📽️Finding success with TikTok livestream selling
📽️Finding success with TikTok livestream selling
TikTok shop launched a year back in SG. We found initial success but then struggled. Today TikTok is our biggest sale channel, with livestreams contributing to 60% of sales. How did we make it work?
👋 Hola! Welcome to Out of Singapore. This is Shan and I write every Sunday on business and marketing. My everyday revolves around TikTok, Facebook Ads, Instagram, Shopee and various 3PLs. It starts with checking yesterday’s revenue, product orders, marketing spend and MER. Then, checking if all orders are being fulfilled or held due to unforeseen reasons. Finally, prepare inventory for next 30-45 days of sale. When this is done, I work on new product launches and reshaping the brand strategy to scale further. That’s my daily life.
My routine means that I learn new things every day. It’s humbling. This creates an opportunity to share the experience and learnings on this blog. So here I am with another experience - finding success with TikTok livestreams. Today, It has become our biggest distribution channel, with fairly strong ROI.
Today’s structure will be this
Three stages of livestreams selling
What worked for us?
How did we generate meaningful scale?
What’s next?
What doesn’t work?
#1 Three stages of livestream selling
We started selling on TikTok shop from Sep 2023. We were small, unknown and a new wellness supplement brand. We had three distinct phases on TikTok.
Initial phase
Time period : Sep to Nov 2023
When TikTok Shop started, and creators started live selling, it was space up for grabs for everyone. So for the first six months, several new creators came on the scene selling multitude of products. We reached out to streamers who streamed often and within our niche of wellness products. We wanted more streamers to show our products during their stream and sell.
We also hired part time resources to livestream on our official channel. Soon, realised that it doesn’t really work. Consumers don’t like to buy from official brand accounts.
We also reached out to Facebook streamers. However, we could not secure more than two streams. Facebook livestream selling ecosystem had less sellers and it was a distributor kind of business. So, we decided to give Facebook streams a rest.
TikTok become the top channel in the first month itself. In the hopes that the performance will be consistent, we took huge inventory bets. This bet did not play out well.
Amateur phase
Time period : Nov 2023 to Jan 2024
Since I or the team wasn’t familiar with TikTok ecosystem, so we scouted for TikTok MCN. They were supposedly experts in handling TikTok Shop, would work directly with TikTok KAMs and deliver better results. So, we got hold on one of the MCN.
Instead of growing, we degrew for the next 3 months. It was frustrating since the cost of maintaining the agency was high. So we decided to end it at end of January 2024.
Challenges of working with an agency on something new that I faced -
Agencies will follow standard protocols and processes.
They won’t really go out of their way to scale your business.
For agencies, 10% to 20% growth is good. For a brand, that’s not.
Coming of age phase
Time period : Feb 2024 onwards
This is when we decided to do everything ourselves. I didn’t have much hopes, but I had few bullets up my sleeve. I activated the existing creator network we had built in Sep and October. Plus, I was able to get into an working arrangement with our current top streamer - Lucas.
Beyond everything, Lucas was extremely hard working, ambitious and creative individual. We decided to focus our entire energy on daily streaming with Lucas, and working closely with him. I didn’t know if this arrangement will succeed but as time went by, my confidence rose. His story and authenticity clicked with the audience and they would buy a few units.
This is also the period when TikTok Shoppable videos came up. We made a few videos and promoted it. While this worked, our sales were still Livestream dependent.
In April, TikTok launched their new GMV Max advertising format on TT Shop. To improve ROI, I moved our entire budgets to this format. Our scale got limited for the first two months. We needed more shoppable videos. We went after it, specially Lucas understood this very well.
July 2024 onwards Live and videos both started working better. We increased available budgets for GMV Max ad campaigns and started Livestreams with Lucas in the office. Both these initiatives worked very well. We grew 2x in one month.
While July to Sep 2024 has been good, now we are working towards growing further.
#2 What worked for us?
We have grown 3x in six months on TikTok. 60% of this revenue is from affiliate livestreams. Most of this livestream revenue is one creator - Lucas Low. So, what really worked so well? Why other creators could not scale up but Lucas did so well?
Storytelling - Lucas did not come across as just a seller, but a true believer in products. His personal story of hardships along with results seen for his parents, were taken well by the audience. While there has been a backlash on claims, it started a dialogue and we have been able to clarify specific claims.
Authenticity - Lucas has streamed everyday for past 6 months. He is on live talking to consumers with his face shown, with his parents and consumers everyday for over 5 hours. He has a small product selection instead of selling every available brand. He focused on real testimonials, scientific research and personal story. Audience find it authentic and trust worthy.
Focused whitelisted advertising - We run ads from creator accounts and its called whitelisted ads. Since we worked with primarily Lucas, most of the advertising money was spent on promoting his content - live and videos. The content was good, and combined with ads push, it reached right audiences who became our customers.
Mega Streams - We tested a new livestream format where Lucas comes to Xandro office and leverages the laboratory for basic product testing. We also run flash prices on specific products during this stream. It has become one of our major revenue channels. The focus of the stream is always one product - NMN. The focus, location, deal and location combo seems have worked well for us.
Essentially, we focused all our efforts into Lucas’s account and our own account and scaled up content. Livestream is dominated by Lucas while videos has more affiliates.
If you realise, all these activities needed a lot of hard work and commitment from Lucas. We were able to amplify his messages and efforts.
#3 Advertising to generate meaningful scale?
TikTok is a content and social channel. TikTok shop is the easiest means to capture an impulse or an existing demand with storytelling (videos and live). But how do you really get in front of thousands of people? There are two answers -
Make great content
Make okay content and boost with ads
Making great content takes time and a lot of money. For a brand selling physical products, it is better to go with the second approach. Make lots of okay content and amplify with ads.
In case of TikTok, you have these options
GMV Max ads - This will boost shoppable videos, affiliate videos (who have provided access) and product cards.
GMV Live Max - This boosts livestreams for specific accounts. It doesn’t work well.
Custom advertising via TikTok ads - This is more involved advertising platform, similar to Facebook Ads. Unfortunately you cannot run GMV Max and custom ads on one product simultaneously. We split products between GMV max and custom ads to take advantage of both.
The assets that can be promoted are -
Non-product videos (not shoppable) - Can be used followers or getting reach.
Shoppable videos - Can be used for conversion ads.
Livestreams - Can be used for conversion as well as viewership ads.
Our focus has been on conversion led ads. We spend less than 2% of the total money on reach campaigns. Unless I have a lot of money to waste, I am not going to put money behind reach and traffic campaigns.
#4 What’s next on TikTok livestreams?
We are not the biggest on TikTok livestream. It is sustainable but it needs more scale. Here are some plans coming forward.
Hit 10K SGD in a single livestream. We have reached close but crossed it yet.
Hit 30K SGD and then 50K SGD in single livestream.
Repeat the above 2 points a few times each month consistently.
The question then is - How do you entertain 80-120 concurrent viewers? I don’t know yet. That will be tough part to figure out.
Celebrity streams don’t work but can we leverage them?
We have worked with celebrities a few times now. Except once, it has always failed. The economics of celebrity livestreams don’t make any sense. I will write about livestream economics soon. But for today’s purpose, while celebrity livestreams are not revenue generators, they hold attention of 150-250 users concurrently.
Celebrity livestreams are good brand awareness generator but bad sales medium.
That’s it for today!
Thank you reading again! Please like the post if you enjoyed reading 😍. If you found it helpful, please share with your friends or colleagues. 🙈🙈
I made two impromptu, unedited TikTok posts today morning. It’s about the blog and the topics. I will continue doing these posts and slowly start making more involved TikTok videos. Go find me on Tiktok, haha.
This past week has been excruciatingly difficult. More work, more hiring and tons of pending tasks. It’s going to be like this for next 3 months at least. Last October was same. I almost went insane.
Look at this happy kid
Today has been late. But happy that I could send you guys this post. I will write again next Sunday. Till then, ciao! 👋