How livestreams are taking over TikTok Shop
In August, BK Beauty hosted its first eight-hour livestream on TikTok Shop at the brand’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. BK Beauty had recently begun posting live videos on a weekly basis for an average of two hours at a time, with the encouragement of TikTok staff.
The eight-hour livestream turned out to be a hit. By the time it was over, BK Beauty had smashed its modest GMV goal of $20,000 by five times that amount.
A couple of weeks later, TikTok Shop flew out BK Beauty staff members on the platform’s dime to its professional studio in Los Angeles to shoot another livestream. TikTok paired the brand with a five-person production team, armed with professional cameras, lighting equipment and stage direction know-how. What was intended to be another eight-hour livestream ended up running for a total of 10 hours. After the stream, the brand posted a video to its TikTok page that showed the brand’s co-founder and live co-host, Lisa Jauregui, doing lunges on the sidelines of an elaborate movie-esque set outfitted with BK Beauty’s logo and makeup products.
The livestream was such a success that BK Beauty has made live selling a key part of its e-commerce strategy. The brand plans to go live again in mid-November at the LA studio as part of TikTok Shop’s broader Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign.
This is just one example of how, for the past six months or so, TikTok has been encouraging brands to hit the “Live” button — a feature on the app that lets users broadcast live videos and interact with its audience of 150 million users in real-time. TikTok has also been pushing its lives front and center to users on its app via the “For You” page. Big brands are still wary of livestreams, but smaller brands like BK Beauty, which was founded in 2019 and has only about a dozen employees, are leaning in. From investments in pricey camera equipment to tight production schedules, more brands and agencies are treating TikTok Shop like an entertainment venue instead of an e-commerce platform.
“We are often told not to stream any shorter than two hours in length. That tends to be the minimum, though usually we go for three to six hours at a time,” Nicole Rechtszaid, co-founder and co-CEO of Ghost Agency, which works with brands like Alo Yoga and Wyze. “Long livestreams are really the recommendation right now.”
Lights, camera, action
Some TikTok Shop staff are encouraging brands to upgrade to fancy camera equipment and other tools beyond just a mobile phone, according to Rechtszaid.
Equipment can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars, for something like a mobile livestream set-up, to several thousands of dollars, for hardware upgrades like DSLR cameras. A dedicated production set can cost around $10,000, on the low end, said Rechtszaid. She added that most brands opt to partner with agencies like hers, which provide the necessary camera and lighting equipment and charge between $100 to $300 an hour for livestreams.
In this way, brands are functioning more like TV shows. Brands are more likely to win visibility within TikTok’s algorithm if they have scheduled programming. As such, more companies have implemented set days and times when they’ll post. Livestreams themselves, particularly the more produced ones, operate according to a strict schedule around how frequently the hosts discuss a product and when to offer flash deals.
When BK Beauty went live at TikTok’s LA studio, the production team ensured the event ran like a well-oiled machine, according to Sophia Monetti, who heads the brand’s social and influencer marketing.
“There’s someone on the computer with me tracking the click-through rate on each product. There’s one person just looking at how everything’s performing. There’s one person handing the talent onstage products. And there’s another person filming behind the scenes,” Monetti said. The same team has also provided BK Beauty with recommendations on the best type of equipment to buy for the brand’s in-house streams.
As TikTok Shop encourages more brands to adopt livestreams, some agencies like Ghost Agency are leaning away from the traditional affiliate model — in which brands distribute hundreds, even thousands, of samples to influencers every month in the hopes that they’ll post about the product and go viral. Not only does this process put a strain on inventory, it’s “very much like a gamble,” Rechtszaid said. Instead, they’re creating more shoppable content that’s posted on a brand’s TikTok Shop page. In essence, the brand becomes the influencer.
Entertainment value
TikTok Shop’s livestreaming bet will hinge on its entertainment value.
“We’re encouraged to have some sort of unique live-selling point, whether that’s having a live discount or running ads to drive traffic to the page or having a very unique set,” Rechtszaid said.
A prime example of this is The Beachwaver Co., a top-selling brand on TikTok Shop that sells hair care products and was an early adopter of the live shopping format, thanks to platforms like QVC. Beachwaver regularly goes live. One segment includes a live packaging show, in which the brand’s CEO and co-founder Sarah Potempa grabs packages that are about to ship and calls out each customer’s name in the process.
Another way TikTok Shop suggests brands keep audiences engaged is with a tactic called “preheating.” This is when merchants post videos in the weeks ahead of a livestream, highlighting any special giveaways, special guests or product drops audiences can expect from the event, according to BK Beauty’s Monetti. In the case of BK Beauty’s 10-hour livestream in LA, the brand posted preheating videos a whole month in advance. The goal is to generate excitement and drive traffic before the livestream.
One big issue for livestreams is talent. While companies like Beachwaver and BK Beauty leverage the natural charisma of their own executives, others have live hosts who operate more like salesmen than TV personalities, according to one agency executive, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about the platform.
The executive said brands and agencies will need to invest more money to secure the right talent. They said many brands pay a host around $30 an hour to regurgitate a sales pitch. But part of the problem is the pool of hosts is small in the U.S. compared to China, where livestreaming is most popular and brands can easily tap a cottage industry of influencers known as key opinion leaders, or KOLs.
“Livestreaming in the U.S. is very boring. It’s just someone basically reading a script for 15 minutes trying to sell you something, and then they repeat it,” they said. “Chinese influencers have a distinct persona they put on. They know how to put on a show.”