Internet celebrities have become the main battlefield for marketing

In terms of the influence of internet celebrities, they can influence everyone from first-tier elites to young people in small towns. Our consumption concepts and values ​​are all influenced by internet celebrities.

To be less precise, it is internet celebrities who are shaping the lifestyles of young people.

So as a marketing strategist, what role does the internet celebrity group play in the entire marketing system? How can we make good use of the value of Internet celebrities? This is a question we should think about today.

Just a brief chat, to stimulate discussion, the following:

Insight: Everyone is entering the new economy of influencers

During the National Day holiday, I went back to my hometown in the countryside and observed an interesting phenomenon: the people in the village started watching live broadcasts selling goods and buying a lot of goods in the live broadcast room. Not only did they buy goods sold through live broadcasts, they also bought goods recommended by Internet celebrities.

People who used to place orders from Pinduoduo now place orders from Kuaishou’s live broadcast room.

And in the just-concluded Double Eleven pre-sale, Wei Ya’s first-day pre-sale amount reached 5.2 billion, which is a very scary number. Someone calculated that Li Jiaqi made 600 million yuan overnight, while Viya made 700 million yuan.

These terrifying figures are evidence of the full-scale outbreak of the new Internet celebrity economy.

In the past, only the elites in first-tier cities paid attention to KOL influencers. The previous Weibo and WeChat public accounts and self-media served young people with higher education, and their audience was actually quite limited.

But now with the comprehensive rise of Tik Tok and Kuaishou, more and more people are being drawn into the celebrity economy. Essentially, all Internet users are within the influence of celebrities.

Perhaps it is because of this that celebrity-driven new economy companies like "Tianxiaxiu" are able to support such a large market value.

Speaking of the brand side, in the past only big brands did KOL marketing, but now small and medium-sized enterprises have fully entered the market, and some of these small and medium-sized enterprises only do internet celebrity marketing because traditional media are too expensive.

As Double 11 approaches, all merchants are preparing for a big event.

"WEIQ", the celebrity advertising platform under Tianxiaxiu, integrates celebrity resources from all social platforms including Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu, establishes intelligent marketing celebrity resources, becomes a connection point between celebrities and advertisers, and empowers businesses with celebrity marketing.

A few days ago, "WEIQ" carried out a promotion targeting small and medium-sized enterprises. They went to Taobao villages, live-streaming sales villages and other sinking markets where small and medium-sized enterprises are concentrated, painted walls, did roadshows, and placed advertising spaces. We hope that small and medium-sized business owners can use the WEIQ platform to do influencer marketing during Double 11.

There is nothing much to talk about this matter itself. It is just a marketing communication that goes down to the lower-end of the market and targets small and medium-sized enterprises. But for the influencer marketing ecosystem, this proves that the new influencer economy has become increasingly popular.

As a celebrity advertising platform, WEIQ is sensitive to the market. They have found that more and more small and medium-sized enterprises are entering the market and starting to look for celebrities for marketing on their platform. So they simply take advantage of the arrival of Double 11 to accelerate the formation of this trend.

In the past, this market was not big, and it was enough for the second-party company to have some media personnel to connect with it. Now that the market is large enough, WEIQ has been formed to operate as a platform. Platform-based operations make the new economy of influencers more scaled and standardized.

This platform is like the "Didi" of the marketing industry. You can choose the right platform and influencer, and then place an order with just one click. Compared to the past when media had to look everywhere for the contact information of celebrities, WEIQ can provide the contact information of all celebrities.

When everyone is involved in the influencer economy, how can brands and marketers conduct influencer marketing in a more systematic way and use influencers to achieve brand goals?

Strategy: Marketing with influencers at the core

Next, let’s talk about the solution. Although we just need to find KOLs to place advertisements, there is a huge gap between a budget of 200,000 and a budget of 5 million. There is a huge gap between 10% of the budget share and 80% of the budget share.

Why do influencers get an increasingly larger share of the budget? What are the advantages of influencer marketing compared to traditional methods?

One is the role of creator. As mentioned in previous articles, I think the most essential difference from traditional marketing is the role of the creator.

The content created by internet celebrities to sell is all based on the internet celebrity’s personal IP brand. It is a specific person talking about one thing, while traditional advertising is a simple thing.

The second is the integration of content, traffic and effect. What used to be done by three companies together can now be done by one internet celebrity.

Producing content, generating traffic, and selling goods at the same time is more cost-effective for brands.

The third is precise stratification. I am a niche vertical brand, a small and medium-sized enterprise. The consumers I serve are very few and very precise, so it is difficult for traditional media advertising to satisfy them. But if I find KOLs in the vertical industry, the conversion rate will be incredibly high.

If you get the recognition of all KOLs in this field, you will become the most successful brand in this field. Vertical Internet celebrities are the most cost-effective choice for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Internet celebrities have great advantages over traditional media advertising, but there are still many problems that have not been solved.

The entire ecosystem is very complex, diverse and fragmented, like a maze. If people who don’t understand it rashly invest in it, the budget will be wasted even more seriously. At this time, brands need a professional internet celebrity operation platform to help them avoid many pitfalls and perform influencer marketing as efficiently and accurately as possible.

So I found the WEIQ platform to see how they solved the problem of influencer marketing.

Internet celebrity ecological map

The platforms that produce internet celebrities include Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, etc. These platforms are divided into different circles. Within the circles, there are top and mid-level internet celebrities, as well as real and fake internet celebrities. The marketing value brought by the content attributes of different internet celebrities is also different.

Faced with the complex ecosystem of internet celebrities, even professional marketers may not understand it all. In any case, I know fewer and fewer internet celebrities. At this time, you only have a budget of 200,000, enough to buy 3 small internet celebrities. What will you choose? Should you choose 3 from your own perspective, or choose 3 from the entire market?

What WEIQ can do is to label and classify all Internet celebrities, and put different platforms, circles, content attributes, and past case data in front of you, analyze the commercial value of each Internet celebrity, and you can choose the most suitable one.

Watch this video to reveal how WEIQ uses big data technology to empower influencer marketing:

These digitized celebrity individuals are eventually compiled into a digitized celebrity ecosystem, which is like a celebrity map that marks the mountains and rivers, various signposts and paths for you. Even if you don’t know this continent well, you won’t get lost with this map.

Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, which don’t know much about marketing or internet celebrities, but just want to find internet celebrities for marketing or selling products, they need such a map.

Communication strategy planning

If you just want to sell goods, you can just pick the right anchor to promote the products. But if you want to build a brand and make it bigger and stronger, you need a communication strategy.

The strategy should be based on marketing purposes, including selling products, exposure, word-of-mouth accumulation, public opinion topics, brand tone, etc. Different marketing purposes have different strategies.

Based on different marketing purposes and scenarios and based on big data analysis of past cases, the WEIQ platform accurately matches the influencers needed for communication.

So, which platform should you go to, which influencer should you look for, and what marketing should you do? Think clearly. Based on long-term case operation and data accumulation, WEIQ has summarized the communication strategy methodology of each platform for your reference.

For example, Weibo. In my personal understanding, Weibo is used to create topics and public opinion, and it can also retain user UGC. WeChat is still serving the purpose of topics, but it is a vehicle for more in-depth content interpretation. The most efficient and logical carrier of information is still text.

For example, Xiaohongshu is used to promote content. Celebrities are important, but word-of-mouth sharing by ordinary people is also important and more authentic.

For example, Tik Tok, the social role of this platform is to create youth culture trends. In marketing, we can create brand popularity by creating a framework for social popularity, thereby shaping explosive products and driving sales. This can be done here.

These communication strategies serve as a reference for big brands that are already very familiar with KOL marketing. But for small and medium-sized enterprises that have just entered the market, it is very instructive and can help them avoid many detours.

First of all, we need to have a map of the Internet celebrity ecosystem to know what is in this pool. Then, based on the current situation and your own needs, choose a suitable content platform, and within a smaller range, select the internet celebrities you need to achieve your own marketing goals.

Outlook: Scale and Standardization

Among 10 young people, at least 6 people dream of becoming internet celebrities.

Internet celebrities have created too many myths of getting rich overnight, and the news that Li Jiaqi made hundreds of millions overnight stimulates the nerves of every young person.

Internet celebrities are getting more and more budget in marketing. From the brand end, big brands and small and medium-sized enterprises have all joined in; on the consumer end, everyone from first-tier elites to small town youth are influenced by Internet celebrities.

However, this industry is still a very extensive and rudimentary market. At the beginning of the year, I wrote an article titled "Accelerated Elimination of KOLs". In fact, it is about accelerated iteration. Too many people who became popular by luck are being eliminated by their own strength. However, more MCNs are unable to continue operating and have closed down. The assembly line influencers under the traffic logic cannot bring higher commercial returns.

From the perspective of brand marketers, what this industry needs more is scale and standardization.

The first is scale. The dispersion of platforms and internet celebrities means the dispersion of traffic.

When we do marketing, we need large-scale and systematic traffic. How to effectively organize this scattered traffic into large-scale traffic and deliver information more efficiently is a great test for communication strategies.

Then comes standardization. There are dozens of platforms, and a chaos of big and small internet celebrities of different types and circles, including real and fake ones. The entire quotation system is also very messy. For brands that don’t know much about this ecosystem, it is very easy to be deceived by fake internet celebrities.

Fake traffic is no longer a secret in this industry. I remember the exposure of fake internet celebrities before. The data were very good, but there was almost no conversion. This type of internet celebrities can be found everywhere.

Social media has been developing for ten years. In the past, internet celebrities and their own media played an assisting role in marketing. But now, Internet celebrities are becoming the main battlefield for marketing.

What we need to think about in the future is how influencer marketing can be operated in a more standardized and systematic manner.

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Author: Yang Buhuai

Source: Yang Buhuai ( yangbuhuai01 )