How to choose a Douyin account? How to invest ROI?

This article is the first step. If you want to know the next two steps, I suggest you: follow first, then read, and finally forward it, all three in one click.

The first trick (KOL): How to choose a Douyin account?

The second trick (content): How does Douyin create content?

The third trick (investing in traffic): How does Douyin invest in ROI?

01Why invest in KOL

In my previous article on the official account, "After investing in 100 Douyin cases, I summarized the six underlying logics of consumer brand growth", I put forward a point of view:

Today, "brand building" is almost equivalent to "content building", which means that content is no longer a "tactic" but a "strategy".

Today's brand building is already bottom-up. It does not depend on what the brand wants to say, but on what the influencers that consumers follow say, a product recommendation note, a short video recommending good things. Through these "product recommendation contents", consumers have discovered a new treasure, clicked on the shopping cart, and completed the purchase with one click. The entire communication chain has been extremely shortened, with only two steps left: selecting suitable KOLs for content co-creation and taking over the operation of the e-commerce platform. The links are getting shorter and the difficulty is increasing.

Since 2019, the traffic of TikTok has exploded, and short videos have become the mainstream of content marketing. The new and local brands that entered the market at this time have all enjoyed the dividends of the growth of TikTok KOLs. However, after this wave of dividends receded, how many brands will survive? Ultimately, no brand can rely on dividends to move into the future.

Short videos are a watershed in the era of digital marketing. No matter how you perceive it, the market trend is irreversible. If you regard KOL placement as the ROI of performance marketing, then the result will inevitably be bleak. If you treat KOLs as collaborators in the future building of your brand, the outcome might be different.

If content is used as a brand strategy today, there are no shortcuts. The only way is to move forward step by step. Choosing the right KOL is the first step.

02Types of KOLs

Internally, we divide KOLs into three categories: vertical, pan-vertical, and non-vertical.

1. Vertical KOL

Taking the selection of beauty product accounts as an example, vertical categories can be divided into two major categories. One is the speaking type, called oral blogger, and the other is the non-speaking type, non-oral blogger. The biggest difference between the two is the account potential and category preference.

Vertical bloggers, such as beauty, food, mother and baby KOLs. The characteristics of a spoken-word blogger are that he has a clear personality, a certain fan base (more than 500,000), good script creation ability, and vivid video expression ability. On the TikTok platform, vertical spoken word bloggers are scarce, and the growth rate of spoken word bloggers has not kept up with the speed of commercialization of the platform. This is also the reason why it is difficult to get a good ROI by investing in KOLs today. Today, it is meaningless for brand communication to just talk to itself. What you need is co-creation with KOLs. And today, those who can really penetrate the content, make the product popular, and create brand awareness mainly rely on this type of KOLs.

The head effect of Douyin has already appeared, and almost all of them are vertical word-of-mouth bloggers. They not only have super strong ability to bring goods, but also are the weather vane that influences the direction of the market.

Most vertical non-spoken bloggers do not speak, but rely on video effects and subtitles to express content, and many of them are KOCs. In 2019, we served nearly half of China's emerging cosmetics brands. At that time, there was a special investment method, which was to expand the KOC and pursue a certain video explosion rate. In that year, we invested in a lot of popular videos. We tested almost all cosmetics categories, and finally the few categories that could explode in volume on KOC were only: lipstick, eye shadow, blush, highlighter and other high-value cosmetics categories. But there is a problem here. The good-looking KOCs don’t talk, but they achieve certain exposure and conversion through simple makeup or makeup changes and amazing makeup effects, but it doesn’t matter who the brand is or what the product is.

In 2019, many new cosmetics stars became popular thanks to TikTok, but how many of them will be remembered in 2021?

Today we look at the brand perception and brand power of Perfect Diary and Huaxizi. In 2019, Perfect Diary invested nearly 2,000 KOCs (also KOLs) every month, while Huaxizi invested 200 KOLs (also KOCs) every month. Different choices lead to different results.

2. Pan-vertical KOL

Taking beauty products as an example, maternal and child, life, VLOG, and even food bloggers, as long as they can create a short video that is almost the same as a beauty blogger through content performance, and it is a verbal type, then in terms of content, they are almost vertical bloggers. The reason for investing in the pan-vertical category is that in the vertical category, all the KOLs that should be invested in have already been invested, and the category has to be expanded. The key points here are:

First, the KOL’s fan profile must match the purchasing population of the product being marketed.

Second, the verticalization of content creation by general vertical bloggers must also comply with the "4T content rule" commonly used by vertical bloggers (the second trick to share).

3. Non-vertical KOL

The general understanding is a plot account, or a large traffic account with a low CPM. Whether a plot account carries goods or not, the categories vary greatly. Based on past experience, a plot account can carry products with popular categories, strong video expression and low customer orders.

There are several key points to consider when choosing a plot number:

First, the account must have category attributes. This depends on the attributes of the content, whether a lot of the content ultimately focuses on the product. Many drama accounts are based on commercial considerations and have category positioning from the beginning, most of which prefer beauty and lifestyle attributes.

Second, the health of the fan portrait. The proportion of female fans is the most basic, and the age ratio also affects the ability to bring goods and the customer acceptance. Most of the plot accounts are quite young, but educating the young market is a good choice for cosmetics brands.

Third, the account personality. Although the plot is the same, the characters have their own unique stickiness, which can be seen from the comments of fans. If I have to recommend a good one, I'd pick the domineering president type. You can experience it for yourself.

Not all types of KOLs are suitable for full-link delivery "from content to traffic", but oral bloggers are suitable, so the PAVG number selection methodology is mainly aimed at vertical oral KOLs.

03PAVG Number Selection Methodology

The PAVG number selection algorithm is based on our past experience in KOL placement and the summary of the number selection methodology for vertical oral bloggers. We have also developed a system that calculates core indicators in four dimensions to derive a PAVG comprehensive index. Through sorting, we can lock the number selection range, improve the efficiency of number selection, quantify the data model of each KOL, and improve the effect of number selection.

P is for Performance

A：Advertising

V：Value

G：Growth

In principle, in order to ensure the accuracy of the calculated data, we take the values ​​​​based on the star map background data. The data of personal works and commercial works are separated, and the value is related to the degree of commercialization. If the commercialization is low, personal data will be used for calculation.

Since the algorithm calculation method is relatively complicated, I will share some quantitative indicators with you. Based on these core indicators, some references for number selection are also instructive.

04P: Performance

This dimension focuses on quantifying the short video content capabilities of KOLs.

Communication Index: Weighted calculation of KOL’s effective playback, interaction, completion rate and other data in the past 30 days to evaluate the communication ability of KOL’s works. This data is one of the official algorithm indexes that focuses on dissemination.

Interaction rate: number of interactive behaviors (likes, comments, shares) / number of plays.

This data is an indicator with likes as the large base. We often compare the interaction rate with the like rate. Vertical bloggers often have high like rates and low interaction rates, while the data for non-vertical bloggers (such as plot accounts) are just the opposite. This indicator has average weight for vertical talk show hosts and is for reference only.

Completion rate: number of complete plays/number of plays.

Vertical bloggers will focus on the indicators of commercial works (commercialization looks down on personal works). Relatively speaking, the completion rate will be within a reasonable range, and the relatively reasonable range is: 3-10%. However, sometimes when comparing the completion rates of individual works, we will find huge differences in the data. I don’t think this is unreasonable. On the contrary, the completion rate of individual works will reveal the KOL’s true fan stickiness.

Hot article rate: number of hot articles/number of videos.

The definition of a hot article is generally one with more than 100,000 likes (the standard is lowered to 50,000+). Today, vertical bloggers rarely produce hot articles, and some even have less than 1,000,000 natural views. However, this does not affect their production of hot articles. The principle behind this is that brands will invest in Dou+, content services, influencer bidding and other traffic enhancements. Although it is affected by the traffic, this is not subjective. On the contrary, because KOL videos have good expressiveness, good content conversion model, and strong traffic acquisition ability, it is possible to become a hit article after the traffic is added. If the ROI is a mess, how can the brand invest in traffic?

Regarding the dimension of performance, I think it is difficult for machine algorithms to replace humans (of course, this is not necessarily the case, as semantic analysis and comment analysis are not currently used for analysis), because there are many subtle sensory connections regarding the performance of the video, especially regarding the judgment of the character, which are difficult to quantify with data.

In the case that the expressiveness cannot be 100% quantified, we have also summarized some effective experiences:

First, is the KOL’s personality real? It is true that there are many MCN agencies in Douyin today. They use some routines to incubate accounts. This is a business and there is nothing wrong with it. But for users, if they see a large number of such homogeneous accounts (fake accounts and water accounts), it was okay in the early years, but do you think users will buy it today? It is obvious that today only those KOLs who are real, distinctive, and even unique can impress users and become their fans. You will find that the personalities of all the top KOLs in vertical categories today are unique.

Second, the ability to create content. In our "4T Content Rule", 1T is TRUST. Whether the blogger has had profound experiences, or even painful experiences, such expressions are difficult to read out by rote, and such content often resonates strongly with fans, thereby triggering discussions, sharing and purchases. The essence of KOL content co-creation lies in whether KOL can move users with true emotions.

Third, you should also give some small accounts some opportunities. If trust is not enough, you can make up for it with appearance. KOLs who are good-looking and well-endowed have a good growth rate, but those with plastic surgery faces will not. Since the trustworthiness of small accounts is relatively weak, don't talk too much nonsense at the beginning, get straight to the point, try to strengthen the demonstration effect of the product in the "temptation" link of the product, explain the selling points of the product in detail, and a certain degree of exaggeration is also necessary to enhance the expressiveness of the video.

In the past, when I was handling a case, the client’s budget for KOLs was limited, but for traffic investment was unlimited (based on ROI standards). In this case, it was unlikely to invest in very expensive KOLs. My strategy was to invest in mid- and low-end KOLs with a limited budget, but there were two requirements. First, the selected KOLs must be relatively exaggerated in their expressiveness, requiring a certain visual or auditory impact to enhance the expressiveness. Second, the MCN agency must have a high degree of cooperation, because relatively small KOLs have weaker control over content, so in this case I can only focus on the content itself. The final result was not bad. Some mid-level KOLs had excellent content production and their video traffic was better than usual. With a stable ROI, their native videos also consumed a lot of traffic from Dou+ and influencer bidding. Other low-end KOLs produced high-quality materials at a relatively low cost and also performed well in information flow delivery.

05A: Advertising

This dimension focuses on quantifying the KOL’s ability to bring products through short videos.

Grass-planting index: weighted calculation of KOL’s recent click-through conversion of shopping cart and other components to evaluate KOL’s grass-planting ability.

Shopping cart click rate: number of shopping cart card clicks/number of plays.

Shopping cart clicks represent potential store-entry behavior. If 20-50% of this data is used, it represents an indicator of store-entry rate. There are huge differences in different categories, but at least this reference value can clearly understand the KOL's ability to attract traffic and its potential ability to bring goods. The ideal click-through rate of vertical KOL shopping carts is 3%+.

Like rate: (comments + shares) / number of likes

An indicator that focuses on comments and shares. If a short video has a large number of comments, it either means that the content is high-quality and has sparked a lot of discussion, or that the blogger has a strong fan base and fans participate in the interaction. If there are a large number of shares, it means that the content is useful and is shared by users with others. No matter which of these situations is the case, it is a very good phenomenon of planting grass, and it will be fully verified from the perspective of bringing goods. Therefore, I do not attribute this indicator to the expressiveness of the content, but rather to the commercial power of the ability to sell goods. The ideal rate of likes and comments from vertical KOLs is 5%+.

In this dimension of Advertising commercial power, it is true that the same KOL can recommend different products and show completely different results, and the ability to bring goods can even differ by 10 times. In fact, KOLs themselves have obvious "category preferences". It may be because of their personal positioning, or it may be based on certain types of content. Douyin has given KOLs obvious labels. Therefore, in the process of selecting numbers, KOLs who can match category preferences will show higher efficiency in their ability to bring goods.

Sometimes it’s not that you chose the wrong account, but that the KOL you chose does not have the category preference you want.

Another key point is that KOLs cannot promote products of the same category in the same month. Firstly, it is easy to cause users to distrust and the influencers will take advantage of the situation. Secondly, the previous promotion has already overdrawn a certain amount of purchasing power, so the effect of the next promotion will naturally be greatly reduced. Some products are not even competing products but are in competition with each other, which will also divert users' purchasing demand for a period of time.

Ideally, KOLs should be able to stagger their product categories by three months. If that is not possible, then stagger their categories by one month.

This year, I was handling a sunscreen case. The competition in the Douyin sunscreen market was very fierce. Basically, the selection of KOLs started in January. After April, you will find that the good KOLs have almost been selected by competitors. However, good vertical KOLs are very careful about their reputation and will not take on multiple competing products at the same time. If they do, we will PASS them immediately. We cooperated with a KOL this year, and his sales data indicators were almost perfect. It took 3 months from delivering the product for trial to confirming the order. The KOL also did a very smart thing. She used the topic of "I will only accept one sunscreen this year" and let fans participate in the internal test to select the only sunscreen product she would promote this year. The final result is self-evident. All the potential energy exploded when it was finally released, and one short video brought in over 2 million products.

06V：Value

This dimension focuses on quantifying the cost-effectiveness of KOL’s short videos.

CPM: When comparing the CPM of vertical influencers in the top and middle categories, it no longer depends on natural traffic, but mainly depends on the traffic support provided by the brand (Dou+, content services, influencer bidding). If the brand is willing to invest, at least the value of the influencer will be verified. When looking at some influencers in the growth stage, since their prices are relatively low and there is little traffic support, their natural traffic will show a good CPM, which will have a higher cost-effectiveness.

Estimated playback volume: The estimated playback volume is the basic traffic. Its relationship with the influencer price can be used to pre-calculate the space for the added traffic to the popular video, and can roughly calculate the budget allocation and overall ROI. If the estimated playback volume is too small, there is a high probability that traffic support will encounter bottlenecks, which is definitely not a good choice.

Let me briefly talk about this here. Is a small account (with less than 500,000 followers) cost-effective? I think that you can only achieve cost-effective results if you invest in those that are truly in the growth stage, gaining followers at a high speed, and producing explosive content, and the prices have not had time to adjust, or if you have the ability to judge that this influencer has the potential to become a big name (unique personality and content ability). Otherwise, ordinary small accounts or KOCs, which at least need to rely on oral broadcasting skills, although the prices are relatively low, will most likely die miserably. They have no trust endorsement, no fan stickiness, no account weight, and in the end, they cannot even increase traffic.

It takes at least seven touches to complete a transaction on Douyin (the rule of seven).

Based on the principle of the seven-times rule, I handled a case where the product had a certain degree of recognition on Douyin, the category had good acceptance, the average order value was not high, and the target audience was relatively wide. Based on these factors, one of our strategies was to invest heavily in low-CPM drama accounts. The brand already has coverage of many vertical KOLs. We need to allow users to be reached multiple times in a closed-loop ecosystem, so as to continuously awaken them and then achieve conversion. Drama accounts can achieve low-cost reach as long as the CPM is well controlled. Therefore, the standard for selecting an account is to pursue cost-effective CPM and maximize exposure while matching the account category attributes and fan portrait. In the end, although the conversion rate of plot accounts is far behind that of vertical categories, there is still a good ROI after the ultra-large-scale exposure data. But the problem is that it is impossible to support the flow.

The opposite approach to the above is the way of playing vertical word-of-mouth broadcasts, investing in large accounts (head and waist) with strong personalities and good content. Although they do not seem cheap, there is a chance to buy 5-10 times the traffic, such as Dou+ investing 500,000 to 1 million, and experts bidding for 100,000 to 2 million. More importantly, good content is widely disseminated, and when the final accounts are calculated, it is found that this is the real cost-effectiveness.

The speed of a train depends entirely on the leadership of the head. If the "1" of content is not well done, the "0" of traffic behind it will be difficult to continue to support it. The cost-effectiveness depends on how you calculate this account.

07G：Growth

This dimension focuses on quantifying the purchasing power of KOL’s fans.

Fan growth index/number of fans growth: I won’t say much about this. The speed of fan growth over a period of time can show the growth potential of the influencer. Before the influencer breaks through 1 million fans, this stage is worth betting on.

Activity Index: Generally, it refers to the ratio of heavy fans’ activity. This value is closely related to the quality of fans. The higher the heavy activity, the better the quality of fans. Generally, the ideal ratio is 70%+.

iPhone Index: the proportion of iPhone users among fans. This is also an index of white, rich and beautiful women. Although many domestic mobile phones are becoming more and more high-end today, the proportion of iPhone is still like a weather vane, becoming the standard for the high proportion of those top KOLs who bring products. Generally the ideal range is 40%+.

24-30 Index: People in the age group of 24-30 are the backbone of consumption. The proportion of this group of users can reflect the consumption quality of the influencer’s fans. Generally, the ideal range is 20%+, the more the better.

I once had a case where I served a client with Douyin KOL advertising for nearly 18 months. During this period, we invested in almost everyone who could speak on Douyin. In the end, this product became a big hit for the brand. For such a long-term cooperation, the strategy I gave at the time was that in addition to vertical and pan-vertical investments, we focused on investing in new accounts with good growth potential. The reference dimension was to monitor the daily, weekly, and monthly data on the increase in fans, likes, and comments, and bet on KOLs in their rising period. Indeed, we reaped a lot of growth dividends from KOLs. Although there are also failure cases, overall, more money is earned.

Many times, the first three commercial advertisements of KOL have good cost-effectiveness. Once the effect is good, you should continue to bet on it.

The KOL you choose to invest in today is the time point with the lowest cost in the future.

08 Conclusion

In a long journey, choosing a number is just the first step.

Due to my professional habit as a product manager, I really hope to be able to quantify the core indicators of number selection and to support such work through algorithms and systems. When writing this article, I feel more like I am writing an algorithm.

You can look at the KOLs you work with from the perspective of our past experience in selecting numbers and these core indicators. The data star map is basically available, and at least through some data indicators, you can make relatively reasonable judgments. In the long run, the ability to select numbers is only the most basic content capability of a brand.

What I will share today is more about how to choose an account from the data dimension, and also supplement some necessary human experience judgments. This idea is applied to social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Kuaishou, and its core logic is also applicable.

Choosing good KOLs and co-creating content with them is definitely not just cold data, but the content should be warm, strong, and resonate with others. The creation of good content also has a mature content framework and routines, which I will share in the next article: The second of Douyin’s three magic weapons, “4T Content Rule”, Douyin’s effective content methodology.

Finally, I hope you can avoid taking detours and wasting less money.

END

Author: Growth on the road

Source: Growth on the way