KOL promotion strategies that new media professionals must know

I’m a bit cautious with my marketing budget. In my strategy, I often use marketing objectives as the basis to calculate the required marketing funds. In addition, we will seriously recommend that brands conduct periodic and systematic reviews, and optimize and improve their budgets to achieve better results.

Especially in the past few years of social media marketing, I found that a lot of budgets were wasted for unknown reasons, and it always felt not worth it for the brand. For example, self-media operations with annual revenue of over one million. Some clients told me that their own media was created by their own people and did not cost a lot of money.

The reason why it is a waste is largely because self-media does not play the value it should as a switch for converting customer relationships.

When potential consumers come in to learn more information, the information is incomplete, inadequate, and delayed, resulting in reduced user interest; when existing consumers come in to discuss and communicate with the brand, two-way communication is not achieved, etc., all of which indicate that the switch that can convert "cold customers" into "hot customers" is actually failing.

In KOL marketing, how to spend money and how to spend money correctly have also evolved from metaphysical to more operational methodologies, tools and systems. Many brands use their own or third-party tools to find more effective opinion leaders, identify the effects in a measurable way, and continuously optimize their practices.

But is this method of becoming more and more refined and detailed as time goes by really the best?

Live as a different person in different media and obtain different interest information. I call this kind of behavior a platform-type personality.

That is, I am a fan of celebrities and follow entertainment news on Weibo, so the content that I pay attention to and constantly participate in is related to this. When I am on WeChat, I am more involved in topics related to my career. Through the "Take a look" and other content push notifications in the Moments, I will be exposed to different viewpoints and opinions on the advertising and marketing industry. As for the headlines, I am extremely concerned about 3C technology. When I switched to Tik Tok, I became interested in funny bloggers who reflect society.

Instead of breaking the content boundaries of a certain APP, users who are well versed in social media have become accustomed to switching interests across different media to expand their information. It’s not that a certain APP does not cover all content, but the reason why each APP has a foothold in the mobile phone is the unique personality and territory it represents. If two media overlap, there is no need for them to co-exist.

For brands, on the one hand, they need to understand the content preferences of their consumer groups when using different media, and on the other hand, they need to plan to create brand effects in-depth, continuously and effectively on the right media to achieve the best consumer influence.

But think back, in recent times, have you ever felt that a certain brand has been mentioned particularly frequently by netizens? It may be a clothing brand, catering brand, or 3C digital product. It seemed like the whole city, even the whole country, was talking about it all of a sudden.

Of course, this situation may be due to successful topic operation creation, such as brand collaboration and brand peripherals. But more often than not, it is directly related to the "hidden power" used by brands on social media.

I call this operation method the tide strategy. Through the large-scale, continuous participation of non-first-tier KOLs in topics, we can increase product exposure, disclose the product's possible uses in multiple dimensions, arouse users' curiosity and desire to try, and increase the possibility of offline discussions among consumers.

• Product-driven : Often, a sudden surge in discussion is about a brand’s new products. For example, XX has released a new season of clothes, XX has released a new package, etc. Even if there are many products in a series, it is obvious to see the focus of several of them.
• User testing : Most of the content is based on personal purchase, trial, wearing, tasting and trialing at the point of sale, which arouses resonance among other users. It makes the audience want to try it out.
• Mainly mid- and low-level KOLs : The more famous the KOL is, the easier it is for users to judge it as commercial promotion. KOLs in the circle with performance data in the thousands or tens of thousands are particularly suitable for tidal promotion. On the one hand, it looks more real, and on the other hand, it does not require a high budget for the brand. In addition, the public relations risks that may be caused by it can also be well controlled.
• Large-scale and continuous : The effectiveness of traditional advertising depends on both coverage and frequency. The surge in promotion fits perfectly with this classic theory. The use of a large number of KOLs ensures that a wide range of people are covered. Through their constant appearance and repeated exposure frequency, users’ memory is increased and their desire to act is heightened.

In terms of promotion rhythm, it is neither as long as the four to six weeks of a campaign in the traditional TV advertising era, nor as short as the three to five days of promotion on social media a few years ago. With the help of new products or new news, a large amount of discussion and participation will "surge" within 2-3 weeks.

Depending on the topicality of the product itself, some promotions can successfully drive the next wave of free exposure through this wave. With the secondary participation of top internet celebrities, media, and consumers, the second wave of discussion has taken off. Therefore, the experience of the onlooker consumer is that a product has been discussed for a long time. Among them, the prologue is opened by the brand, and the subsequent extension is a spontaneous long tail.

The KOL matrix used by the surging KOL strategy is flat and wide. Different from the conventional pyramid matrix, its KOL selection has no head and tail, and a large number of mid-level or even lower-level channels are selected. From the perspective of scientific monitoring, it is relatively difficult to identify such a large number of KOLs in the early stages and monitor the effects in real time during implementation.

Therefore, the effectiveness measurement mechanism of this strategy is also different from the current scientific and rigorous KOL quantification standards. Judging from the final results, the improvement in brand power, the increase in store visits, and the increase in trials are all relatively good measurement indicators. Looking more closely, it is not suitable for a single monitoring method for each KOL, but rather a product-based KPI dynamic tracking is more suitable. For example, the SKU’s search volume, inquiry rate, trial rate, and online discussions.