Marketing Promotion丨3 suggestions for brands to build their own content and influencer ecosystem

2020 is the first year for brands to focus on short video content creation and incubation of their own influencers.

This is mainly due to the influence of three aspects.

First, as China's economy is in a downward trend and is affected by the long-term impact of the sudden epidemic, most brand owners will choose to cut their promotion budgets and pay more attention to the input-output ratio of advertising. In the absence of sufficient budget, building their own content and influencer teams is a long-term and cost-controlled path for brands to build their own assets.

Second, in 2019, some brands have achieved good results in self-operated content/influencer ecology through self-construction, investment or joint incubation with MCN agencies, and have successfully driven brand sales. Typical examples include: Shangpin Home Delivery, Totwoo, etc. With the launch of shopping carts, mini-programs and other conversion-enabling product tools by Douyin and Kuaishou, as well as the popularity of short video e-commerce, the value of brand-owned accounts has become more prominent, with the dual value of exposure and conversion.

Third, 2020 is the year when brands go ALL IN on live streaming sales. In the context of a scarcity of top influencers and strict product selection, building one's own team of influencers and anchors, and constructing a private traffic pool through multi-channel self-operated content and live streaming has become an integral part of brand marketing.

As the saying goes: If you have rice in your pocket, you will not be worried.

Mars Culture CEO Li Hao once predicted: In the next ten years, content production and user operation teams will become standard for brand companies. Therefore, Mars Marketing Research Institute will add some content creation research in subsequent articles to help brands that want to build their own content/influencer ecosystem to find the right approach to building a good persona and content. This is the first article.

1. Short video content creators during the epidemic: crisis coexists

The opportunity lies in: because a large number of users are forced to work from home, the online content industry has become particularly popular, and the number of short video views has remained high. Mars Marketing Research Institute has found through Kas Data that many videos that were not popular before have shown an upward trend in recent data after being "discovered" by users, and are likely to become popular.

The danger lies in: due to restrictions on going out and gatherings, the content production capacity of short video teams has declined. In the past, with the help of a team, a video could be shot in two or three hours. However, due to the operation cycle and communication difficulties, and the fact that most celebrities do not have the comprehensive capabilities of service, makeup, props and content production, the daily content releases are either sold out or the quality declines, not to mention advertising response and service capabilities.

As advertisers postpone/cancel their campaigns, and agencies’ service capabilities and responsiveness decline, it can be seen that in February and March, the turnover of MCN agencies that use advertising marketing as their core monetization method will also decline significantly.

2. Research on high-increasing pink influencers and content features in the first month of 2020

At this time, a popular celebrity with outstanding overall performance ability made his debut as the center.

According to the statistics of the Kas Data Newcomer List, in the first month of 2020, among the 20 accounts with the fastest increase in followers, in addition to media/program accounts, government/institution accounts, and celebrity accounts, there were 12 KOL accounts. They are:

▲ The 12 KOL accounts with the fastest increase in followers on Douyin in January 2020. Data source: Kas Data

Mars Marketing Research Institute classifies these 12 accounts into:

Type 1: Drama

Representative KOLs: Ancient Snake Samael, Wonderful Museum, Big Wolf Dog Zheng Jianpeng & Yan Zhen Couple, Liang Xiaoxiao, Yaomi, Qingdao Aunt Zhang Daxia, It Turns Out to Be Uncle

Among the 12 accounts with the fastest increase in followers, drama accounts account for more than 1/2, which shows that entertainment is still the core motivation for users to watch short videos. However, superficial funny jokes can no longer satisfy users' demand for pan-entertainment content. Looking at these dark horses with increasing followers, we can see that they are all powerful creators, and most of them have unique content styles.

Outstanding creativity, you can take blockbuster movies at home (representative KOL: Qingdao Aunt Zhang Daxia)

The KOL plays two roles, showing the hilarious life stories between a high school son and his mother. The scenes are mostly concentrated indoors, showing the battle of wits and courage between mother and son to the extreme. Users can see the shadow of their own lives in each video segment. For example: relatives competing with each other about their children's academic performance during the Chinese New Year, a son going around to check on his mother's whereabouts to be lazy, etc., all of these add some fantastic ideas to the story while being realistic and unpretentious.

Create two or more characters to make the story more interesting (representative KOL: It turns out to be Mr. Uncle)

This account focuses on the daily life jokes of the three uncles Ahao, Yuyang and Zheyi. The three characters have three different colors and three different personalities, which makes the story line more complete and can attract users with a wider range of interests.

Focus on personal packaging to attract users with strong contrast (representative KOL: Big Wolf Dog Zheng Jianpeng & Yan Zhen couple)

The domineering and gorgeous landlady + the simple landlord who is dominated by his wife, the strong contrast between the couple from their dress to their personality creates conflicts in the story. Even if familiar audiences know the content routine, they will always be moved by the reversal at the end, allowing users to immerse themselves in the beauty conveyed by the "personality".

From plot to episode, the continuous content is more fascinating. (Representative KOL: Ancient Serpent Samael)

Continuous short video content has a more complete story. Once users are attracted by a certain paragraph, it is easy to convert from ordinary users into hardcore fans. As long as you put your heart into the content, your fans will be relatively stable and the possibility of becoming a hit will be greater. For example, the ancient snake Samael. The themes of the videos on this account are curious and the characters' appearances are eye-catching. For example, in the "My Zombie Prince" series, the protagonist's zombie appearance is extremely eye-catching, and the plot is based on real life. It has a foundation in real life on the premise of fantasy, which attracts people to keep following it episode after episode.

The production of film and television-level content has unparalleled quality. (Representative KOL: Wonderful Museum)

The KOL Wonderful Museum, one short story after another, with exaggerated character performances and plots, truly reflects the most naked human warmth and coldness. The shooting techniques are superb, the actors' acting skills are excellent, and the post-editing is also quite professional, giving the audience an extremely high audio-visual experience.

Type 2: Talent and Skills

Representative KOLs: Wang Damao, Sun Sister (Chenchen), Zhao Xiaoli

The three talent and skill KOLs on the list have different content types, including the sweet music KOL Wang Damaoya�, the elegant painting creator Zhao Xiaoli, and the funny science skill KOL Sun Sister (Chenchen). Although they are all traditional types in terms of content categories, they all combine their own characteristics to further innovate the content.

Professional skills are very powerful. (Representative KOL: Zhao Xiaoli)

The beginning of each painting seems random, with rough color mixing and painting. The rough parts are done with hands, and the fine parts are meticulous. The strong painting technical skills always give people a feeling of turning decay into magic. Finally, the young lady and the painting appear together, which makes people feel the beauty and distinctive style.

Novel content awakens the audience's participation. (Representative KOL: Sun Sister (Chenchen))

The number of followers of science experiment-related content increased by 4.7 million in one month. The reason for this is that, first of all, the small experiments in the video content are like simple magic tricks, which use small scientific principles to bring about strange phenomena. This kind of small game not only makes people's eyes light up, but also makes people have a strong desire to "give it a try". And it just so happens that during the Spring Festival holiday, users have a considerable amount of time at home and can practice these wonderful games by themselves. Therefore, they pay a lot of attention to KOLs and upload their successful videos of operations to short video platforms to "submit their homework."

Type 3: Expert/Professional

Representative KOL: Wei Zi from Yilu Xiangqian, SamChak from Xianmu

KOLs with expert personalities can provide guidance on specialized content encountered in people’s lives through short videos. They are more credible, and if they can interpret professional content in a more popular way, their ability to attract fans will be even greater.

For example: Yi Lu Xiang Qian Wei Zi, he is an emergency doctor at Peking University First Hospital. Most of his content is about emergency cases that he or his colleagues encountered in daily emergency work. Through these real-life examples, he reminds everyone what details they should pay attention to in daily life. For example, if fungus is soaked for too long, it will produce deadly toxins. During the pneumonia epidemic, all kinds of information flooded the Internet, and there were many different opinions for a while. He also provided the public with first-hand confirmed information and answered questions in a timely manner to reduce misunderstandings, allowing short video viewers to better understand the development of the epidemic and respond to measures, which was helpful in preventing the epidemic. It was under these conditions that the account gained 12.9 million followers in one month.

The above content has a strong commonality, that is, the unique content style, that is, content innovation is very important. In the early stages of establishing an account, you must have complete account content and personal positioning, and avoid "copying others". Even if imitating other people's content will yield short-term gains, it will be difficult to grow into a big account. Be sure to establish the account style and content orientation based on your own characteristics to give people a refreshing feeling and make it easier to create a hit.

3. Brand self-built content/influencer ecosystem suggestions

1. Successful “personality” creation is a prerequisite

The personality gives the account a sense of life. A successful personality can use personal charm to narrow the distance with users, and continuously and steadily maintain fan relationships, thereby creating a strong IP-level account.

For drama-based content, it is necessary to weaken the rigid implantation of products in early video content, and to create multiple core characters to reduce operational risks such as the loss of a single actor. At the same time, it can also increase content conflicts and watchability. For non-drama content, due to the strengthening of the popularization and penetration of professional knowledge, firstly, professional content can better enhance brand credibility; secondly, professional characters are closer to conversion, the accumulated users are more accurate, and the monetization effect is stronger.

2. Exquisite content production is the key point: but creativity is more important than good production.

The effort that creators put into video content must be conveyed to users, so refined content is a prerequisite for impressing users. However, under the influence of the epidemic, it is recommended that brands simplify shooting techniques and add some first-person shooting and storytelling. At the same time, they should strengthen the improvement of content creativity, use high-quality creativity to make up for the shortcomings of industrial creation during the epidemic, and minimize the epidemic risks caused by the gathering of shooting personnel, so as to reduce the difficulties brought to account creation and operation during special periods.

3. Whether it is account positioning or content output, long-term unification is very important

It is very unwise to use one account as a trial and error platform for multiple content styles. The back-and-forth switching of account styles is not conducive to the platform's positioning of the account content, and is also extremely unfriendly to the fans who have already followed it. Therefore, starting from the first video of the account, relevant personnel must have a long-term control over the direction of the account positioning.

Here I would like to remind everyone that if your account plans to sell goods through live streaming in the future, it is recommended that the person who appears in the short video and the person who does the future live streaming should be the same, so that the conversion rate will be better. After all, users follow the account because they like this "personalized IP", and their trust is also focused on this persona.

In addition, grass-planting accounts will continue to grow in large quantities in 2020. This is due to: First, the current grass-planting accounts have a single performance and high-quality grass-planting accounts are scarce; second, the categories of goods they carry are also relatively single, mostly concentrated in the fields of clothing, daily necessities, etc. But what we need to remind you here is that accounts that are pure grass and lack character appearances and creative features have lost their vitality.

Here I would also like to remind brands that want to build their own content/influencer ecosystem that creating content is definitely a long and arduous process. You should have the right mindset and remember not to operate accounts like you do on Weibo and WeChat. Create content from a user-centric rather than a business-centric perspective, and you will gain more "followers."

At the same time, you should also make full use of data to guide your content creativity, operations, and the launch of marketing products such as DOU+, improve your capabilities and efficiency, and win at the start.

Author: Mars Marketing Research Institute

Source: Mars Marketing Research Institute (huoxingyanjiuyuan)