In 2020, move from KOL marketing to influencer marketing!

Since the birth of social media, "influencer marketing" has become an important way of brand marketing.

Influencers are called influencers abroad. There are two main reasons why influencers are increasingly valued by companies.

• First, in the fragmented era of mobile Internet, users' attention is no longer focused on the core time period of a certain core media, so the role of traditional advertising is gradually declining.
• Second, influencers are in an objective and fair third-party position and have influence in vertical fields, so they have an increasingly greater impact on consumer decisions.

Influencers are generally called KOLs in China, and they were born in the Weibo era. Over the past year or so, with the popularity of short videos and live streaming marketing, a new word has been mentioned more and more frequently: “expert.” The concept of influencer marketing was born.

Judging from the trend of videoization on social media, influencer marketing is bound to become an important means of brand marketing in the future.

This article will discuss the following issues:

1. What is the difference between influencers and KOLs?
2. What are the pain points of influencer marketing?
3. How to conduct influencer marketing correctly?

01 Influencers, from KOLs to influencers

First, let’s talk about the difference between KOL and influencers.

(1) In terms of time, platform and content format

KOL was born in the era of the rise of Weibo. In the early days, KOLs on Weibo were mainly a group of elites, such as Han Han, Fang Zhouzi, Lian Yue, He Weifang, etc., who shared their views on Weibo. As the group of people expanded, joke tellers conquered Weibo, and a large number of joke tellers represented by Gushan became KOLs with great influence. Later, they further differentiated into KOLs in various fields such as finance, technology, and beauty.

These KOLs were mainly active in the years when Weibo and WeChat marketing was at its peak, and their main output was also pictures and texts.

The word "expert" has basically only appeared in 2019 or even later. They are a group of influencers who have emerged with short videos, especially Douyin and Kuaishou. They are experts in a certain field and are good at using short videos and live broadcasts, which are more vivid and popular ways to explain problems.

(2) In terms of the core value they provide to users

The core of KOL lies in O, which stands for opinion. A KOL's opinions, views and opinions based on his or her knowledge and experience influence the audience. If a so-called KOL only has a large number of fans but does not have his own unique views and opinions, then he cannot be called a KOL.

The core of influencers is to promote and remove content, which is determined by the nature of video-based social media.

A consumer saw a pair of shoes on Weibo. The nature of the pictures and text made him focus on the design, materials, workmanship and brand history of the shoes. When consumers see a pair of shoes on Douyin and think it is very cool to see the influencer dancing in the shoes, they will be attracted to buy them.

Therefore, the value points of text and image KOLs and video experts’ content are different, and fans’ focus on the two contents is also different.

(3) From the perspective of how the two affect consumers.

In the KOL era, consumers form circles, and they often take the initiative to seek out KOLs in their circles and then are influenced by them.

In the era of experts, intelligent distribution will recommend experts that consumers are interested in, allowing them to find organizations and gradually be influenced.

Recently, there is a person who is good at expressing himself on Douyin called "Da Neng's Watch Notes". Through intelligent distribution, he appears in the information flow of users who may be interested in watches, and gradually makes them become fans, and gradually influences the consumption decisions of fans in the future. This expert has not been operating Douyin for long, but he already has more than 5 million fans. In the era of Weibo and Weibo, it is difficult for people in this niche field to obtain such a large amount of traffic and fans.

The evolution of influencers from KOLs to experts represents the trend of the social media ecosystem from pictures and texts to videos.

In the long run, graphic content and video content will inevitably coexist, which is determined by the differences in their forms and values.

However, as graphic and text KOLs have gone through years of development and video content has rapidly emerged in the past two years, video influencers have shown an explosive trend. One manifestation of this is that many graphic and text creators have turned to the video ecosystem.

Nowadays, you have to admit that more and more brands are starting to cooperate with influencers on short video platforms to achieve better brand marketing results.

02 Pain points of brands conducting influencer marketing

Influencer marketing for short video platforms has gradually become a trend, but just like KOL marketing in the past had many problems, influencer marketing also has problems, the most core of which are the following:

(1) Low docking efficiency

Today is an era of the explosion of self-media, with more and more KOLs and influencers emerging on various platforms.

For example, on TikTok, top influencers are very well-known and recognized, so they are often favored by advertisers. But in fact, there are more than one million influencers with media value on Douyin, and the potential media value of more mid- and long-tail influencers is worth exploring. It often takes time and effort for advertisers to find these influencers.

(2) Price opacity

When a brand wants to work with a certain influencer, the quote it gets from the agent may have gone through several hands. In addition, the agency packages it with strategies, creativity, etc., making it even more difficult for the company to determine the influencer's true price. In the Internet age, the trend is for media to become increasingly transparent, but the problem of price opacity is still widespread in the industry.

(3) Data authenticity issues

This problem has existed since the birth of KOL. The extensive development of early social marketing has led to the data-only theory of brand marketing. A KOL who appears to have millions of fans may have less than 10% real fans, and may falsify information such as reposts, interactions, and likes. This results in the brand marketing effect appearing to be perfect, but in fact it falls far short of the brand's expectations.

This phenomenon is also unavoidable on short video platforms. There are many cases where the sales revenue of an expert through live streaming is not enough to cover the placement fee.

03 Platforms gradually solve the pain points of influencer marketing

The entire advertising industry has been trying to solve the above problems for many years. From the big trend, the health of marketing is gradually shifting to the platform.

• On the one hand, it is because the platforms understand the value and advantages of their own platforms best, and they can provide marketing that is more suitable for the platform.
• On the other hand, only when the platform brings real and effective marketing value to advertisers, will the platform’s own commercial value become greater and greater.

In the era of dual-micro marketing, the Fantong launched by Weibo and the Moments ads launched by WeChat have, to a certain extent, provided advertisers with real and effective marketing tools, which are healthier.

In the video era, advertisers have a more urgent need for a measurement system for video content marketing, and platforms respond more quickly to such demands.

Bytedance Star Map is a one-stop service platform based on the creator ecosystem launched by Bytedance. This platform was launched in 2018 and has been trying to help brands solve the pain point of finding the right influencers for content marketing.

In the latest version, Jueliang Star Map has launched functions such as submission tasks and live broadcast. Using submission tasks, advertisers can initiate a topic or task and have multiple influencers contribute and participate. Using live broadcast tasks, advertisers can directly select live broadcast experts based on historical data and place orders for live broadcast tasks.

When advertisers are screening for suitable influencers, they can use the five dimensions of the Juleliangxingtu influencer index as a reference, namely, the communication index, cooperation index, fan growth index, cost-effectiveness index, and grass-planting index. Even the expected playback volume of the task and the expected CPM can be estimated in advance.

These features of Julebao Star Map allow advertisers to screen influencers efficiently and transparently, and the marketing results are relatively controllable.

Even if large brands outsource execution to agencies, they can still monitor and understand marketing results throughout the process through the platform. Small and medium-sized brands with limited budgets can directly screen influencers and conduct marketing, eliminating various processes such as inquiry, screening, and finding agents.

04 How to use influencer marketing correctly

(1) Clarify your goals

Before engaging in influencer marketing, you must first determine your goals. Is your goal to expose your brand, increase consumer awareness, promote and sell new products, or gather target users to participate in activities and co-create content? The goals are different and the marketing focus is also different.

Although short video platforms can now achieve the so-called "integration of brand and effect", for the promotion of a brand at a certain stage, there must be a focus on brand and effect, rather than a 50-50 split.

(2) Find the right talent

Once the goal is determined, you need to find the right expert. When it comes to influencer marketing, most brands have heard of the dozens of big influencers at the top, but a large number of mid- and long-tail influencers are often overwhelmed.

As mentioned above, there are more than one million influencers with media value on TikTok. For most non-head brands, sometimes it is not enough to spend a budget to purchase the head influencers, but they also need to find mid- and long-tail influencers that are suitable for the brand tone.

Based on your own product characteristics and fields, find a group of mid- and long-tail influencers who match your product labels and let them influence the target population. The final effect will be better than finding a top influencer account with a low match but a huge number of fans.

(3) Personalized native content delivery

The traditional advertising and marketing method has always been "one source of water for the world", that is, to shoot a TVC, and all channels and media use this TVC to promote it. This method actually causes a certain degree of waste. The TVC is likely to be delivered to people who are not the product's target audience or people who do not like this category. In this case, the TVC is actually ineffective.

A better solution is to personalize and promote native content for different influencers.

After selecting influencers with different attributes, brands can develop different short video content for promotion based on the attributes of the influencers and target groups. Influencers can also produce original content that suits their own style to maximize the effect.

In the fragmented era, everyone is an island. Short video platforms and influencers have become bridges connecting everyone. In this context, native advertising is the general trend. The advertising value of native content gives influencers the right to express and understand brands. The content created by influencers not only incorporates a strong personal style, but also provides an interesting expression for the brand. It is an effective way for brands to interact with fans through influencers.

For example, for a mobile phone, different video content should be produced for men and women. For men, content about performance should be produced and digital experts should be selected to deliver it. For women, we produce content about fashion, beauty, and design, and select fashion experts to distribute them.

(4) Evaluation and adjustment

If brands conduct influencer marketing based on the above suggestions, they can monitor, evaluate and adjust the results during the promotion process. Choose different talents and different content and carry out multiple sets of delivery. If the set performs well, continue to deliver it. If the set performs poorly, improve it.

On the Julebao Star Map platform, each set of delivery data has a clear data report, which can scientifically guide the brand to take the next marketing action. At the same time, these data are also the brand's data assets. The more data there is, the more effective the basis for marketing decisions will be.

Perfect Diary’s promotion on Douyin is very representative. When promoting Perfect Diary Matte Lip Glaze, Perfect Diary took an unconventional approach and selected a total of 42 accounts to create different content and participate in the video promotion of this product.

The number of fans of these accounts ranges from 10,000 to over 1 million, and most of the fans are women aged 18-25. They include accounts for drama, beauty, and product recommendations. Below is a video of one of the experts, which contains a sitcom.

Previously, Perfect Diary also cooperated with top beauty influencer Chen Caini. When analyzing the case results, Duanyuer Business School found that the influencer marketing model with a combination of mid- and long-tail multiple accounts was not inferior to this. The effects of the two can be said to have their own merits.

Perfect Diary's marketing strategy on Douyin can be simply summarized as screening a large number of mid- and long-tail accounts, co-creating original video content with influencers, and conducting grass-roots marketing to target consumers.

In the future, more brands will definitely try this marketing model on Douyin. The role of Julebao Star Map in this marketing model is to help advertisers find the most suitable influencers more efficiently and quickly.

In the long run, because Bytedance has solved the pain point of disconnection between advertisers and influencers, it has improved the efficiency of influencer video marketing. At the same time, its transparent and digital characteristics have also allowed the entire industry to enter a standardized and healthy ecosystem earlier than the chaos of the Weibo and WeChat era, which is welcomed by the entire industry as a whole.

Influencer marketing is an important form of marketing in the social media era. As social media moves from the text and image era to the video era, influencers are gradually transforming from KOLs to experts. At the same time, the attributes of short videos and live streaming marketing have also made traditional marketing, which only focuses on brand exposure, increasingly tend towards integrated marketing.

Every brand that has attached importance to KOL marketing in the past must attach importance to influencer marketing in the future.

Author: Xunkong

Source: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation (ID: xunkong2005)

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