In 2022, 20 vertical anchors will "make money quietly", and 3 "new super heads" will rise

In the past year, live streaming e-commerce has undergone a major reshuffle. With Wei Ya and Simba moving behind the scenes, Luo Yonghao "retiring", and Li Jiaqi occasionally fading out, the "four major legends" have fallen, and the industry has said goodbye to wild growth. Let's follow the author of the following article to take a look.

The "three new super heads" Dong Yuhui, Xiao Yangge, and Zhang Lan perfectly received the offer, with poetic talent, funny twists, and even entertainment gossip, all of which cleverly became sales conversions for the products. The industry has evolved from the "lowest price" 1.0 model to the "good content" 2.0 model.

It is worth noting that the platform has upgraded the traffic distribution mechanism, and live broadcast rooms with good content and high conversion can obtain more traffic. From the perspective of merchants, they no longer pin their hopes on a single anchor to bring goods, and have begun to deploy self-broadcasting and multi-matrix live broadcasts by experts.

As a result, a group of vertical anchors and celebrity anchors with unique styles, unique professional advantages and unique user groups have quietly emerged, and representative figures have emerged in various fields, such as Luo Wangyu in the beauty field, Xiao Xiong Chuanming in the clothing field, Long Zijia and Mr. Lu Jewelry in the jewelry fashion field, and B station UP host Mi Deng in the home decoration and home furnishing field... Even the second and third echelon full-category mid-level anchors have begun to promote the vertical categories they are good at, such as Li Jinming's transformation into a clothing anchor.

Compared with the top anchors in all categories, vertical anchors have the advantage of accurate fans. Their professional ability in a certain vertical category is often higher than that of comprehensive e-commerce anchors. At the same time, they also pay attention to consumer mindsets, consumption habits and market trends. In 2022, anchors are looking for differentiated traffic value in supply chains, brands, and sub-categories, striving to achieve long-term binding with brands, while also paying attention to whether the content that fills user needs is high-quality.

1. 3 new super leaders + 3 major armies

Dong Yuhui, Xiao Yangge, and Zhang Lan have all become popular thanks to their high-quality content and innovative live streaming formats. They continue to define the role of the anchor: not just a live streaming salesperson, but also one with other attributes, such as talent, an interesting soul, and a sense of closeness, etc.

In June, Dong Yuhui made Oriental Selection popular by cleverly combining selling products with English-Chinese teaching and eloquent golden sentences. That month, Oriental Selection topped the Douyin sales charts, directly replacing Make Friends to become Douyin's new "sales champion", dominating the charts for five consecutive months.

In November, Crazy Brother Yang became the first Internet celebrity to have over 100 million fans on a single platform. His "crazy" performance style, such as bickering with brothers and challenging the tolerance of brands, has become his distinctive way of selling products with personal characteristics.

In December, the drama between Zhang Lan and her daughter-in-law once became more popular than the World Cup. Hot search terms such as green tea, marinated eggs, mattresses, and electricity bills were transformed into natural scripts in Zhang Lan's live broadcast room. Not only did she bring in 200 million yuan in sales a day, but even her son Wang Xiaofei's brand Ma Liuji hot and sour noodles sold more than 5 million yuan in two days.

In addition to the anchors, this year's MCN is also very eye-catching, with three major groups: Oriental Selection, Yaowang, and Mei ONE.

The characteristic of the "Oriental Selection" group is the pursuit of "anchors with different styles + content iteration". On the one hand, it cultivates anchors with different styles and characteristics such as Dun Dun, Yoyo, and Qiqi; on the other hand, it pursues rapid iteration of content, including outdoor live broadcast formats such as Northeast Tour, Shaanxi Tour, and Qingdao Tour, as well as in-depth content formats such as cultural celebrities and entertainment workers entering the live broadcast room to talk about culture and art.

For Yaowang, "scale replication of celebrities" is its signature. From signing Wang Zulan and Jia Nailiang to last year's outstanding artists Yang Zi, Huang Shengyi and Zhang Baizhi, Yaowang has achieved standardization of live broadcast processes and customization of product selection content in terms of celebrity live broadcasts. During last year's Double 11, Yaowang became the first MCN to cross Douyin, Kuaishou and Taobao live broadcast e-commerce.

Mei ONE, which has always been "all in" with Li Jiaqi, has been frantically promoting the "assistant broadcast group" since last year with the idol training system. The former assistant broadcaster Wangwang has transformed into a "guide" for all girls to become beautiful and independent. Anchors such as Huowa and Dongdong frequently participate in the Double 11 live broadcast. Even after last year's Double 11, Mei ONE also opened the "All Girls" and "All Girls' Wardrobe" live broadcast rooms.

2. Beauty and skin care track: supply chain "misalignment", deep binding with brands to create "content"

You should know that Li Jiaqi has always been the one dominating the beauty and skin care track in the live streaming e-commerce field. It is difficult for other beauty anchors to get the same discounts as Li Jiaqi. Some anchors have begun to "misalign" in product segmentation, supply chain, and brand selection, while some anchors have begun to compete on content instead of price. They all achieve common interests through long-term cooperation with brands.

"Beauty Devices" During last year's Double 11, a Douyin anchor named "Xu Xiaomiao Lisa" who was selling beauty devices achieved sales of approximately 1 million to 25 million yuan during the Double 11 live broadcast with only 74,000 fans. Her main products were beauty devices such as JOVS and AMIRO, and the overall average customer unit price in the live broadcast room reached 2,280 yuan.

"Medical Beauty" Taobao anchor Ye Yiqian's beauty-related selections mainly include medical beauty, oral correction, and instrument products.

"Contact lenses" Taobao anchor Ichili Xiaoshazi pays more attention to the contact lenses segment and launched the "Fashion Contact Lens Festival", which directly broke the previous live broadcast sales record.

"Bonded goods" The beauty products promoted by Taobao anchor Lieer Baby are mostly from its own stores or Tmall International direct stores and Global Shopping official stores, and the actual shipper is the bonded warehouse.

"Counter products" The live broadcast hosts "Duoyu and Maomao Sister" under Wuyou Media tried the "counter live broadcast" model. During last year's Double 11, they held the live broadcast in the offline beauty counter of Intime Department Store. Because of the counter channels, some big-name beauty products are priced the same as or even lower than those in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room.

"Niche domestic products" Lulu, a beauty UP host at Bilibili, has become unpopular. The products she sold on live broadcasts were mostly niche skin care products such as Ding Jiayi and Su Ji.

Luo Wangyu, the top beauty influencer on Douyin, is the representative of the "content" of the beauty and skin care track. In the past year, he has reduced the frequency of live streaming with goods, and designed non-sales live streaming with skin care teaching, such as 1-on-1 skin care consultation and skin product matching. In the live streaming with goods, compared with introducing the extreme discounts of products, he prefers to convey the content of skin care.

Especially after the Douyin shelf scene was maturely built last year, Luo Wangyu began to pin the link to the top of the short video comment area to guide users into the display window. Now his monthly display window PV has exceeded 3.2 million.

Of course, there are also anchors who have "turned over" in content innovation. Last year's Double 11, Douyin's top celebrity Pan Yurun set up an offline exhibition called "Double 11 Crazy Domestic Products Exhibition" based on Li Jiaqi's online brand bargaining program "All Girls' Offers", and output product selection and bargaining content such as crazy product selection meetings and crazy machine-made houses. However, the video content did not go viral, but the brand price cuts caused public discussion, "The imitation is too fake" and "It's still a competition for the lowest price."

Behind these actions is the changing relationship between anchors and brands. In the era of super-head anchors, many brands have realized that the "lowest price" cooperation model of top anchors seems to be able to achieve product and effect integration, but it is limited to Li Jiaqi. Only he can take into account both the ability to plant grass and sell. For other beauty anchors, brands will first cooperate with the first-tier anchors, and then choose beauty and makeup niche bloggers for special live broadcasts.

Take the Douyin review anchor "Shi Shuyaoya" as an example. She and the skincare brand PURID Pu Li created sales of 2.5 million to 5 million during the live broadcast during Double 11. Their cooperation model is that the brand and the influencer will deeply promote the product for a year, and finally complete the long-term harvest during the big promotion.

Borrowing the demand for anchors expressed publicly by L'Oréal Paris at the end of the year, we can foresee the trend of anchor cooperation in the beauty track in 2023. They hope to match refined and differentiated products through accurate and differentiated crowd portraits, from promoting explosive products to promoting explosive products for everyone in the future, to help brands reach consumers point-to-point.

3. Clothing track: vertical clothing has obvious stylization, segmentation and scene-based

The evolution of the clothing fashion environment in the past year has seen the influx of stall merchants and fast fashion brands, the intensification of the homogenization of public aesthetics, and the emergence of personalized development of niche and national designer brands. Consumers who consume under the drive of fashion concepts are relatively less sensitive to prices. The strategy of inducing low prices is no longer as effective as before, and the dominant position of the inherent fashion driving force of commodities is increasing.

Some stylized clothing live streaming rooms have seized on style trends and entered the clothing vertical category. Some anchors’ sales performance has been able to match or even surpass that of mass-brand clothing anchors.

The representative of the "designer style" anchor is "Little Bear", a zero-fan incubation account under Wuyou Media, which focuses on niche designer brands and targets women aged 18-35 in first- and second-tier cities who have a high pursuit of fashion. During the 618 shopping festival last year, the account had only 800,000 fans, but the GMV reached 20 million, and the average customer price in the live broadcast room was stable at more than 350 yuan. This type of live broadcast room is often more content-oriented. Little Bear will amplify the guidance of "celebrity private clothes" and "celebrity same style" in the live broadcast room, such as the private clothes worn by Zhao Lusi, Yu Shuxin and others in private, so as to attract fans of brands and celebrities other than users to pay.

"Street style" Weijia gaara616, a UP host on B station, has 840,000 fans on B station. In September last year, he founded his own brand "Gastation Carnival", which is mainly aimed at young men. Before live streaming, Weijia often makes videos to promote products in advance. He not only understands the fabrics and styles of clothes, but also can express the elements of national fashion culture in clothes appropriately, which directly resolves the embarrassment of fans minding the UP host's meal. This year's Double 11, many clothes in Weijia's live broadcast room were basically sold out within five minutes of being put on the shelves.

"Buyer's store style" vertical star anchors Li Jinming and Chai Biyun, they understand clothing, trends, and have a strong desire to share. In 2021, Li Jinming entered the Douyin full-category live broadcast, with the same supply chain as other stars, competing in acting skills and routines, and constantly overturning. Last year, Li Jinming signed a contract with Quanshang Culture and began to transform into the buyer's clothing track, bringing popularity to niche brands such as "Unable to Fall Asleep", and the sales of its products in a single game can reach 3 million. Chai Biyun was on Douyin live broadcast in June last year, focusing on a gentle and intellectual style. The products sold were mainly women's clothing worth hundreds of yuan, with a maximum GMV of 25 million.

At the same time, the categories of the clothing industry have become increasingly subdivided. Even the MCN Make Friends opened a matrix account last year that includes designer women's wear, light luxury women's wear, sports and outdoor, business men's wear, trendy women's wear, trendy men's wear and other categories.

The most obvious change in the clothing industry is that the anchors’ sales scenes are becoming more and more inward-looking.

In March last year, Hu Bing, a celebrity anchor under Galaxy Stars, tried the "anchor + catwalk + virtual person live broadcast" for the first time. He cooperated with Hongdou Men's Wear Special and changed more than a dozen sets of clothes in the Douyin live broadcast room, walking on the catwalk and selling goods at the same time.

Last August, Goumei's Taobao clothing anchor "Sister Xishi" moved her live broadcast room to different scenes such as the West Lake Scenic Area in Hangzhou and camping sites to conduct scene-based live broadcasts.

Several service providers in the clothing field told Duzhu that clothing is one of the industries where brands do best with self-broadcasting. In the coming year, if influencers want to have an advantage in bringing goods, they should not look for brands that any anchor can sell. It is best to have distinctive product trays and be deeply tied to the brand. For example, it is best to develop some new products based on the brand's design concept, influencer's tone, etc., which may help them stand out in the fierce industry competition.

4. Jewelry fashion: After a period of wild growth, high-quality anchors emerge

In 2021, the anchor industry was still in a period of wild growth in the field of live streaming e-commerce. At that time, jewelry anchors represented by "Mr. Dong Jewelry" flooded into e-commerce platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, often using "bargaining" routines to attract fans to buy cheap jewelry and carry out wool-pulling style sales, resulting in dramatic scenes of users scrambling for "moissanite". Finally, under the criticism and condemnation of consumers, the platform established regulations, and the top anchor Mr. Dong changed his cover and transformed into a full-category anchor, and also started charity live broadcasts.

In the past year, the jewelry fashion luxury field has begun to see the emergence of precious jewelry, second-hand luxury bags, and even simple tea sets for tea tables. The professionalism and after-sales service of anchors have gradually reached the standard, and high-quality anchors such as Long Zijia and Ma Weidu have emerged.

"Oriental Design Jewelry" Douyin anchor Long Zijia is a new jewelry designer born after 1995. His jewelry is a favorite in the entertainment industry. Stars such as Carina Lau, Zhang Ziyi, and Yang Mi have worn it. Last October, he sold products from the Oriental Twelve Floral Gods High-end Jewelry Conference in his live broadcast room, with sales reaching 33.29 million. During the live broadcast, there were only three products priced at 100 yuan, and the price range of the other 40 links was 3,999 to 39,800 yuan. The Colombian emerald worth 28,000 yuan in the live broadcast room was sold out as soon as it was launched.

In the live broadcast room of Ma Weidu, a collector of "Jade and Cultural Playthings" , objects related to traditional culture are sold, such as gold jewelry, ceramic tea, wooden playthings, and jadeite. The sales of a single live broadcast can reach more than 20 million. His content is similar to Dong Yuhui of Oriental Selection. Many people watch Ma Weidu's live broadcast for the content of traditional culture, and then buy a piece of amber by the way.

【Natural colored gemstones】 Taobao anchor "Mr. Lu Jewelry" has been engaged in the jewelry industry for more than ten years. He mainly sells high-quality natural colored gemstones, with a customer unit price of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of yuan. Last year, he became popular in the "China New Anchor Competition" held by Taobao Live, and finally became a group. In the live broadcast room, he will make a lot of explanation pictures and PPTs to compare with the real objects in the live broadcast room to popularize gem-related knowledge.

The high-end jewelry products do not only refer to the high unit price, but also include the value of the products and brands, and the mindset. In this non-standard industry, the products are niche and diverse, and their value is difficult to accurately and effectively evaluate. This is also the main reason why many people dare not rashly spend money to buy jewelry. If anchors want to break this barrier, the selection of products in the future should be standardized, and the service should give consumers a sense of security, so as to establish shopping trust.

5. Unpopular and durable consumer goods sectors such as home furnishings and furniture: Top bloggers appear across the Internet

The field of durable consumer goods such as home appliances, home decoration, and furniture is a less popular track for live streaming e-commerce. Unlike impulsive consumption areas such as beauty and clothing, it emphasizes after-sales service, in-depth promotion of products through short videos, long-term management of fans, etc. Even the previous four super-heads rarely involve this track.

Starting from 2022, this track has seen the emergence of top anchors. On the first day of the Double 11 last year, the B station live broadcast anchor "Mi Deng" had a GMV of over 130 million in the first live broadcast, and the total GMV of Double 11 exceeded 400 million. He is a home furnishing science popularization UP in the life area of ​​B station, mainly doing video evaluations of durable consumer goods, and has accumulated millions of fans.

In the home furnishing field, there are well-known brands such as Hualing, Haier, Midea, and Dreame. These durable consumer goods are learning consumer products. Before purchasing, consumers need to do sufficient homework to see the performance and configuration, and then compare prices before making a purchase. Bilibili is a good soil for bringing durable consumer goods. Through the introduction and evaluation of the product by the UP host, it can strengthen the user's planting of grass and trust in a certain product. After all the actions that need to be explained in the lead-in are put in place, when it comes to the broadcast, the role of the live broadcast room is equivalent to a cash register.

At the same time, durable consumer goods are not impulse-driven products. In live broadcasts, the most taboo thing is to over-hype a product, which can easily cause a "crisis of trust." Last year on Double 11, celebrity anchor Lin Yilun suffered a setback when he was reviewing Tineco. The floor scrubber became dirtier and dirtier, and many people in the comment section turned against it, saying "It's a good thing I didn't buy it." On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, notes and complaints about floor scrubbers followed one after another.

In addition, Duozhu observed that the average price of durable consumer goods is more than 1,000 yuan, and the trust of the anchor's after-sales service is extremely important and is its core advantage.

In fact, in this live e-commerce industry where amazing data is generated every night, high-quality and professional anchors have always been a scarce resource. The "2021 China Short Video and Live E-commerce Industry Talent Development Report" pointed out that in the expected employment gap in the short video and live e-commerce fields, online anchors may account for 52%, and the demand for online anchors is quite strong.

The differentiation of anchors and the emergence of vertical anchors will be a general trend in 2023. In the view of industry insiders, vertical anchors in the future are not only able to bring goods and recommend products to users, but also have the patience to serve users, and more importantly, have feelings and a sense of responsibility.

Author: Gan Si

Source: WeChat public account "Dou Jiao TMT (ID: KOL-TOPKLOUT)"