Why a strategic approach improves your chances of success with live shopping

As with every other major initiative, a live shopping journey should be seen through a strategic lens to make it flourish as an invaluable channel for marketing, sales, and awareness.

When going live for the first time, it may just be as a proof of concept. And that is just how it should be. There is a first time for everything. But going forward, you may come a long way by taking a strategic approach to why and how you go live.

Why you go live

Depending on the size of your business, you may have an overall strategy for your organization. Here you have taken deliberate choices regarding the future direction of your business and allocation of resources to achieve your objectives.  

Perhaps the roots of this strategy have branched out into marketing, sales, and omnichannel strategies. But how does your live shopping adventure fit with these – or how do you fit these strategies to your new live shopping channel? Let’s elaborate.

It has become increasingly important to connect the dots that collectively constitute the business’ brand experience – how you interact with customers across all digital and physical touchpoints. This is omni-channel.  

Thinking strategically about live shopping, you may consider how it tabs into your omnichannel strategy: Is the overall purpose of your live shopping journey to market your products? Is it to create brand awareness? Is it to complement other channels and attract customers to your physical store or webshop? Or is it simply to directly increase sales? Eventually, it may be a combination of the above.  

The range of opportunities that live shopping provides is wide. But deliberately thinking about why you do live shopping helps you connect the dots and match this to your other activities.

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How you go live strategically

One thing is to consider how live shopping fits your overall business strategy, but another is how you approach the individual live shop-ping sessions. After having done one or a few try-outs with live shopping, you have gained some valuable first-hand experience.  

You may have a good overall understanding of your customer base, but now you have got to interact and connect with the segment that watches your live shows. Those are the ones you need to deliver value to. However, at the same time, you should still consider making your brand experience consistent across channels.

Ask yourself: How can my next live session add to my strategic targets, and how do I measure it? One approach is to set yourself some goals and take the necessary actions. A few examples:

If a goal is to increase brand awareness, make the number of viewers an objective. Take the necessary actions to increase the number of viewers, such as promoting the live event, increase followers on social media, make viewers recommend the next show, and more. Measure the view count across a couple of live shows. Elaborate and improve.

If another goal is to increase customer visits in your physical store, make it an objective. Talk about your physical store during the live session or make it an option to pick up reservations in the store. Ask customers if they have seen your live shows, and if that was a factor that nudged them to make a visit. Measure the number of visits through a period, where you also do frequent live shopping sessions. Elaborate and improve.  

Conclusion

We always emphasize to make live sessions personal, present, and informal. But combining it with a strategic approach makes it easier to improve and match the session to your other activities – and to your ambitions.

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