The Benefits of Livestreaming for Your Business in 2024

In the next four years the livestreaming industry is estimated to reach an industry value of $250 billion annually. This year, in 2024 the value is just barely over $100 billion, so before you read through this insight just know that we are speaking to companies that want to begin livestreaming to not only grow their business, but to partake in a growing industry with huge potential. Livestreaming can help your business in numerous ways including spotlighting your employees, offers, sales, value proposition, or to even make a profit from livestreaming platforms themselves.

Real-time engagement can be the most effective, honest, and personal ways to reach your prospective customers. Answering questions live creates a sense of authenticity that can not be imitated by other mediums. Nothing is more sincere than a person representing their brand answering a direct question in real time. Businesses have livestreamed successfully on platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, X (Twitter), Kick, Instagram, TikTok, and even LinkedIn. Almost every social media platform has their own livestreaming service.

In this insight we are going to explain the benefits of livestreaming for your business, the programs to consider using to accomplish some successful livestreams, and the etiquette you may want to consider before you press “go live” on your broadcasting program.

Livestreaming is a new phenomenon gaining popularity over the last 15 years, but the real surge in users of livestreaming platforms happened during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. People were stuck at home, businesses were closed, and you had to distance yourself from people so they wouldn’t get sick. Businesses took one look at livestreaming platforms and thought, “Maybe we could do a product showcase live? Answering questions about our process while live could intrigue people! How about we offer in-store discounts from codes we give away only on the livestream?”

The entire market for livestreamed videos took off in a matter of months, and 2020 remains one of, if not, the largest livestreaming explosions in history. People not only wanted to see people interacting live, but they also wanted their television shows on demand. We saw a flurry of streaming platforms come out with their own streaming services like Peacock and Apple TV. This let businesses advertise across a larger selection of television platforms as well.

Question and answer sessions are the go-to for businesses considering livestreaming, but there are many options out there. Depending on your business you could consider livestreaming your employees accomplishing a difficult task, or even a mundane one if they’re entertaining enough, but ultimately it will come down to your own taste. Here are a few examples of livestreams that have seen success over the past few months:

• Live tutorial on fixing car engines from mechanics
• Puppy Cams for pet stores
• Culinary services during the dinner rush
• Get ready with us before our business opens

Engaging with viewers on a live platform is incredibly interactive and gives your audience a sense of immediacy and personal connection. It presents a human element to your business that can’t be expressed in a social media post or a graphic in an email. This builds trust and credibility with your audience. Understanding your prospective customer’s concerns in a livestream environment will show you their thoughts in real-time which will give you an insight on what is really important to them. This also gives you immediate feedback. If something is unpopular your audience will let you know, make a note, and then make strides to adjust your sales strategy once the livestream is over. These instances can only help your business.

Going live will present your business to a wider audience, just by the nature of livestreaming. Social media platforms will always want more people on their platform, and they are always presenting new content to their viewers. Your livestream will be pushed out to people who may have an interest in your industry, your brand, or even randomly stumble upon you.

There are many livestreaming platforms and there are a few services out there that enable you to use all of them at once:

• Restream
• Streamlabs
• XSplit

Consider casting a wide net first, and then narrowing your platforms down later, or not at all as it costs you nothing to keep the livestreams going on all platforms. On sites like YouTube, Facebook, and X the livestreams are permanently stored on your channel’s page for the future.

You can also repurpose this content into long-form and short-form video. Some platforms offer a “clip” option that saves the last 30-seconds of your livestream. Save the video and post it as a short on YouTube, a Reel on Instagram and Facebook, or a TikTok. You can also make announcements on social media platforms to advertise when you’re going live. This type of content creation system leads to tons of evergreen content on your pages, even though it can be a lot of work.

The other upside to these content creation systems is it targets audiences who prefer to watch video. Video consumption keeps going up year after year as videos are far more entertaining, and the general population’s attention span has rapidly declined over the last decade. The engagement you receive from making these livestreams and video pieces will have livestreaming sites pushing your content out to more people more often.

In our last insight we mentioned shoppable posts are extremely popular in 2024, and you can leverage this popularity to more sales. If you livestream an employee testing out a new product and people are asking where to find it you can then link it directly to your website’s store. Nothing convinces people of a product’s worth like seeing it in action. If you have a new product, you can show your audience exactly the strengths and weaknesses that product offers in real-time.

We mentioned adding a livestream discount which can be done by creating a landing page with the offer that sends them to your website and they can enter a discount code. It doesn’t have to be much, even a 5% discount on a brand-new product is a good deal for a consumer. You can also portray immediate action from them, as you can say to your live audience that the code is only good for that day/week/timeframe/etc. This encourages people to use that discount now, rather than later.

A great example of these strategies can be found on TikTok. The parent company Bytedance has invested a ton of money into facilitating the TikTok Shop, and products can be linked during a livestream with discounts or deals already applied when done through a specific livestream. TikTok Shop and Facebook Marketplace act like Amazon and eBay in a way, they are a third-party that facilitates the sale and takes a small sliver of the profit. Consider using strategies like a live auction stream, or a stream with time-sensitive sale offers.

Being able to livestream on a platform us usually free (Except for X, as of July 23^rd, 2024, they require you to have a paid subscription), but a few have some requirements like number of followers or subscribers to your channel. These also don’t cast your business any money (we do not recommend buying subscribers or followers) but it does take time to build up your audience. Going live on the platforms you are able to livestream from will naturally point people in the direction of your other social media pages and your website, so it will come with time.

Here are two programs to start your livestreaming journey for free:

OBS – A broadcasting system that takes your video and sound and sends it to a platform of your choice.

Restream (free version) – This platform send your signal to other sites at the same time, and allows chats to be combined from all of those sites. It’s like an HDMI splitter for social media sites.

Just using these two tools you can livestream to 2 different platforms and have a live chat feed from both presented to you in a digestible format. Since the down payment to start this adventure is practically free (you will need a computer or tablet) the return on investment for livestreaming is through the roof. If you have a popular enough channel, you can make quite a bit of money from people subscribing to you on Twitch or buying a membership on YouTube.

Each livestreaming service has its own metrics tool, and the one we mentioned above, Restream, automatically sends you an email report after every stream. These will tell you how many people watched, how long they watched, what time of the stream you had more popularity, and which sites they tuned in from. These metrics can be logged and presented to investors, bosses, etc.

If your livestream becomes viral and you find yourself with an overwhelming number of questions, comments, etc. you might need to rethink how many people are helping with the production, getting moderators to enforce rules, or to change the streaming guidelines. For example, you can select a slow chat mode on Twitch that forces chat to run at a reduced pace and viewers can comment only once every so many minutes.

Like everything related to your business, you must plan and prepare for everything. While hitting the “Go Live!” button on Facebook sounds enticing, you need to pick a well-lit location, consider getting a microphone, or even a nicer webcam for your computer to give a good showing. We would like to emphasize the microphone part, viewers will tolerate a somewhat inconsistent video feed, but they will NOT tolerate bad audio. They can close their eyes; they can’t close their ears.

Prepare an outline of general topics for your livestream. You will not be able to write an entire scripted showing for a livestream, and it defeats the purpose of being genuine and interactive. Create a clear goal and comment to your audience about that goal. If you are looking to gain 15 followers, then mention it every 15 minutes or so that you are looking to hit 15 today, and once you hit that goal spend the rest of the livestream thanking your audience for the follows, likes, subscriptions, etc.

Promoting your livestream is multi-pronged, but the MOST important way to gain traction is to keep a consistent schedule. If you go live every Tuesday at 8am your audience will know and get alerts. If they have to go to a social media account, look for a post about the next time you go live they will probably write it off. As you become more adept at livestreaming creating graphics and promotions for your events will become easier and more in-depth.

Lastly, how to engage with your audience is also important. It is not professional to swear constantly, use derogatory language, or to just make fun of people. Try to present yourself well by dressing nicely and keeping yourself kempt. Also, depending on your business/brand if you don’t want in-person attention and only want to push online sales do NOT mention your home address or any other identifying information you do not want out on the internet. We hesitate to mention the suburb you live in, just pick a city close by and use that as a general marker.

You did it, you went live and tried it out. You got to talk to people in real-time and answer their questions, good job. Here is a quick recap of the steps to setting up a content creation system with your livestreams:

1. Set up you location/backdrop
2. Adjust your streaming software
3. Go live in front of an audience
4. Go back and clip out segments from that live broadcast
5. Repurpose those clips into short-form videos

This content creation process will have you making upwards of 50 pieces of content a week. If someone asks an important question on your livestream you can save that response on ALL of your social media forever, it’s evergreen.

The potential for livestreaming your business is unlimited, and the market for livestreaming is only going to increase exponentially over the years. Make sure to jump on this trend now before you get left in the dust by your competitors.

If you have any questions on livestreaming equipment, programs, or coaching make sure to give us a call here at Acclaim, we have your back.