Video shopping is a highly interactive medium. If you have an engaged customer, their needs are being met and their propensity to buy is higher.
So what is engagement in the context of video?
Engagement around video is traditionally seen as length of time a shopper views a video, or if a shopper interacted with or took some action in or around the video. This is a hugely important metric in brand marketing because it gives an indication that the shopper is beginning to consider a purchase. With video being so powerful, engagement with a video reliably predicts purchase.
Engagement in live video shopping is different because it’s live and it’s interactive
Live video takes engagement to another level. Because the video is live, it means the presenter can react to the needs of the audience. They can tell if a shopper or a group of shoppers are engaged in real time. If shoppers are unengaged, the presenter can change tact, do something different. If a shopper is engaged – it’s a matter of keep on keeping on and drive an action.
In live shopping there are levels of engage-ability. Not all of them video, but all of them around communication. Let’s go through the levels:
- Website – self serve, users choose what they want to view, if it meets their needs, they engage, if not, they move on
- Chatbot – also self serve, but chat bots ask questions and have predestined answers. More responsive, but restricted in “intelligence”
- Live chat – here you interact with a human, over text. Shoppers express needs, chat “agents” respond to those needs. More intelligent than a chatbot, but at scale, one chat agent is taking to 6 people at once. Only so responsive
- Audio – this is the call centre. You are one to one, you have the undivided attention of the “agent”. You are hugely responsive to needs, but also have the ability to “connect” and relate to a fellow human being as well as being sensitive to non verbal cues like tonality and sub text.
- Video – basically as close as you can get to a face to face conversation. Everything that audio gives plus, facial expressions, body language, visual setting all contribute to engagement.
…..coincidentally, the Confer With platform works across all of these levels, but we care most about video – because it is the most engaging. Video will allow an expert in store engage at the most effective level with a shopper, resulting in better actions and commercial outcomes.
Engagement in live video shopping goes even further
Live video shopping is much more dynamic that you might expect. There are types of engagement in live video shopping. Specifically one to one and one to many engagements. Let’s look at them both.
One to one engagement – is pure, individualised or personalised shopping. This is a retail expert talking to their customer directly via live video stream. Connections are established, needs are being communicated (explicitly by asking or implicitly by seeing the reaction shoppers have to the experts statements), and hopefully those needs are being met. This is a hugely powerful conversion driver.
One to many engagement can be described as – grouped needs. One presenter taking to multiple shoppers at once. There is some interaction, often shoppers communicating by chat, and experts responding via video. This no’s viewed as more scalable, but effectiveness in engagement reduces when compared to one to one.
Live video shopping is nothing if not dynamic. It’s almost like a shot of adrenaline in the arm of engagement. Marketers and retailers have a new suite of tactics available to them to engage with customers.
If you are interested in learning first hand how powerful live video shopping is in driving engagement, please get in touch to get a demo of Confer With.
