Livestreaming has been a huge trend in China in the past few years and in 2019, the number of livestreamers and viewers combined reached 504 million. Covid-19 fuelled the rise of livestreaming marketing as Chinese consumers, who were staying home more, enjoyed virtual shopping to feel more connected with brands. It’s expected that the livestreaming market will reach over 100 billion RMB by 2023. Anyone who wants to succeed in the China market, can’t miss this chance.

Although livestreaming is one of the most effective marketing and sales channels, many brands are still overwhelmed with questions about how to implement it successfully. In this webinar, our ChoZan team will give you an overview of how livestreaming is being implemented in the market and why it’s important to marketers.

What will you learn?

• The current implementation of livestreaming in China
• Ways to get the most from livestreaming on short video platforms
• Ways to get e-commerce traffic with livestreaming
• How industry players can use livestreaming in their marketing efforts
• How livestreaming integrates with entertainment
• Successful and failed case studies

Livestreaming commerce has taken the lead

iResearch predicts that by the end of 2020, China will have 524 million online livestreaming users. This means 40% of Chinese people and 62% of the country’s internet users will be livestreamers. The total scale of China’s live streaming e-commerce industry reached RMB 433.8 billion in 2019 and is expected to double by the end of 2020. Given that in 2019, livestreaming e-commerce only accounted for 4.1% of the online retail market and it accounted for 1.1% of overall e-commerce, it still has plenty of room for growth.

During the epidemic, more and more industries turned to livestreaming e-commerce and it moved beyond the standard products. People were even selling houses. On April 24, Evergrande Group, one of China’s biggest real estate companies, had over 3.8 million viewers for its livestream and it racked up 7.12 million likes. During the broadcast, 38 discounted apartments sold out in one second.

Livestreaming being used at museums

Back in February, around 30 museums including the National Museum of China, Dunhuang Research Academy, The Nanjing Museum and Suzhou Museum did livestreaming on platforms such as Douyin, Taobao, Kuaishou. On the Taobao livestreaming app alone, the “Virtual Museum Visit” series have accumulated close to 10 million online visitors, that’s the number of visitors for the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1 year. Say for the debut livestreaming of the Potala Palace, the 1-hour livestreaming had 920,000 views, which is more than half of its yearly visitor traffic.

Pandemic has opened doors for museums in lots of ways

1. Operation costs for the palace were also significantly lower as they only needed 2-3 tour guides to accommodate everyone in the livestreaming session.
2. Previously, there were concerns about not having enough exhibition space to display all pieces at the Palace Museum in Beijing. In fact, the previous curator of the museum has mentioned that the museum is currently displaying less than 1% of its collection, not because of the lack of money or resources, but the lack of proper exhibition space.
3. Livestream visitors are encouraged to speak and share their thoughts now, very different from before when they would be asked to refrain from making any noise. In popular museum livestreaming sessions, people on average can comment up to 6 times per visit.
4. Tour guides can use livestream polls to ask what viewers want to see or hear next and introduce the museum accordingly. 
5. With the new interactive format, it’s also much more natural for museums to upsell their creative merchandise during livestreaming. Suzhou museum included up to 44 links of merchandise in their livestreaming to boost their sales. The combined views for 2 livestreaming sessions for Suzhou Museum were 580,000 views, equivalent to its visitor traffic for 3 months.

Livestreaming on entertainment: JD music festival

E-commerce giant JD has also become particularly active in integrating entertainment & e-commerce with the use of livestreaming. For the big annual 618 Shopping Festival, JD invited over 300 celebrities and influencers covering a wide range of age groups to take part in the 21-day livestreaming campaign. It was successful in building this “consumer + livestreaming concert + sales” loop and the 618 sales was 21 times more than last year’s Double 11 event.

The campaign consisted of casual chit-chat type livestreaming sessions as well as large-scale music concerts such as the Strawberry Festival, the Retro Music Party & the Rock concert. The campaign ran from 29 May till 18 June. During these livestreaming sessions, fans could redeem super discounted products & also get a chance to win the big prize through lucky draws. On the last day and also the most important day of the entire campaign, Chinese rock legend Cui Jian (崔健) held his first online concert and attracted 11.2 million views for just that event; he also broke the record for the most-viewed livestreaming concert on e-commerce platforms.

About the Webinar

Topic: How to Use Livestreaming to Set Up Your Brand’s Success in China – Excel at sales, marketing and entertainment through livestreaming

Speakers: Natalia Drachuk, Stella Zhan, Beverly Law

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKiH-QvZvWQu0026t=1s

For access to the presentation slides of the webinar, please click here.

About the Speakers

Natalia Drachuk, Marketing Director at ChoZan

Natalia is a China watcher and marketing expert with 5 years of experience. She develops global marketing strategies, content, insights and social media plans for Alarice and ChoZan.

Stella Zhan, Social Media Marketing Manager at ChoZan 

Stella Zhan is a creative Chinese social media marketing expert who helps brands to effectively communicate with modern Chinese consumers. Stella’s areas of expertise are KOL campaigns, social media advertising and promotional tools such as livestreaming.

Beverly Law, Senior Digital Marketing Executive at ChoZan

Beverly Law has over 5 years of experience on content marketing and social media marketing projects. She closely tracks social media trends and is an expert on creative media campaigns and building customer journeys. 

Check out this webinar right now to get the most actionable insights! Our ChoZan webinar playlist is also on YouTube in case you want to check out our entire webinar series. We also have a range of FREE resources of blogs, mini books and reports to see our latest insights on Chinese consumers and marketing in China. Contact us if you would like to get in touch to discuss your China strategy.