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Live Shopping is new terrain for many businesses. It's a new way to communicate with and sell to customers. But in the end, success with live shopping comes down to the same principles of any good customer marketing efforts — it's easy once you get the hang of it.
You might say we’re biased, and we are in the sense that we think Bambuser Live Video Shopping is awesome. But the good news is that you don't have to take it from us. Bambuser customers have shown, time and time again, that live shopping is simple, fun, and profitable!
We asked some of our customers for their advice to businesses who are new to live shopping. What do you wish you had known when you first started? Here’s what they had to say.
1. Start small and experiment
One of our fashion industry customers uses the analogy of “crawl, walk, run” to describe their early experiences with Live Video Shopping. Start by hosting smaller, more targeted shows.
It’s a great idea to treat your early live shopping events as marketing experiments that you will learn so much from and evaluate them like an A/B test:
- Come up with an idea or hypothesis that can be tested
- Test the hypothesis with a live show
- Measure the results of the live show
- Based on the results, come up with a new hypothesis
- Repeat until you find the winning combination
In brief, don’t be afraid to try new things. It can take a few experiments to hit the right combination of host, theme, product selection, location, and so on, and that’s also the fun part of it all!
2. “New” and “exclusive” are very powerful words
We all want to feel important, and one of the many ways retailers can make their customers feel important is by offering them something special: A brand-new product, early access to a sought-after item, or even a personalized service.
Here are some things Bambuser customers have done to make their live shopping events feel more exclusive:
- Invite-only live shows for loyal customers
- Limited-time discount codes or gifts with purchases
- Launching new products or collections through live shopping
- Exclusive access to chat with celebrities or influencers through live shopping
The words “new” and “exclusive” create a sense of urgency and tap into the customer’s emotions. And if the customer can get something exclusive from your live show, they will feel special.
“The engagement on [private, invite-only] shows was especially good. We can see clearly that more people interacted, sent messages, clicked on the heart button and the average viewing time is higher than our regular shows.”
Isa Larsson, Social Media Coordinator, By Malina
3. Go live on a reliable, consistent schedule
Bambuser clients in all industries had the same advice for those new to live shopping: Simply, go live regularly Good content and a reliable schedule are how you build a consistent live shopping system. For your viewers, live shopping is entertainment and retail mixed together. If you can consistently entertain and sell at the same time, you will build a loyal and enthusiastic audience.
4. Re-use your recorded live shows on your website
Shoppable, recorded shows can be profit magnets, especially if they fit nicely on a product or category page. Our stats show that recorded live shows can bring up to 70% of your sales after the live has ended.
“We ensure that our shows continue to create value by – amongst other things – implementing them on the relevant product detail pages for customers to interact with while shopping."
Cecilia Demant, Editor-in-Chief, Matas LIVE
There you have it: advice to you from some experienced Live Video Shopping experts. Live shopping may feel a bit intimidating at first, but once you try it out, we’re sure you will love it.
Interested in trying Live Video Shopping for yourself? Get a 7-day free trial of Bambuser One-to-Many Starter by clicking here.
