Live sales are now the lifeblood of Paparazzi. If you aren’t doing live sales, and are still relying mainly on album sales for your Paparazzi business, the consultants we have talked to strongly recommend that you start doing live sales.
We’ve talked to some of the most successful consultants, and put together what we think are the most important things to keep in mind when running a live sale.
How often should you go live?
This can vary from person to person. If you only have 50 customers, it might overwhelm them a bit to go live every night. But if you have 5,000 customers, every night might be appropriate.
You want to go live often enough to actually make money (these sales are going to be your primary money-makers), but not so often that your customers stop showing up. Usually the number is between twice per week and four times per week.
However many times you decide to go live weekly, we can say without hesitation to make sure you are consistent. Retailers with the best results go live on the same day at the same time each week. Your customers start to be able to set aside that particular time and know that you will be there.
How do you get people to show up at your live sales?
When you go live, it is extremely important that people actually show up at your live sale. You should use every single method you can think of to let people know (or just remind them) that you are going live.
You should definitely send out an email, you definitely post in your Facebook group.
We would be remiss though if we didn’t mention our own product (Mobile Text Alerts) as a way to notify your customers via Facebook, Twitter, Email, Facebook Messenger, and most importantly, texting.
95% of people read text messages within 10 minutes of receiving it, so texting is a great way to get people to your live sales.
Do you need special equipment?
Good equipment is important to good live sales. Some people think that the quality of your live sale doesn’t matter. Either people will buy, or people won’t buy. But from our experience, the better quality your live sale is, the more people will want to watch it.
Why is this? Because people watch your live sale not just to buy, they want a good experience during your sale. Good live sales are enjoyable and pleasant to watch. People enjoy watching well made things.
With that said, don’t go out your first live sale and spend $1,000 on video equipment. Start small. You can run a live sale with nothing more than an iPhone.
Improve one aspect of your live sale at a time. Maybe for your next live sale, try and improve the lighting, then for the next live sale try and improve the video quality, etc.
Listen to feedback from your viewers. Do they have any complaints (ex: “It is too dark,” “we can’t hear you well,” etc)?
Make your sale a little better each time, and eventually it will be at the quality that you want it.
What equipment should you use?
With all that said – What are the best tools to use for your live sale?
Camera
Actually a vast majority of retailers don’t use special cameras. In fact of all the retailers we interviewed, none of them used a camera other than their iPhone camera.
The iPhone camera is a wonderful camera, and it makes it the simplest for sharing to Facebook.
Although you don’t need a special camera, there are iPhone lenses that can make your live sale experience a lot better.
The Aukey Ora iPhone Camera Lens ($29 on Amazon) greatly increases how much fits on your iPhone screen.
Lights
Lighting is more important than you might think. Especially when purchasing clothing, the lighting on a dress might be the difference between a customer saying “that looks great!” and buying it, and “no thank you.”
Natural lighting is the best lighting you can get, but it isn’t very practical to do your live sales outdoors. Try to run your live sale in a room with several windows.
Windows usually are not enough though, especially if you do your live sales at night (which most people do). LimoStudio has some great, simple lights on Amazon for $52. They would be a great starting point.
Audio
The iPhone actually has pretty good audio on its own, but if your customers are having a hard time hearing you, or you just want to really up your game, Rode has an iPhone mic that works really well for about $40.
Really, the only other equipment we would recommend is a tripod.
People often get nauseous from watching video. You can help alleviate this by just keeping the video steady.
The arkon tripod works great for iPhones, and is only $18 on Amazon.
Other General Tips
Without making today’s lesson too long, here’s a list of other tips we gathered in order to have a great live sale:
- The camera on the back of your iPhone is much better than the camera on the front of your iPhone. Use the back camera, and plug an HDMI cable from your phone to your TV to watch your live sale.
- Don’t start your live sale until you have tested everything out, and you are 100% ready!
- Remember that even if people aren’t in your live sale, if you record it and show it later, any comments you make at the beginning will be recorded.
- Look at the camera, make connection with people, don’t fidget, don’t play with your hair.
- Make sure to handle the jewelry carefully! No one wants to buy something that they’ve seen thrown all over
- Make sure you have enough battery for the whole sale, or are plugged in
Finally, most successful retailers made comments to try and be “entertaining” while presenting. Don’t think of yourself as just a salesperson, but you are presenting.
This doesn’t mean be disgenuine. If I had to pick, I would rather watch someone who is a little boring, but I can tell they are being real, rather than someone who is overly expressive and very fake.
Be yourself, but be your most expressive and friendly self.
Actionable Exercise For Today:
Think of one tip from today that you will apply to your next live sale. Comment below, and let us know when you are going to implement it!
