Liveshopping/ video commerce is a huge trend in the e-commerce space right now, as the best new way to inspire a generation of loyal customers and make sales soar. While these goals can easily be achieved by a great livestream shopping campaign, common mistakes a marketing agency makes when orchestrating liveshopping shows can get in the way of this for brands.

Here are the top five – so that you can avoid making them too.

Mistake #1 – Rushing Into It

 In Jeff Walker’s book Launch – a bible of internet marketing – he outlines the importance of making people aware of your offerings, creating a buzz before releasing products and turning your marketing campaign into an event.

After all, no matter how great your products are, if your target audience has no idea they exist, they’re not going to buy them. 

In this new age of marketing, this applies to both the products a brand is advertising and the livestreams themselves. 

Often, when marketing agencies work with brands, they can feel pressured to make a liveshopping show happen as soon as possible – but this is a mistake. 

It’s absolutely essential to take the time, from two or three weeks prior to the event, to generate a buzz and drum up enthusiasm. This is known as ‘activating your audience’ and it allows you to actually have an audience when the brand comes to livestream. 

Mistake #2 – Focusing too much on follower numbers

Obviously, numbers are important. After all, a large audience equals a whole lot of people that a brand can reach.

However, when it comes to selecting the right influencer/presenter to host a brand’s livestream, there’s so much more to take into account if you want to turn those followers into viewers (and those viewers into customers).

For a start, it’s important that an influencers’ following aligns with the brand’s target market – otherwise, you’re going to be marketing the livestream to people to whom the brand isn’t relevant.

More than this, the influencer or creator you choose needs to be engaging in a live video format. Whether this means you check they have experience with video content, presenting, or livestreaming, you need evidence that they can engage an audience.

Engaging the livestream audience is crucial for two reasons: first, it persuades consumers to make purchases during the livestream, and second, it ensures their return for future livestreams (as well as encouraging others to do so).

Mistake #3 – Not actually going live

Although this mistake may seem redundant, given that this blog focuses on livestreaming, marketing agencies often make this error too frequently. They do so by pre-recording content and releasing it at a scheduled time to minimize and control risk, rather than actually going live.

However, when doing this to eliminate risks such as technical problems or “mistakes” made by the influencer, you also remove the magic that makes livestreaming special.

The great thing about livestream shopping app events is that they’re interactive; the audience can react to – and interact with – the livestream host in real time, as well as connect with other livestream viewers.

These factors contribute to a sense of community that fosters brand loyalty – making livestream viewers associate the brand with these positive experiences and keep them coming back to connect week on week.

However, just because it’s live doesn’t mean you have to relinquish all control – we recommend creating an outline for the overarching plot of the livestream, and perhaps a script for your influencer to refer back to.

With that in mind, always encourage your livestream host to adapt and go off script, especially when it comes to audience participation.

Mistake #4 – Expecting a one-off event to work miracles

A livestream shopping strategy is most effective when it’s implemented consistently over a period of time. We recommend hosting at least one livestream event per week over at least a few months to build the kind of community we talked about above.

Along a similar vein, the longer you host livestreams for, the more time word has to get out about the livestream shopping events, and the greater an audience you can hope to gain and turn into loyal advocates for the brand.

This means that – hosted over a greater period of time – livestream shopping campaigns are associated with a higher ROI, since a larger number of people (and, subsequently, customers) tune in.

More than this, livestream events are really difficult to get right the first time around. Like everything in life, perfecting the art of livestreaming takes practice and in order to obtain a loyal customer base, you’ll need to put time into creating livestreams that are engaging and valuable.

Mistake #5 – Not realizing there’s more to it than the livestream itself

Though creating an entertaining and engaging livestream is important, it’s not enough in itself to make a brand’s livestreaming strategy a success.

With that in mind, remember that livestreaming has three stages, and here’s what you should do in each.

Pre-event.

This is the time to research your target demographic, select your influencers and get publicizing via ads and social media to create a buzz. Here are a few resources you can use to prepare your event. Joining an expert community can also be helpful

Livestreaming.

Self-explanatory. This is where you engage your audience with live video content and make them want to come back for more.

Post-event.

A major mistake involves assuming that the job is finished once the livestream ends. There’s so much more value to be gained from the livestream even after the cameras have stopped rolling.

For one, you can repurpose clips from the livestream to use in email marketing – or on product pages on a brand’s website.

Moreover, it’s important to make sure that those who missed out on the livestream can view it by pressing replay.

This allows people to feel included in the community, even if they weren’t there for the main event – and it gives them a window into what the brand’s livestreams are like (and whether they want to mark the next one in their calendar).

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