How do brands engage fashion and beauty KOLs?

This article introduces several key points that brands need to pay attention to when engaging with fashion and beauty KOLs.

For fashion brands, advertising should be targeted wherever young people are. As KOLs gradually take over young people’s consumer discourse and traditional marketing models gradually lose their influence, brand owners are investing more budget in KOL marketing.

This is an era where both brands and KOLs are learning quickly to embrace change.

Through the star map system, we can intuitively see that on Douyin, there are 1,580 "fashion" influencers with more than 100,000 fans, and 1,575 "beauty" influencers. In addition, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, WeChat public accounts, Douban, Taobao Live... each platform has a large number of fashion KOLs.

With such a dense population of KOLs, the characteristics of each platform are also different. How do major brand owners find KOLs? How to identify the most suitable KOL? What did those KOLs who frequently received advertisements from big brands do right? Let’s explore these issues one by one.

1. What is the purpose of international brands’ investment?

Data released by Fabrizio Freda, president and CEO of Estée Lauder, during the company's annual earnings conference call showed that 75% of the Estée Lauder Group's marketing budget went to influencer marketing. In the domestic context, it is KOL marketing.

In recent years, Estee Lauder’s efforts in KOL investment have been obvious to all, and the results it has delivered are quite impressive. In the just-concluded Double 11, Estee Lauder achieved a transaction volume of nearly 500 million in just 25 minutes after the pre-sale started, exceeding the transaction volume of the entire day of Double 11 last year, and achieved a transaction volume of 587 million yuan on the first day.

Xia Xia is the planning director of Xingbang, one of the Xingtu service providers. She has more than four years of experience in short video integrated marketing and has served clients such as L'Oreal Group, Shanghaojia, and Jieliya. In her opinion, there are three main purposes for international brands to place ads:

1. By trying new forms of social marketing, focusing on exposure and interaction, we can enhance brand influence and favorability;
2. Rapidly penetrate product information through national-level traffic exposure and dissemination;
3. The e-commerce department tends to direct external traffic to the e-commerce platform and pays more attention to ROI.

International brands use KOLs not only to promote their products, but also to leverage the KOLs’ personal endorsement and the sense of trust they create to have a positive impact on brand promotion. This kind of scene creation, including the celebrity effect follow-up scene and the communication scene in which users and brands form a dialogue, can make the originally cold brands and products become vivid.

2. Where to find suitable KOLs?

Let’s first use a few cases to experience the different styles of KOLs on different video platforms.

1. Douyin: High requirements for creative highlights, suitable for light content

Douyin is a platform that has very high requirements for creativity. Therefore, Douyin's KOLs will attract users' attention by adding "highlights". This highlight can be a plot, a reversal, a strong character label, or any form of creative expression. But due to the duration requirements and platform attributes, TikTok is suitable for lighter content.

The account "Ye Gongzi" ranked first on the Star Chart beauty category ranking list has 17.6 million followers. It has promoted brands such as Revlon through the form of "love reversal plot". The Star Chart system shows that the expected number of views of the task is as high as 11.15 million, and the commercial index exceeds 99.99% of similar influencers.

Another example is the KOL "Hardcore Girl" with a unique style. She has become a leader in the field of beauty on Douyin by using hardcore evaluation methods such as using her face as a swatch board and using markers on her face to demonstrate concealer effects, coupled with her highly personal expression and European and American personal image. Her outstanding personal style has made her popular with big-name beauty products such as Olay, Bobbi brown, and YSL. She was also invited by Rihanna to attend the launch of her personal makeup brand and participated in a private party. This incident became a hot topic on Weibo and Douyin.

Another example is "Li Yimeng EMOD", a pair of twin girls who are cute, handsome and funny. They have great taste in clothes. The two girls look similar but have completely different personalities. The video content is very interesting. It is a mid-level account on Douyin with more than three million followers. It has received advertising campaigns from big brands such as Dior and FENDI.

2. Kuaishou: More suitable for pan-entertainment and pan-life content combined with plots and jokes

There are not many native vertical beauty KOLs on the Kuaishou platform. With Kuaishou’s accelerated support for vertical e-commerce and the entry of a large number of MCN agencies this year, beauty KOLs have gradually emerged. Kuaishou’s beauty content is simple and basic, and is more suitable for users in the sinking market; coupled with the unique "old iron economy", there are common consumption characteristics between users and KOLs, and its ability to bring goods conversion is obvious to all.

1. Bilibili: Focuses on in-depth reviews and practical tutorials, and has a high level of trust in UP hosts

The fashion and beauty section of Bilibili is a relatively mature vertical category. After years of development, the fan base has formed a large scale, with strong stickiness and fixed viewing habits. They have a strong sense of trust in the UP masters, and videos such as grass-planting, evaluation, unboxing, and tutorials are extremely popular.

The advantage of Bilibili's content is that since there is no time limit, UP hosts can maximize the usage scenarios through real-life tests, unboxing records, hourly makeup effect records, etc., to give users the most detailed and complete scenario-based experience. Especially for beauty products, maybe the lipstick color is suitable for autumn and winter, maybe the makeup lasts for 12 hours without falling off, or maybe the concealer effect is excellent. As long as one effect can impress the user, the grass-planting process is complete.

Dalaotianer is a top-ranked UP host in the beauty section of Bilibili. Her video content mainly includes beauty tutorials, product unboxing, recommendations, imitation makeup and life vlogs. Her style is funny, the content is real and full of practical information. She has 921,000 fans on Bilibili and is especially loved by makeup novices. High-quality reviews, authentic and natural personal style, and partner brands include well-known brands such as L'Oreal, SK-II, Filorga, and SUQQU.

3. How can brands identify the most suitable KOL?

The top KOLs with a huge fan base and high net worth are not the absolute protagonists in the marketing strategy. The "small and beautiful" vertical KOLs and mid-level KOLs are becoming more and more popular among brand owners.

There was a saying that once circulated in the brand industry: "I know that 50% of my advertising budget is wasted, but I don't know which 50%." It is not difficult to understand that mid-level influencers who have been deeply engaged in a specific field have a higher influence in the circle and a more precise audience group. Although the fan base is not that large, the focus generates high energy and the conversion rate is even more impressive. Coupled with the relatively reasonable price of Waist Master, it is not only very friendly to brands with a small budget, but also can minimize the "50 percent" of waste.

Mei Zi is a practitioner of a beauty brand. She shared the general ideas of brands in selecting KOLs. The brand company where Mei Zi works has a relatively clear investment objective, which is mainly to look at ROI conversion.

When Mei Zi has a need for advertising, the first people she considers are usually vertical beauty KOLs with more precise user segmentation. If the product to be launched is lipstick, the selection of influencers will be prioritized among bloggers who usually do lipstick testing or lipstick reviews; if the product to be launched is makeup products such as foundation or eyebrow pencil, the selection range will be appropriately widened, and KOLs such as makeup experts and makeup artists will also be included in the main selection range.

Generally speaking, the first step is to select the influencer category, and then select potential target influencers who match the brand tone. At this time, the brand's judgment criteria are whether the user portrait of the product is consistent with the influencer's fan portrait. For example: gender, age, etc., these can all be used as reference bases. Of course, different reference key points will be included depending on the specific circumstances. Brands will also use data platforms to assist in comparison.

When all the above requirements are met, you can then choose from the remaining high-quality influencers. If there are cases of similar competing products being promoted, or if there are endorsements from big brands, then there is no doubt that you should choose TA. The key point of selection is to understand what kind of product promotion is more suitable for you. The more segmented the KOL's content is, the more accurate the corresponding fans will be. And brands like this type of experts the most.

Mei Zi also added a special point. Generally speaking, KOL marketing does not just end after a KOL promotion cycle, but is actually a whole process of comprehensive testing and feedback of the entire information flow. If the expert test is completed, but there is no good push platform, efficient transmission of information flow data cannot be achieved, which will also result in poor results. In the overall layout of KOL deployment, the top, middle and tail accounts should be deployed in a reasonable proportion, otherwise the overall conversion rate of fans' orders may be greatly reduced.

When Bai Jie, partner of Yingtianxia, ​​selects and targets KOLs, he will analyze a KOL’s recent performance: interaction rate, originality, popularity, cost-effectiveness, etc.

Xia Xia shared some key factors for big brands when conducting KOL placement. The methods for selecting KOLs include but are not limited to:

1. Platform brand penetration and public opinion research
2. Identify needs through brand insights and consumer preference insights
3. Multi-dimensional circle screening + long-term average data monitoring of a single expert
4. Pay attention to the dark horse list
5. Establish a high-quality traffic pool

Big brands tend to focus more on exposure when advertising on short video platforms, so they usually advertise in a way that maximizes exposure. Basically, they do not advertise with influencers multiple times in a short period of time. Generally, brands of products with high average order value and long purchase decisions (such as computers) and e-commerce platforms (hoping to brainwash users for a long time) will consider reinvesting.

4. What do those KOLs who frequently receive advertisements from big brands do right?

Quanquan, who is in charge of the business affairs of a certain MCN and is also the agent of fashion influencers, summarized a practical guide for beauty influencers to cooperate with high-end brands:

When launching advertising, most brands will generally negotiate with the corresponding agency to facilitate cooperation. For many high-end brands, conversion is a factor they need to consider but not their main consideration. In comparison, being able to better demonstrate the brand's premium ability may be the most important factor that high-end brands value when selecting beauty experts.

After all, whether in terms of cost or ingredients used, the price difference of beauty products of the same level is not that big, and the key factor affecting the overall pricing of the product depends on the specific circumstances of the brand premium. In order to maintain a continuous good brand premium space, these high-end big brands prefer to find high-quality beauty experts who are suitable for their own brand characteristics to work with.

From the perspective of brand premium, when high-end brands choose beauty influencers as their partners, what do they want from them?

1. Good looks + good temperament + high popularity

In addition to the fresh and refined good looks, high-quality personality and high popularity among the public are the safety factors that high-end brands want to use to maintain brand premium.

1. Strong interactivity + storytelling

Being active among users for a long time, enhancing the user experience, and the diverse and interesting stories of the influencers themselves can all enhance user stickiness and increase conversion rates, and will be the key factors that brands will consider - whether it is for the brand itself or for new products that are about to be launched. After all, the public prefers to follow beauty experts with stories. For example, the vlogger "Hello Bamboo" who is very popular with brands is a genuine Beijing hutong girl and a new-age woman who has lived in the UK for many years. Because her videos have strong storytelling and are interesting, the audience has a strong sense of involvement and empathy, which can help brands achieve better communication effects.

1. First-tier brand cooperation experience + high-end brand endorsement label is essential

High-end brands also hope that influencers themselves have some cases of cooperation with other high-end brands or endorsements from other high-end brands, so as to achieve a mutually beneficial and win-win effect in brand premium and brand promotion.

The above three points basically outline the points that general high-end brands will deeply consider and screen when selecting suitable beauty experts from the perspective of brand premium.

In addition, it is also important to note that if you start from different angles, the brand’s reference points will be different. For example, from the perspective of brand positioning, international brands are actually reluctant to see that the influencers they have selected for cooperation have received too many orders for second- and third-tier products or fast-moving consumer goods with lower average order values ​​- this will make the gap in brand tone and brand positioning of this beauty influencer a little too large.

Specifically for beauty experts themselves, how can they manage themselves better? The experience of a former head of a million-level fashion public account and current head of a head MCN fashion matrix:

1. From the perspective of content, when positioning their personalities, influencers should focus on differentiation and magnify their advantages and characteristics.
2. Moderately grasp the advantages of bloggers' content, combine the personal characteristics of different beauty bloggers, start from their strengths and weaknesses, slots and hot spots, implement content and operations in all aspects that are conducive to healthy interaction, and achieve effective communication with fans.
3. To create a highlight that is different from others on the same topic, you need to cultivate content thinking and a spirit of perseverance. Sometimes, you need to find a new angle to approach; sometimes, you need to do one more step than others. For example, many people recommend swimsuits, but basically no real people try them on. In that case, we buy them and have real people try them on - this is the simplest "one more step".
4. About a sense of gain. Here, we need to have a clear mindset: no matter what the topic is, before writing and producing, it is best to deliver high-quality content that is informative and conducive to learning. In this way, when users receive this information, they may exclaim: "So it can be done this way!" - creating content that exceeds user expectations will help improve user stickiness.

In summary, regarding how beauty bloggers can summarize and analyze their advantages from the perspective of personality, we have summarized the following points in our previous article:

1. Combining hard and soft advantages
2. The appearance symbols and scene symbols are compatible
3. Distinguish between own characteristics and competitive elements

In short, high-end brands have many reference angles when screening different beauty influencers. When these different reference factors form a unified quadrant for summary display, the influencer who best suits their brand will "automatically stand out". Therefore, beauty influencers who hope to be connected with first-tier brands can refer to the "non-comprehensive" characteristics above and constantly improve themselves. Through long-term progress and accumulation, it is not difficult to cooperate with big brands.

Author: Gu Gu, Jin Jin Jin

Source: Short Video Consultant