20 industry truths about KOL, anchors, and live streaming!

Discussions about KOLs have been popular twice in the marketing industry this year. The first time was when it was said that KOLs were dead and were replaced by KOCs; the second time was the "bee swarm traffic fraud" incident, which instantly brought the old issue of KOLs brushing traffic to the forefront again.

E-commerce live streaming sales are also very popular this year. The continuous release of sales data of Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya has made brand merchants unable to wait and want to try it out. There are also endless industry articles discussing these top live-streaming hosts. Some say that heroes are made by the times, while others say that the heroes create the times.

As a member of this industry, I have seen and learned a lot, and I have also practiced it myself during this period.

So, I wanted to organize all of this, and came up with the following text, named "Industry Truth" as a summary.

1. There is a difference between KOL and anchor

The rise of e-commerce live streaming has brought many live streaming hosts who sell goods into the public eye, such as Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya from Taobao, Xin Youzhi from Kuaishou, and Niurou Ge from Douyin, etc. However, I have always felt that there is a difference between these live streaming hosts who sell goods and the KOLs we usually talk about.

KOLs are more like content creators. They output interesting content in their respective fields, such as knowledge, jokes, emotional chicken soup, comics, film reviews, outfits, etc.; while anchors are more like salesmen. They rely on product explanations and sales skills. In the past, it might have been one-to-one sales in offline shopping malls, but now it can be one-to-many online.

In a sense, both KOLs and anchors can sell goods because they all have a certain influence among their fan groups, but the premise depends on how you understand "selling goods."

2. Product promotion can be divided into two types: seeding and selling

"Bringing goods" is a term that has only become popular in the last one or two years. Now when people talk about "bringing goods", they basically think of "how much was sold in one minute" or "how much transaction volume was achieved after a live broadcast" by those e-commerce anchors. It is more inclined towards bringing goods at the direct sales level.

But I think there are actually two types of product promotion: one is direct sales as mentioned above, and the other is grass-roots promotion.

I checked Baidu Encyclopedia and found that the explanation of “bringing goods” is “referring to the driving effect of celebrities and other public figures on commodities. Celebrities’ use and preference for a certain commodity often cause consumers to follow suit, setting off a popularity trend for this commodity.” The result of promoting products mentioned here is "creating a trend of popularity for this product", and it does not mention "a buying trend".

For example, you hired a KOL to promote your product, and although it didn’t directly lead to significant sales, you found that the product discussion volume on social media, search index on Taobao, number of store fans, number of added carts for designated SKUs, and number of favorites all increased. Does this count as bringing in products? Of course.

3. KOLs are more focused on spreading and promoting products

Earlier in the first point, we mentioned that KOLs and anchors can both sell products to a certain extent, it just depends on your understanding of “selling products”; combined with the second point, selling products can actually be divided into two types: direct sales and product recommendation.

I think KOL’s role in bringing products is more about dissemination and promotion, rather than directly driving sales like e-commerce anchors, because as mentioned above, KOLs are essentially content creators.

Jiang Cha Cha, a well-known KOL in the advertising and marketing circle, once revealed that she used her powerful influence to try to help a certain socks client sell goods, but ended up selling only 4 pairs. Cha Cha is very good at writing jokes for the advertising circle, and has received over 100,000 views, but she is really not good at selling products.

The reason for mentioning this point is that I want to tell those friends who have a certain budget and want to try "marketing with goods" to have clear goals and expectations in mind before launching. If you are clear about harvesting sales, then finding e-commerce anchors to do live broadcasts will definitely be more effective than finding some KOLs outside the site; and if your goal is to plant grass, such as a new product that has just been launched, and you want to quickly gain consumers' awareness and trial, then you can try to find some KOLs on platforms such as Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, etc. to do topic dissemination and good product recommendations.

4. Currently, most of the cooperation between KOLs and brands is still at the stage of selling advertising space

Compared with traditional advertising media, the biggest advantage of KOL is that KOL engages in content marketing and can use immersive content to influence consumers rather than simply exposing them to advertisements.

Of course, these are just the ideal states of using KOLs for marketing that we imagine in our minds; in fact, most of the current cooperation between KOLs and brands is still in the stage of selling advertising space.

Taking the most familiar example, many KOLs will first tell a long and interesting story, and then make a 180-degree turn to put up an advertisement, claiming it to be a "miracle twist". However, sometimes this twist has nothing to do with the previous story. This is actually better. At least the previous content is readable and can attract users to see the final advertising placement.

Sometimes, the brand simply sends a ready-made article to the KOL, which is full of good things about its own products, without considering the style and tone of the content that the KOL has posted in the past. As for KOLs, they just posted the same post in order to make money.

Is this what you call content marketing? How different is it from selling advertising space?

Truly effective content cooperation should be that KOLs integrate brand information organically into an article based on their consistent content positioning and writing style. This way, KOLs don’t have to advertise secretly and worry about fans unfollowing them, and brand information will not be simply ignored as an advertisement.

Of course, this is easier said than done. I have seen that the two public accounts of SoYoung and DingXiang Doctor have done a good job in this regard.

Taking SoYoung as an example, most of their public accounts will start with the appearance of a certain celebrity in the entertainment industry, and then combine their own professional knowledge in plastic surgery to give analysis and suggestions, and finally embed their own advertisements.

5. KOLs are divided into “real person” accounts and “institutional” accounts

There are two types of KOLs on the market: one is the "real person" type, and the other is the "institutional" type.

The so-called "real person" type does not necessarily mean that the KOL must appear in person, but rather has a fixed personal image, such as a tasteful fashion blogger, a joke teller, or a workplace blogger. A KOL with more personality will also reflect his or her own "three views"; the "institutional" type, for example: xxx rankings, xxx lists, xxx topic lists, etc., this type of account usually has a very high number of fans.

KOLs with "real person" accounts and "institutional" accounts can usually be used together. The "institutional" account is used to increase breadth, while the "real person" account is used to increase depth or favorability. If the budget is limited, it is recommended to choose the "real person" account.

6. Fake traffic is sometimes a conspiracy between Party A and Party B

The "Bee Swarm Traffic Fraud" incident that broke out some time ago is actually very familiar to people in the industry, because it was a conspiracy between Party A and Party B. In order to sell the KOL at a good price, Party B needs to fake orders; in order to achieve KPI, Party A can report to the boss who only knows how to look at data.

It is said that 7 out of 10 leading self-media are inflating traffic. If you search for keywords related to "inflating traffic" on the Internet, various service companies will show that this has formed a stable gray industrial chain.

When will fake traffic end? That is when the marketing industry no longer just looks at the superficial communication data, but pays more attention to the quality of the content itself. At this time, the industry may need to reshuffle.

7. To identify whether a KOL has inflated data, you can tell by looking at the following fan interactions

There are many people who brush data in the industry, and there are also many ways to tell you how to identify brush data. There are various tools for you to view various parameters. But I think there is a simplest way, which can be done as long as you have been in this industry for more than a year, and that is to look at the interaction under the content posted by the KOL.

Interaction includes three core dimensions: commenting, forwarding, and liking. It is very easy to increase the number of reposts and likes, as they are charged based on the amount of reposts. However, it is not so easy to increase the number of comments. If all the comments below are just a few words praising a post, and there are no likes in the comments themselves, then they are most likely fake.

8. In addition to inflating the dissemination data, sales can also be inflated

If inflating traffic is a secret in the industry, then inflating sales may still be unknown to some people.

That’s right, a long time ago, I bought something on Taobao, and the store owner sent me a private message asking me if I wanted to do “private work”; I asked what private work, and he told me that it means you pay for the things in his store, and then he will refund you, and when the time comes for the goods to be shipped, he will send me an empty package, and I only need to sign for confirmation. I was a little confused at the time and thought he was a liar, so I ignored him.

Later, I learned that this was the legendary “brushing orders”.

This is now something that many businesses do. In addition to displaying the number of xx units sold on the product details page, the purpose is also to increase the search weighting of the product or store.

Now some large live streaming sales companies will more or less use this method, and some even have a "brushing orders" team behind the scenes, in order to show merchants how much they have sold in a live broadcast.

As a merchant, don’t be too happy. You should look at the return rate of purchases made through live streaming over the next few days. If there are more than 5 returns out of 10, it is very likely that the anchor is brushing orders.

9. KOLs have to pay “tolls” on most platforms, which is also the reason why KOL prices are high

Now, KOLs need to pay a “toll” when posting content with brand implants on the platform, otherwise their fans will not be able to see it.

Taking Weibo as an example, in addition to the mandatory fee of purchasing "Fans Headlines", it is best to purchase various Weibo paid products such as "Fans Pass" and "Hot Searches". Only in this way can your content have traffic. Otherwise, no matter how good the content is, it will not be easily spread.

This approach not only raises the cost for brands to purchase KOLs, but also makes it impossible to measure the effectiveness of the KOL, because in the end it is not known whether the effect is due to the influence of the KOL's own fans or the effect of Weibo's paid traffic.

10. Weibo hasn’t produced any buzzwords for a long time, which is related to its KOL screening mechanism.

The previous article mentioned Weibo, so let’s continue talking about Weibo.

I don’t know if you have noticed that Weibo hasn’t spontaneously generated any buzzwords for a long time. "My life is so hard", "My damn charm", "The life of rich people is so plain and boring", these rustic and humorous remarks that are often said by men of all ages across the country are mostly produced by Kuaishou and Douyin.

Maybe you will say that this is related to the rise of short videos. Yes, on the one hand it is true. But I also think that this has something to do with Weibo’s own KOL screening mechanism.

In the previous article, we roughly talked about that the core way for KOLs to gain traffic on Weibo is to spend money. If you don’t spend money, your content will fall into oblivion. One result of this is that KOLs on Weibo no longer have much pursuit in producing content. Advertising for brands is just a diary-like content without many opinions of their own.

11. The KOL quotes that Party A gets must be the price after going through several hands

There is a point above that says the price of KOL is very expensive now. In fact, in addition to paying tolls to the platform, the KOL quotation that Party A finally gets must be the price after going through several hands.

The path with fewer routes is: MCN company - advertising company - Party A, and the path with more routes may be transferred several times in the MCN company.

Every time it is transferred, profit needs to be added in, so it will naturally become more expensive in the end.

what to do?

It would be best to purchase KOLs directly from the MCN company, or even negotiate with the KOLs yourself. Of course, this is relatively rare, but it does exist. For example, there are some UP hosts on Bilibili who can chat directly with you through private messages.

12. If you can’t afford the top KOLs, you can choose some “small and beautiful” KOCs

A while ago, a word called KOC became popular. This provides brands with another option. When you don’t have enough budget to buy top KOLs, you can consider some “small and beautiful” KOCs, which are actually called mid-level KOLs.

This “small but beautiful” mainly reflects that they may not have that many fans, but the amount of interaction (reposts, comments, likes) for each post is very high. This type of KOL often exists in platforms with very high user stickiness, also called strong relationship platforms, such as Douban, which calls itself a literary corner, and Bilibili, which is famous for its two-dimensional culture.

13. There are three types of KOL and anchor sales models

1) Sell products directly

This is more suitable for e-commerce anchors, with sales conversion as the goal. "Lipstick King" Li Jiaqi and Taobao sales queen "Viya" are the most representative cases.

The billing methods for this cooperative model are divided into three types: fixed price, guaranteed price + CPS and pure CPS. It is usually recommended to cooperate with the anchor in the form of "minimum price + CPS". On the one hand, it can guarantee the conversion rate of the listing, and on the other hand, there will not be too high requirements.

2) Planting seeds is better than selling

This type is more suitable for what we often call KOL. As mentioned in the third point above, the biggest role of KOL is dissemination and promotion. Xiaohongshu is a powerful seeding platform where many KOLs are involved. For example, when beauty and skincare bloggers teach or share their makeup and skincare tips, Amway products are truly effective in moisturizing people without making any noise.

3) “Fake promotion”, real PR

The essence is event marketing, which just uses the influence of KOL to accelerate the fermentation of the event. By planning in advance to create explosive news with high sales in a short period of time, the purpose of wide-ranging information dissemination can be achieved.

In this model, whether the sales actually occurred is no longer important. For example, Rebecca previously had an amazing "sales record": 100 limited edition MINI cars priced at 285,000 yuan were sold out within 5 minutes, and all orders were paid for 50 minutes later. I think this is most likely a premeditated fake PR event.

14. "Is the product good?" is the most important prerequisite for selling products

There are various strategic suggestions on how to sell goods. In fact, the most important prerequisite for selling goods is "whether the goods are good." If the goods are not good, no matter how good the host’s eloquence is or how strong his appeal is, he will not be able to sell them; even if they are sold, there will be various customer complaints later.

Let’s take Party A in the previous “bee swarm” incident as an example and see what goods he was selling. It is a so-called "magic tool to save menstruation" that is very tempting to cheat users. It claims that it uses a technology called eefit to inject high-energy light waves into your body, and then these light waves will solve the problem of dysmenorrhea. However, when you search the Internet for this so-called eefit technology, you can't find it and it doesn't exist. In fact, it is just a 500-yuan hot pack.

I think not many people would buy this kind of stuff even if the traffic is not fake.

15. "Low price" is the means by which most anchors sell goods

I have written an article before titled "Live streaming sales is a record of the "Seven Injury Fist": Even Li Jiaqi and Viya can't save it". One of the important arguments in it is that the reason why most anchors can drive so much sales now is "low price". For the top anchors, merchants need to give the "lowest price on the entire network". Li Jiaqi had two incidents of angrily criticizing merchants in the live broadcast room because he found that the merchants gave him fewer rights and interests than those given to Viya. For details, please click to read my original article, I will not repeat it here.

16. There are three essential conditions for a live streamer to be able to sell goods: a suitable personality, professional knowledge, and eloquence

What kind of anchor can sell goods?

I think there are 3 conditions:

1. Personality fit: The personality of the selected anchor should be consistent with the brand image. Why is Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room mostly about cosmetics, while Wei Ya’s live broadcast is more about selling fast-moving consumer goods? Essentially, it is because of their different personalities.
2. Professional knowledge: A good salesperson must be familiar with the professional knowledge of the product, so that you can be convincing when communicating with customers. The anchor is essentially an online "one-to-many" salesperson, so the same is true. You must be able to concisely and effectively explain the core selling points of the product, consumption scenarios, etc.
3. Eloquent expression: If you can achieve the above two and add good eloquence, you will be perfect. In addition to being eloquent, one also needs to make what he says infectious and have a rhythm, so that people who watch the live broadcast will feel fascinated by what you say and place an order without realizing it.

17. The anchor who “sells fake goods” will eventually: be born with traffic, lose to trust

With the popularity of live streaming, more and more anchors have been found selling counterfeit goods. Since they cannot get lower discounts from merchants for genuine products and do not make much profit, they go to find fake sources of goods themselves. In this way, the discounts appear to be very large. For example, a pair of shoes worth 2,000 yuan may only be sold for 800 yuan in his live broadcast room, and users will be very tempted to place an order after seeing this. However, when they received the goods, they found out that they were fake, and it is usually difficult to find regular after-sales service for things purchased through live streaming.

These anchors who sell fake goods will eventually gain traffic but lose trust.

On the one hand, consumers come to your live broadcast room because of trust. They may feel that they trust your aesthetics and will buy even if there is not much discount. However, after being deceived once, fewer and fewer people will be deceived again. On the other hand, the country’s censorship policy on live broadcast sales will become more and more stringent, and these anchors will be banned sooner or later.

18. Be cautious when using celebrities to promote products through live streaming

Many people think that celebrities have many fans and good personal images, so if they were asked to help with a live broadcast, they would definitely be able to sell a lot of goods.

But the fact is that many celebrities are not suitable for live streaming of e-commerce products. We have previously worked with popular artists such as Wang Junkai and Zhang Yixing, and the sales were very dismal.

Why?

As I have been saying above, the anchor is more like an online salesperson. Can you imagine what kind of people are doing sales? You have to let go of that! Feel free to explain the product selling points, feel free to create the atmosphere, and feel free to sell in the live broadcast room. But can celebrities do it? It's difficult, after all, they all have the image of being an idol.

But now a small number of celebrities have begun to put aside their burdens and walk into the live broadcast room like normal anchors, such as Li Xiang, Fan Bingbing, and Li Xiang, but they are a minority after all.

19. Be cautious when using e-commerce anchors to promote your brand

On the other hand, don’t easily try to ask e-commerce anchors to help brands create branding-level communication materials like celebrities.

I have seen a case like this in the TVC shot by Li Jiaqi for the cosmetics brand Hua Xizi. The monologue read by Li Jiaqi in the video made me feel embarrassed. Although the picture was quite beautiful, it just felt very inconsistent. Why?

I think the biggest problem is that the context has changed. What kind of image does Li Jiaqi have in the live broadcast room? He is simply a lively and energetic live-streaming influencer who keeps talking all night long. But now, placed in such a poetic context, it is obviously inappropriate to use the previous celebrity tone of speaking.

20. Brand building is the driving force to ensure that KOLs and anchors can bring goods

Finally, what I want to say is that marketers should not always be obsessed with live streaming to sell products, because this is, after all, a short-term harvesting behavior.

For new brands, they must first build a strong enough mindset in consumers’ minds through brand building before they can reap the rewards; for old brands, they also need continuous brand building to establish a good reputation so that they will have the driving force when it comes to reap the rewards.

Author: JS Planner

Source: JS Planner