By Ethan Kramer, CEO and founder of EK Creative, a digital advertising agency focused on live selling e-commerce.
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If you’re in the e-commerce world, then you know that staying ahead of the curve is essential to your growth.
Introducing live selling.
A quick Google search will predict it’s the future of retail — but we’re using it right now to drastically reduce our clients’ costs and hit metrics that traditional e-commerce agencies would only dream of. (Full-disclosure: My agency focuses on live selling.)
The best part? It can work wonders with social media advertising on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to get more conversions for less overall cost and a higher return on ad spend.
Why Your Business Needs To Start Live Selling
We’re talking about a shopping experience that engages and entertains while selling. Live selling provides retailers with the opportunity to directly engage with multiple customers at once in order to show off products, make sales and gain a new audience. It enables businesses to acquire potential customers as their personalities shine in real time.
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This emergence of live selling means that consumers no longer need to navigate product descriptions or scour the internet for reviews. They can get immediate feedback, ask questions and remove traditional barriers to capturing an online sale, such as trust in the brand or product quality.
Instead of thinking of all the reasons why not to buy while browsing, just to leave your site, customers get a chance to view the fit and functionality of products, ask questions about the merchandise or chat with another shopper (and your team) to exchange insights before buying. Talk about social proof!
How Your Business Can Start Live Selling
We’ve seen clients literally just go live on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to show off their products. There are also features such as Facebook or Instagram Live Selling that allow you to tag products and provide direct links to your site as you feature the items. YouTube, Amazon and more are also jumping into the space with dedicated sections to explore live streams.
In addition, we love live selling platforms, such as CommentSold, Bambuser or buywith, that provide all-inclusive services for small businesses to rival their billion-dollar industrial counterparts on existing social platforms. These tools automate time-consuming tasks such as invoicing and inventory management and provide a cost-efficient means for businesses to develop direct connections with a global audience.
This means live streams are no longer just an opportunity to show off new products. They are a powerful selling tool that generates actual revenue.
Live Streaming Works Wonders For Paid Ads
The benefits of live selling don’t end when the stream does.
When you add live streaming to your advertising campaigns, you’ll see lower costs because of how engaging the content can be. For social media algorithms, engagement is king, and that’s the same for your paid ads. Live streams are full of engagement, so naturally, they outperform traditional advertising posts.
There are a few keys to review to ensure you get the most out of promoting these live streams.
• We encourage users to always start off with an engaging and exciting intro to the video. If you can edit it after, do that too. When a new user sees this previously recorded live stream in their feed, you want them to feel welcome. Start off by asking who is new here and where they are from, what they like, etc.
• Engage your audience on your live stream. Constantly ask questions, tell your favorite features of the product and get them commenting, sharing and talking to you and one another.
• Promote your live stream before you go live! You can post about it, send an email, shoot out an SMS or do an online event invitation.
• Promote your live stream after you go live! It’s a great way to get new users exposed and engaging with your brand for less because the algorithms love these posts. Plus they will enter your retargeting audience and be alerted to future live streams.
How Do Live Sales Outperform Traditional Ads?
• Live video content has six times more organic reach than any other social media post, which means when it’s promoted it has all the right signals the platforms are looking for. This allows them to generate more purchases for less compared to traditional ad campaigns because the platforms want users to view these streams too.
• Live streams associate a face and level of authenticity to your brand that can’t be replicated. Users like to buy from people they like, more than brands.
• Live streams have three times longer average view duration than pre-recorded videos. The longer you can keep someone engaged, the more likely you are to sell them.
• By nature, live streams build tons of social proof with comments, shares and likes that build trust with new users and shorten the sales cycle. This leads to more conversions in your ads because there are fewer trust issues preventing the purchase.
• Live sales create urgency and an aspect of limited time to your offers or products. You simply can’t replicate that urgency with a traditional social media post or ad. Users can see others buying, and if you only have a few left, they know they need to get it before it’s gone.
• These live streams are entertaining. Users don’t feel like they are being “sold” to, and buying is fun as opposed to stressful or anxiety-provoking.
Whether it’s through CommentSold, Facebook Live Shopping or one of the other emerging social selling platforms, live selling allows brands to tell stories, build awareness and drive sales in an engaging manner.
In turn, these types of posts can drastically boost your advertising campaigns as well, offering a new shopping experience that customers love and the ad platform algorithms love, too.
If you follow the tips above, you’ll be sure to get the most out of your live streams and paid advertising.
