By: Katherine Nguyen, Integrated Marketing Coordinator

Today’s digitally-savvy brands have countless tools at their disposal that allow them to reach wider audiences and increase consumer awareness. With social media, blogging and SEO among some of the most popular marketing methods, brands will not find a shortage of tactics any time soon. However, any marketer knows maintaining the upper-hand in competitive marketplaces requires not only keeping up with current industry trends but thinking ahead. That’s where live streaming comes into the fold. 

Live video is a fairly new development in online streaming that allows users to broadcast live from anywhere at anytime. This service is available through various social media platforms and gaming consoles, and offers individuals the opportunity to interact with one another through chat rooms. As a marketing tool, it can act as an inexpensive way for brands to reach online audiences and forge relationships with them in real-time.

This can take shape in a number of ways. A representative of your brand can act as a one-person video company, providing demonstrations, answering customer questions, or even creating prepared content. At this juncture, anything is possible. 

ColourPop Gets it 

Beauty giant ColourPop uses Instagram Live to showcase new products and answer customer questions. The brand is known as a pioneer of ‘takeover content’, where social influencers are given the opportunity to, you guessed it, take over the brand’s Instagram for a day to post on their own volition. 

What We Can Learn 

As a part of their takeover campaigns on Instagram Live, ColourPop recruits the help of the platform’s biggest beauty influencers to give demonstrations using new products in three minute increments or less. With most of their Instagram Lives averaging roughly 50k views per post, it’s safe to say that this medium does fairly well for them. 

Other brands have taken notice of how useful live video can be in their marketing strategy and we can now see BuzzFeed and Nestlé using it to beef up their sponsored content. 

Headed in the Right Direction 

Live video has amassed a huge user base since it first hit our screens and is only growing stronger by the minute. In fact, 63% of people between 18-34 are watching live-streaming content regularly. 

While there are drawbacks to these services, live video offers a number of opportunities to burgeoning businesses that want to find a way to connect with their audience and extend their reach. From services like Instagram live, to Twitch, brands are bound to find one that fits their needs.