Xiaohongshu KOL screening, placement, and review tutorial

Since its inception, KOL has possessed strong traffic attributes, bringing more GMV to brands. This article sorts out the process and methodology of KOL marketing on Xiaohongshu , and discusses high ROI strategies with everyone.

01 KOL screening, three dimensions to measure KOL's influence on product promotion

KOL marketing has become the mainstream strategy for brand marketing. But whether it is the traditional pyramid delivery model, the large-scale investment of KOC, or the focus on mid-level influencers, the most important thing is still the KOL itself.

Figure｜Qiangua (Xiaohongshu data)

High-quality KOLs are the guarantee for brand promotion. The KOL three-dimensional screening model evaluates KOLs from three perspectives: basic data, grass-roots quality, and commercial quality. It includes both objective data evaluation and subjective initiative judgment that is difficult to quantify.

Figure｜Qiangua-Brand Details-Note Analysis

There are 8,033 related notes about Shiseido in the past 30 days, an increase of 12.01% year-on-year. It also ranked TOP4 in the brand commercial investment ranking in August. Shiseido’s KOL campaign data has great reference value.

Basic data

Figure｜Qiangua-Brand Details-Business Notes Analysis

Brand analysis shows that from July 1 to September 15, "Shiseido" released 399 business notes (brand cooperation notes), involving 363 relevant influencers. Among them, there are 7 KOLs (mid-level influencers with 100,000-400,000 fans) who have reinvested 2 times or more and have produced explosive articles (a single article has more than 1,000 likes).

Figure｜Data source-Qiangua

The average like-to-like ratio of fans of the 7 KOLs in the past 30 days is 0.60%; the average median number of likes in the past 30 days is 649. Among them, the average like-to-like ratio of fans of influencer A in the past 30 days is 1.58%. For influencer A with a median like number of more than 1156, the two brand cooperation notes released by Shiseido were both popular articles.

The average percentage of active fans is 76.76%, and the average percentage of idle fans is 22.87%. Data from the China Advertising Association shows that in 2020, the average proportion of invalid fans of KOLs across the entire network was 60.5% (that is, the average proportion of active fans was 39.5%). High activity and low-water fans are important factors in measuring the value of KOLs.

The average update frequency of notes in the past 30 days is 2.33 (i.e., updated every 2-3 days). For individual KOLs, updates range from weekly to daily. When the update frequency is too high, you need to focus on the quality of the note content.

Figure｜Qiangua-Note Analysis-Note Data Growth Trend

The premise for data validity is authenticity. It can be seen that for notes with a high probability of inflating the number of likes, the number of likes increases rapidly in a short period of time, and then falls back to almost 0, which is an obvious data anomaly. The normal note trend shows a slow downward trend after reaching a peak.

Grass quality

A high-quality KOL should not only have good basic data, but also have sufficient ability to promote products.

Figure｜Data source-Qiangua

The average rate of popular articles of the seven KOLs in the past 30 days (popular article rate = number of popular articles in the past 30 days / number of notes in the past 30 days) is 32%, and the highest is 70%, which is Expert A. It can be seen that KOLs with a high rate of explosive articles are indeed more likely to produce explosive articles again. At the same time, there are also 2 KOLs whose viral posts have 0% in the past 30 days. Therefore, it is not appropriate to use the explosive article rate as a rigid indicator, or to extend the time period of the explosive article rate to 90 days/180 days.

The importance of the cover and the content of the article cannot be overstated. The cover just needs to look comfortable and beautiful. The main content can be sorted into sections according to Xiaohongshu's emoticons, but be careful not to simply pile up selling point keywords. This note first introduces why we consume too much sugar, then introduces the disadvantages of excessive sugar intake, then proposes methods to resist sugar, and finally introduces the product. The logic is clear and the expression is natural, which makes it easier for fans to be attracted.

Figure｜Qiangua-Notes Analysis-Related Comments

When it comes to KOL public opinion, on the one hand, we need to pay attention to whether the messages in the comment section contain negative information, and on the other hand, we need to pay attention to whether the user’s focus is on the product or the KOL itself. If users only focus on whether the KOL is good-looking or not, it will be ineffective exposure and interaction for the product. The top three comments on this note focus on the product's price, brand, and applicable population. This shows that this note has the ability to deeply plant seeds.

Figure｜Qiangua-Note Monitoring

Long-tail traffic lasting up to 90 days or even 1 year is one of the important advantages of the Xiaohongshu platform. It can be seen that the change range of the note interaction data at night is significantly stable, and the main growth occurs during the day. And the overall trend is upward.

Figure｜Qiangua-Expert Details-Expert Analysis

Secondly, pay attention to the growth trend of KOL fans. It can be seen that the fan growth trend of this KOL shows a 45° trend, with slight fluctuations in the middle. The historical notes of KOLs on Xiaohongshu are also frequently browsed by new fans. Therefore, in addition to the total number of fans, the KOL fan growth rate is also an important reference for us to judge long-tail traffic.

Commercial quality

Matching tone is one of the important criteria for high-quality brand cooperation notes. Different KOLs have different styles. Some KOLs use their celebrity status to promote products that cost less than 100 yuan, while others use KOLs to promote products that mainly share affordable and good products. The latter are more likely to be recognized by users and resonate with them emotionally.

The similarity between fan portraits and brand purchasing users. Investing in KOLs actually means investing in their fans, their gender distribution, geographical distribution, focus, fan group labels, age distribution, active time, and fan interaction preferences. The higher the similarity with the portrait of the brand's product purchasing users or target users, the better. This can be used to determine whether the KOL can reach the target audience of the product.

Historical promotion of brands is an important criterion for measuring KOLs. The main focus is on whether other brands have launched products recently and whether they are in the same category. The KOL promoted Innisfree’s cleansing mask in July and Shiseido’s air cushion in August. The product exclusivity between different categories is relatively small. Never buy the same product from different brands in a short period of time, especially when the prices, tones, etc. of the two brands are very different.

The original purpose of deploying KOLs is exposure and conversion. CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPE (cost per interaction CPE = cooperation fee/interaction volume) are the core reference indicators.

Figure｜Data source-Qiangua

The CPE of most of these popular articles is within 10, and even 3 notes are within 5, which is an excellent effect. At the same time, we can also see that the CPE of two notes is between 10-20, and the unit interaction cost of popular articles also varies.

While pursuing the explosive rate of articles, we should also pay attention to CPE. Get higher interaction data at a lower unit cost. (Note: The cost of a single note by an expert is 5% of the number of fans)

02 KOL placement: the purpose determines the placement model, and the content determines the effect of seeding

Perfect Diary has truly brought KOL marketing into the public eye, and its pyramid marketing model has received widespread attention.

Figure｜Qiangua (Xiaohongshu data)

Today, the simple pyramid delivery model is no longer sufficient to meet the more segmented user needs. Depending on the purpose of the delivery, delivery models such as the olive-shaped matrix, KOC matrix and pyramid model have been developed.

The KOL matrix is ​​suitable for the early stage expansion of new brands or new products. The pyramid model is a standard delivery strategy that complies with the principles of communication, and is suitable for focusing on the complete brand communication chain of Xiaohongshu. The olive-shaped matrix is ​​a high ROI strategy that is more suitable for mature brands whose brands and products have great influence.

Shiseido’s KOL placement from July 1 to September 15 is a typical olive-shaped matrix (330 out of 399 brand cooperation notes were from mid-level influencers, and mid-level influencers accounted for 82%). In addition to providing different brief direction guidance based on the delivery model, different KOLs’ daily content, personal style, and writing style, brands also need to deploy content based on the role played by KOLs at different levels.

Picture｜Xiaohongshu

From July 1 to September 15, among the 7 celebrity and well-known KOL brand cooperation notes released by Shiseido, 5 directly mentioned the brand, product or efficacy, and the other one focused on member benefits. Celebrities and well-known KOLs mainly play a role in creating social momentum, quickly sparking topics, distributing benefits, and playing with the fan economy. Therefore, it can be simple and clear, and stand out directly.

Figure｜Shiseido-Brand Cooperation Notes Top 8 Liked Titles (Top Talents)

Top influencers rely more on high fan stickiness to drive discussions about related products. In addition to notes that directly point out the product's efficacy, he is particularly good at using multi-scenario marketing such as drawing, taking photos, and driving practice to naturally elicit demand and bring out products.

Picture｜Xiaohongshu

Waist experts are beginning to develop in the direction of specialization. Through product reviews and tutorial notes, we can strongly promote products and accelerate the sales process.

Figure｜Shiseido-Brand Cooperation Notes Top 10 Liked Titles (Beginner Expert)

At the same time, the direction of promotion of quite a number of mid-level and junior influencers is relatively generalized, ranging from pain point marketing to real experience and then to evaluation. Plant grass in all scenarios and spread it repeatedly to maintain brand popularity.

The amateur level is most suitable for sharing real experiences and showing off orders, creating an image that everyone is using it, forming social fission, and consolidating brand reputation.

Of course, the direction and form of promotion by influencers at different levels are not fixed, but brands must consciously deploy content direction to truly leverage the communication advantages of different KOL delivery models.

Secondly, in terms of the periodicity of Xiaohongshu’s grass-roots promotion, daily grass-roots promotion and node-based marketing each have their own focus.

Daily grass-planting is mainly based on grass-planting notes, with the main purpose of pursuing long-term traffic. When the number of likes for Shiseido's related notes in August reached a significant low, the number of related notes increased significantly in the next few days, maintaining the monthly or even weekly interaction value.

The interaction volume range that needs to be maintained is mainly based on the on-site and off-site search conversion volume required by the brand on a daily basis, which is converted into the interaction volume and exposure of Xiaohongshu notes.

Important marketing nodes give equal importance to seeding notes and performance advertising. Xiaohongshu’s node marketing delivery rhythm is divided into four cycles. The water storage period focuses on writing grass-planting notes to test the quality of the content. The sprint period is to confirm content and keyword planting with high interactive ROI, and cooperate with performance advertising. During the weeding period and the return period, performance advertising is mainly used.

However, Shiseido still maintained a high frequency of grass-planting notes during the 618 grass-planting period and the return period, consciously guiding a small burst of interaction. There is no choice but to run only performance ads. The joint launch of grass-planting notes and performance advertising has begun to become a new node marketing model.

Testing the content of the grass-planting product is an important step. For the same product and the same expert level, which ROI is higher for tutorial notes, review notes, or daily sharing notes? For the same scene promotion, which scenes can attract more users? These answers can be obtained through periodic review.

03 KOL review, phased retrospective optimization, boost brand ROI growth

From August 1st to August 31st, Shiseido released a total of 180 brand cooperation notes (the number of fans of waist influencers ranged from 50w to 500k), and the focus was on analyzing 81 of these graphic notes.

Figure｜Data source-Qiangua

Shiseido’s promotional products in its brand collaboration notes (Waist Expert) in August include the third-generation red waist, Yuewei Lotion XNever Naiwa family limited edition, Yuewei anti-sugar frosting, etc.

Figure｜Qiangua-Case Closure Report

81 graphic and text brand cooperation notes, with a total interaction volume of 46,600, a single interaction cost of 145,000 (single interaction cost = total cost/total number of interactions), and a total cost of 675,200 (estimated at 5% of the number of fans).

Figure｜Data source-Qiangua

It can be seen that the high-quality brand cooperation notes of Yuewei Anti-Sugar Frosting and Blue Fat Man (single interaction cost <10 is considered high-quality) account for a very high proportion, both exceeding 60%. Brands can further optimize the key content based on the direction of the grass-planting content of these two products. And select some high-quality KOLs for reinvestment.

Figure｜Qiangua-Case Closure Report-Related Data Change Trends

The trend of changes in relevant data from August 15th to August 31st shows that: on 6 days, the advertising cost and interaction volume were relatively close (the cost per interaction was low), and on 10 days, the advertising cost and interaction cost deviated greatly (the cost per interaction was high).

Figure｜Qiangua-Case Closure Report-Analysis of Delivery Types

Shiseido prefers to target mid-level influencers with more than 100,000 followers. These KOLs are the group that benefits the most from Xiaohongshu's decentralized mechanism, and their interactive ROI is relatively stable.

Figure｜Qiangua-Case Closure Report-Analysis of Delivery Types

The interaction volume of a single note is mainly in the range of 100-500, and the interaction volume above 1000 accounts for about 11%. The overall distribution of the interaction volume is olive-shaped, with low ends and high in the middle.

Figure｜Qiangua-Case Closure Report-Audience Analysis

Audience analysis of Shiseido's brand cooperation notes shows that men account for 13.48%. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that the proportion of male users on Xiaohongshu has reached 30%. On the other hand, there is also a demand for male-oriented products such as Black Waist.

The audience's age is concentrated in the 18-34 range. This group of people generally pursues a fashionable and refined life and has strong consumption needs.

Figure｜Qiangua-Case Closure Report-Audience Analysis

The top 1 focus of users is skin care (11.93%), which reaches people with skin care needs more accurately. In addition to focusing on skin care parties, popular men and women are also key labels for the target audience. This group of people keep up with current fashion trends and pay more attention to content such as dressing, beauty, celebrity entertainment information, etc. These users can be naturally reached through scenarios that interest them.

Figure｜Qiangua-Case Closure Report-Execution Follow-up Person Analysis

Performing follow-up analysis has complex usage. It can be used to analyze the number of notes and interaction ratio of different executors, and it can also be used by users to analyze the launch of different products under a brand. The interaction volume of Yuewei Anti-Sugar Frosting accounted for 32.83%, which was significantly higher than the 13.58% of the number of notes, and the delivery effect was significantly better than other categories.

You can also analyze data on different content directions of the same product (such as tutorials, reviews, daily sharing, and good product recommendations), or even subdivided directions of the same content direction (different components, different scenarios, etc.), to continuously optimize and improve interactive ROI.

The types of comments are mainly neutral and positive, with very few negative comments. This requires brands and KOLs to guide public opinion in a timely manner under the brand cooperation notes, and popular comments are mainly positive.

The comment word cloud is mainly composed of product words "red waist", brand words "Shiseido", intention words "good" and "plant grass". Through user comment feedback, we can adjust the next round of grass-planting keywords to better hit the user's pain points.

04 Summary of KOL Marketing

KOL marketing has become a traffic pool that every brand cannot ignore. KOL marketing has become a new trend, from extensive promotion to refined operations. Brands should pay attention to the following points:

High-quality KOLs are selected based on a three-dimensional model including basic data (notes), quality of recommendations (bloggers), and commercial quality.

The purpose of planting grass determines the delivery model, and the content determines the effect of planting grass. It is easier to obtain high ROI by selecting delivery models according to different purposes and deploying content in different directions.

The refined operation of KOLs cannot be separated from periodic review. With the help of data products, simple and efficient optimization of grass-seeking plans can help brands better improve effective GMV.