The 4 necessary stages of KOL placement

Compared with the mature information flow advertising, KOL advertising has always been like a stepmother.

When delivering information flows, the platform will continuously analyze user behavior and preferences and provide advertisers with more detailed labels. Even if you have just discussed with your girlfriend where to go for the vacation, when you open Douyin, you will see targeted advertisements for hotels and air tickets.

However, KOL advertising is different. Advertisers can only see basic user portraits such as gender and age.

Tik Tok Advertising Platform - User portrait of a KOL in Star Chart

Without much data reference, it is difficult to establish a relatively detailed set of delivery standards when placing KOLs, and it is not easy to reuse them in other products.

However, if the company does not understand the stages that KOL advertising goes through, fails to anticipate the problems that will be encountered, and has no rhythm or focus in its advertising, it will have to bear more trial and error costs.

As the person in charge of front-line KOL marketing, I try to find commonalities in the actual marketing operations.

From a macro perspective, KOL deployment is divided into four stages, each stage including deployment focus, problems and solutions.

I hope this can give students who are responsible for KOL advertising a little thought, so that they can avoid detours in the advertising process, and also save some trial and error costs for companies.

KOL deployment for the purpose of performance advertising generally goes through four stages: verification period, optimization period, volume expansion period, and bottleneck period. The key content is in the last stage.

There is no standard time period for each stage, which varies depending on the characteristics and target audience of the product.

When launching a KOL in a new channel, use a portion of the budget that can bear losses to test whether the input-output ratio meets expectations. This is the first stage of KOL deployment - the verification period.

However, not every channel will go through all four stages. Most product launches in new channels end in the verification phase. Therefore, the effectiveness of the delivery during the verification period will directly determine whether the delivery can continue in the future.

The best way to verify new channels in the shortest time is to “imitate first, then surpass”.

First, find out whether similar products have been launched in this channel before, and analyze from four dimensions: product selection, path design, KOL screening, and content outline.

Recent public account launch of a programming product

• Product selection: If a product has multiple SKUs, the SKU with the highest sales volume will be selected as the product to be launched during the verification period.
• Path design: Try to reduce the number of user jumps. Generally, the shortest conversion path consists of three parts: browsing content, entering the landing page, and order conversion. At the same time, ensure that the data at each level can be tracked.
• KOL screening: 60% of the budget is allocated to vertical KOLs, and 40% is allocated to other types
• Content outline: The content format should be consistent with the characteristics of the channel as much as possible, and the content characteristics should be consistent with the KOL's daily style as much as possible.

From the perspective of effective delivery, the input-output ratio of such a large amount of delivery is very low.

When the input-output ratio of the verification period reaches expectations, it will enter the second stage - the optimization period, and the main optimization direction is the conversion funnel.

When I was personally in charge of KOL delivery for public accounts, the delivery effect was increased by 271.13%. When I was in charge of KOL delivery for Douyin, the effect was increased by 473.08%. Looking back, it is mainly based on the optimization of this model.

The main purpose of optimizing the conversion funnel is to improve the input-output ratio of KOL investment.

First, you need to create a conversion funnel model to record every step from user browsing content to conversion.

Take the example of KOL placement on public accounts. If the product placement path is to place an order directly, the user will go through 5 steps: see the title - browse the article - enter the landing page - click to buy - complete the payment

The left side of the conversion funnel is the user conversion process, and the right side corresponds to the optimization purpose of each layer of the funnel.

The core purpose of the funnel is to improve the data of each layer of the funnel, but during the optimization process, you cannot only focus on the data of one layer.

For example: The following is a tweet from a public account. What is your first impression when you see this title and cover for the first time?

If you choose the first approach, it may not be very convenient in public. But if you choose the second approach, wait, have you guessed there is a pitfall? But I still want to click in to see what it is!

Are you curious about your expectations? Or an experienced driver?

If I click in and quickly scroll through it, and don't see the familiar yet unfamiliar characters like 【私はとても纯粋な文です】, I'm afraid I'll close it immediately and maybe even curse in my heart.

I also didn’t expect this to be a promotional article for a financial management course, **!

Using such a title to improve the data of the first-level conversion funnel is indeed effective! But many users were just deceived into contributing a certain amount of reading, so the data of the second-level funnel can be imagined.

Therefore, during the optimization process, you must not forcefully attract completely irrelevant users just to improve the data in a certain funnel layer.

If one day, your boss tells you that the budget for a new channel needs to be increased. Congratulations on entering the third stage of KOL deployment - the volume expansion period.

This is good news, as your campaign results may have exceeded your leadership’s expectations. However, this also means that you will face greater pressure and more difficult KPIs to achieve.

When the amount of investment increases, what comes with it is an excessive workload. In addition to increasing working hours, it is more important to control the pace of delivery and focus on important things.

Those who have done KOL advertising on public accounts know that the choice of account almost determines the effectiveness of the advertising.

But many people still don’t spend most of their time screening accounts, but instead waste time on trivial matters.

The reading volume curve of a public account

The key to improving efficiency is to "focus on the big and let go of the small"

The working hours are limited every day. Since we know that the selection of public account is very important, we should spend 80% of our working time on screening high-quality accounts.

As for those chores that have little impact on the achievement of your work goals but waste a lot of time, "learning to be lazy" is the best solution.

Energy is always limited. If your goal is to reach the top floor, who cares whether you squat or lie down in the elevator? Just find a comfortable position.

When reaching the bottleneck period, the most intuitive data manifestation is that the delivery effect is getting worse and worse.

Although I had a rough idea of ​​the effect before launching the campaign, I still had to go ahead and launch it. Every day I was struggling with how to spend the budget without affecting the effect.

Almost every product will encounter this problem when placing KOLs on any channel. After all, the number of KOLs in each channel is limited, and the number of KOLs that match the products is even smaller.

Tik Tok KOL screening criteria

In addition to reinvestment, a more effective method is to change the products or selling points.

Coming back to the launch itself, are we really targeting KOLs?

No, what we target are relatively precise users attracted by KOLs through vertical content.

Based on the trust in KOLs, when users endorse the products they need, the decision-making cost is lower, resulting in a higher input-output ratio.

Take mobile phones as an example. If the purpose of the campaign is to sell more mobile phones, the product selling point is "charge for 5 minutes, talk for 2 hours", which can attract users who have demand for charging speed.

Another selling point of the product is "ultra-stable micro gimbal, more wonderful night scenes", which can attract users who have needs for shooting.

The content a KOL usually publishes is related to mobile phones. It is entirely possible that these two types of users with different needs will follow this KOL at the same time.

Even if the same KOL is used, different product selling points can still attract different users and bring in new orders.

A skincare brand used the same KOL 6 times in 45 days

Of course, if the limited products and selling points have reached a bottleneck, you can consider looking for new distribution channels. Based on the purpose of the launch, the effect of public account launch is getting worse and worse. Douyin, Bilibili, and Video Account may enter the verification period to test the effect.

1. Verification period: The best way is to "imitate first, then surpass", focusing on the four dimensions of "product selection, path design, KOL screening, and content outline"
2. Optimization period: Create a conversion funnel according to the user path and improve the data of each level of the conversion funnel, but do not look at it completely separately
3. During the period of volume expansion: focus on the most important things. The key to optimizing the delivery process is to "focus on the big and let go of the small, and learn to be lazy"
4. Bottleneck period: Change products or selling points and re-enter the verification period

Author: Extraordinary

Source: Extraordinary