The selection logic and marketing strategies behind KOLs

In the past two years, brand owners have continued to increase their investment in KOL marketing , and the KOL market size is expected to grow by 44% in 2021 to reach 98 billion yuan.

The popularity of KOL marketing is not only rising, but what kind of marketing logic is supporting it? Next, I will analyze KOL marketing in three dimensions from the following aspects:

Why do KOL marketing?

What we often call KOL marketing refers to social media marketing and communication activities involving KOLs. Brand owners use the influence of KOLs in the circle to achieve their marketing goals. Common forms of KOL marketing include content seeding and live streaming. So what gave rise to KOL marketing?

(1) The rise of new media and the transformation of Internet communication methods. The rise of new media such as WeChat, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu has created a large number of Internet celebrities. They have transformed the previous relationship between products and consumers from simple exposure and being exposed to exposure, interaction, and sharing, making the influence of brand communication more profound and the brand more personalized.

(2) Driven by the benefits of traffic monetization. In the Internet age, traffic means scale and the possibility of monetization. In the new media era, some people are constantly innovating content to attract fans' attention and establish their own traffic base. When the traffic accumulates to a certain level, they begin to engage in commercial activities such as brand promotion and sales to realize the conversion and monetization of traffic.

(3) The rise of new consumer brands. New channels, new groups and new supplies have given rise to new consumer brands. The new consumption wave has allowed new consumer brands to take root in new media and develop creative ideas to achieve brand communication and promotion and acquire customers. This also provides continuous nourishment for KOLs based on new media, pushing them to continuously innovate content and expand fan traffic to meet the brand's marketing needs.

From its birth to its development, KOL marketing has gone through the process from basic content marketing to digital marketing, and then to scalable scenario marketing.

(1) KOL Marketing 1.0 - The embryonic form of content marketing: Brand owners rely on platform traffic dividends and publish content through top KOLs on Weibo, WeChat, and Douyin to reach and influence users. This is a primary content marketing model.

(2) KOL Marketing 2.0 - Digital Marketing Establishment: With data insights as the core, and using data to match content to the corresponding groups for dissemination, the position of KOL gives way to data and algorithms.

(3) KOL Marketing 3.0 - Prevalence of scenario marketing: KOLs are back at the forefront, integrating scenario-based, self-fermentable and scalable super-communication to form truly effective communication.

How to effectively screen KOLs

When a brand wants to collaborate with KOLs for marketing promotion, we must clearly define whether the marketing goal is to increase brand exposure and awareness, or simply for sales conversion. Different purposes determine the type of KOL we choose. According to the fields covered and influence of KOLs, they can be divided into celebrity KOLs, vertical KOLs and pan-entertainment KOLs.

Celebrity KOL: They have a loyal fan base and traffic appeal, and are suitable for promoting event topics and new product launches.

Vertical KOL: Focuses on vertical fields, has strong professional knowledge, interacts with fans in a two-way manner, has high stickiness and brings high-quality traffic, and is suitable for brand professional endorsement and pre-sales guidance.

Pan-entertainment KOL: has a wide audience range, is used to spread information and lead interactive participation in topics, has low fan stickiness, and is suitable for large-scale exposure and increased popularity.

Different types of KOLs have different sizes, and the roles of KOLs of different sizes in brand marketing also vary.

Top KOLs: Top-level traffic takes the lead in building brand awareness, bringing explosive attention and discussion, and celebrity endorsements harvest fan economy and promote conversion. Generally, we choose to cooperate in new product launch events with sufficient budget, and annual e-commerce promotions such as 618 and Double 11.

Mid-level KOL: Analyze product selling points from a professional perspective, conduct marketing communications through tutorials, reviews, forwarding and lucky draws, etc., target precise circles to promote conversions, and are suitable for events and activities with limited budgets that require a large number of screen-sweeping effects.

KOC: Cooperate with top KOL and mid-level KOL to post orders, share product experiences, word-of-mouth examples, etc. from the consumer's perspective, to form secondary dissemination and voice accumulation.

Brand owners can build a KOL cooperation matrix that suits their own brand positioning. If the budget permits, they can establish long-term cooperative relationships with multiple KOLs, and actively tap into small and medium-sized potential KOLs to co-create content and achieve continuous brand penetration.

It is very difficult to select a KOL from among many KOLs that matches the tone of your own brand, meets the promotion budget, has the same target audience, and can bring high-quality results. Everyone has their own methodology for selecting KOLs. During my research, I found that the PAVG number selection methodology based on star map data is a theory that is very strong in both theory and practice. PAVG number selection methodology focuses on four aspects: KOL’s expressiveness, commercial power, growth and cost-effectiveness.

What are the KOL marketing methods?

For different marketing purposes, KOL’s combination marketing strategies are different. Marketing activities aimed at new product launches and brand promotion mainly spread information through the pyramid-shaped KOL matrix. Marketing activities aimed at sales conversion mainly use vertical KOLs to carry out large-scale dissemination and promotion to guide the target group to convert. In large-scale integrated marketing activities, select KOLs from multiple fields to conduct communication guidance in different marketing links to achieve marketing goals such as brand communication interaction and sales conversion.

KOL diffusion type: GAC Trumpchi Shadow Leopard x Weibo x Su Bingtian Tokyo Olympic Games brand communication event

At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Su Bingtian broke the Asian record in the 100m with a time of 9.83 seconds, becoming a hot topic among the nation. GAC Trumpchi deeply tied Shadow Leopard to spokesperson Su Bingtian's labels of "speed" and "curve", and carried out in-depth brand communication on Weibo.

Before the Olympics, GAC Trumpchi officially announced that its Shadow Leopard spokesperson had a remote conversation with Su Bingtian, using the popularity of sports stars to spark discussion and support from fans, laying the groundwork for hot topics during the Olympics.

During the Olympics, Su Bingtian ran 9.83 seconds in the 100m semi-finals to break the Asian record, becoming the first Chinese athlete to enter the Olympic men's 100m final. He also finished sixth in the final, dominating the Weibo hot search list. GAC Trumpchi took advantage of the popularity of the event to launch the topic #Su Bingtian easily changes the value of Shadow Leopard#, and used the help of automotive vertical KOLs to accurately reach people with an interest in cars, prompting media celebrities to spontaneously participate in topic sharing and dissemination, fully bundling the popularity of the event, celebrities, and brands, fully realizing the resonance of social emotions, and spreading brand information to the greatest extent.

The Chinese team advanced to the men's 4X100 relay final in track and field, and once again welcomed the hot spot of the event. They combined Su Bingtian's cornering performance with Yingbao's cornering strength, released the topic #苏冰天角落影豹中国速度#, and bundled them again. They also continued the popularity of the event and user emotions through Su Bingtian's super topic, achieving the harvest of public opinion.

In this brand communication, Su Bingtian was used as a celebrity KOL to bundle the Olympic Games with Shadow Leopard, and the message was spread through automotive vertical KOLs and media influencers to stimulate user discussion enthusiasm. The average click completion rate of Su Bingtian X Shadow Leopard hot search topics was 480%, and the car model volume during the event period increased by 28 times year-on-year, which strengthened the product strength of the Shadow Leopard model and improved its social voice and brand favorability.

KOL Focus: Estee Lauder Collagen Cream x Xiaohongshu New Product Launch Marketing

Estee Lauder launched a new collagen cream product to capture the mid-to-high-end facial cream market, and cooperated with Xiaohongshu to recruit new product experience officers to evaluate and share new products, and refined communication with the crowd to achieve both product and effect.

Based on the big data of Xiaohongshu platform, it was found that having collagen is considered to be the most intuitive manifestation of young skin, and a good nickname is helpful for product promotion; the era of nitpicking slogans has been bid farewell to the promotion of skin care products, and users are increasingly looking forward to straightforward and clear communication of efficacy; the anti-aging pain points are segmented, "looseness" and "fine lines" are the core pain points of anti-aging, and staying up late is the most popular scenario. Based on the above insights, we positioned the new product in the firming and anti-wrinkle segment, seized the nickname of "collagen cream", and established the efficacy communication of "no looseness, no sagging, no visible wrinkles".

In the early stage of promotion, through the tailor-made "New Product Experience Officer" project, we recruited hundreds of KOCs to be the first to experience the cream, publish notes, and output the first batch of real word-of-mouth, and adjust the launch communication strategy based on user feedback.

Based on the previous data, we customized various population packages for collagen cream. Aiming at the anti-aging pain points of different groups of people, KOLs created grass-planting notes from different angles to achieve refined communication and gain high interactive feedback from users.

We created a "surprise box" specifically for the new collagen cream, attracting high-concentration skincare and anti-aging users on the entire site to search for samples/full-size collagen creams, and to post notes to share their experiences, effectively driving up both site-wide searches and notes for the new collagen cream.

In the end, Estee Lauder Collagen Cream became the No. 1 hot search in the cream category on Xiaohongshu, with product search popularity increasing by 333%. The marketing promotion also drove the collagen cream to sell out across all channels, with pre-sales on Double Eleven increasing by more than 900% year-on-year. The number of notes released about Estee Lauder's collagen cream has increased exponentially, more than 6 times compared to before the promotion. After the new product was launched, it successfully captured the minds of users, and the "firming", "anti-aging" and "anti-wrinkle" effects were clearly recognized.

KOL functional type: Julebao Bai Xiaochun x Douyin x Zhao Jinmai integrated marketing communication

Junlebao Bai Xiaochun focuses on the new generation of energetic young consumers, and has comprehensively refreshed its product line and brand, positioning itself as "a new generation of native tender milk" and signing the new generation star Zhao Jinmai as its brand spokesperson. In order to communicate with the new generation of consumers and refresh and establish the brand image of "new generation of energetic milk", the #抖出嫩活范er National Tender Dance Challenge was launched on Douyin, calling on consumers to maintain vitality anytime and anywhere through scientific nutritional supplements and a healthy lifestyle.

During the event warm-up period, spokesperson videos, event warm-up videos, product videos, etc. are released to continuously refresh the brand image and promote the event warm-up, accumulate attention from the entire network before the event starts, and fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the spokesperson's fans.

During the outbreak period of the activity, the topic #抖出嫩活范er was released, and a national tender dance challenge was initiated. Zhao Jinmai released a tender dance video to guide user participation, and KOLs from various fields spread the word. There are Qingdao Aunt Zhang Daxia in the comedy category, Xiaobawang in the dance category, Yun Xiaoduo in the music category, Xiaoqiang in the host category, etc.

After the event was launched, we continued to output rich event content such as landmark check-in dance videos and drama videos. Taking advantage of the popularity of the event, KOLs are used to direct traffic to e-commerce platforms, converting the event's communication power into sales power.

In the end, the activity received over 1.2 billion interactions on the Douyin platform, and sales of Bai Xiaochun products soared rapidly, doubling in the first month. The brand image of "new generation of energetic milk" has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

KOL Marketing Trends in 2022

According to Miaozhen data, the expected growth rate of social marketing in China is 18% in 2022. 76% and 79% of mature and emerging advertisers will increase their social marketing investment, and 35% of emerging advertisers will increase their social marketing by more than 30%, which is more aggressive. Since 2019, the overall attention on KOLs has been on the rise, and 67% of advertisers believe that KOL marketing will still be the focus of advertisers' social marketing in 2022. In 2022, I think the following trends need to be focused on:

(1) KOL promotion has become a mainstream demand: In 2022, 64% of advertisers' marketing goals are product promotion (an increase of 14% from 2021), 37% are product conversion, and brand communication is 27% (a decrease of 4% from 2021). Therefore, advertisers are more clear that the main goal of KOL promotion is product promotion, and they look forward to the direct product conversion brought by promotion.

(2) Mid-level KOLs have become powerful influencers in bringing goods, and KOC investment continues to grow: Mid-level KOLs can deepen product awareness, mobilize user participation, and achieve deep conversion, making sales conversion efficiency more obvious by virtue of their expertise in the field. In 2021, KOC grew most significantly compared to 2020 (5.5%), accounting for 75.5% of the total. It can achieve secondary dissemination and word-of-mouth fission of brands and products, and complete large-scale grass-planting similar to the circle of friends.

(3) Virtual KOLs have great potential: From the first generation of singer Luo Tianyi to the entertainment IP idol Ye Xiu, and then to the hyper-realistic digital people AYAYI, Ling Ling, and Hua Xizi, virtual KOLs are constantly iterating. Hyper-realistic digital people with realistic images come with the metaverse. With the blessing of their own traffic and potential, they can provide advertisers with diversified marketing methods such as brand endorsements, press conferences, and live broadcasts.