10 tips for KOL marketing!

As a person who has been working in the market for many years, I have organized many campaigns, both big and small, and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars. Of course, part of this budget must have been spent on tuition fees. So what have I learned after paying this tuition fee? Please see below.

1. Water number identification

This is an important point. No one wants to experience another "swarm" incident. If you cannot tell whether the KOLs are real or fake when doing KOL advertising , then everything you say later is nonsense. As for how to distinguish water accounts, I will briefly talk about it here. I will write a special article when I have time.

WeChat: You can use third-party tools to monitor the three recent push notifications of potential KOLs at the minute level, and the data curve can show the waterness of the KOL at a glance. If the growth is rapid in the second half of the night, then forget it, because this person is a liar.

Weibo: Check all the blogger's Weibo posts, first check whether the overall data has a big difference, then randomly click on a single Weibo post to check the comments. Be sure to sort them by time to see if the reply time is uniform. If so, this is most likely a scammer. Then you can look at the content of the comments and make a subjective judgment. If you want to be more specific, you can randomly click on a few users who commented to see if the commenting users are real users.

2. Clarify the purpose

Before starting a campaign, you must be clear about your purpose. Is it to spark discussion and increase awareness, or simply for download conversion or sales conversion? You should know that each product has different attributes and focuses. For example, if you sell cars or houses, the unit price is high, the frequency is low, and the decision-making chain is long. Don't expect to rely on a few KOLs to do sales conversion for you. KOLs influence their fans, and their fans are not their biological parents. Even if they are their biological parents, tens of millions of dollars are spent just by your mouth. As parents, you have to think about it too.

Those who start discussing both quantity and conversion rate right away are either ignorant or rogue. For bulk products, KOLs can bring them more discussion volume and increased popularity. Of course, for those brands that are eager to achieve sales conversion, anchors on e-commerce platforms may be more suitable for you than KOLs on Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, etc.

The premise is that the average order value of your product should not be too high and the decision-making chain should not be too long. At the same time, it is important that the price given to the anchor must be the lowest in the entire network. Why did Pechoin stand up Li Jiaqi a few days ago? It was because it was unable to offer the lowest price in the entire network.

3. Who are you doing this for?

Before promoting each campaign, you must think clearly about who you are promoting it for. This cannot be simply divided into TO B promotion and TO C promotion. You must know that TO B is also divided into internal B and external B.

The external B is easier to understand, which refers to the people in the industry and the upstream and downstream companies related to your brand; while the B within TO is divided into TO boss, TO boss’ boss and TO investors. The accounts followed by people at these three levels are naturally different. Of course, the one with the lowest status here is your boss. If you can deal with investors or your boss’s boss in one round of communication, then you will definitely achieve your KPI for this month.

TO C communication is outstanding, but the premise is that you can deeply understand what kind of people your brand's audience is. Let's take an example. For example, if you are a maternal and child brand, then when you choose a KOL, it is definitely inappropriate to choose some two-dimensional accounts followed by post-95s. So in addition to the regular mother-and-baby type accounts, is it okay to invest in a military fan account that is followed by straight men?

Real cases tell us that it is not only feasible for maternal and infant brands to invest in military fan KOLs, but the effect is also quite good. I have a friend who sells maternal and infant products, who just invested in a wave of military fan KOLs during Double Eleven, and the conversion rate was extremely high. You know, fatherly love is no worse than motherly love!

4. Are fans after KOLs or content?

High-quality KOLs with strong fan stickiness often have a strong influence. If the KOL creates content based on your advertising content, it may be okay to put your advertising content in the first half of the KOL content, but if you put it in the end, it will basically be a failure, especially with the now popular surprise-twist ads.

Because these KOLs have such powerful personalities, their fans are more attracted to the “person” rather than the content, which results in a low input-output ratio for the campaign itself. This is why some high-quality KOLs’ comments would be like “The advertisement caught me off guard and sprained my waist,” “XXX finally got an advertisement!”, “XXX is short of money again!” This kind of content does save trouble for KOLs, and it does not harm the reading experience for KOLs’ fans, but it is a real loss for advertisers.

Since fans discuss the KOLs themselves more than the ads, this is why I currently require KOLs to create content based on the ads from the moment I place demands on them.

5. KOL Life Cycle

As we all know, every KOL has a life cycle. Here we just give a few examples. Last year, @腰子姐, who became popular on Douyin with the phrase “Come on, brother,” has closed her store this year. There is also @回忆专装小马甲 which was extremely popular on Weibo back then, but in the past year it seems that there is no high-quality content except for regular advertisements. I don’t know if it’s because its dog was lost. This is the life cycle of an internet celebrity, which can be long or short. For KOLs that have passed their explosive growth period, their cost-effectiveness is actually not very high.

Taking Weibo as an example, let me share our current delivery logic. Generally speaking, there are companies operating behind the joke tellers, and the companies operating the joke tellers are also very smart. They are well aware of the short life cycle of each joke teller, so they will continuously cultivate new joke tellers. So how do we find these potential stocks?

In fact, it is very simple. You just need to check out which old joke tellers often repost the original blogs of their small accounts, and then look at the fan growth trend of the original blogs. Once you find those joke teller accounts with rapid growth, don't hesitate, just invest in them. The joke teller companies are eager to cash in, and the prices of these potential joke teller accounts are often not expensive compared to those of old joke tellers. Look, the input-output ratio will come out immediately.

6. Implantation in the comment area of ​​WeChat public accounts

For some projects with tight budgets, it is still quite difficult to invest in some top KOLs. If it doesn’t work in the mainland, we can take a small path. If there is not enough money for main text placement, when the KOL has no other projects, we can choose to pin the comment section.

For KOLs, since there is no income from this push anyway, it doesn’t matter if they put a comment on top. It doesn’t require any thought and can bring in some income, so why not do it? For brands, the data of top KOLs are there, and it doesn’t cost much, so it would be a waste not to take advantage of it.

7. Multiple collaborations with a single KOL

The brand itself is deeply bound with KOL, directly cutting off the dissemination of friendly companies under the same KOL. Here I take the official account of my friend "Yang Buhuai" as an example (why I always use friends as examples). Yang Buhuai is one of the most influential accounts in our advertising circle. This year, he has released many cases under Alibaba, whether it is Taobao, Tmall or Juhuasuan, various cases and various parties have taken turns. For the fans of "Yang Buhuai", every action of Alibaba's marketing department is as worth learning as a textbook. This is the effect of multiple cooperation with a single KOL, which directly turns the fans of KOL into brand fans, so this is the reason why we love the house and the dog.

Friends, you can search the proportion of Alibaba and JD content in the push of "Yang Buhuai". In fact, from a certain perspective, every time JD is put in, it may be an assist (don’t hit me, JD friends). Of course, if JD’s placement is TO its own BOSS, then there is nothing wrong with this operation.

8. Clearly define the needs and leave the rest to KOLs

"Talk directly to the boss when looking for a job" and "No middlemen make a profit from the price difference" are all about this truth. As a brand, it is best to communicate directly with KOL (author) and don't leave everything to agents. In this environment, most agents only serve as messengers, and some of them can't even convey the message clearly. In addition, some brands themselves are confused and don't even understand what the requirements are, so they let the agents communicate with KOL. Then the brand makes all kinds of inexplicable demands. It would be a miracle if this kind of cooperation can be smooth.

You must know that it is of utmost importance for brands to determine their core needs. As for how to produce specific content, just leave it to KOLs. The fans belong to KOLs, not to the brands. How can brands have KOLs who understand their fans? I wrote in a push three months ago that you should not treat KOLs as small advertisements. In that case, it is better to invest in hard advertising.

9. KOLs don’t necessarily flatter brands. The key is to attract attention.

This is mainly aimed at the placement that is not aimed at conversion. This kind of placement is more about topic discussion and increasing brand awareness. Take the recent WeChat public account rookie champion "Half-Buddha Immortal" as an example. My brother Half-Buddha is a risk control person. The main content of his public account is to record this magical world. The content is all about complaining about P2P running away, wool party, and milk tea shops cutting leeks. Normally, brands are desperately avoiding this kind of KOL with a strong temper. They will even write about which brands and the public relations of those brands will deal with it immediately. But Luckin is different. Luckin is not an ordinary brand.

Thanks to a few pushes from my brother Banfo, Luckin Coffee not only did not become a sickle for cutting leeks, but instead became the light of the nation. How can you not accept this operation? It is said that Luckin Coffee is a model for Internet companies to build brands in recent years.

10. Data Collection

Every brand needs to build its own KOL pool. This is not only a knowledge reserve for understanding the market, but also a proof to report to the boss.

Generally speaking, when brands place KOLs, it is either recommended by media agencies or decided on a whim. In short, it is decided based on their own subjective judgment. This is a standard decision-making behavior. Every time the boss asks:

Why did KOL choose "Yang Buhuai" and "Half-Buddha Immortal"?

He is very popular recently, BALABALA

Apart from subjective conjecture, there is no objective data to support this. What would you think if you were the boss? "I think this guy has received money from the KOL!" What the hell are you talking about?

If you have your own KOL pool (KOL fan portraits, delivery records, reading, interaction, price and other data changing trends), you can throw the form in your boss's face and ask him who he is with! Look at what else he said.

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

Author: Captain

Source: It feels wrong and there is no highlight (ID: marketing921)