A practical guide to high conversion rates with KOL campaigns!

In the era of traffic anxiety, companies are increasingly demanding on conversion rates, so it is even more important to weigh various factors when choosing KOLs. So how can we achieve high conversion rates through KOL advertising ?

I have said before that how to spend little money to achieve big results in brand marketing, or how to spend money where it counts, is a common topic for all brands in 2020.

KOLs are an inevitable and important part of brand advertising, but from practical experience, spending money without any effect is very... painful.

Especially in the era of traffic anxiety, companies have increasingly stringent requirements for conversion rates, so it is even more important to weigh various factors when choosing KOLs.

I have summarized 5 key steps to achieve good KOL placement:

Choose the right KOL: Ensure that the selected KOL is basically in line with the brand communication needs and budget by analyzing basic data such as KOL content tags, fan portraits (age, gender, region), fan activity, recent content interaction data, and influence on fan circles.
Make good use of KOL: Advertising is not just throwing the demand to KOL. You need to match a lot of precise content and output content according to different scenarios.
Optimize the delivery strategy: Delivery and promotion is a combination of measures. If you only promote through a certain channel, you will inevitably end up wasting money and having no effect. Brands must learn to use resources rationally and optimize KOL delivery strategies.
Be good at handling traffic: selling goods and attracting fans, one of them must be on the way.
Data collation and review: Investment is not a decision made on a whim. Data speaks for itself. Only by constantly summarizing, reviewing and iterating can we avoid making more mistakes.

The following are detailed one by one, enjoy:

Choose the right KOL

1. Clarify the demand for delivery

Before you start communicating, you must be clear about your purpose: whether you want to increase brand exposure and awareness, or simply for sales conversion. Different purposes will lead to different preferred channels for brands.

Generally speaking, Weibo and Bilibili are more suitable for exposure, while official accounts, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Douyin, and live streaming are more suitable for conversion.

2. How to select KOLs

①Determine the crowd and budget

First of all, you need to be clear about who you want to show your advertisement to. Therefore, during the advertising process, you need to be clear about which type of KOL your brand, product or event is suitable for. Then you need to carefully understand the fan portraits behind each KOL and adapt the two.

Secondly, based on your budget, ask the media agency or advertising company to provide a quotation. You can first screen the quotations with suitable prices, or circle the potential KOLs, and then cover the budget through other methods such as resource exchange, package promotion, etc.

② Do the evaluation and use the tools wisely

A common mistake made by many brands is to decide on advertising based solely on the data provided by the advertising company.

Sometimes the KOL data provided by advertising companies is very impressive, but if you don’t want to waste your money, you still have to dig deeper to find KOLs with good quality and excellent results.

In addition to manually taking the time to identify fake accounts, here are a few tools we commonly use.

3. Xigua Data: can be used on WeChat public accounts and Weibo

Xigua Data Platform is one of the platforms we use more frequently. It allows you to see the "reading volume growth curve" that we often use to determine whether the reading volume is inflated. The key is that it is free (you can also export specific data tables).

It provides pre-investment public account diagnosis, public account comparison, reading number monitoring, investment effect analysis, and competitor investment effect analysis. It can also be used for deleted post detection. Overall, it is a relatively brand-friendly platform.

The following is an example of how I use late-night posting to diagnose a public account. You can see that the basic data and user portrait tags are all covered. What’s surprising is that it can also recommend similar public accounts.

4. New list: can be used on WeChat official accounts, Weibo, and Douyin

Xinbang was established earlier and includes more accounts, but it is charged. If you are doing pre-investment account monitoring on WeChat public accounts and Weibo, it is recommended to give priority to Xigua.

But what we want to talk about here is Xinbang’s new Douyin platform, that is, the evaluation of Douyin accounts.

On the new Douyin app, you can see some basic data of Douyin bloggers, such as the number of followers and likes in the past 30 days. If you want to explore deeper fan portraits, you will need to pay.

5. Fire Cloud Data: Available for use on Bilibili

Due to the diversity and openness of Bilibili's content, I have always been optimistic about its commercial value.

On the Huoshaoyun data platform, you can query the historical average graphic and text data of the Up master's works for free, and perform minute-level monitoring. Other more advanced features will require payment.

For Xiaohongshu, you can use the Qiangua data platform, but it is also paid, so I won’t go into details here.

Of course, each tool has its own focus. It is recommended that you start from the purpose and combine the data from several platforms. This way, you can make a more comprehensive assessment and reduce the chance of making mistakes.

Make good use of KOL

The cooperation between brands and KOLs should be seen as a win-win brand collaboration, rather than just a matter of sponsors spending money to buy advertisements. If brands want the blogger’s fans to become their fans, they must put more effort into delivering content.

One thing to remember is that planting grass is not just about throwing it to KOLs, you need a lot of content.

I generally divide content delivery into two situations:

①KOL writes articles and respects the platform’s tone

If the promotional copy is written by a KOL, the brand must determine your core promotion needs, organize the points that need to be presented as detailed as possible using a demand form and send it to the blogger, allowing the blogger to customize the content based on his fan base. Of course, the copy must be reviewed and communicated in the end.

Taking a facial mask product we once made as an example, the content direction requirements given are very clear. You can refer to it:

② When writing brand articles, avoid using the same article for all websites

Customized content for users:

The promotional content should start from the needs of users and be customized according to the interests of different KOL fan groups, rather than just expressing the content that the brand owner wants to promote, let alone using one general article for the entire network. (Hit the point!!!!)

The content should be interesting and useful:

For example, food KOLs can share recipes, food recommendations and other practical information to introduce promotions, etc. However, it is difficult for users to buy into content that is too direct.

For example, I think HFP’s way of launching public accounts is worth learning from for many brands:

1) Each field has its own press release copy, and the content details of the press release (including content structure, selling points, layout, benefits, etc.) can be adjusted according to the needs of KOLs.

2) They will link product copywriting based on user needs, mainly writing articles to solve user pain points, such as:

Get younger, get whiter
Solve specific problems: oily, dry, acne, large pores
Highlight key facial parts: eyes, lips

Therefore, when we are outputting content, we need to consider this: whether the content you present is combined with the user's real pain points, whether it is specific to a certain coverage or matches a certain demand point and a specific product.

③ Comment area water army is very important

Of course, the water army here does not refer to asking KOL or spending money to buy water army to increase the number of views, but refers to the implantation in the comment area. One is the implantation of the brand, and the other is to arrange your own people to act as readers and write comments under the content. Please refer to Taobao buyer shows for details.

Optimize delivery strategy

1. Three strategies for brand KOL placement

Method 1: Pyramid type, spreading through the head, shoulders, waist and tail KOL matrix, penetrating layer by layer.

This is suitable for brands with sufficient budgets. For example, Estee Lauder, which I wrote about before, takes this route:

The main purpose of cooperating with traffic stars and top KOLs is to create waves, increase brand awareness and pave the way for subsequent voice.
Due to the celebrity effect, top influencers will value products endorsed by well-known celebrities. After all, they have their own traffic, and when brands negotiate cooperation with them, there will be more room for premium.
With the endorsement of traffic, mid-level bloggers will follow the trend of celebrities and top influencers, and it will be natural for them to start cooperation.
Finally, from top to bottom, the impression was created that everyone was using Estee Lauder products, which led to ordinary people following suit and posting their own notes, and UGC content followed suit.

Game method 2: IP binding, binding top IP bundled marketing, centralized resources, and ICON communication.

This also happens when the budget is relatively sufficient. You can find a top KOL or celebrity to create a Douyin or Xiaohongshu video for the brand product, similar to the one by Li Jiaqi and Yang Mi.

The brand will then re-create the material and distribute it to different channels to leverage the momentum for dissemination.

For example, Xiaoxiandun has cooperated with celebrities such as Zhang Yuqi, Cecilia Cheung, and Jing Tian, who are labeled as "rich ladies" and "health-conscious". They share their experiences of eating Xiaoxiandun for a long time, and re-create and disseminate the original video. With the help of the influence of celebrities, the video is distributed to spaces where young people gather, such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, and it continues to exert its influence through the long-tail effect.

Game method three: Collective screen-sweeping type, through the synchronization and resonance of mid- and low-level KOLs or even KOCs and amateur accounts, small wins big and makes a counterattack.

This year's top influencers may not be as popular as mid-level or even amateur KOLs, so brands have more choices.

Relatively speaking, vertically segmented KOLs, expert users, amateur KOLs, etc., often have more trust from fans because they do not have such high public opinion gimmicks. At the same time, their creative space and time are relatively free, their cooperation is relatively high, and their costs are relatively low, which makes them suitable for winning by quantity.

For example, Zhong Xue Gao only started to explode during the "618" event in 2018. But it is said that one out of every three foodies on Xiaohongshu knows Zhong Xue Gao, as can be seen from the extent to which it has been popular on Xiaohongshu.

To sum up, the pyramid type and IP binding type can bring about economies of scale through matrix dissemination.

The collective screen-sweeping type is very friendly to innovative brands and brands that lack sufficient support from vertical head KOLs. It has better cost-effectiveness and is also the ultimate use of long-tail traffic.

2. Multiple placements for a single high-quality KOL

What kind of KOL can be considered a high-quality KOL?

Taking WeChat official accounts as an example, let me first talk about some of the current industry standards that I think exist for WeChat official accounts. The open rate is generally 1-2%, and the reading conversion rate is around 3%. 5% is already considered a very high-quality account. That is to say, for an article with 100,000+ views, the order volume is roughly calculated to be 3,000-5,000.

So, my suggestion is that after testing the high-quality accounts, you can sign a framework agreement for long-term cooperation.

When Miniso’s official account opened up for BD cooperation, many sponsors would ask to sign an annual contract and make repeated investments. For example, the HFP mentioned above achieved one tweet per week.

The advantages of doing this are, firstly, that the brand itself is deeply bound to the KOL, directly turning the KOL's fans into brand fans; secondly, there is a price advantage, and there is more room for discounts.

3. Be good at seizing the growth bonus period of content platforms

If the content platform is mature enough, the price of traffic will also become higher, so brands need to "enter the market early."

"Perfect Diary" is a typical example of taking advantage of external dividends and going with the flow. First, it captured Xiaohongshu, then Douyin, then Taobao Live, and finally it returned to the operation of private domain traffic groups. It reaps the platform dividends the most, the most thoroughly, and the most deeply.

But the traffic trends on Internet platforms are changing very quickly. From Xiaohongshu, Douyin, live streaming to private domains, these four waves of dividends have occurred within just two years. This reminds brands that they must enhance their sensitivity in this regard in order to find new opportunities from these changes.

Do a good job in traffic acceptance

What is traffic handling? One is to attract traffic by selling goods through e-commerce, and the other is to attract people by using private domain traffic.

Of course, due to the restrictions of platform rules, this may be more suitable for attracting traffic from public accounts.

Due to the explosion of private domain traffic, it is no longer popular to attract followers to public accounts in the second half of 2019. Instead, fans can be guided to add personal accounts + communities. For example, you can communicate with KOLs. When placing public accounts, you can use appropriate benefits (coupons or gifts) in the article to guide the blogger's fans to follow.

As for how to activate this wave of traffic, my suggestion is that personal accounts should carry out refined operations, not sell goods on a daily basis, only share content, increase the proportion of silent orders, and then use big tricks during the big promotion to launch a large wave of activities to stimulate transactions.

The same goes for community operations. Only groups that output useful information, expert answer groups, check-in groups, product experience officer groups, etc. As for welfare groups, activity groups, and sales groups, they are too utilitarian. You can set up a "flash sale group" before the big promotion, which is limited to a few days, and the group will be disbanded when the activity ends.

Data collection and review

1. Data collection and summary

This needs to be combined with the evaluation indicators of your delivery. The delivery needs are different, and there are different platform outputs, and the evaluation indicators are also different. Take a project I have managed as an example. Because we are doing brand exposure and have no demand for product conversion, the indicators I need to analyze are mainly:

Taking Weibo as an example, the number of readings, reposts, comments, likes, the content quality of the KOL, and the real comments and feedback from fans are all comprehensive indicators that I care about.

2. Establish a KOL resource library

There are two situations:

One is: we take the initiative to discover and connect with some bloggers that match the brand's tone, and then connect with them. Then, we will divide the blogger into ABCD levels according to the number of fans, reposts, comments and likes. For AB level, we will consider cooperating in the form of paying some advertising fees, and for CD level, we will cooperate with the blogger in the form of gift exchange.
Another way is: After each promotion, I will ask my team to build their own KOL pool. This is not only a knowledge reserve for me to understand the market, but also a reference for the next promotion cooperation.

We will classify these KOLs based on the overall delivery data. For example, which KOLs are suitable for brand exposure, which KOLs are suitable for bringing goods, which KOLs are suitable for what categories, and what are their advantages and disadvantages? Make a summary of each in a table.

If you have your own KOL pool (KOL fan portraits, delivery records, reading, interaction, price and other data changing trends), it will be less likely for you to make mistakes in your next delivery.

Although this is a long process (which is directly related to the budget), the output ratio is still considerable.

Finally, finding the right promotion channel is just the icing on the cake. A complete "combination punch" is the key to integrating product and effect: whether the product is of high quality and in high demand, the influence of long-term brand building, and the deep cultivation of user minds will all determine whether consumers will pay for your product.

The above is today’s sharing of practical information about KOL marketing version 2.0.

Author: Sister Mulan

Source: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)