6 Success Principles of KOL Marketing for New Consumer Brands

The collective rise of a number of new consumer brands such as Huaxizi, Wang Baobao, Babycare, Ubras, and LuLulemon is undoubtedly one of the most noteworthy phenomena in China's business field in recent years.

These "strong" brands not only appear frequently on young people's Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili, but also see a surge in consumption against the trend, with sales soaring rapidly. They shine brightly in their respective fields and become popular targets for capital.

So how did new consumer brands rise? Which marketing strategies are worth learning from?

Recently, Weibo, MMA, Magic Mirror Market Intelligence and 18 media jointly released the "2022 China New Consumer Brand Development Trend Report" (hereinafter referred to as the Report) . Based on more than 200,000 data samples, it found the six successful laws of KOL marketing for new consumer brands from the perspectives of the objective external environment, brand development and trends.

01 The more you plant, the more you sell

Morketing research shows that Douyin (77%) , Xiaohongshu (63.5%) and Tmall/Taobao (53%) are the top three channels for respondents to access new consumer brands. In addition, 51.9% and 46.1% of respondents said they learned about new consumer brands from Weibo and WeChat, respectively.

It can be said that under the fragmented and circle-based user catalyst habits, KOLs have acted as the most important trust agents for new consumer brands, efficiently planting grass and deeply connecting consumers and brands.

KOL marketing has also become the marketing standard for new consumer brands. Among online advertising channels, social media advertising accounts for the largest proportion of nearly 60%. New consumer brands generally use social media platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, Kuaishou, and the strategy of combining top, middle and tail KOLs to quickly expand their brand voice and quickly establish consumers' mental awareness of the brand. Among the brands studied, KOL advertising expenses accounted for the largest proportion of e-commerce revenue, reaching 15%.

What is the conversion effect of KOL’s recommendation? By studying the relationship between the number and amount of KOL recommendations for 30 typical new consumer brands and the sales volume and sales revenue of brand products on e-commerce platforms, we found that with the increase in KOL recommendations, the overall conversion effect of e-commerce will also increase accordingly. Overall, the two show a highly positive correlation, which shows the strong driving effect of KOL recommendations on e-commerce conversion.

Taking two typical brands as typical cases, on the whole, except for special e-commerce nodes (618 and Double Eleven), KOL seeding and sales conversion are basically the same in the same month. In other words, the promotion effect of KOL seeding on e-commerce will be concentrated in the e-commerce conversion of that month.

In addition, the report also found that when a brand adds three or more platforms to promote its products, sales increase significantly. It can be seen that users’ consumption decisions are based on KOL recommendations on multiple platforms, and reaching out to multiple scenarios can improve users’ decision-making efficiency. In addition, the sales growth changes of new consumer brands are basically positively correlated with the growth changes of posts on Xiaohongshu, with the same frequency of 91.6%. In other words, Xiaohongshu has a significant promoting effect on brand sales conversion, followed by WeChat, with the same frequency of 83.3%.

How much room is there for KOLs to promote their products? As the low cost and strong monetization capabilities of influencer marketing are continuously discovered, more and more advertisers are using influencer marketing. In the past three years, the proportion of KOL marketing expenses has increased by 5.01%. However, from the perspective of development space, the current KOL marketing market size only accounts for about 13% of the Internet marketing market share, and it is still in the blue ocean market stage. There is still huge room for the development of influencer marketing in the future, and it is an era that brands must compete for.

02 The more successful a new consumer brand is, the less likely it is to be achieved overnight

Nothing can be achieved overnight, and the popularity of new consumer brands fully proves this point. High-quality, cost-effective product preparation + long-term and unremitting investment and persistence + continuous improvement + good luck can equal success, among which long-term KOL marketing "slow endurance" plays a key role.

The report found that in 2021, the main demands of typical new consumer brands' KOLs were concentrated on daily promotion, accounting for about 45%, e-commerce conversion accounting for about 25%, new product promotion accounting for about 20%, and live streaming sales accounting for only 17%.

Compared with the short-lived and enthusiastic live streaming sales, the more mature new consumer brands value the long-term and regular promotion of products.

In addition, the report results also show that since January 2021, the amount of investment and the number of posts by new consumer brand KOLs have continued to rise simultaneously. On average, a single brand has invested about 1.6 million yuan per month and published 120 articles. In October 2021, the amount of investment has climbed to 3.31 million yuan, with 260 articles published. Overall, there is a clear trend of normalization and continuity in KOL marketing for new consumer brands.

03 From traffic help to regular army, the more stable the brand is, the more it understands the long board effect

The first new consumer brand is “Traffic Gang”: they use a self-operated commission-based approach to conduct commercial cooperation with KOLs, that is, they use the company’s internal media BD model to achieve rapid KOL placement and market expansion, treating KOLs as channels. If BD is successful, the media will receive commissions. With this approach, brands need a large number of media BD personnel, which not only faces the risk of difficult-to-control brand pricing systems, but also has low efficiency.

The second type of new consumer brands are the “regular army”: Most of the core teams of this type of new consumer brands come from “big factories” and they establish standardized processes and systematic operating models in the early stages. It mainly relies on the purchasing model of third-party platforms to carry out data-based and scientific investment. This type of purchasing model has the advantages of high delivery efficiency, controllable KOL cooperation prices, and a standardized pricing system. The core team's energy is more focused on consumer insights, product research and development, supply chain management, etc., which is more conducive to the long-term and stable development of the brand.

04 The more crowded the stadium is, the more you need to stay awake

Although Xiaohongshu and Douyin have become well-known traffic codes, the more lively the "scene", the more brands need to stay "awake". Different platforms show different characteristics in terms of attributes, tone, and crowds. For brands, only the suitable one is the best.

This report finds that in terms of the scale of investment, new consumer brands of apparel focus on Xiaohongshu and WeChat, new consumer brands of beauty focus on Weibo and Bilibili, new consumer brands of mother and baby prefer Xiaohongshu and WeChat platforms, new consumer brands of daily chemical products pay attention to Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, new consumer brands of food and beverage value Xiaohongshu and Weibo, and new consumer brands of small household appliances focus on Xiaohongshu and WeChat.

In fact, new consumer brands will choose different platforms for focus layout according to their own industries, rather than relying solely on Xiaohongshu and Douyin.

In addition, from the perspective of future development space, the report believes that Zhihu, Bilibili, and Video Account are currently growing at a rapid commercialization rate, with the most obvious user growth, and have a large marketing space. WeChat Video Account may become a new highland of marketing value by relying on Tencent's traffic advantages and user stickiness advantages. In addition, vertical interest platforms such as Zhihu and Bilibili may become the new focus due to their relatively precise user circles and stickiness advantages.

05 The efforts and gains of refinement must be proportional

How to use refined KOL investment strategies to get more value for money is particularly important for brands, especially emerging brands that are still in their start-up phase. The report found that new consumer brands usually use the following strategies to achieve refined delivery:

Strategy ①: The stronger the conversion demand, the more vertical the KOL type and the more concentrated the TIER level.

Specifically, new consumer brands have different focuses on KOLs in different marketing scenarios: daily promotion focuses on the layout of mid-level KOLs and tail-level KOLs, accounting for a total of 69%, and the vertical categories of selected accounts only account for 30%, and 70% reach a wide range of people through pan-entertainment accounts; in topic marketing scenarios, top KOLs account for a high proportion of 30%, and pan-entertainment accounts account for as high as 85%; in new product promotion marketing scenarios, top KOLs account for the largest proportion of 40%, and focus on vertical KOLs of investors; in e-commerce conversion scenarios, the focus of investment is on mid-level and vertical KOL types.

Strategy ②: Combining vertical professional circles with radiating interest circles

New consumer brands pay particular attention to the hierarchy of their investment, and usually adopt a strategy that combines vertical professional circles with radiating interest circles.

Overall, new consumer brands in various industries have the largest share of interest circle accounts, usually between 50% and 80%. Among them, the types of accounts for new consumer brands in the two industries of small household appliances and clothing were the most discrete. The types of accounts for vertical professional circles accounted for only about 5%, and the remaining 95% were radiating interest circle accounts. The types of accounts for new consumer brands in the beauty industry were the most concentrated, but the proportion of beauty and fashion accounts in vertical professional circles was less than half, only 42.5%.

It can be seen from this that new consumer brands mainly want to quickly build mental awareness among a wide range of people through a strategy that is mainly cross-field and general population + supplemented by vertical penetration.

Strategy ③: A strategy based on sharing, good products, recommendations, and reviews

Judging from the characteristics of posting keywords and gameplay, new consumer brands use sharing, good products, recommendations, and reviews as the main posting keywords on mainstream social media platforms, and pay special attention to entering from the perspective of KOLs' own usage experience to cultivate users' minds.

In addition to the common characteristics mentioned above, each platform still has certain differences in gameplay and platform personality. For example, Xiaohongshu's collections, store visits, lists, and substitutes; Bilibili's domestic products, unboxing, red and black lists, and vlogs; Douyin's life scenes, domestic products, and brand quality.

Strategy ④: Top KOLs mainly use weak placement, while mid- and long-tail KOLs mainly use strong promotion.

New consumer brands use KOLs at different levels and have different strategies.

Top KOLs are usually weak in terms of fan verticality and industry professionalism, but have strong influence and communication capabilities. Therefore, top KOLs usually use weak implantation methods to make recommendations. Overall, the correlation between the implanted products and the overall work is low, but the general user communication effect is better.

However, mid- and long-tail KOLs are relatively professional, have a strong vertical fan base, and are more accurate in their communication. Therefore, they promote products in a strong grass-planting manner, that is, all content revolves around product-related topics and fully emphasizes product advantages and selling points.

06 From Internet Celebrity to Long-term Popularity, “External Force” Cannot Replace “Internal Strength”

In addition to focusing on gaining brand product awareness and the first batch of conversion precipitation from public domain traffic such as e-commerce platforms, social media platforms, and short video platforms, new consumer brands also focus on closed traffic pools of e-commerce/social platforms, personal WeChat accounts, and community channels to improve their own "internal skills" in retaining customers. Perfect Diary has more than 26 million fans across the entire network, Huaxizi has more than 17 million fans, and Winona has 12 million fans.

This long-term ROI operation method deeply retains and taps into the value of old users, and activates secondary growth of the brand through refined operations. Taking a certain brand as an example, the long-term ROI brought by the full-link operation from public domain to private domain has reached 1.96, which is much greater than the 90-day ROI (1.5) and the intuitive ROI (0.7).

Therefore, new consumer brands generally transform public domain value into private domain traffic pools that can be controlled by the brand itself through integrated public and private domain joint ventures and long-term operations, thereby achieving effective user and sales growth.

In addition to the internal strength of the private domain, the cultivation of digital internal strength has also become a criterion for new consumer brands.

The digitalization of "people, goods and places" is undoubtedly an inevitable trend. Brands not only need to connect with a large number of KOL resources through third-party trading platforms, but also need to rely on the platform's own data capabilities to achieve precise delivery and continuously improve marketing conversion efficiency.

In other words, the third-party KOL delivery platform not only needs to achieve delivery transaction matchmaking, but also needs to empower brand marketing with full-link digital capabilities. In KOL delivery, Weibo uses data analysis to achieve pre-delivery strategy support, communication execution during delivery, and post-delivery effect evaluation and optimization, forming an intelligent marketing chain of "data-driven, smart insight, full-chain engine, and smart operation."

Digital marketing is a product of the highly information-based era. Creating marketing channels, optimizing marketing costs, and efficiently acquiring customers are the keys to growth for new consumer brands.

New consumer brands have put in far more effort and become more sophisticated in KOL marketing, user operations, digital management, etc. than we imagined. They are brave challengers with foresight, innovation and innovation in the era of consumption upgrading and digitalization in China. They have stirred up the Chinese consumer market like a catfish, rewritten the business and marketing rules and brought about unprecedented business changes.

In the future, perhaps more new consumer leaders will emerge and the market structure will change rapidly. In the fair business world, whoever can master new ways of playing and adapt to the new era will stand out in the new changes.

Author: weiboyi

Source: weiboyi