Please read this section with these questions:
1. What are the factors that affect the traffic of the live broadcast room?
2. How to increase the traffic of the live broadcast room?
3. Why is the first five minutes of the live broadcast the “golden five minutes”?
An account that operates both short videos and live broadcasts is a dual-core drive, which can speed up the progress of the entire project. However, TikTok live broadcasts and short videos are two different traffic pools and recommendation mechanisms, and the corresponding strategies are different. If you do both, you need to master two sets of strategies. But don’t worry, I believe you will learn quickly because the underlying logic is consistent.
The traffic of the live broadcast room does not depend on how many fans the account has, but the number and stickiness of fans will have an impact on the data of the live broadcast room. For accounts with fans, the platform will push more accurate people to the live broadcast room, and their stay time and interaction rate will also be higher. When the data of the live broadcast room is good and attracts a lot of new fans, the data of short videos will also increase.
However, many merchants who do TikTok live broadcasting will be trapped in the problem of no audience in the live broadcast room: without people, no matter how good the words are, there is no way to make a deal. In this section, I will summarize the factors, diagnostic methods and improvement methods for TikTok live broadcast rooms to obtain traffic, to help you solve the problem of no traffic or low traffic in the live broadcast room.
1. Factors affecting TikTok live streaming traffic
Generally speaking, an account in a healthy state (not punished for violating platform rules) will have a wave of extremely fast traffic in the first five minutes of broadcasting, usually about 500 views (I call it the “golden five minutes”). If we can “catch” this wave of traffic, let users stay in the live broadcast room, and have likes, comments, interactions, attention and purchase behaviors, the system will recommend more traffic to you to enter the live broadcast room. If you fail to “catch” this traffic, users will soon be lost, and the system will reduce recommendations until all the people in the live broadcast room are lost and there are no viewers.
TikTok backend will use the following four factors to determine whether you can “catch” the traffic it pushes to you.
1. Effective entry rate
When users swipe to the live broadcast room or look at the recommended page of the live broadcast room, they are at the “door” of the live broadcast room and have not entered the live broadcast room. Or users swipe to your live broadcast room but do not stay effectively and just slide away. These situations mean that your live broadcast room is only displayed to users, but is not selected by users as an effective view. If your effective entry rate is very high, the background will determine that your cover or the content you are showing is attractive to this group of people, and will continue to recommend users to you, and because of the strengthening of tags, the recommended users will become more and more accurate.
2. Stay time
Staying time is the most critical factor. I mentioned when talking about the traffic of short videos that what TikTok wants most is the length of time users use this app, whether it is short videos or live broadcasts, as long as you can retain users and extend the usage time, TikTok will be willing to recommend more user traffic to you. So even if you are a new account with zero fans, as long as you can do everything you can to retain the first wave of traffic during the live broadcast, it is common to increase the number of people online at the same time in the live broadcast room to several thousand, and the total audience to tens of thousands.
3. Interaction rate
Interaction includes likes, comments, and follow-ups. It is essentially a kind of stay, but it is more active than pure stay. However, our employees use their own accounts to interact in the live broadcast room. This behavior is usually not judged by the system as valid interaction data, because the platform wants to prevent artificial data pulling.
4. Purchase behavior
If the length of stay is the user’s “vote” for our live broadcast room with time, then the purchase behavior is the “vote” for us with money. Purchase behavior can show that the user’s recognition is very high, and the system will increase your weight accordingly. It will also label our account according to the fan portraits who have purchased the product, and then continue to recommend users to the live broadcast room based on the purchase behavior.
These four factors are the decisive factors for the traffic of the live broadcast room. After clarifying the influencing factors and the logic behind them, let’s look at it based on this cognition: How should we optimize these factors to increase the traffic of the live broadcast room?
2. How to increase the traffic of TikTok live broadcast room?
1. How to improve the effective entry rate?
First, the most critical factor in improving the effective entry rate is the live broadcast screen. In the previous section, I mentioned that the live broadcast effect should be improved through the lighting arrangement of the live broadcast room and the placement of products, but these are auxiliary factors. The most important thing is the picture effect of the product display. The following three pictures, from left to right, are the optimization comparisons of two live broadcast pictures of a jewelry overseas project I incubated. Before I helped them optimize, the live broadcast room they prepared was very messy, the light was dim and yellow, and the most important thing was that the anchor was always holding the smallest diamond ring to show and explain. When the live broadcast camera was not very good, it was difficult for users to see the exhibit clearly and it was even more difficult to be attracted by the picture. Therefore, this live broadcast room could not withstand the first wave of traffic, and after 7-8 minutes, there were no viewers in the live broadcast room.
I asked them to make adjustments to the live broadcast room environment first: adjust the light color, keep the background as clean as possible, shorten the distance between the product and the lens (this is very important, so that users can focus on your product as soon as they come), etc. On this basis, test the traffic of each product one by one.
This is really very important! I must emphasize it here! After doing a good job of visual foundation, you must test the traffic of each style. You can’t subjectively think that which one is good and play it in the live broadcast room. Instead, you must test it and speak with real data. Only by testing hundreds of products in multiple live broadcast rooms at the same time and recording the traffic data of the live broadcast rooms can the products with real traffic be screened out.
Even if the styles are different in the same category, the traffic will be very different. Look at the second picture, which is a screenshot of the live broadcast of the product after an adjustment. The traffic is much better than the first one: 10 minutes after the broadcast, it can basically stabilize at 20~40 people online at the same time, and the number of inquiries and purchases is also good. After helping them adjust for the second time, continue to test the product, and the measured traffic has reached a new level: the number of people online at the same time can reach between 100~200, the total number of viewers can reach 5000~8000, and the order conversion effect has also been significantly improved.
Therefore, the product style and display method determine the picture of the live broadcast room, and the degree of attraction of the picture to users determines the effective stay and entry rate of users. Repeatedly testing styles in the live broadcast room and reviewing the data can help you find the real traffic style, improve the effective stay and entry rate, and make the traffic of the live broadcast room have a qualitative leap.
Second, label the account and live broadcast room to get accurate crowd push traffic. I have explained the importance of labels very thoroughly in the short video section, and I believe you are also very clear that accurate labels can bring accurate traffic to the account. Here I need to mention that compared with short videos, live broadcasts have an additional high-weight labeling method-user purchase behavior. If a user buys a product in your live broadcast room, the weight of this user’s label will be increased. For example, your live broadcast room is selling false eyelashes, and a male user comes to buy a pair of false eyelashes for his girlfriend, but the user’s own label is “male, basketball, food”. Because this user bought the product in your live broadcast room, the algorithm will recommend a certain proportion of people with the same label, such as men. At this time, because most men are not interested in false eyelashes, the entry rate becomes low. So we don’t want this kind of “reverse label” people to come to the live broadcast room to buy, because it will affect the push crowd in the live broadcast room.
So we should try our best to attract people with accurate labels to enter the live broadcast room to buy products in the decoration style and speech setting of the live broadcast room. When the precise group of people completes the purchase behavior, they will add a stronger precise label to the live broadcast room, prompting the live broadcast room to be pushed to more precise groups of people, the effective stay and entry rate will increase, and the traffic of the live broadcast room will also increase. .How to increase the length of stay?
For new live broadcast rooms, users are unfamiliar with us, and there is no natural familiarity and favorability to make them stay. As for you, you must seize the “golden five minutes” of rapid flow just after the broadcast. Because the system will recommend a wave of rapid flow in the first five minutes of the broadcast based on the known tags of your account. If you can take over this traffic and keep them in the live broadcast room (usually keeping 50% is a very good data), then TikTok will continue to recommend viewers to your live broadcast room at a good flow rate (number of recommended people).
Tips
The flow of live broadcast room is like a water pipe releasing water into a pond. If you can take 50% of the water in the first five minutes, then the water pipe will be stretched to be “thicker”. A thick pipe must flow faster and have a larger flow rate than a thin pipe.
So you must do your best to take the first wave of traffic given by the system in the first “golden five minutes” and increase the length of stay so that there will be considerable traffic continuing to enter the live broadcast room. If you can’t take it, the subsequent flow rate will decrease; if you can’t take it again, slowly no audience will enter the live broadcast room. At this point, TikTok is more obvious than Douyin in China. If you say there is no one, there is really no one.
For this reason, I have summarized three ways to increase the length of stay.
First, use the speed of product delivery and listing to increase stay. After we optimize the live broadcast screen and test the traffic product, the speed of our display and delivery is very important. If the delivery is too fast, users will leave satisfied after buying what they like; if the delivery is too slow, users will be upset and leave directly without waiting for what they want (foreign users are less patient than domestic Douyin users). Therefore, it is necessary to test the speed of product delivery, consciously review and adjust until it is adjusted to an optimal value, and write it in the SOP (standard operating procedure) of this project.
Second, use welfare activities to increase the length of stay. Now the British area Xiaohuangche has opened the coupon function. You can set the threshold for receiving coupons according to the tasks you want users to complete, similar to the blessing bag of Douyin in China. This is the artifact that helps us increase the length of stay and guide attention. This function will be gradually opened and improved, but for areas where this function is not open, you can also increase the length of stay by giving users welfare, such as the giveaway I mentioned in Chapter 4.
During the live broadcast, keep organizing giveaway activities, write “a round of prize draw in the comment area every five minutes” directly in the live broadcast room, and tell the fans in the live broadcast room not to leave, there will be gifts every five minutes, and you can participate in every round. The stay time of fans in the live broadcast room will be extended a lot, and good stay time data can also attract new fans to push traffic.
And as I explained in Chapter 4 about giveaway, its cost can be very low, even covered by postage. So this trick can not only be used to improve the data and traffic of short videos, but also to improve the data of live broadcast rooms. The specific operation method is consistent with the content of Section 3 of Chapter 4, so I will not repeat it here.
Third, use music and sound effects to increase the stay time. The background music and sound effects of the live broadcast room will have a great impact on the stay time. For example, in a live broadcast room selling wearable nails, I arranged for the anchor to play with the acrylic drill on the nail art while selling products. Diamonds collide, making a decompression sound (I mentioned it in the “Super Snowball Model of Short Videos” and added a picture), and it is also visually stunning (because it is a lot of beautiful diamonds), and then tell fans: “First choose the diamond you like, and then choose the style of armor.” Many fans said that this sound is really comfortable and this picture is very decompressing. So they are willing to buy products and stay in the live broadcast room. For me, this wave of operations can not only extend the stay time through decompression sound effects, but also show the strength of our source manufacturers, and give customers a high-end customized shopping experience, killing three birds with one stone.
Speaking of this, let me share where the inspiration for this wave of operations came from: When I was watching the TikTok live broadcast in the US area, I found a very popular live broadcast method: ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Responds, spontaneous sensory meridian response, commonly explained as intracranial orgasm, that is, the pleasure response caused by the human body when it is exposed to some sounds, touch, or other subtle stimulations of other parts). This kind of live broadcast is mostly human live broadcast, with the anchor in front of a big microphone, hitting various objects with his fingernails, crushing certain things, or using props like zippers, etc. Because the sound makes people feel very relaxed and is very suitable for listening before going to bed, this kind of live broadcast room is very popular. There are more than 1,000 people online at the same time, and the anchor can receive a lot of gifts in one night. I extracted the most popular sound effects in this form, combined with products and visuals, and used them in the live broadcast room for selling goods, thus effectively extending the length of stay in the live broadcast room.
The length of stay is very important, which determines the flow and flow rate of the live broadcast room. However, when we are pulling the stay, we must not deviate from the precise crowd portrait of fans. For example, dancing in the live broadcast room selling female products is pulling the length of stay of male fans. This will make the flow of the live broadcast room inaccurate again.
3. How to improve the interaction rate?
The interaction rate also contributes greatly to the traffic of the live broadcast room, because the more users like to interact, the longer they stay and the greater the possibility of placing an order. Therefore, when we increase the interaction rate of fans in the live broadcast room, in addition to improving the interaction rate data, we can also drive the two major factors of stay time and user purchase behavior.
Here I will tell you three very effective ways to increase the interaction rate.
First, use benefits and prizes to trigger interaction. The two welfare methods mentioned just now can set an interaction threshold, such as replying to a specific comment in the live broadcast room to be eligible to participate in this round of lottery. Fans will be very active in sending the content you specify to increase interaction.
Second, create a sense of scarcity of products and services to encourage interaction. For example, you can say in the live broadcast room that this style is limited edition, and there are only 5 in total. Friends who want it can enter “1” in the comment area; for another example, “We have 5 professional sports coaches who will guide you one-on-one in using this fitness ring, but each coach can only serve 5 customers, and the number of places is limited. Fans who want free one-on-one guidance can enter ‘1’ in the comment area, and I will note your needs.” Fans in the live broadcast room will interact according to your requirements because of loss aversion.
Third, stimulate the sense of competition among fans and strengthen interaction. In the live broadcast room, you can put a number next to each product to facilitate fans to “order”. When there are more fans in the live broadcast room, everyone wants the anchor to show the one they want to see, but we don’t show it too fast, so there will always be people entering the number they want to see in the comment area. Some smart fans will repeatedly swipe the number they want to see, and the anchor will really show the most swiped number first. Other fans will see that this method is useful and will follow suit. In this way, the interaction rate will go up.
Users use the TikTok app for entertainment and leisure, so they are naturally “lazy”. We have to use our own methods to mobilize their enthusiasm and make them feel strongly involved. Once this premise is in place, it will be much easier to get them to support purchases.
4. How to promote purchasing behavior and improve conversion rates?
Letting users spend money to pay is our ultimate goal and the most important thing. The reason why we want to do everything we can to increase the traffic in the live broadcast room is to make the transaction funnel larger and thus close more orders. I mentioned earlier that after the transaction of users with accurate tags, the weight of accurate tags will be increased, bringing more accurate traffic to the live broadcast room. This is like a positive cycle flywheel, which will promote each other after it turns.
To increase the purchase transaction rate of fans in the live broadcast room, you need to do two things: direct conversion and indirect conversion.
First, improve the direct conversion of the live broadcast room. Let fans make purchase decisions directly in the live broadcast room, complete the direct conversion transaction, and then guide users to enter the private domain for secondary conversion after the transaction, and guide them to give good reviews and share after receiving the goods. This set of links is the most perfect and ideal. The path of direct transaction needs to be continuously optimized and reviewed as the main line, so how to improve the direct conversion of the live broadcast room? The answer is: one premise + two methods.
First, to improve the direct transaction in the live broadcast room, there is an important premise: the product cannot be too expensive, otherwise the fans will not be able to make a purchase decision in a short time, and they will forget it once they swipe away (this is why I will first systematically disassemble and analyze TikTok’s five forces model in Chapter 2, because they are very important and exist in every link in an integrated manner).
Secondly, I will share with you two specific methods to improve the direct transaction in the live broadcast room: “repeated purchase instructions + limited-time discounts”.
Let’s talk about repeated purchase instructions first. When I talked about the preparation of live broadcasting, I mentioned that it is necessary to repeatedly issue action instructions to fans, among which the purchase action instruction has the highest priority. Constantly remind the fans in the live broadcast room: buy it if you like it, and place an order quickly. Otherwise, their “consciousness” is not that high.
I have a friend who is a boss of cross-border Amazon. After experiencing the Amazon “black swan” incident, he transformed into an independent station and TikTok in 2022. He is a junior college student who made some money through cross-border business in the early years. When he did the first live broadcast on his TikTok account, he went to broadcast it himself. He repeatedly said in his non-standard English and a few words: “Order now! Please! Order it! Very good! Just buy it!” (Please place an order! Please place an order! Just buy it! The thing is very good!) I believe you can understand these sentences without translation. His live broadcast basically repeats these sentences, but because the products and prices are good, and he grasped the very important action instructions and repeatedly issued purchase action instructions to fans, his live broadcast room sales are not bad, and the live broadcast achieved sales of 500,000 US dollars in just 3 months.
I don’t give this example to ask everyone to copy his method, but we can see that he grasped a key point and did it to the extreme. You can add it to your own live broadcast skills.
Let’s talk about limited-time discounts. Douyin in China has already played this trick very well, often making fans in the live broadcast room rush to buy as if they don’t need to pay. However, too many tricks will not work on TikTok. Foreigners’ acceptance of TikTok’s interest in e-commerce is still in the process of slowly improving, not to mention overly complicated tricks. Therefore, we should make it simple and easy to understand when setting limited-time discounts, such as “50% off for orders placed within one minute”. This very simple method is more effective.
Second, deposit the live broadcast room traffic to the private domain for indirect conversion. Fans who can be directly converted into orders must be able to guarantee direct transactions first. However, there are still a large number of fans who have not made the decision to buy immediately, and feel that they need to take a look and think again, or they are not very accustomed to shopping on the TikTok platform. For these fans, we should not “let them go”, and try our best to deposit them in the private domain first, and then continue to “plant grass” day after day, convert them with content, and not cause waste of traffic.
In order to solve this problem, I have summarized a set of TikTok live broadcast room private domain conversion five-step method.
Step 1: Bind private domain tools. Before the broadcast, choose the most suitable private domain chat tools, such as photo wall, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc., and bind them to the TikTok account homepage (if you forget how to do it, you can review the content about private domain traffic in Section 3 of Chapter 2), and prepare for the precipitation of private domain in advance.
Step 2: Provide the words to attract traffic. You need to use rhetoric to guide fans to the private domain, for example: “Every new fan who supports me, go to my photo wall and send me a private message with the code: 123, and you can become a VIP of our brand (while showing a high-end physical VIP card), receive a $50 gift card (similar to the stored-value card of JD.com in China, which can be directly used as money in this merchant), and enjoy a 30% discount on every order in the future, and apply for a free trial of new products from our brand every month. Only the first 20 people can receive this VIP card.”
Such conditions are very tempting for fans in the live broadcast room to get gift cards directly without much effort, and enjoy lifetime VIP. Even if you haven’t made up your mind to buy at the moment, you will feel that it is not a loss to get a benefit first. Doing so will not let go of some potential users.
It should be noted here: If you have also done the same drainage action, but the effect is not good, it is probably because the “temptation” you give is not big enough to impress these “lazy people” to move their fingers. So how can we offer enough “temptation” and save costs? The key is: gift card + free trial. Gift cards are coupons that can only be used when purchasing products. In essence, they are discounts given to customers to get them to order quickly; and the logic of free trials is exactly the same as the giveaway I have talked about many times. These two points combined can not only give fans enough “temptation”, but also control costs.
The third step: private domain operation and chat orders. After the fans are deposited in the private domain, strong operational and sales forces are needed to undertake it. After the fans receive the benefits, ask the other party which style they like. The other party has received your benefits and is more likely to reply to your question. At this time, your customer service should be very considerate to help him calculate the discount, for example: “This pearl necklace with a diameter of 12mm, the price of the independent website is $399. Today, our boss gave all fans a 50% discount in the TikTok live broadcast room. Not only that, the $50 gift card I just sent you can be used today. The final price is: $399×50%-$50=$149.” Help them calculate and send it directly, so that users can receive more intuitive signals and can directly trade a batch.
Step 4: The final push. What should I do if the customer is still hesitant after doing all the above actions? Then take out the sales final push method: a limited-time confidential activity given only to the customer. If the customer is still hesitant about the $149 plan given above, saying that this price is too expensive and wants to add a 30% discount on the VIP card, you can first inform the other party that you need to apply for permissions, and then give a reply after a while: I have applied for all the permissions I can, and the final discount is: $399×50%x 70%-$50=$89, which is our unprecedented price. But there are two conditions for this price: first, you need to keep it confidential, and second, you need to complete the payment within 10 minutes. After doing this, the transaction will generally be completed.
Step 5: Reduce the difficulty of placing an order. After talking clearly about the user’s specific needs and problems and giving a discounted price, there is another action: send the specific payment link to the user, so that the user can pay directly by clicking the link, instead of looking for the payment entrance. I have also talked about this in the operational power section of Chapter 2, so I will not repeat it. Live streaming is the most important way for us to monetize TikTok, and it also requires day-to-day practice, polishing, review, and improvement. I have summarized the best and most effective methods, like a martial arts secret book. But whether you can master these skills and become a top master requires repeated practice and a thorough understanding of the underlying logic behind them.