People don’t follow brands; they follow people.
That’s seen by how creators engage fans and drive their purchase decisions — just Google “TikTok Made Me Buy It” for a growing list of products that went viral after appearing on TikTok. We can expect they’ll have a similar level of influence with live stream shopping. We’ve seen it take off with Amazon live influencers and now it’s spreading on social media with new live streaming ecommerce features.
And who better to know the newest app features than influencers.
What are the benefits of influencers?
1. Influencers bring a guaranteed audience of their trusted followers.
In 2019, Kim Kardashian and a major Chinese influencer teamed up together to sell perfume on a live stream that gathered over 13 million fans. In minutes, all 15,000 bottles of perfume were sold out.
As you can see, these influencers didn’t have to be in a store or even the exact general location in order to be effective.
Leverage their trusted followers for your brand’s campaign.
2. Influencers can help target a specific demographic.
A follower base can easily be narrowed into specific demographics and niches. For example, @bodybygia’s followers consist of mainly women that enjoy fitness tips. Influencers like @maria__corrigan cover a wider amount of topics like fashion influencer marketing, skincare, home decor, food and pregnancy marketing.
Whereas, financial influencer @calltoleap’s audience consists of users interested in banking, investing, and the stock market.
No matter the niche, all influencers yield a high level of influence in their respective areas.
A good example of selecting niche-specific influencers is when JCPenney launched a live stream shopping series on its website, YouTube and Facebook Live for the holidays. Each stream is hosted by a member of their staff as well as a special influencer with a focus on different product categories depending on the episode.
3. Influencers are good in front of a camera.
As well as being educational, live streams should be entertaining. Which do you pay more attention to: a TV commercial or a TV show? Well, live stream shopping combines the two.
Walmart used TikTok influencer marketing for their 2020 “Holiday Shop-Along Spectacular,” featuring 10 TikTok creators, including such influencers like Michael Le, Devan Anderson, Taaylor Hage, and Cole and Savannah Labrant. These creators were alive and active: responding to questions in the chat and trying on items that were being sold. This provides a “lean back” experience as a form of entertainment influencer marketing.
The event was a great success, netting 7x the amount of predicted views and growing Walmart’s follower base by 25%. This encouraged Walmart to do another beauty influencer marketing brand campaign in 2021.
Some live stream shopping ideas include:
- Tutorials, such as makeup demonstrations by influencers.
- Interviews with an influencer.
- “Behind-the-scenes” videos.
4. Influencers can cut the consumer journey in half.
There’s no need for a consumer to go research and read reviews on a product when they have it all in one place. An influencer’s live stream is the perfect incubator for discovery, product reviews, and demonstrations of how it works from a trusted influencer.
Then even further to the logical next step — giving the consumer the opportunity to communicate directly with the seller or creator in real-time and complete a purchase seamlessly through the platform. It integrates the entire buying cycle for the consumer.
Live Shopping Key Considerations When Working With Influencers
- Influencers need to know the products they are selling, so brief them and send products beforehand so they can get familiar with it, personally experience it, and give authentic feedback.
- Most influencers aren’t professional actors – stay away from scripts and talking points, or they’ll seem robotic and rehearsed. Live streams are more about authenticity, improv, and on-the-spot reactions.
- Influencers can accompany a host that’s a leader from the brand for a dynamic pairing of education and personality.
- Have an influencer-specialized code for a discount or free shipping that is time-sensitive to when the live ends.
If you’re interested in jumping on the live shopping trend using influencers, download this free trend report or contact us. Open Influence is a global influencer agency full of creative thinkers and social media gurus. Drop us an email at social@openinfluence.com or message us on any of our social media channels.
