It can help achieve several
consumer-facing goals, including community building, influencer
outreach, native advertising and social commerce
The noise on social media has reached a fever pitch—to even be heard
over the din, entrepreneurs in Asia Pacific have to produce moving
content on a daily basis, or allocate a large advertising budget. As
none of these strategies is cost-effective, entrepreneurs need to look
for nascent channels to reach new users and customers. One of the most
promising is livestreaming, which has already gone mainstream in China,
where it is set to exceed box office receipts, and is fast growing in
the rest of Asia.
Forward-thinking entrepreneurs would be wise to look at livestreaming as
a major touch point for their brand, as it will enable them to
accomplish a variety of consumer-facing goals, including everything from
community building and influencer outreach to native advertising and
social commerce. As livestreaming in the region has often gone under the
radar in favour of more mass-market industries like ride-hailing,
here’s everything that entrepreneurs need to know about the medium’s
potential for their brand in Asia.
Community Building
Livestreaming can accelerate your community building efforts. Many
brands try to build communities around their business, be they for their
service providers or end users, through Facebook or LinkedIn groups.
Livestreaming may be an effective way to jumpstart your community
building, as it represents such a major shift from how we normally
interact online.
Rather than interact with other users asynchronously on a group or a
board—that is, not in real-time—livestreaming gives people the
opportunity to interact with one another as its name hints: live. Shared
experiences on digital, such as responding to the same show or
participating in the same challenges, can forge stronger relationships
among users and between them and your brand.
Influencer marketing
Livestreaming may make influencer marketing accessible again. The rise
of globetrotting influencers on social media platforms like Instagram
has placed influencer marketing beyond the reach of most entrepreneurs.
With fees for a single post commanding up to tens of thousands of
dollars, only large corporates can realistically work with influencers
on a regular basis.
Livestreaming restores influencer marketing as a tool to the vast
majority of entrepreneurs. Since audiences on livestreaming platforms
tend to be more intimate, fees are not only more affordable (with some
even accepting in-kind payment), but the results may be more impactful.
When a livestreamer shares a product or service with their audience,
viewers do not simply like a post and then scroll on as they would on
Instagram. The influence wielded by influencers on livestreaming
platforms is much deeper: Viewers sit, watch, and listen, in what for
many is one of the few uninterrupted breaks during their day.
More pull
Livestreaming may bring you more bang for your advertising buck. One of
the most commonly touted advertising metrics in digital marketing is
cost per impression, which tracks the cost for every thousand
impressions. No equivalent metric exists for livestreaming. Why? Because
viewers do not simply look at a livestreaming feed and then click away,
as they would with a banner ad or social media post. Each viewer is
instead glued to their phone, giving the kind of undivided attention
that other channels can only dream of.
With this level of intimacy, any form of advertising—not just influencer
marketing—becomes more efficient. Entrepreneurs have many tactics to
choose from. They can create branded content in collaboration with
livestream show producers, provide ads that can air during relevant
programs, or even embed themselves directly into the platform.
Sales channel
Livestreaming can even be a sales channel. Many entrepreneurs may
erroneously assume that livestreaming is only for top-of-the-funnel
marketing activities. Such could not be further from the truth. In every
market where livestreaming has matured, there is always a natural
evolution toward commerce, with viewers ordering products that the
livestreamers is talking about, interacting with, or even wearing.
Commerce on livestreaming is almost like a private version of home
shopping, made interactive to the extreme. Viewers can pose questions to
the livestreamer, request they test the product in different ways, or
even ask for recommendations. Brands appreciate this level of
interactivity, as it spurs more sales from often fastidious Asian
shoppers.
While streaming, of course, does present its own challenges, brands in
Asia Pacific should look to the new medium with gusto. It’s a channel
that presents many opportunities for the entrepreneur discerning enough
to see livestreaming not just as a trend they need to tap, but as a
future they must prepare for.
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