Tik Tok, Kuaishou, Bilibili... How do beauty KOLs conduct cross-platform marketing?

How should beauty short video KOL marketing be done? What are the cross-platform grass-planting paths, and what marketing rules should KOL marketing grasp?

Tmall data shows that in the 25th minute on June 16, Tmall's body care transaction volume exceeded the entire day last year, and the transaction volume in the first hour increased by 352% year-on-year. Behind this data, there is one brand whose performance is particularly eye-catching, and that is the domestic brand - Banmu Huatian. During this year's 618, Half Acre Flower Field's shea butter body scrub sold a total of 520,000 cans, and ceramide body lotion sold a total of 180,000 bottles.

But analysts are not surprised by the sales performance. Because, in addition to the year-on-year success in sales performance, Banmu Huatian also achieved success in its short video KOL marketing. We can even conclude that the Douyin marketing practice of Half Acre Flower Field demonstrates the powerful sales capabilities of Douyin influencers and also verifies Douyin’s ability to create explosive products that cannot be underestimated.

Let’s first look at the video data of the “Half Acre Flower Field” brand mentioned in the “Brand Tracking” function of the Kas Business Edition.

Since October last year, Banmu Huatian’s three best-selling products have appeared on Douyin at a high frequency and in a rhythmic manner. There are more than 400 videos in which KOLs actively mentioned the Banmu Huatian brand, many of which appeared in the form of cooperation with Star Chart. So to sum up: If the serious girl Yan Jiu is the wild spokesperson for KIKO, then Chen Caini must be the "brand friend" of Banmu Huatian. Banmu Huatian's popular products: scrub, anti-mite soap, and body lotion have all been recommended by Chen Caini.

(Source of the video data about Half Acre Flower Field: Kas Data)

At the same time, let’s take a look at the word-of-mouth and public opinion of Half Acre Flower Field under the “Internet celebrity effect”.

Behind the KOL's guidance, there is also the certified endorsement of purchasing users. Whether on Xiaohongshu, Bilibili or Weibo, you can see users’ spontaneous shopping experience, which further accelerates the purchasing decisions of “swing users”. Therefore, good products and good reputation ensure good sales.

(Data source of Half Acre Flower Field public opinion: Kas Data)

Previously, we also summarized the investment of various brands on Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili. Among the 20 brands that have invested in the top 100 beauty KOLs in terms of the number of fans, Banmu Huatian is among them.

In addition to Half Acre Flower Field, we also found through the report:

1) L’Oréal Group supports half of the top 100 beauty KOLs in terms of the number of fans; among the top 20 brands that use beauty KOLs, 7 are from L’Oréal Group. The high investment also caused a number of L'Oréal Group's products to be sold out, among which the most typical ones are L'Oréal Paris's Little Black Bottle, Purple Iron Eye Cream, Ampoule Mask, Shu Uemura's foundation brush, and cleansing oil.

2) Local beauty brands are also the guests of beauty KOLs. Among the TOP20 brands, 8 are from local brands. Through high-frequency KOL placement and the trustworthy endorsement of influencers, it is common practice to quickly bring new products to the market and drive user conversion through influencer word of mouth. In addition to Half Acre Flower Field: Fengda Afu, Yilian, Zhiguan, Perfect Diary, and Natural Melody have all been on the list in recent years.

So, how should beauty short video KOL marketing be done? What are the cross-platform grass-planting paths, and what marketing rules should KOL marketing grasp?

We have mentioned that there are significant differences in the beauty and makeup vertical content and KOL development ecosystems of each platform, resulting in different marketing methods that each platform excels in. A single content strategy obviously cannot maximize marketing value. Mars Marketing Research Institute also provides suggestions for brands to promote their products across platforms.

Phase 1: Trigger

For newly launched products/brands, this stage of promotion is of great significance. Firstly, the product can be pushed to the user's eyes as soon as possible, which can arouse the user's interest in the product and create heated topics.
This step is applicable to celebrities or top and bottom vertical KOLs. They have the influence of making a first-hand statement, can quickly grab the user's attention, and allow users to form a basic understanding of the product, creating a good topic popularity in a short period of time. Of course, this step is not just about accumulating influence. High-quality celebrity influencers can also bring good product sales conversions.

Secondly, it plants a seed of "déjà vu" in the minds of consumers, which can trigger a sudden flashback in the hippocampus of consumers at some future marketing node, making them think, "I saw a celebrity/head V recommend it before, and he said it was very useful." The professional, picky, and trustworthy impression of celebrities or head and shoulders vertical KOLs in the minds of consumers can influence users' consumption decisions at critical moments.

Common content types for this type of promotion are unboxing or recommendations for favorite products. There is no need for heavy and tedious content packaging, only endorsement of the product by celebrities or KOLs. This type of content is recommended for use on platforms with strong celebrity influence such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu, or in fast-paced promotions on Douyin.

Phase 2: Detonation

The detonation period focuses on leveraging the influence of celebrities or top and shoulder KOLs in the first phase, mainly focusing on shoulder, waist and tail KOLs with relatively higher cost-effectiveness and wider selection, in order to achieve the spread and detonation of the first phase topics and attract users' attention to the product. We will also cooperate with pan-entertainment KOLs to create content, expand the radiation circle, and create a screen-sweeping marketing influence. The content promotion at this stage can no longer be "superficial". You can leverage celebrity/big V topics to create content with themes such as in-depth reviews/color trials of the same products as celebrities, or embed product scenarios into joke plots to allow users to have a more intuitive and profound understanding of the product. And through the continuous bombardment on all social media platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, it ignites the passion of users.

Phase 3: Lasting Impact

This step belongs to the long-term stabilization stage. The purpose is to prevent the product topic from losing momentum after being ignited in the previous stage, causing the attention to drop sharply, making it difficult to provide support for the final conversion. According to data insights from the Mars Marketing Research Institute, this situation occurs more frequently with large brands, and the KOL deployment that "starts well but ends badly" always makes people feel regretful.

In order to maintain the continuity of communication, it is recommended to mainly select vertical mid- and tail KOLs at this stage. Firstly, they have better cost-effectiveness; secondly, they can achieve a deeper influence on the circle. In terms of content strategy, online content should include makeup tutorials, long-term evaluation challenges (such as the Olay Whitening Bottle 30-Day Whitening Challenge), etc., to strengthen the actual usability of the product in order to continuously activate user attention; offline, experience activities can be carried out to strengthen brand advantages, enhance brand endorsement, and prepare for product promotion harvests.

This type of content is more suitable for platforms such as Bilibili that can accommodate longer video playback, or posting experience posts on graphic platforms such as Xiaohongshu and WeChat can also achieve good results.

Stage 4: Harvest and Transformation

The early preparations have accumulated strength for this battle.

Brands should focus their efforts during product marketing nodes or e-commerce festivals and select KOLs with strong sales capabilities, such as Kuaishou live broadcast KOLs; or sales platforms with short conversion paths and high professionalism, such as Taobao celebrity live broadcasts, to complete short-term, high-frequency, hard-implanted dumping-type content promotion. In line with users' concentrated consumption habits during promotional periods, we use powerful sales methods to fully divert traffic and boost sales.

Stage 5: Experience Sharing

The promotion in this phase takes over the long-tail traffic harvested and converted in the previous phase. Individual mid- and tail KOLs should be arranged to post their orders and share their shopping experiences to stimulate spontaneous expression of UGC who have also placed orders to purchase the products.

This type of promotion is mainly carried out on graphic and text platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo. These platforms have a low threshold for content editing and are more friendly to UGC; efficient short video recording platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou are also applicable.

This kind of word-of-mouth recommendation can split the UGC friend circle for the second time, further empowering the sustained influence of the third stage and accumulating power for the next marketing node. In this way, a complete set of brand cross-platform KOL planting paths has been formed.

Above we have learned how to coordinate the promotion methods of different platforms according to the brand marketing demands. The most important thing is to choose the right KOL. So how does Kas Data evaluate the promotion ability of a KOL? The Mars Marketing Research Institute provides a model evaluation of the ability of seeding products to bring in goods.

Evaluation indicator 1:

The first step in promoting products is whether the KOL’s content can effectively influence his fans and achieve deep reach of information? That is: how active are fans in interacting with KOL content?

Kas Data mainly evaluates the value of KOLs based on two indicators: fan interaction rate, namely the fan-to-like ratio (Kuaishou and Bilibili have the broadcast-to-like ratio) and the like-to-review ratio. The higher the interaction rate, the more active the fans of the KOL are and the more they identify with the KOL’s content. Similarly, when seeing commercial advertisements cooperating with the KOL, their acceptance and recognition will be higher.

On the other hand, Kas Data will also horizontally evaluate the recent operational status of KOLs based on the popularity rate of their content and the increase in fans in the past 30 days. To help brands find KOLs with high fan recognition and good operational performance, so as to expand the communication radius.

Evaluation indicator 2:

The second step in promoting products is to evaluate whether the KOL can win the trust of fans and successfully promote the product to them.

Kas Data believes that in order to win the trust of fans, the most core evaluation indicator is fan quality. Fan quality comprehensively evaluates the fan interaction depth, interaction stickiness and the proportion of high-quality fans. The higher the fan quality score of an account, the more it means that: in the long-term operation, a close relationship has been formed between the KOL and its fans, and they are interdependent. Fans trust the KOL, and the KOL's content can also strongly bind fans. With this kind of emotional connection, KOLs do not need to lobby their fans too much to successfully promote products.

In addition, we can also use the "Fan Analysis" function of the Kas Business Edition to understand the in-depth content preferences of KOL fans, such as: who are the other KOLs that fans follow, whether the video content they like to like and comment on the most (and the video content posted by the KOL) is consistent; if the KOL fans follow more content of the same type, and the frequency of liking and commenting on this type of content is higher, it means that the fans are more easily impressed by this type of content, and the conversion path is shorter, and vice versa.

Taking "Li Jiaqi Austin" as an example, in the other KOL video content that fans like the most (i.e., the most likes), there are more content about becoming more beautiful and thinner, which shows that fans who follow Li Jiaqi are more sensitive to this type of content and are more likely to be converted.

It is worth mentioning that Kas Data reminds us that the health of KOL content public opinion is also extremely important. Truly valuable fans must be positive and proactive. If the account is active with only black fans every day and the comments are extremely negative, the effectiveness of the fan base will be greatly reduced.

Evaluation indicator three:

The most critical and difficult step is from planting grass to pulling grass. This step reflects whether the KOL can convert his personal influence into brand influence, and thus realize monetization.

Kas Data evaluates the trust conversion power of KOLs from two perspectives.

First of all, whether the KOL’s fans are highly consistent with the brand’s target TA. The higher the degree of overlap, the higher the fans’ demand for the product, which makes it easier to help sales conversion.

Furthermore, users’ preferences must be relatively stable and continuous. It is impossible for users who like to watch dark and Gothic content to like to wear sweet puffy skirts in real life. Therefore, the general style of the KOL must match the brand’s tone. Otherwise, no matter how efficient the reach is or how fantastic the promotion is, it will be in vain.

Finally, the KOL’s own commercial maturity, the effects of past commercial cooperation interactions, the number of times users actively mention the brand in comments, brand public opinion, effective user coverage, etc. are all among the standards for certifying the KOL’s ability to bring products.

Now that we understand the KOLs’ paths to success and what kind of KOLs have excellent sales power, does that mean that brands can easily manage a cross-platform marketing campaign? In fact, this is not the case. In actual implementation, brand marketing still faces comprehensive problems such as difficulty in number selection, difficulty in creativity, difficulty in execution, difficulty in monitoring, and difficulty in evaluation. The Kas Data Platform is able to solve the above difficulties.

Kas Data is not a platform that simply collects and organizes data and then presents it to the front end, but a system that can provide intelligent big data analysis in marketing scenarios for things that are difficult to accomplish humanly, thereby obtaining solutions. To this end, we proposed the "five-layer funnel" model of expert selection.

Specifically, it includes the following 5 steps:

• Choose the right KOL: By analyzing the KOL's content tags, number of fans, celebrity attributes, celebrity public opinion and other basic data, we can select those that match the product tone and are within the budget, and try to avoid the risk of investment and provide basic guarantees.
• Use quasi-KOLs: After screening basic data, further ensure the accuracy of influencer selection by conducting detailed analysis of fan profiles (fans’ age, gender, region, etc.), fan quality and other fan data.
• Make good use of KOLs: By analyzing the influencer’s fan growth data in the past 30 days, interaction data of recent videos and other operational data, we can understand the KOL’s current operational status and influence on the fan circle.
• Guarantee service quality: Ensure the quality of the content produced by influencers by analyzing their organizational attributes (whether they are affiliated with MCN, whether they are star accounts, etc.), business cooperation status (historical service brands, key service industries), and other data.
• Optimize delivery strategies: formulate more optimized influencer delivery strategies by analyzing data such as fan overlap and horizontal influencer comparison.

It is worth mentioning that in the process of writing the report, we conducted a 30-day sampling tracking of the KOL interaction data of the three major platforms and found that: taking the Douyin platform as an example, 20% of the short video beauty KOL data showed "makeup" behavior.

On a dark and windy night, it is the best time to increase the volume. The author hereby reminds all brand owners to beware of the rise of data late at night. Minute-level data monitoring can better protect brand KOL investment and make "what you see is what you get, what you think is what you appear".

Author: Mars Marketing Research Institute

Source: Mars Marketing Research Institute (ID: huoxingyanjiuyuan)