Little did we know that the powerful combination of social media, live streaming, and instant shopping would significantly disrupt mainstream e-commerce.
Live stream shopping has emerged as the new frontier in consumer purchase behavior, and we’ve all got eyeballs pinned to it.
According to Forbes, the live stream shopping revenue is expected to hit the $20 billion mark in 2022 in the US alone. And the trajectory is predicted to cross $57 billion in 2025.
The Chinese live-streaming market witnessed year-over-year growth of a whopping 108% in 2021 alone. We already know about the success of Amazon in the realm of live-stream shopping.
Now we have world-renowned retailers like Walmart partnering with social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook to host live shopping events.
Without a doubt, we are destined for a live-stream shopping bonanza in the foreseeable future.
What is Live Stream Shopping?
Let’s start with the basics. What is live stream shopping?
Live stream shopping allows the consumers to shop directly from the seller during a live video broadcast. Sounds similar to the old-school TV shopping shows, doesn’t it?
Carrying forward the legacy of those shows, the host talks about the product during the live show, demonstrates the features and functionalities, and convinces the consumer into impulsive buying.
Hence, live stream shopping offers an engaging experience to the consumers and allows them to interact directly with the seller in real-time.
Popular Live Commerce Platforms
While we previously only knew about Amazon as the king of live stream shopping, we now have several live commerce platforms gaining popularity.
Live commerce platforms such as TalkShopLive, Taobao, Banbuser, and ShopShops are leading live stream shopping.
Live stream TV like NTWRK and Twitch are also gaining momentum.
Social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have built their own live stream shopping capabilities, giving a push to discovery shopping.
How can Marketers Use Live Commerce to Create Value?
So, what’s in there for the marketers?
Direct interaction with the consumers allows marketers to establish a connection between the brand and the consumers.
They can seek immediate consumer feedback regarding the product’s features and usefulness through live chat, polls, and comments.
More importantly, live stream shopping is a commercially viable strategy and significantly boosts sales.
Digital marketers can leverage live commerce to attain their objectives:
Quicker Conversions – live shopping is pretty entertaining; it keeps the audience engaged and helps accelerate their decision-making journey.
Increase Brand Appeal – live commerce helps distinguish the brand from the crowd and adds to the brand’s appeal and awareness.
Improve Discoverability – live stream shopping brings your brand to the limelight and significantly improves its Discoverability. It further increases engagement through personalized marketing, thereby driving traffic to your website.
How to Get Started with Live Stream Shopping
Getting started with live commerce is a four-step action plan:
- Choose your products
- Develop your content plan
- Choose your streaming platform
- Go Live
- Choose your Products
You know which products to sell if you’re a digital marketer working for a brand. If you’re an influencer or an affiliate marketer, you’d want to choose your products wisely. Select products that sell better and those that your followers would like to buy.
- Develop your Content Plan
Once you’ve got your products sorted, devise an action strategy. Do you want to showcase a product demo? Do you want to share a BTS video? Do you want to invite any existing users for a testimonial? Do you want to conduct a live Q&A session?
- Choose your Streaming Platform
Select a reliable all-in-one live streaming platform that will help amp up your live commerce game. OneStream Live is a cloud-based live streaming solution that allows you to create live video broadcasts and multistream them to over 40 social media like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Twitch, and LinkedIn simultaneously.
You can also embed your live shopping streams on your website or any other RTMP destination. You can even create your own personalized webpage for live streaming.
Here are some commendable features of OneStream Studio that are bound to grab your attention:
- Live Sales – you can showcase and sell your products during live shows. You can add product images/videos, product descriptions, price tags, and even product links to encourage your consumers to buy.
- Live Unified Chat – you can respond to all incoming messages from all the connected social media platforms from a single window.
- Invite Guests – you can invite up to 10 guests to your live shopping shows.
- Branding Options – you can brand your live shows using logos, banners, and tickers.
- Overlays – you can enhance the visual appeal of your shows using creative overlays such as backgrounds, intros and outros, intervals, countdown timers, and more.
- Screen Sharing – you can share your screen during your shows to share any presentations, videos, etc.
- Media Sharing – you can share external media, such as any image, video, or other files, during your live show.
- Go Live
You’re set to go live with your live shopping show. Make sure to do a test rehearse before you go live.
Conclusion
Live stream shopping is the buzzword for the millennials and Gen Z. For them, it’s not an option; it’s a given. Interestingly, Gen X and Baby Boomers are also adapting to this trend, owing to its convenience. We certainly foresee an immersive future of retail powered by live commerce.
Time to grease the wheels and give your brand a leg up on the competition with shoppable live streams!
Author Bio:
Saba Mohsin is the Lead Digital Content Writer at OneStream Live. OneStream Live is a cloud-based live streaming solution that allows creating and multistreaming live video streams to 40+ social media and the web simultaneously.