How to do KOL marketing promotion? 4000 words of dry goods presented

With the rise of short video platforms such as TikTok and live streaming, 2020 has become the first year of internet celebrity (KOL) marketing. Many companies tried the new marketing model of influencer marketing in 2020. Judging from the results, many people said that the effect was not good. Especially in the live streaming e-commerce industry, there are too many tricks and the waters are too deep. However, with the standardization of the industry and marketing trends, influencer marketing will still be one of the mainstream marketing channels in 2021, so it is very necessary to understand the relevant knowledge.

This article will cover multiple aspects such as how to find suitable Internet celebrities, marketing budget allocation, and effect evaluation.

What is influencer marketing?

With both KOL and live streaming selling products, I believe everyone has a vague definition of internet celebrity marketing, so let’s give a unified definition here.

As the name suggests, influencer marketing is a form of collaboration between brands and influencers to achieve marketing goals, using the influence and popularity of the influencers themselves to help promote brands or sell products.

This type of influencer that is suitable for cooperation with brands usually has two characteristics:

1. Have a stable fan base in a specific professional field, such as Li Jiaqi.
2. Those who can directly influence consumers’ shopping decisions with their own characteristics, such as Luo Yonghao.

The fundamental factor is influence, which can gain user trust and thus deliver value.

Internet celebrities usually work hard in a specific field, post content on social media, and communicate with fans to become experts in that field. The more loyal fans an internet celebrity has, the greater his or her influence will be, and the more effective the promotion and sales the brand wants to achieve will be. One pitfall that needs to be noted here is that many internet celebrities have fake fans and have no real influence at all.

Why do consumers trust influencers?

In fact, this logic is the same as celebrity endorsements. When celebrities endorse products, consumers will believe in the celebrities and thus make purchases. Internet celebrities also rely on their continued influence to gain users’ trust and thus bring conversions to the brand.

With the rapid development of the economy, more and more brands are competing with each other in the market. Coupled with the advertisements and information of various companies, it is very easy for consumers to get lost in the sea of ​​uneven brands. This not only reduces consumers’ attention span, but also makes it difficult for them to trust brands directly.
According to a survey report on millennials (people born in the 1980s and 1990s) and Generation Z (people born between 1995 and 2000), only 1% of these consumers trust advertisements.

When it comes to brands, consumers are more inclined to trust the opinions of third parties , such as internet celebrities, when making purchases. This is also the direct reason why brands’ investment in hard advertising has dropped significantly.

Internet celebrities are not stars. They could be anyone in real life, such as a full-time mother, an ordinary office worker with frequent skin allergies, a design graduate who loves collecting sneakers, etc.

These people share their experiences or lives on social media. In their sharing, you can find answers to your questions or be attracted by their personal charm. More importantly, these people have no sense of distance from their fans.
These people are experts in their fields and do not belong to any brand. They will not blindly endorse any brand. This makes these Internet celebrities an important channel for consumers to verify the quality of brands, and consumers choose to listen to the advice of experts.

This is why influencers can influence consumers’ shopping decisions. Every time an internet celebrity endorses a brand, it tests consumers’ trust in the internet celebrity. If consumers believe in the internet celebrity and actually buy their favorite products, then fans’ trust in the internet celebrity will deepen.

On the contrary, if an internet celebrity endorses a bad brand, the end result may be the loss of fans. From the perspective of internet celebrities managing themselves, they usually need to screen products more carefully in order to establish a virtuous circle. The recent popular Simba bird’s nest incident shows how important product selection is.

How to do influencer marketing? 5 common ways of cooperation

For influencer marketing to flourish, it requires content production, event packaging and other forms of content to create content that attracts consumers. Some brands will design activities to attract influencers to participate in order to stimulate them to create content about the brand, while others will directly contact influencers to discuss schedule cooperation or content exchange. Here are 5 common collaboration models:

1. Give away PR items

Brands will give away new products for free to influencers who meet the potential target audience in exchange for unboxing posts and videos by the influencers, but they usually do not force the influencers to post articles or get a lot of exposure. It is commonly used in cosmetics and skin care products, and electronic products. Reference case: various unboxing videos on Bilibili.

2. Internet celebrity profit sharing

Brands design promotional offers and spread them through posts or videos by influencers. After consumers place an order, the influencer can get a commission on the revenue, which is usually calculated in the form of a discount code. This cooperation model can be used for most products. For reference, there is the recently popular “Skills to Make Money”, where other KOLs conduct marketing and share profits.

3. Sponsorship and Cooperation

When influencers attend events, brands provide merchandise, venues and other resources for free in the form of sponsorship. In order to achieve product exposure, influencers will usually expose the brand in videos or social media after the event to indicate the source of sponsorship. Sponsorship cooperation often occurs in event clothing, venues, equipment, etc.

4. Content exposure cooperation

The most common cooperation model is that brands provide products to influencers and discuss the types of cooperative content such as social media posts, videos, live broadcasts, etc. The influencers' own traffic drives brand exposure. Most products can use this cooperation model. Reference cases: various grass-roots articles on Xiaohongshu

5. Internet celebrity co-branded products

Brands and influencers join hands to jointly launch new products with the influencers' own characteristics, so as to attract fans of both the brand and the influencers and achieve a mutually beneficial effect. It is more common in products with low development difficulty, such as food and beverages, clothing accessories, etc. Reference case: Li Ziqi’s river snail noodles.

How to choose the right influencer? Four categories of influencers

Nowadays, internet celebrities are everywhere, but among so many of them, it requires careful screening to find the ones that are truly suitable for cooperation. According to the activity goals planned by the brand, it is often necessary to cooperate with different types of influencers. Generally, we will use influence as the selection indicator. Here we divide influencers into 4 types according to influence:

Celebrities (Number of fans: 1 million or more)

These are basically the top KOLs in a certain industry. They have a huge influence, but are also very expensive. Such as Liziqi, Li Jiaqi, Luo Yonghao and so on. Usually the pit fee is a very large cost. Moreover, these internet celebrities usually have the right to choose their partners, or their partners will be reviewed by their agents or agencies. Generally, only big brands have the strength to cooperate with us.

Well-known Internet celebrities (number of fans: 300,000-500,000)

This type of internet celebrity has less influence than celebrities and is not a phenomenon. But he is also a well-known figure in a certain industry. And their professionalism and verticality are very high. And compared to celebrities, it is easier for them to interact with their fans. There are many big Vs in such vertical fields on Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili.

Mid-level KOL (number of followers: 50,000-300,000)

Compared to well-known internet celebrities who are operated by a team, mid-level KOLs are generally self-media run by individuals. Although they don’t have a lot of fans, they are trustworthy and the price is not too expensive, making them an ideal channel for cooperation.

Low-level KOL (10,000-50,000 followers)

Although these influencers have a small fan base, they are usually experts in the domain name. The fees for cooperation with this type of influencer are usually relatively low and the degree of cooperation is very high. Although the quantity is not large, it is possible to cooperate with multiple people at the same time.

Seven steps to influencer marketing

Step 1: Establish activity goals

The first thing is to set goals for this internet celebrity marketing collaboration. What kind of results do you want to achieve through this collaboration with the internet celebrity? The most basic ones are to increase brand exposure and improve product sales. You can also set more specific goals, such as finding high-quality customers, increasing brand exposure, etc.

After establishing the activity goal, remember to set a few quantifiable numbers for this goal, such as how many fans the brand fan page will gain, how much percentage the product sales can be increased, etc., so as to facilitate the final evaluation of whether the activity has truly achieved the desired goal.

Step 2: Define the audience for the campaign

You probably already know your brand’s potential audience, but when developing an influencer marketing strategy, in addition to leveraging what you already know about potential customers, you can also target that audience into smaller groups.

For example, if a brand wants to promote a small-sized frying pan, the usual target audience is housewives or people who cook frequently. However, since a small-sized frying pan is not suitable for preparing meals for a family, the target audience can be changed to singles and office workers who cook. The internet celebrities to be sought can also be targeted, and the content is dedicated to providing lunch boxes and single-portion meals for office workers, as well as sharing recipes.

Step 3: Set a budget and find a matching influencer

Next, you need to set a budget for this influencer marketing campaign. In addition to determining which influencers you can work with, the size of the budget will also affect the content that can be produced.

For example, videos with the best communication effects command the highest prices, while simple graphic and text collaborations are relatively cheap. In addition, if brands want to produce content with influencers and advertise on their own, these costs should also be included.

With your marketing goals and budget, you can start looking for suitable influencers. For example, if you want to expose your brand and have a high budget, you can consider looking for a well-known influencer. If your brand is in its early stages and you want to cultivate loyal customers first and your budget is not high, you can consider looking for multiple low-level influencers to work with.

Step 4: Screen influencers and select partners

Now you should have a group of potential influencers in your hands. Then you can study the influencer’s usual cooperation mode with brands, the influencer’s own nature, the interaction between fans and other information to determine which influencer is most suitable for cooperation.

You can use a few questions to help you make the selection and clarify: Do the personal characteristics of the influencer match the brand tone? Do fans of influencers pay for their products? What similar competing products has this influencer used in the past? Have you ever said good or bad things about any brand? Did other brands have a smooth collaboration process with this influencer? Are the follow-up benefits good?

Step 5: Contact influencers and discuss ways to collaborate

After selecting a cooperating influencer, you can check whether the influencer has published an agent or cooperation information, and invite the influencer to cooperate. During the cooperation negotiation process, you can first understand how this influencer generally cooperates with brands, what form you expect for this cooperation, and tell the influencer what goals you hope to achieve through this cooperation.

Sometimes it is not necessarily the influencer himself who will come forward to negotiate with the brand, but no matter who is involved in the process, it is best for both parties to have a contract that clearly records important information such as the cooperation period, form, resources, payment, etc., so as to ensure the rights and interests of both parties.

Step 6: Execute marketing activities

In addition to passively waiting for influencers to release content and announce collaborations, you can also display collaboration information on your own brand page, or make good use of the materials from the collaboration to place advertisements to maximize the benefits.

You can release preheating information before the event goes online, vigorously promote the influencer event during the event, and place advertisements during the countdown to the event. However, it is best to communicate with the Internet celebrities before producing these contents, and clearly state them in the contract to avoid disputes.

Step 7: Evaluate your results

Based on the activity goals set at the beginning, it is necessary to look back and evaluate the results of the activity. Key indicators include the fan engagement of the content released by the influencer, how many people actually come into contact with the brand, and the achievement rate of the final target indicators.

You can judge the success of an event based on several important indicators, such as the degree of interaction between influencers and fans, subsequent popularity, specific conversions, and return on investment. You can also compare these data interactively to determine whether consumers like such an event. For example, if the discussion rate is high but the final conversion rate is poor, the problem may be that consumers are attracted by the recommendations of Internet celebrities, but the actual purchase page is not attractive enough.

at last

Nowadays, traffic costs are getting higher and higher, and many channels can no longer achieve the desired results. As influencer marketing has become a hot marketing channel recently, many people are eager to try it, but in the end there are no good results. But in fact, it may be caused by one's own reasons, so there is no need to abandon the entire channel directly. Taking small steps and making mistakes, and constantly optimizing the details, is a good choice.

Author: 3D Push

Source: 3D Push