Live Shopping is one of the most important trends in the immediate future of ecommerce, mainly because of the high engagement it achieves with customers. For this reason, many companies are already looking for a way to incorporate it into their strategies for years to come.
These strategies usually focus on ways to make customers tune in during live streaming sessions, but they tend to ignore the fact that the content produced during said streamings can help a company in many ways: from embellishing social media feeds to populating dedicated websites that can boost sales and offer customers new experiences.
So, how to best take advantage of a live shopping strategy beyond live broadcasts? Below we dive into two of the most interesting ways to reutilize content generated during Live Shopping events.
Populate social media
Social media is not seen as the best platform for Live Shopping events, since it doesn’t offer customers the same quality experience that a tailor-made website can offer. A company can decide to show their event simultaneously on social media but, if customers don’t understand that the website where you host live shopping events offers a different experience, they might not be compelled to go visit the company’s live shopping hub.
This doesn’t mean that you should ignore your social media when planning for Live Shopping: Manu García, Head of Live Shopping for Latin America at VTEX, suggests using social media to invite customers to your live streaming and, after the event is finished, using video recordings from live events to create short clips destined for social media.
“All these events are content. So, why not leverage them for promotion instead of spending more money on creating different types of video content for different channels? While the event is live you can also use social media to show a behind-the-scenes type of material, which our customers have also found to be very effective engagement-wise.”
Manu García, Head of Live Shopping for Latin America at VTEX
With a strategy like this, your social media platforms wouldn’t be competing for views with your main Live Shopping channel, and it would give your social profiles a fresh reason to post and drive up interactions out of “FOMO”. The content can even feed this “don’t wanna miss it” feeling if, after the event is over, you share edits showing the best moments of the stream or the best promotions included in it.
Create your own /live
The main way to replicate the Live Shopping effect, and to drive up your website’s traffic, sessions duration and orders, is to archive your videos in a place where customers can access them at any time and have a similar experience to the one offered when they were broadcast in real-time. Your own website.com/live.
“There, customers should be able to rewatch any event with the product carousel also accessible. This allows them to experience any demo or tutorial broadcasted by the brand, and easily check the products involved, add them to cart, and complete purchases”.
Manu García, Head of Live Shopping for Latin America at VTEX
Websites like these attract four times more viewers than the original streaming, according to Bambuser. This way, you can benefit from higher add-to-cart percentages, as well as a higher number of completed purchases.
As an added benefit, whether your strategy is centered around influencers, tutorials or comparisons, its impact can last even longer, and it can keep bringing results long after the original broadcast. This is especially true if you decide to prolong the promotions offered during the event.
Grupo Éxito, one of VTEX’s most active Live Shopping clients, has experimented with live shopping archives, giving their customers the chance to revisit its events.
Added value, one click away
The best part of these alternatives —besides getting more bang for your buck— is the ease with which they can be implemented, without the need to add any hardware or sophisticated processes.
VTEX Live Shopping app, supported by Amazon Web Service’s cloud architecture, enables you to ask for the recording of a live shopping stream after it’s done. This produces a video file that can easily be hosted on your website, or be shared with your social media team in order to make the necessary edits.
So: if you were considering the adoption of a Live Shopping strategy, but were concerned about its “limited impact”, hopefully, you now know the great revolution it can represent for your business, as well as the simplicity of implementation that companies such as VTEX offer you.
