You’ve spent the whole week preparing for this party. You’re all dressed up, drinks are on ice, food is on the table, and lounge music runs in the background. What a great night ahead! But when the time comes, nobody actually shows up. Because you forgot to invite people. Now imagine this happens to any of your live shopping experiences. Even more dystopian, right? But the good news is that this will never happen as long as you promote your live shopping event.
Plan your live shopping event
First thing first: before you start marketing your next live shopping event you should have a plan in mind. While during this article we’ll focus on how to get in front of as many people as possible, I think it’s mandatory to always start by drafting your plan.
This will help on a number of levels, but most importantly it will also help you decide what are the ideal customers for that specific live shopping. And identifying the right customer persona is going to allow you to create the right marketing message (and campaign) for your session.
A good starting point is to decide what products you want to showcase and sell. Starting with this in your mind will make it easier to identify the right audience. Once you know your audience, it will become easier to identify the right host. It can be any brand ambassador, influencer, or member of your team that could engage the specific audience.
From here on things will go into a straight(er) line. Once you have selected the products and nominated at least one host for the show, you can proceed and start sharing the great news. Well, actually there is one more step you should take before promoting your live shopping event.
Schedule your event
Once you have sketched your session you should schedule it on your live shopping platform. This way, you can start sharing the good news with your community.
You don’t actually need to have everything in place for the initial setup. But there are 3 elements that we find essential at this stage of the process:
Set up the name and description for your online shopping session
Keep some surprises for when you go live, but help your potential customers understand what will be the focus of your event. A good description of the event will help viewers set up the right expectations. And, if you have identified the right audience for your show, your message will “hit the target”.
Let people know who will host the session
Another important aspect is the one the host of the event. Share the name of the person that will go in front of the camera, regardless if it’s an influencer or an experienced member of your team.
Set up a start date and time
Communicating the exact date and time when you will go live is essential. Otherwise, how will customers know when to show up for your live shopping session? With Streams.live the no-show rate can be easily reduced. We will cover this subject towards the end of the article, also from a technical point of view, so make sure that you read it to the end.
Embed the shopping session on your platform
Streams.live provides a unique URL for each live shopping session hosted on the platform. So don’t worry if you don’t own a website – you will have a designated landing page where to invite your audience.
However, whenever possible, we encourage our partners to embed the experience on their platforms as well. Or on a partner’s platform for that matter. What we’ve noticed lately is that many brands partner up with media companies and embed the experience on their platforms as well.
With Streams.live, “embedding the experience on your website” actually means copying and pasting a code snippet. So it will probably take you around 30 seconds to have the experience up and running on your website. This way, all your efforts of promoting the live shopping experience will bring people back to your platform – and this is a great thing for any business.
Email marketing still works
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
Although billions of emails are sent and received daily, email marketing is still used by almost every company out there. Because the newsletter still works.
Unlike other forms of paid or organic marketing, email marketing is totally under your control. When people decide to share their email addresses, they share them with you. Even if you are using third-party solutions to deliver your messages, you still own the data. Contrary to Social Media channels, where algorithms may decide to cut your reach, email marketing is strictly between you and your community.
You should definitely use this channel to promote your upcoming live shopping events. Include a direct link to the webpage where the session will be hosted, but use the message to also communicate the benefits they will get by joining the live. This way you will continue building a relationship between your brand and your audience.
Promote your live shopping event on Social Media
In 2022, we spent 147 minutes a day on social media platforms. Almost two and a half hours. And so do our customers. If you want to drive customers back to your website for the upcoming shopping event you could definitely use these platforms in your favor.
Post as often as possible (but keep the 20/80 rule), run ads, and invite team members and partners to share the news with their communities. At the same time, you can use the specific features for each of the platforms – the ones that have proved to be the most suited to drive engagement.
Facebook. set up your live shopping show as a Facebook event. FB Events are visible to anyone on the platform and are great at driving engagement. Those interested can submit their interest in it and share it on their walls, helping you reach broader audiences. You can also drive engagement by using the discussion tab and learning more about what people are looking to gain from your products.
print screen from Facebook
Instagram. Post stories on Instagram and use the countdown feature to reiterate the idea that your event will start in X days. The story countdown feature not only can be shared by your followers but they can also opt-in to be notified when the time comes.
Youtube. Youtube lets you schedule your next live event, allowing you to drive engagement long before the actual live. As for the other mentioned options, this one also allows viewers to choose to get notified when you go live.
Ok ok. But I’ve mentioned that we encourage our partners to go live on their website and at the same time we recommend using Social Media events. What’s the catch? Enter: multicast!
Promote your live shopping event…live
With Streams.live, you can share the live video experience with your social media accounts with ease. The multicast feature allows you to connect third-party destinations through RTMP. Once you’re live on your website, you’re also live on your Social Media accounts.
Unlike the other options mentioned throughout this article, multicast will help you promote your live shopping event while it’s happening. You can set up links redirecting clients to where the party is actually taking place: on your website. And here is why:
- When you’re live on 3 different social media platforms, your customers have 3 different experiences. Viewers on Youtube will not have access to FB chats and the other way around. By bringing all your audiences in one place you will offer a complete experience where all viewers will have access to the discussions.
- By integrating your eCommerce platform with Streams.live, shoppers have the option to add products to the cart straight in the video experience. A seamless shopping experience that it’s not yet available on any social media platform.
Invite guests to (co-)host your shopping shows
There are many live shopping formats that work wonders. When it comes to content, video format, or who actually hosts the show. And when you decide to create a co-hosted live shopping session or one hosted by an influencer, you can use this in your marketing efforts as well.
The person going in front of the camera will definitely want to share this with their community. And so your next event will become visible for people that otherwise may miss their chance of seeing your products showcased live.
The feature that supports your marketing efforts
When your marketing efforts pay off, you’ll see a lot of traffic hitting the page where you have embedded the live stream shopping event. But what will they actually see as you are not live yet? A black screen?
With Streams.live you can upload a background image or a video teaser that runs in the loop, keeping customers engaged all the time. But that’s not all. Remember the part where I was mentioning the start date and time for your event?
Streams.live allows your customers to register for notifications. Straight on your website. The notifications feature is embedded into the live experience, meaning you just need to set up the time and date for the event and select what information to allow your customers to share with you. Customers that want to be notified when you go live can opt-in with their email addresses, phone numbers, or both. It’s your choice. At the same time, they can add the event to their calendars. So they never forget about the live shopping experience.
Each potential customer that sees the live shopping page before live will be able to opt-in and get notified. Thus reducing the no-show rate for your event and supporting your marketing efforts.
Final words
Live shopping provides the biggest conversion rates for any digital sales channel. But, before customers can actually purchase from your sessions, they first need to know about them. This is why, in order to have successful campaigns, you need to promote your live shopping events.
