“Lai lai lai! Today it’s this fish ah! This fish, if you buy at the restaurant ah, it’s RM 400. I give this can of abalone also. Come bid! START NOW!”

The timer ticked down 3 mins. I tapped “RM50” and hit send. The comments flooded in. RM60. RM80. RM90. The bidding went higher and higher. The timer buzzed. The final price the fish and the can of abalone went for is RM 150. What a bargain! I laid in bed that night, beating myself up for losing the bidding.

Platforms are now flooded with live content. Lazada and Shopee give their merchants a platform to do live commerce everyday. Influencers are inviting other influencers to go live on Instagram. A sea (heh punny) of fish sellers doing live commerce on Facebook. Gamers are streaming with a vengeance across different platforms. Viewers are spoilt for choice. It is clear as day Facebook wants to capitalize on this phenomenon as well. We have seen Facebook pages with followings less than 4,000 followers raking in 15,000-16,000 views, not to mention raking in revenue just doing live commerce on that platform. This just means that their algorithm is favouring live videos than your usual postings. On our end, we are seeing an increased in enquiries to Nuffnang teams to do live videos for brands as well.

Before you jump in for this ride, it is important to remember live videos are a very demanding type of content. They are usually around 45 minutes long or more. That’s 45 minutes viewers are not getting back. Live videos require viewers to interact via sharing, commenting and reacting. This takes effort, however small it may seem. As a base, these are things we need to remember and take to heart. With that, our mindset changes from how to keep audiences from dropping out to how to maximize value for their time and actions. And in regard to live commerce, remember we are asking for viewers to part with their hard-earned money. We must give them value! Remember the extravagant low bid for the RM400 fish? The seller definitely made a loss, but he made a customer happy. In fact, he made other customers wanting more and built up FOMO. This is extremely key and you will find a common phenomenon in most trending social media campaigns (not just live commerce).

To maximize value for our audiences, these are general guidelines that we can follow:

1. Live commerce is meant to be action-packed and spontaneous. Think Jason Bourne car chase scenes on steroids. Throw in a twist. Do something unexpected. Entertain and educate them about your brand. Build an experience that will benefit the viewers. They will know if you have them at the top of your mind. Manufacture these spontaneous moments to keep them on the edge.
2. The face for your live commerce is arguably more important than the product itself. Some products sell themselves. Most times, it’s who is selling the product. Viewers always choose with familiarity, relatability and trustworthiness. The host is also selling the entire live commerce experience as much as he or she is selling the product. You can plan entire live commerce mechanics but if your host falls flat, the entire experience goes down with it.
3. You need a team of Power Rangers. If the host is the Red Ranger and leader, then you would need the other Rangers to handle a variety of other tasks on the backend. From handling comments to deciding giveaway winners to fulfilment, a lot of these works go under the radar when we are watching live streams. Every Ranger has a part to play to make the live commerce experience exciting and fun.
4. The live commerce mechanics must be simple, convenient and fun. Remember we are taking time and effort from viewers to be a part of this experience. The moment they feel it is cumbersome, that is the moment we lose out.

The above guidelines are good foundations to start with. Building the entire experience can be a huge undertaking, we understand that. And so, integrating our years of creating marketing experiences with clients, we have launched Nuffnang Live with Commerce.Asia. This is an end-to-end live commerce solutions starting with providing the right influencers, to creating and executing the live sessions and down to fulfilment and delivery. If the above read is something exciting to you, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]!