5 Ways to Use KOL Marketing

Now if you ask yourself what a KOL is, can you answer it immediately?

KOL is defined as "Key Opinion Leader", which usually refers to those who have more and more accurate product information, are accepted by relevant groups and can influence their purchasing behavior. Many internet celebrities, bloggers, anchors, stars and even corporate CEOs can be included in the list of KOLs.

In recent years, brands have begun to pay more and more attention to the layout of KOLs on major online media platforms. Based on the KOL’s personality, it can usually deliver product information to consumers more quickly and effectively than traditional advertising, and influence their purchasing decisions.

For brand owners, KOLs are an important part of brand contact with consumers. To a certain extent, KOLs can help brands establish and improve their image in the minds of consumers.

For example, in July 2019, the "Black Sea Salt Bubble Mask" launched by PROYA became a hit on Douyin and won the first place on the "Douyin Beauty and Skin Care List" in one fell swoop.

In addition to the novelty of the product itself, the brand’s cooperation with a large number of Douyin’s top and mid-level KOLs contributed to the platform’s popularity. Since the target audience of the product is male, PROYA specially selected male KOLs to conduct live streaming to sell the products.

Since KOLs can bring powerful market effects to brands, how to effectively place KOLs has become a focus of attention for many brands. In the following content, we will have an in-depth discussion from three aspects: "The purpose of KOL placement", "The introduction, maintenance and growth of KOL" and "The purpose and strategy of KOL marketing ".

01KOL placement: purpose, platform, type

Our general understanding is that the purpose of brands deploying KOLs is to sell more products, and this is usually relative to emerging brands.

For mature brands, launching KOL platforms is not only for selling products, it can also be used to enhance the brand’s recognition and image in the public’s mind.

This is easy to understand. Old brands have already occupied a place in the market, and the key is how to continuously maintain their own image to maintain or even enhance user loyalty.

But for new brands, if the products cannot be sold and no one experiences them and recommends them to their friends and family, it is impossible for the brand to establish a good reputation.

In addition, each platform also has a certain growth trend in the number of users. Although online media that mainly use pictures and texts, such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu, already have hundreds of millions of daily active users, platforms specializing in short videos are still growing at an astonishing rate.

Bilibili, Kuaishou and Douyin ranked the top three among the five major short video platforms with growth rates of 55.4%, 45.8% and 24.0% respectively, and Douyin's daily active users have reached an astonishing 657 million.

In addition to the huge potential brought by rapid growth, platforms are also gradually launching KOL marketing plans.

For example, Douyin's Bytedance Star Map platform launched live streaming services in May and June 2020, and also launched submission tasks; in addition, Bytedance launched the Star Plan to promote the commercial monetization awareness and capabilities of potential talents.

In July 2020, Bilibili also launched the "Fireworks" business cooperation platform, building an official channel for up-hosts to communicate with brands, while encouraging the tail up-hosts to join the marketing army.

In August of the same year, Kuaishou’s “Quick Order Acceptance” function comprehensively upgraded services such as customer ordering and delivery qualification review, optimizing the delivery efficiency and experience of brand owners.

In September, Kuaishou upgraded the talent screening, recommendation and matching aspects of “Quick Order Acceptance”, added talent data dimensions to help advertisers accurately match talents, and renamed “Quick Order Acceptance” to “Magnetic Star Gathering” in November, allowing talents’ works to be officially connected to public domain traffic while retaining private distribution.

The importance that major platforms attach to the KOL economy shows that the KOL economy will continue to grow and develop in the future. Proper KOL investment can bring greater market influence and even more revenue to the brand.

In addition to the platform, KOLs themselves also have several types and forms:

Short video experts and celebrity presidents promote products, such as Dong Mingzhu, who is a typical example of a president promoting products; top KOLs become celebrities, such as Viya’s appearances in many variety shows; virtual idols like Luo Tianyi go out of their circle to promote products; and finally, live streaming becomes a variety show.

When celebrity presidents come to promote products, they can usually provide endorsement for the products, such as a celebrity with good skin endorsing cosmetics, a celebrity with good fashion sense endorsing a clothing brand, or the chairman of a major air-conditioning brand personally promoting the products.

Similarly, top KOLs can generally provide good product endorsements based on their deep expertise in a particular professional field. Virtual idols also have a form of communication such as variety show live broadcasts, which are mainly entertainment-oriented and use the emotions of the audience to promote products and brands.

For different brands and products, the types of KOL placement are different.

For products like cosmetics and daily chemicals, consumers are very curious about their professional knowledge and functions, so KOLs who can naturally provide product endorsements are more suitable to promote the products. Products that are related to related industries or for which consumers are less concerned about professional knowledge can be promoted through virtual idols or variety show live broadcasts.

02Introduction, maintenance and growth of KOLs

When brands start introducing KOLs, “rhythm” becomes a key point. It is not advisable to introduce too many KOLs at the early stage, as they will bring too much content promotion to the brand and ignore the interaction with fans.

Of course, introducing too few KOLs will result in insufficient exposure, with users having less content to read, which will result in the loss of fans.

Of course, there are four more dimensions to consider when choosing a KOL:

First, the KOL’s image and temperament must be consistent with the brand. Many brands believe that top KOLs with many fans are suitable for them, and that a large number of fans can bring a lot of brand and product exposure. In fact, this is not the case.

The key is whether the KOL's image is consistent with the category sold by the brand. I believe no one would hire a business-dressed boy to talk about dressing, nor would anyone invite a trendy-dressed anchor to recommend computers to users watching the live broadcast.

Second, whether the KOL’s values ​​match those of the brand. If a KOL's values ​​run counter to the corporate values, then the KOL's language during promotion will naturally not make consumers feel sincere, which will become a major hidden danger in brand promotion.

Third, the influence and expressive ability of KOL. A cake that looks good but doesn’t taste good will have no market. KOL is an online shopping guide. Their influence determines whether consumers will listen to them, and their ability to express themselves determines whether consumers will have a good shopping experience.

Fourth, the professionalism of KOL. A professional KOL is more likely to convince consumers, especially when it comes to explaining some highly professional content, which will make users feel more trustworthy.

Secondly, there are two types of KOLs introduced: internal KOLs and external KOLs.

KOLs introduced internally are usually users of the brand who have already purchased the product, think it is good, and are willing to recommend it to others. This type of KOL does not need to be very active, but the quality of the content produced must be high. Compared with content quality, activity is easier to cultivate and improve.

When recruiting external KOLs, brand owners need to first clarify the purpose of the introduction, whether it is to ask the KOL to enhance their brand image, or to increase product sales, etc.

Before communicating, the brand needs to formulate a cooperation plan and clearly explain the purpose and process of the cooperation when communicating with the KOL to avoid potential misunderstandings.

Then, brands can communicate with KOLs about cooperation through the contact information they post on social media.

At this time, whether it is a big brand or a small brand, it is most important to be honest with KOLs when communicating. After all, KOLs will have an impression of the brand and product image in the market and ultimately reach a cooperation.

Everyone knows that after reaching a deal with a customer, it is necessary to revisit the customer regularly. The same applies to maintaining the relationship between the brand and the KOL. In addition to the simple establishment of KOL files and the rules for communicating and promoting with KOLs, the cultivation of KOLs is divided into three stages: early, middle and late.

The initial training of KOLs mainly involves packaging their personal images and coaching them on professional skills.

With image packaging, such as wonderful life experiences or special personality, KOLs have a unique image in the minds of users. Just like a class teacher may only remember the most mischievous student in the class many years later, a KOL with a unique image will be more easily remembered by users.

The mid-term training of KOLs will involve how to keep them. At this time, KOLs may also be "poached" by other brands, so certain exclusive constraints are essential.

For example, additional contract terms can be signed with KOLs. If the KOLs do not cooperate with competing brands, there will be incentive policies. In the early stage, spiritual incentives can be used, in the middle stage, material incentives can be used, and in the later stage, interest bundling can be used. This will help companies retain capable KOLs.

In the later stage, brands need to think about long-term cooperation with KOLs. In addition to interest binding, emotional maintenance is also important. Just like many companies will give stock dividends to employees with good performance, brands need to form a "community of shared destiny" with capable KOLs to prevent KOLs from leaving after they mature.

By using KOL’s live streaming account to be owned by the company rather than privatizing it themselves, the KOL is forced to give up when weighing the pros and cons of leaving.

Emotional connections can also be maintained through regular team-building activities, dinners, and outings, so that KOLs can truly feel cared for and taken care of in the process of integrating into the group.

Having said so much, the cooperation and relationship maintenance between brands and KOLs is still an aspect that needs to be carefully studied and improved by all brands.

03KOL Marketing Strategy

After understanding the various platforms, the purpose of the launch, and the introduction and maintenance of KOLs, the next focus is how to launch KOLs.

Here are some common marketing strategies:

1. Massive exposure and creating buzz

2. Hot topics trigger interaction

3. Widespread spread of topics

4. Plant grass and build word of mouth

5. Radiate to multiple circles and break the circle

Of course, the marketing environment of different platforms is also different:

1. Weibo Marketing Environment

The growth rate of users has slowed down, and the main competition comes from short video platforms and content community platforms. The user structure tends to be younger, with users born in the 1990s and 2000s accounting for nearly 80%, and they like entertainment-related topics.

The platform has a trend towards video, with more than 15,000 video accounts having over one million followers. General entertainment content is the sector with the fastest increase in followers.

2. WeChat Marketing Environment

With ecology as the main strategy, it can attract traffic, new users and increase exposure for the official account. The video account is a traffic pool that can divert traffic to the official account, increase the public domain exposure of the official account, or divert traffic to the mini program mall to promote purchases.

From these perspectives, WeChat KOL marketing will be affected by the number and duration of video content users, and brands need to take this disadvantage into consideration.

3. Tik Tok Marketing Environment

The platform is accelerating the construction of an e-commerce closed loop. By cutting off external links and continuously improving internal e-commerce infrastructure, a closed link of "planting grass + pulling grass" is formed within the platform ecosystem. Brand accounts display hot-selling product promotions and coupons on their homepages to guide users to buy while browsing.

4. Kuaishou Marketing Environment

The platform focuses on "breaking the circle" culture, including evening parties, support for two-dimensional content, celebrity stays, cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala, etc., which will enrich the creator ecosystem while attracting more users. In addition, the platform will integrate public and private domain traffic and advance both ends simultaneously.

5. Xiaohongshu Marketing Environment

By focusing on live streaming, bloggers can interact, share, download and chat with users, but the conversion rate is relatively weak. Diversified content sections promote communication between creators and users with similar interests, allowing both parties to become friends.

The platform is also actively developing video content, gradually shifting the internal ecology from text and images to videos. In addition, the platform also provides brands with traffic and financial support, giving brands the opportunity to grow rapidly within the platform.

The platform marketing environment and strategies introduced above are the main forms. The detailed methods require brands to conduct deeper strategic segmentation based on the platform and the results they want to obtain.

For example, a mature snack brand’s purpose of advertising on Weibo is to publicize the brand’s legendary development history and product concept. The main purpose is to create buzz on the media platform and trigger widespread dissemination, rather than rushing to promote sales.

At this time, you can write some stories about the brand, or the social charity activities you have done, etc., to buy popularity and spread it online, and strengthen the brand's positive image in the minds of consumers.

Written to the end:

Since KOL advertising has gradually become a mainstream way for brands to promote their products, brand owners need to formulate advertising strategies for different media platforms and use a combination of approaches to effectively and efficiently expose their brands and products.

In addition to the careful consideration of platform selection, KOL investment, KOL marketing methods and other aspects, brands can also try new models, or even mix and match several methods to launch a combination of punches.

Innovation in any direction, such as products, channels, and marketing models, can help brands gain an advantage in the market.

Author: New Dealer

Source: New Distribution