How can marketers maximise the effectiveness of their spend on live commerce?

In a world of shrinking budgets, marketers who look to invest in their live commerce business need to look for sustainable investment for over one to three years, with clearly stated objectives and a picture of success, said Danny Ho (pictured second right), chief financial officer, Sa Sa International Holdings during a panel discussion at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s inaugural Digital Marketing Asia Hong Kong conference. 

Live commerce, which Ho described as “eCommerce ‘on steroids’”, allows brands to interact with a wider audience and provide engaging product demonstrations, encouraging impulse purchases.  

It is one of the latest retail trends that has been leading the China market for years and now emerging in Hong Kong. For example, in May this year, Hong Kong Technology Venture Company's eCommerce platform HKTVmall also unveiled a live commerce channel as part of its effort to strengthen the company's social eCommerce development. 

Behind the glory and success of HKTVmall’s live commerce business, were multiple rounds of trials and errors. Ken Chan (pictured second left), director of business development and marketing said it’s important for marketers to define their objectives before they start their live commerce business. 

“It’s critically important that you talk to your CFO and clarify your target audience...it’s important to give the CFO a benchmark on the average performance, but the actual project is going to be even better,” he added. 

However, it’s not always possible for companies to dish out big bucks on live commerce channels, especially when they are still in their premature stage.  

As such, it’s crucial for marketers to leverage the assets they currently have and turn them into the tools to drive long-term sales, said Agnes Lung (pictured far right), group chief marketing and digital officer, Uni-China Group. 

“For instance, our business nature is still mainly about offline retail. So live commerce for us is still at the supplementary stage. So we cannot really invest too much out of it. So I tried to use the strategy to leverage what we have, For instance, we have a market DJ team which consists of 40 DJs, who can wander across our points of sales to do promotional roadshows.” 

She added that Uni-China Group is also utilising its in-house production teams to promote its products on social media such as Facebook or Instagram to minimise the marketing cost. 

KPIs to look at 

In order to drive long-term sales, sustainable investment in various long-term strategies is necessary. Taking Uni-China Group for example, Lung said that given the group has a team of 40 market DJs, one of the most important KPIs would be the incremental sales target, as well as the uplift in average market size and measurement in viewership count, such as engagement and conversion rates.  

“We will closely monitor the number of reviews and feedback, such as how many positive and negative sentiments and all that,” she added. 

To help marketers perform better on live commerce, Sa Sa’s Ho said he would focus a little bit more on the financials, such as every sales dollar and the contribution of after-platform charges. 

“We actually do a lot of planning ahead of the actual buy, which means we have a lot of products in our product portfolio in terms of margin which can go anywhere from 7% to 87%[…]Obviously, we can't put a high margin on that, there needs to be a certain level of attraction to the consumer as well. So finding the right mix is important. We also found that when we're doing live shows, we tend to have more viewers later at night.” 

Ho also believed that leveraging a knowledgeable in-house beauty consultant with a KOL or celebrity provides Sa Sa with the combo of traffic draw with real product knowledge. 

On the other hand, non-financial KPIs are also the contributing factors to a successful live commerce business. HKTVmall’s Chan said customer engagement and knowing the consumer inside out are also key 

“Just like Uni-China Group’s market DJs, they actually need to be the subject matter expertise for that product and service. So that the DJs can raise the charge rates for the products,” he added. 

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