, and preheating.

According to Chen Yu, an industry insider close to Xiaohongshu, Xiaohongshu began to cooperate with celebrities in e-commerce live broadcasts on Double 11 last year. It first cooperated with Jiang Sida on Double 11 to "sample" and began to contact Dong Jie's team in December. Dong Jie's achievements are inseparable from her dedication. "It is hard to imagine that a celebrity deeply participates in four rounds of product selection before the live broadcast, including a round of rehearsal."

From the perspective of product selection, Dong Jie's live broadcast room did not completely follow the traditional strategy. For example, it must have low-priced products such as traffic-generating products and welfare products to quickly heat up the audience or "hold orders" to increase viewing time, and then take on profitable products and long-tail products.

Dong Jie's product selection mainly consists of four parts: the first is brands that Dong Jie pays attention to, is familiar with or has used; the second is brands that are preferred by users on Xiaohongshu or are hot-selling on the platform; the third is brands that Dong Jie's fans like; and the fourth is brands recommended by Xiaohongshu. These brands span multiple categories such as food, fashion, home, and lifestyle.

"Behind this is the characteristic of Xiaohongshu's overall product selection strategy for live streaming. The core lies in the differences in transaction demands and purchase expectations among Xiaohongshu's user groups. Their expectations for Xiaohongshu bloggers are that there will be products with relatively good design sense and that can improve the quality of life. Therefore, the average order value of the live streaming products presented is not low, because the product selection is not based on the logic of purely low price and pure volume ." Chen Yu said.

Dong Jie's approach to product explanation is different from the mainstream "361 format", which is 30% product content, 60% promotional content, and 10% entertainment content. In some live broadcast rooms, entertainment content even accounts for 60%. Dong Jie will spend more time in the live broadcast room to explain the products clearly and match them well.

Dong Jie has the habit of drinking tea every day. She will share which tea is suitable for relieving fatigue and which tea is suitable for girls to regulate their bodies. When selling clothing accessories, she will talk about the matching principles and applicable occasions for petite people, and will consider the cleaning, storage and usage rate of accessories. When summer comes, she will also introduce items to prevent exposure, so as to match the whole outfit and help users reduce decision-making costs.

The reason why these products were able to "sell out" in Dong Jie's live broadcast room is consistent with Dong Jie's own personality and is also related to the "water storage" in the early stage.

Just as the theme of her live streaming is "Dong Life", Dong Jie also shares her daily life on Xiaohongshu, such as cooking for her family, cycling outdoors, and interacting with friends. Before each live broadcast, Dong Jie's team will also make multiple notes to warm up. With the long-term accumulation of water and the accumulated trust, there is the "instant conversion" of the live broadcast room. The Ms MIN cardigan with a unit price of 5,200 yuan and the umawang ballet shoes with a unit price of 4,932 yuan were quickly sold out after going online.

Dong Jie's recent trend of increasing followers is still continuing. According to Xinhong data, in the past 30 days, Dong Jie's Xiaohongshu followers increased by 579,200, with an average of 2.3 posts per week, and a total of nearly 2.08 million followers.

Image source: Xinhong

In the opinion of Sun Ming, who has managed multiple live broadcast rooms, Dong Jie is more like a benchmark for Xiaohongshu's live broadcast, with three purposes.

On the one hand, it once again verifies the differences in the platform’s user groups and the spending power of high-net-worth individuals;

On the other hand, it allows brands, anchors and users inside and outside the platform to see what live streaming on Xiaohongshu is like;

Third, we also want to verify the commercial value of Xiaohongshu. It is not just about promoting products, but can also form a closed loop.

Although it remains to be seen how many "Dong Jie" the platform can produce, many industry insiders have said that Dong Jie's live streaming performance has proved one thing: in addition to low prices, users also have content and aesthetic demands for live streaming sales.

"Dong Jie is like the open ending of a movie shot by Xiaohongshu, telling everyone that there is a lot of room for imagination in the ending. As long as the anchors and merchants enter the market, there is a chance of success." Sun Ming said.

02 What kind of live broadcast do we really need?

Dong Jie’s live broadcast opened up another possibility for live streaming sales.

From a market perspective, users are becoming tired of the "routine" and "exaggerated" live broadcast content, such as the role-playing "empress live broadcast", the disco "beautiful girl live broadcast", and the scripted "bargaining live broadcast".

From an industry perspective, this is an exploration of new styles and new content by live streaming practitioners, and it is a new attempt following the "Oriental Selection" program that "teaches" users.

Recently, Dong Jie's live broadcast room is more focused on conveying taste and showing her understanding of products. It is not only about selling products, but also about selling a lifestyle. Some people in the industry call it "grass-planting live broadcast."

Shouting-style live streaming is still the mainstream form in the field of live streaming e-commerce today, but from the perspective of improving user stickiness and increasing profit margins, knowledge content live streaming like Dong Yuhui's on Oriental Selection and grass-planting live streaming like Dong Jie's on Xiaohongshu provide more possibilities for the live streaming e-commerce industry.

According to Kaibo Finance, a year ago, Xiaohongshu conducted two months of user interviews to discuss what kind of live broadcasts users actually like. The feedback received was that users on the platform do not like or are even tired of some noisy live broadcast formats, and hope that Xiaohongshu will make a different live broadcast that is consistent with the community content and blogger ecology.

"Xiaohongshu has no way to copy others and can only forge its own path. Dong Jie is the result of Xiaohongshu's exploration of the live streaming direction," said Chen Yu.

Screenshot of Dong Jie's Xiaohongshu homepage

Zhao Yuanyuan, a senior practitioner of live e-commerce, recently wrote in an article that "when Oriental Selection 'emerged' last year, the wind direction changed, and the second half of live streaming began. It is changing from a promotion field to a marketing field."

Then, perhaps Dong Jie’s “grass-planting live broadcast” is a clearer signal that the live broadcast room has become a marketing venue.

Many merchants said that for a long time, live streaming sales have become formulaic for both people and goods, and the venue has become a trading venue that only looks at conversions. Now, as live streaming rooms begin to pay attention to content attributes, the venue has the marketing nature of "product and effect integration."

Sherry, a person in charge of Weishidun, which focuses on social ecosystem marketing, said that brands used to spread horizontally and cover more people, but now they find that there are only so many people they can cover. If they keep covering the same people, the marketing effect will be reduced. Dong Jie and others’ “grass-planting live broadcast” can explain the product clearly and conduct real-time interaction, which is equivalent to deeply reaching the vertical fans of the brand behind the anchor. Based on their trust in the anchor, fans may also make repurchases in the live broadcast room.

As more effective connections are created between content and live streaming, bloggers and brands have also gained a new understanding of Xiaohongshu live streaming.

Sang Jie, a veteran in live streaming e-commerce, said that when live streaming e-commerce was born, it was expected to take on the function of brand marketing. This is why some brands choose to "lose money" and cooperate with big anchors. Dong Jie's live streaming has further highlighted the importance of the marketing field and has a longer-tail effect than anchors on other platforms.

For example, before the live broadcast, Dong Jie released her dressing notes for a niche designer brand in advance, and explained through the live broadcast how she met the designer and what the brand concept is. While completing the conversion, she also made the brand known to more people. Users in the live broadcast room not only completed the weeding, but were also planted with love.

Later, some users posted notes about their orders after receiving the goods. Many people were tempted by these notes and went to the brand’s Xiaohongshu store to place orders. As a result, many goods were sold out.

"This form of note-taking and live broadcast linkage can not only shorten the link between planting and removing grass, completing the e-commerce closed loop, but also allow ordinary people to conduct secondary planting of grass on the platform outside of a single live broadcast. " Sangjie said.

However, Sherry pointed out that "Xiaohongshu is suitable for niche designers, home accessories and maternal and child brands because users are willing to pay for taste and trust. However, for big currency brands that have deep user education, low decision-making costs, and rely more on low prices across the entire network to convert, Xiaohongshu does not have much comparative advantage."

For anchors, especially celebrity anchors, it is easier to maintain a consistent persona when facing this kind of "grass-planting live broadcast" and it is not easy to fail as soon as they bring goods. "It was previously recognized that as long as celebrities bring goods, their value will drop. However, the live broadcast format like Dong Jie actually enhances her commercial value." Sun Ming said.

It is understood that the biggest concern of celebrities is whether their reputation will be damaged or their own value will be consumed by selling products. After Dong Jie's case, many celebrity teams have begun to seek cooperation with Xiaohongshu.

03 Will “grass-planting live streaming” be a turning point for live streaming e-commerce?

As live streaming has developed to date, most live streaming rooms are still using the old routine of acting and bargaining, and linking for 9.9 yuan to sell goods. Ultimately, it is because this method has a market, is effective, and has traffic that merchants and anchors are willing to enter the market.

Today, although the grass-growing live broadcast, which was born from Xiaohongshu, has provided a new model for the live broadcast e-commerce industry, this type of live broadcast is not so easy to copy. Many practitioners have concluded that the requirements for "people, goods and places" for grass-growing live broadcast are very high.

From the user's perspective, live broadcasting requires users to have a sufficiently mature mindset to buy into it . If users watch short videos and live broadcasts on a platform for pure entertainment or shopping, rather than sharing life experiences or favorite things, or if they have never been truly inspired by something on the platform, then it is difficult for them to have a mindset to do so, and it will be difficult for the anchor to complete the "live broadcasting".

This is also related to the platform's ecology. The content of platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou is more entertainment-oriented, and users mainly kill time; platforms such as Xiaohongshu are more search-oriented, which is conducive to cultivating consumers' grass-planting mentality. "Platforms all want to create content and sell at a high customer price, but this cannot be achieved overnight and requires the adaptation of the entire ecological system." Sun Ming said.

From the perspective of expert anchors, to complete the "grass-planting live broadcast", the expert needs to have a certain taste and experience in life, and do a good job of building the content of the notes and establishing his personality in the early stage. In addition, he needs to be both a consumer who is being planted with grass and a creator who can talk to everyone about his real experience and feedback, so that he can establish a certain sense of trust or other connection.

"In other words, even if the anchor expert wants to learn Dong Jie's style of product selection and sharing and transform into a live broadcast of promoting products, he or she must choose the right platform . Whether the product fits the expert, whether the expert fits the platform, and whether the platform has a corresponding audience that can meet the brand's demands, multiple factors can contribute to a relatively successful live broadcast of promoting products." Sherry concluded.

More people are curious about whether "grass-growing live broadcast" is a flash in the pan or will it be popular for a long time? Many interviewees said that like most popular live broadcast types, "grass-growing live broadcast" will also encounter development difficulties after the live broadcast room becomes popular.

The first problem that needs to be solved is that live streaming is still a promotion and conversion platform, and users have formed a low-price mentality, which requires that product selection must have quality while satisfying users' price comparison demands.

Sun Ming also pointed out that previously, brands on Xiaohongshu could focus on promoting products rather than closing deals, but now that Xiaohongshu has started to build a closed loop and sell products through live streaming, merchants will definitely still be concerned about GMV.

Secondly, can Dong Jie continue to receive the following traffic after she became popular? How many anchors can become popular by "planting grass and bringing goods" like Dong Jie? Can the anchors with vertical accounts on Xiaohongshu copy Dong Jie?

Screenshot of Xiaohongshu live broadcast page

Sang Jie pointed out that many bloggers who post notes on Xiaohongshu may not have the ability to live broadcast. Even if they choose to broadcast, just like ordinary expert anchors who start from scratch and grow step by step to become professional anchors, they must have professional team cooperation and support in terms of people, goods and places, fix the frequency of live broadcasts, and solve supply chain problems. They also need more time to build trust and make notes and live broadcasts one.

The core problem is that Xiaohongshu's current e-commerce infrastructure still has some deficiencies. Sherry pointed out that the live broadcast industry has become too data-driven, and many businesses are still in a wait-and-see period, but some businesses that can bear greater risks in terms of trial and error costs and pay more attention to brand promotion are more willing to compete for dividends.

Regardless of the situation, many interviewees believe that "grass-planting live streaming" is refreshing for platforms, brands and consumers. This market needs a new style, which will become the next trend.

In other words, in 2023, the entry threshold for live streaming e-commerce will become higher. In order to make money decently, it is necessary to keep up with the needs of users and brands.

*At the request of the interviewees, Chen Yu, Sun Ming, Sherry, and Sang Jie are pseudonyms in this article.

Author: Su Qi; Editor: Jin Yufan

Source: WeChat public account "Kaiboluo Finance (ID: kaiboluocaijing)"