KOL marketing skills!

KOL has undoubtedly transformed the entire marketing business chain. It can even be said that if you don’t know how to work with KOL, you will hardly be able to do marketing today.

01

The current marketing communication chain has been reconstructed by KOLs.

KOL has become an indispensable part of marketing today. From the perspective of the marketing chain structure, KOL is similar to the online version of offline agents.

But what makes KOLs more advanced than traditional offline agents is that they can not only help with sales, but also strengthen the brand through their own public opinion influence. In other words, KOLs are not only online distributors, but also online billboards.

Although it seems that KOLs can achieve "integration of brand and effect", for a single KOL, "brand" and "effect" are often not achieved at the same time, because for the KOL itself, the two commercial monetization models of "brand" and "effect" are relatively contradictory in operation.

Therefore, if a brand wants to achieve "product and effect integration" by investing in KOLs, it cannot be achieved through homogeneous KOLs, but needs to rely on a diverse combination of KOLs. The usual approach is actually very simple in logic - big KOLs promote the brand, and small KOLs bring products.

02

If we look at the growth path of KOL itself, it usually goes through three stages: deep users (KOC/KOF) - vertical opinion leaders (small KOL) - public opinion leaders (big KOL).

KOLs are often first intensive users of a certain platform, or core fans of a certain KOL. As their influence expands, they become opinion leaders in a certain vertical field, and then become opinion leaders in the public domain through breaking through the circle of communication.

There are huge differences between small KOLs and big KOLs in all aspects:

(1) Small KOLs usually focus on their own areas of interest and are usually considered to be XX experts. Their influence is usually limited to the platform. For example, a digital KOL on Weibo may not have influence on Bilibili, Zhihu, or Xiaohongshu. They are still restricted by the platform in various aspects.

The fans of small KOLs are often more sticky to the platform than to the KOLs themselves. Users choose the platform first and then the content of the small KOLs.

(2) Big KOLs have cross-platform influence. In addition to topics in their field of interest, they often comment on social issues. In other words, they can not only output professional knowledge, but also output values. They have become a kind of symbol and have certain IP attributes.

Fans of big KOLs are more attached to the KOLs themselves than to the platforms, and users will migrate platforms based on the KOLs’ own platform choices.

The difference between the two actually explains why small KOLs are suitable for selling products and big KOLs are suitable for building brands.

It is not difficult to find that large KOLs have increasingly become the "image spokespersons" of a certain brand, and the monetization/sales efficiency of small KOLs also depends on whether the platform's own traffic monetization channels are unobstructed. Therefore, when brands choose KOLs, when selecting top KOLs, they need to select IP first and then platform channels. When selecting mid-level KOLs, they need to select platform channels first and then specific delivery accounts.

03

Although Zhao Yuanyuan, an old friend in the advertising circle and head of Taobao Live, told the media that Li Jiaqi "can be completely copied", it is obvious that this is more like a statement to external media.

Can top internet celebrities be copied?

In our opinion, no. There are many complex factors involved in becoming a top internet celebrity, and many opportunities are fleeting and cannot be replicated. Even Papitube and Ruhan have not created a second Papi Jiang or Zhang Dayi.

From the perspective of mind occupation, Li Jiaqi has already occupied the minds of a certain type of users. By imitating Li Jiaqi's path to break out of the circle, at best you can only get some benefits, and it is unlikely to achieve the same influence as Li Jiaqi. The internet celebrity economy is essentially content consumption. The content field is epoch-making, and even Disney is unlikely to create a second Mickey Mouse.

This is also the magic of channel dividends. Li Jiaqi's breakthrough can be seen as the overflow of channel dividends of male beauty bloggers on Douyin. It is the success of the Douyin platform that has led to Li Jiaqi's breakthrough.

But the "bonus" means that once it is discovered, players from all walks of life will flock in, and the blue ocean will quickly turn into a red ocean. Therefore, ROI will only continue to decrease, and no one can maintain ROI through the same delivery model. Even if there is a second Li Jiaqi, the influence will be very different.

Therefore, we believe that the KOL landscape in mature fields such as beauty and clothing has been basically determined and is unlikely to see major changes. It is even more special among live streaming KOLs. Live streaming sales are all about sales efficiency. It is difficult for KOLs to capture fans by showing diverse personal charm, so there are even fewer opportunities to overtake others.

04

The traffic monetization of KOLs can actually be seen as a kind of trust monetization : users will be interested in a product or have a favorable impression of a brand because they trust the KOL’s recommendation.

Generally speaking, KOLs’ daily content output is used to build user trust, and advertising monetization is used to consume user trust.

Therefore, once a KOL takes on too many advertisements, it will overdraw trust and damage the KOL’s own long-term interests. When user trust drops below that of ordinary users, users will treat them as "clowns". This type of “clown” KOL may be well-known and have a certain advertising exposure value, but the commercial ceiling is obvious, such as Feng Jie and Daidai Daxie Xiong.

But this does not mean that it is impossible to strike a balance between user trust and commercial monetization. The result of high-quality KOL marketing should be a win-win for the brand, KOL, and users - solving the information asymmetry among the three parties and improving efficiency. Li Jiaqi is a good example. He has screened good products, negotiated low prices for users, obtained sales for the brand, and won praise from users.

In the process of KOL promotion, in addition to inflating the volume, the biggest difficulty faced by brands is the inability to accurately assess the value of KOLs.

We believe that the value of KOLs can be evaluated through the following model:

KOL investment value = number of fans, trust, category coefficient

The value of KOL placement consists of three aspects:

1. The number of real fans measures the basic influence;
2. Trustworthiness measures the KOL’s ability to persuade users to take action. It can be measured by stickiness indicators such as comments, forwarding, and repeat purchases.
3. The coefficient value of the category label, for example, the category coefficient of finance and real estate is high, the category coefficient of fast-moving consumer goods and snacks is low, and the coefficient of mass KOL is at the average value.

Of course, the above is just a rough idea for KOL evaluation. The three variables will also affect each other, but they should be able to be further optimized through technical means.

05

Finally, let’s talk a little bit about live streaming:

Live streaming seems to be in full swing, but the categories of products it sells actually have great limitations. Currently, the categories of products sold through live streaming tend to be experiential products and non-standard products, such as beauty products, clothing, jewelry and jade.

Live streaming sales and TV shopping do have many similarities, one of which is the de-branding of the products sold. A brand is a kind of trust endorsement, but in the scenario of live streaming with goods, the anchor can supplement this trust endorsement through his or her own speech. Therefore, even if it is an unknown brand, the audience will buy it under the influence of the anchor.

But for most non-experience standard products, live streaming may not be effective unless a price war is launched. Starbucks’ products sold well on Viya’s live broadcast, but the premise was that Starbucks offered unprecedented discounts. It is hard to imagine how much Starbucks could have sold on Viya’s live broadcast if it had been sold at the original price. Similarly, if mobile phone products and digital products are not stimulated by low prices, live streaming may not be able to significantly boost sales.

In other words, live streaming e-commerce currently has screening for product categories, and not all brands are suitable.

I personally don’t think live streaming will become a mainstream form of entertainment, especially among urban office workers who don’t have much time. Selling goods through live streaming is actually a behavior in which users engage in impulse consumption and over-advance future consumption. It is precisely this characteristic of prepayment that means that live streaming consumption has a strong cyclicality.

KOL has undoubtedly transformed the entire marketing business chain. It can even be said that if you don’t know how to work with KOL, you will hardly be able to do marketing today. Luo Zhenyu said a few years ago that "commercial value will shift to people", which actually announced the rise of the power of individuals/Internet celebrities.

Author: Zheng Zhuoran

Source: Spread Gymnastics (ID: chuanboticao)