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On August 7, Lei Jun launched the showcase function and officially started live streaming to sell goods.

As of August 12, Lei Jun had 28.61 million followers on Douyin, surpassing Dong Yuhui's 26.92 million in the same period. Although there is still a gap between him and the top anchors who have hundreds of millions of followers, Lei Jun has already become the veritable "new king". In fact, judging from the results of Lei Jun's live broadcast in April, Lei Jun has become the entrepreneur with the most traffic in China. Recently, Lei Jun started live streaming to sell goods, and his number of fans has increased dramatically.

As the founder and chairman of Xiaomi, Lei Jun has never lacked attention. He is one of the few super-rich people with a huge fan base and a net worth of over 100 billion. Before, Lei Jun had never opened a window display to sell goods. Given that Lei Jun has a huge fan base, selling goods is almost a natural thing.

Recently, a "Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Series Smart Bracelet" priced at 249 yuan was quietly launched in Lei Jun's personal Douyin window, and users can place orders directly through Douyin. Unlike Xiao Yangge who worked hard to promote the product, Lei Jun himself did not work hard on live streaming, which may have led to the unsatisfactory sales of the Xiaomi Mi Band, with only more than a thousand units sold. To the surprise of netizens, Lei Jun's window soon became 0 items, and the products originally sold had been quietly offline. Whether this was a test by Lei Jun has sparked discussion among netizens.

Earlier, in the live broadcast of the 2024 annual speech, Lei Jun publicly stated that he actually wanted to take business orders, but so far no business orders have come to him. All the products he introduced are Xiaomi products and are products that he approves of.

Lei Jun started live streaming to sell goods, which may have boosted Xiaomi's stock price. Since Lei Jun launched the Xiaomi wristband in the window on August 6, Xiaomi's stock price has ushered in a wave of continuous increases. From the low of HK$15.36 on August 5 to the high of HK$16.64 on August 12, the increase in just a few days reached 8.3%. Xiaomi has become one of the few technology companies whose stock price has increased by more than 5% in a year. This may have something to do with Lei Jun's personal super IP.

Your new king of live streaming is here

Previously, the "live streaming sales leader" of Douyin has always been Dong Yuhui and Xiao Yangge. Xiao Yangge has a huge number of fans, which has reached more than 99.99 million. Dong Yuhui's number of fans has always surpassed Lei Jun. With Lei Jun's annual speech and the start of live streaming sales, his number of fans has exceeded Dong Yuhui by nearly 2 million, and the gap between the two is getting bigger and bigger.

Lei Jun's speeches are nothing new. His speeches in previous years were also very successful. The biggest difference between this year and previous years is that Xiaomi SU7 is now online. Lei Jun took "courage" as the theme, starting from the opportunity when Xiaomi mobile phones were sanctioned by the United States, then recruiting talents, personally testing the car, and finally launching it as scheduled with record-breaking sales. He connected many seemingly messy main lines together and told an inspirational story. Many netizens were moved and shocked by the story.

When Lei Jun started making cars, Zhou Shouzi, who was once regarded as Lei Jun's successor, left for ByteDance, which may have been a big blow to Lei Jun, but he did not complain or even blame Zhou Shouzi. He claimed that he and Zhou Shouzi have always been good friends and congratulated him on his appointment as a Tiktok executive. After Lei Jun got through the low period, a large number of professional talents joined the Xiaomi Auto team. This is also a true portrayal of Lei Jun's focus on making cars. He devoted all his energy to it, but it was not all smooth sailing. Fortunately, the ending was relatively satisfactory.

In fact, before the Xiaomi SU7 was launched, the media predicted that the sales volume of Xiaomi SU7 would not exceed 3,000 units, but 28 days after the launch, Xiaomi SU7 had already locked in 75,723 units, far exceeding the media's expectations. This is a plus for Lei Jun and also makes his personal IP more popular.

In the annual speech, Lei Jun did not forget his strong point - telling his own story. In addition to the team's story, Lei Jun focused all his energy on telling his own story, which he is better at. At the scene, Lei Jun released a video of himself drifting in the Xiaomi SU7, which became the most popular material of the night. "The billionaire CEO made me laugh and worked hard to get a racing driver's license." This became a joke for many fans to like Lei Jun, and since then, the growth rate of Lei Jun's fans has been even more amazing.

As of the evening of August 12, Lei Jun had 28.61 million followers on Douyin, surpassing Dong Yuhui, the previous "Douyin live streaming leader". Lei Jun's ability to sell goods through live streaming has been verified. At 8 pm on August 16, 2020, Lei Jun conducted his first live streaming sales in Xiaomi's live studio on the Douyin platform. Two hours later, Lei Jun announced in the live studio that sales had exceeded 100 million that night, and Xiaomi products sold 210 million yuan that night. At that time, Lei Jun's number of fans was far less than it is now. If Lei Jun wants to sell goods through live streaming now, the throne of Douyin's "live streaming sales leader" may change hands.

How strong is Lei Jun’s ability to sell products?

Zhou Hongyi once lamented: "Mr. Lei's marketing level is no longer at the master level, but at the god-like level."

As a top entrepreneur with nearly 30 million fans, Lei Jun did not miss the heat of the Olympics.During the Olympics, Lei Jun went to Europe in person, and every video he posted attracted hundreds of thousands or even millions of likes. He also directly made a sun protection jacket that cost about 100 yuan popular, and products such as watermelons and hot sauces that cost 5 yuan were also hot sellers whenever they appeared in his videos.

On April 18, 2024, Lei Jun inadvertently made Vancl, which had almost disappeared, popular. At that time, he started a live broadcast on Douyin called "Not selling products, just chatting". This live broadcast was originally just to introduce Xiaomi Automobile and its delivery status to the whole network. As a commercial live broadcast, it did not attract much attention from general entrepreneurs, but Lei Jun, who had top-level traffic, had more than 100,000 viewers in the live broadcast room after only one minute of broadcasting.

On the day of the live broadcast, Lei Jun wore a suit with a white T-shirt and jeans, which attracted the attention of netizens. When answering netizens' questions about his choice of clothing, Lei Jun said that he was wearing a VANCL T-shirt, VANCL jeans, and VANCL canvas shoes. "In those years when Chen Nian started his business, I supported him and became his image spokesperson without receiving any salary."

Just a few ordinary words of introduction from Lei Jun directly made Vancl popular. On the tenth day after Lei Jun's live broadcast, Vancl's daily sales on Douyin soared from tens of thousands of yuan to millions of yuan, a 20-fold increase. At the same time, the number of Vancl's fans increased sharply.

During the Paris Olympics, Lei Jun invited Su Bingtian to have morning tea. Lei Jun and Su Bingtian talked about morning tea culture at the dinner table in the live studio. Lei Jun said that it was difficult for Hubei people to eat without chili peppers. Then, like a magic trick, he took out a bottle of chili sauce he brought with him and used it to dip shrimp dumplings. He picked up a shrimp dumpling for Su Bingtian. After eating the shrimp dumpling, Su Bingtian's comment was one word - delicious.

Although Lei Jun's action of bringing chili sauce to Paris may seem insignificant, it caused a huge stir on the Internet.This incident not only showed Lei Jun's real and down-to-earth side, but also brought netizens closer to this tech giant. Afterwards, this hot sauce product became a big hit. Even the Xiaomi backpack that Lei Jun prepared in his live studio was hard to find. Although this backpack was only sold exclusively in the Xiaomi Auto APP Mall, it was hard to resist the enthusiasm of fans. Many businesses even used the same slogan as Lei Jun to sell their products, and the effect was very good.

Investor Liu Bo believes that Lei Jun's super IP is impossible to copy. After Lei Jun's live broadcast of selling cars became popular, many car company CEOs have been learning from him, but none of them can achieve the same effect as Lei Jun. "Lei Jun's live broadcast of selling cars may change the previous traditional sales habits. This is an opportunity and a challenge for car companies. However, when learning from Lei Jun to build an entrepreneur IP, we should also pay attention to the fit between personal characteristics and brand image, and avoid excessive packaging or hype. Otherwise, negative effects may occur easily, affecting the hard-to-build positive image."

Isn’t it enviable that Lei Jun has such huge traffic?

Lei Jun's marketing ability has long been widely recognized by the market. Lei Jun knows the pain points of consumers very well and is very good at integrating product promotion with videos. He never says what product he is promoting, but lets netizens guess.

While watching the game in Paris, you can see the shadow of promoting products in almost every video released by Lei Jun. It seems like he is promoting products but he is not, which whets the appetite of fans.

It is no secret that Zhou Hongyi envies Lei Jun. Zhou Hongyi auctioned a Maybach in a high-profile manner, selected a car in a high-profile manner downstairs of his office building, and even "apprenticed" to Brother Xiao Yang to learn how to sell goods through live streaming in order to learn from Lei Jun. In Brother Xiao Yang's live streaming room, the red-dressed leader actually washed the hair of the internet celebrity Brother Xiao Yang, which shocked many netizens.

However, the growth of Zhou Hongyi's fans is not obvious. As of the evening of August 12, the account of "Uncle Zhou Hongyi in Red" has 6.737 million fans, which is less than 1/4 of Lei Jun's number of fans.

Lei Jun's ability to bring goods has attracted the attention of capital and institutions. On May 27, CMB International released a research report on Xiaomi, saying that Xiaomi's revenue and net profit performance in 2024 will exceed expectations, gross profit margin will increase, and revenue structure will be optimized.

In its analysis, CMB International believes that Xiaomi Group's stock price momentum, artificial intelligence Internet of Things (AIoT) sales strength and overseas network business revenue are expected to continue to drive the company's profit growth in fiscal years 2024 to 2025. According to forecasts, revenue in fiscal year 2024 will increase by 24% year-on-year, and adjusted net profit will increase by 19% year-on-year.

Xiaomi's performance in the first quarter of 2024 was not very ideal. Xiaomi's first quarter report showed that Xiaomi's revenue was 75.51 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.95%; net profit was 4.182 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 0.52%, while the net profit growth in the same period last year was 815.43%.

"Xiaomi's first quarter report cannot fully reflect Xiaomi's performance in 2024. At that time, Xiaomi SU7 has not yet been launched and capital is still on the sidelines. With the hot sales of Xiaomi SU7, the rapid growth in the second half of the year and even the whole year may be consistent with the predictions of many institutions." Liu Bo believes that Xiaomi will be able to achieve rapid growth in performance in the second quarter and the second half of the year.

When Liu Qiangdong participated in a CCTV program, he said, "Don't compete with Lei Jun in marketing. It takes a lot of effort to sell (Xiaomi) mobile phones for tens of billions." This is an affirmation of Lei Jun's influence, and it also indirectly shows the great influence of Lei Jun's personal IP.

Lei Jun's live streaming sales initiative is undoubtedly a successful practice of corporate marketing innovation in the digital economy era. With his personal charm and industry influence, he transformed the live streaming platform into a frontier for product display and brand communication, which not only directly demonstrated the technological innovation and cost-effectiveness of Xiaomi products, but also deepened consumers' understanding and recognition of the brand concept through real-time interaction. This move not only effectively shortened the distance between products and consumers and improved brand affinity, but also directly reached and influenced a large number of potential user groups with extremely high cost-effectiveness and real user experience feedback, achieving a double leap in brand reputation and market share.

As Zhou Hongyi said: "Lei Jun saved hundreds of millions of advertising fees." The brand influence achieved by live streaming sales is far more efficient and cost-effective than traditional advertising models, setting a new marketing benchmark for the industry.

Author|Meng Xiao