How to find new solutions to traffic anxiety through “relationship-based live streaming”?

In this traffic-oriented era, brands have to change their marketing strategies. Nowadays, many brands have successfully explored the marketing method of "relationship-based live broadcast" on video accounts. This article analyzes the successful cases of the apparel industry on video accounts and brings you some strategies worth referring to and learning from.

In recent years, live streaming has rapidly risen, with many investors competing for the market and new stars shining brightly. However, as the overall market growth slows down, more and more brands are beginning to realize new problems - the cost of traffic is getting higher and higher, it is becoming more and more difficult to acquire customers, and conventional content can no longer exceed the "threshold" of consumers' attention.

When the "horizontal exposure" method no longer works, brands need to turn to "vertical deep cultivation" to establish new "relationships" with consumers and use more strategic combinations to improve communication and conversion efficiency. Let's talk about the basic logic of "relationship-based" live broadcasts under this trend and the direction of future advancement based on the successful cases of the apparel industry on video accounts.

01 From advertising to brand communication, the strategic advancement of “relationship-based” live streaming in the apparel industry

Nowadays, more and more clothing brands are flocking to online live broadcast rooms, using live broadcast as a major breakthrough in clothing sales. However, with the increase in live broadcast time and the increase in discounts, this simple "billboard" live broadcast model has become difficult to stimulate consumers' attention and difficult to interfere with the public's marketing decisions.

Therefore, the first step to advancement is to complete the transformation from "delivery" to "dissemination", use higher-quality content to establish relationships with consumers, stimulate interest with content, and make selling points more convincing.

For example, the well-known clothing brand Bananain has been continuously developing creativity. In order to narrow the distance between the brand and consumers, the brand has been producing high-quality content on the video account, interpreting the core selling points with diverse and vivid scenes and strong and thoughtful copywriting. These stable and high-quality daily outputs, coupled with the fan effect brought by the spokesperson, also provide many breakthrough points for the brand development.

This communication strategy that focuses on "content power" can not only help brands break the dilemma of monotony and homogeneity, but also allow consumers to learn about new products in a more efficient way, shortening the conversion path from "new products to hot products."

For example, when Beijing qualified to host the Winter Olympics and ice and snow sports became popular, Anta created an outdoor ice and snow exploration hotspot event for its Reheat technology products.

By broadcasting live broadcasts of Winter Olympics venue exploration activities through video accounts, outdoor ice and snow content with a strong sense of scene and quality was visually presented, effectively highlighting the product's technological attributes such as heat return and enhanced warmth retention, and establishing its own "moat" as soon as the product was launched.

02 From global layout to position building, creating a solid and stable trust relationship

After paying attention to the quality of content, what brands need to do is "integration". In fact, in the extensive stage of live broadcasting, many brands also ran ahead of their competitors by deploying multiple platforms, and gained more incremental market with more investment.

However, when live streaming reaches saturation and starts to compete for the existing market, what brands need to do is not scattered "fake integration", but to focus on a social ecosystem, penetrate a traffic pool, penetrate a target group, and minimize path loss.

The many tools in the WeChat ecosystem, such as Tencent Video, WeChat official accounts, mini-program malls, shopping guide communities, etc., these positional infrastructures provide a good environment for the customization of brand marketing events .

For example, when skiing was popular, The North Face created its own street skiing flash race Urban Ride, which gathered top skiers to challenge slope obstacles and attracted the attention of many skiing enthusiasts.

In the early stage, we used multiple channels such as recommendation page banners, pop-ups, splash screens, and information flow ads to open up traffic. During the live broadcast, there were Tencent Video & Sports watch-and-buy components, which made "one-stop conversion" possible.

In fact, for brands, the successful establishment of a brand position can not only improve the efficiency of attracting new customers and shorten the marketing chain, but also lay a good foundation for every "e-commerce promotion" , making every event meaningful.

For example, when FILA Tmall Super Brand Day arrived, the brand worked with Tencent to create a camping concert. During the preheating and live broadcast, users can make reservations and watch from the four major TME platforms and the brand's video account. The high-quality exposure through multiple channels directly broadened the reach of the crowd; at the same time, users can also jump directly to the product theme page of the brand's Tmall store to make purchases.

Whether it is a street skiing flash mob or a camping concert, these practices have completely broken away from the conventional live streaming model of selling goods. Without overshadowing the main theme, they have significantly increased their appeal to users. These fully demonstrate the advantages of "relationship-based" live streaming.

03 From live broadcast exposure to refined traffic, activating social relationships to deliver in-depth information

In the traditional live broadcasting mindset, most of the traffic attracted by live broadcasting is just the amount of traffic that “flows through” the live broadcasting. Even if the live broadcasting data is very good, the final accumulated value is quite limited. From this perspective, the choice of brands to do live broadcasting on video accounts is itself a communication strategy decision.

After all, WeChat currently has 1 billion users and a mature social sharing mechanism. Apparel brands can use social relationships such as WeChat friends, communities, and Moments to accelerate the spread of marketing content. In addition, the always-on floating window function allows users to always pay attention to live broadcasts while using their phones, greatly reducing the loss rate of brand live broadcast rooms.

Moreover, in this small traffic pool centered on "people" and a more trustworthy tool combination, brand content is easier to achieve efficient delivery and communication. After all, from a trend point of view, consumers are tired of the endless stream of dry goods sharing, and are more likely to be fond of "relationship-based" live broadcasts that are mainly based on emotion.

04 From public domain sedimentation to private domain operation, let the trust relationship achieve sustainable growth

On content platforms with hundreds of millions of daily active users, a lot of traffic is being restored to "people" in a digitized way, helping brands achieve more accurate and efficient matching.

Take the video account, which is upgrading its live broadcast scene, for example. It already supports a variety of private domain traffic diversion methods - such as following public accounts and video accounts through live broadcast room labels, joining communities through corporate business cards, and directly jumping to the product details page through product links to attract more mini-program browsing and registrations.

All these have brought together people with real needs, allowing brands to have sustainable growth space beyond live streaming. As home fitness becomes the new normal, more and more consumers are beginning to pay attention to online fitness classes.

UA, which saw this demand, promptly launched a series of 12 live fitness courses to deepen the mental connection with the target customers.

The brand used WeChat Moments ads to attract traffic to the live broadcast room, and guided people into the group through the live broadcast room QR code. Later, it used user relationship management methods such as shopping guide community sharing, interactive PK activities, and check-in sharing mechanisms to drive the increase in membership and fan loyalty, and achieve sustainable growth in user trust in the brand.

Final Thoughts

When an industry begins to operate in a refined manner, it not only means that it has entered the red ocean, but also means that the industry has passed the extensive stage and is beginning to truly mature.

And those forward-looking and strategic brands will also highlight their true value at this stage. Nowadays, many brands have successfully explored the marketing method of "relationship-based live broadcast" on video accounts, and have also brought us some strategies worthy of reference and reference.

The first step is to complete the shift in thinking from placement to dissemination, and focus on the power of content, which is the basis of "relationship-based live streaming"; the second step is to invest in an ecosystem, establish your own brand land, and fully realize the potential of each dissemination; the last step is to pay attention to fine traffic, layout of full-area operations, and shorten the overall marketing chain.

Especially at times like this, the more we need to explore, iterate and upgrade. I believe that brands that dare to change will also reap new growth.

Author: Mr. Bingfa

Source: WeChat public account "Marketing Art of War (ID: lanhaiyingxiao)"