A guide to avoiding pitfalls when promoting KOLs

Inspired by the recent criticism of traffic fraud, the author combined his own practical experience to introduce to us how to conduct a reliable advertising campaign to avoid being deceived.

In the past two days, an article exposing traffic fraud that has been widely circulated in the circle of friends has lifted the veil on the role of online celebrities in selling products. After patiently reading this super long article written by the victim himself, "A "zombie stage play" directed by a new media giant, which truly restored the scene, the fuse: a video that became popular overnight, but our traffic was 0!", I was completely confused!

First of all, it’s 2020, and there are still people thinking of using Weibo as the main platform to promote products? How blind is this entrepreneurial brother to the current trend of new media!

Secondly, I have never used his products, so regardless of whether his products are good or bad, anyone with a little knowledge of brand marketing should know that users need to be educated about technology products that are not backed by a brand. Without first finding a professional organization or expert to endorse the safety of their products, they are rushing to find internet celebrities to promote and monetize them. Don’t they think consumers haven’t paid enough IQ tax?

In a nutshell: This is a classic case of "I know half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I don't know which half."

So, how did I break this curse today when traffic is getting more and more expensive and traffic water content is getting more and more serious, and use less than 30 million yuan in advertising fees a year to make MINISO a brand with a value of over 100 million yuan?

Among them, the rigorous and skillful media placement strategy played an indispensable role.

Today I will share this set of front-line practical experience with you without reservation. It can be said that this is a summary of the essence of our investment. Behind each experience is the result of our battle of wits and courage with MCN and KOLs . I hope it can help brands avoid pitfalls and not be harvested as suckers.

1. Only 10% to 20% of KOLs do not inflate their traffic

Before I share this set of strategies, I want to give you a heads-up.

According to industry insiders, only 10%-20% of KOLs do not buy traffic, and it has long been an unspoken rule in the industry for MCN agencies to increase traffic for bloggers.

In other words, these days, KOLs with real traffic are even rarer than pandas.

Why?

Because the price of KOLs with real traffic is too high.

Generally speaking, there are many high-quality large-size advertisements like GQ and New World View, and it is easy to choose. You need to queue up to post an advertisement, and in order to ensure the "style", there is often a strict review of the advertising content, which also places requirements on the brand's promotion capabilities.

The MCN agency needs to make money, the KOL needs to eat, the boss wants to see data, and the client wants KPI, and they hit it off immediately. This kind of operation, which is good for both of us and makes the boss happy, should be tolerated by everyone just by turning a blind eye.

It is worth mentioning that in the market, the cost of fraudulent clicks and top posts is too low. Brands invest tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising, but a water account only needs less than 1,000 yuan to create an "original" post of 100,000+.

If you don’t believe it, just go to Taobao and search for Weibo and WeChat inflated traffic. The price is low, and they are fair to everyone. They can help you arrange your data beautifully and clearly in minutes.

So, dear brand owners, do you still believe in the data-only theory in the emperor's new clothes?

2. Is media placement just a simple advertisement?

Many people think that media placement is just a simple release of advertising needs?

Haha, too naive.

In addition to controlling the advertising channels, media placement also involves rigorous data analysis capabilities, copywriting appreciation capabilities, and communication skills . Media placement is the soul of the entire project promotion, and requires very high resource integration and organization capabilities.

This should be a position where money is spent wisely, so professionals must be in charge of this sector. I advise all bosses not to just do it on their own without thinking, as this will not only make yourself exhausted, but also be a thankless task.

If the brand chooses to cooperate with an MCN agency, my advice is not to put all your eggs in one basket, but to compete with several MCN agencies and select at least two with relatively high quality to maintain long-term cooperation. Generally, long-term MCN agencies will not promote accounts of poor quality to you for the sake of small profits. After all, they are still waiting for long-term support from their sponsors.

In addition, when giving a brief to an MCN agency, you must be clear about your promotion needs. Do you want to sell products, gain exposure, or build word of mouth?

Don't underestimate this action. A clear and concise demand will allow the MCN agency to make more accurate matches when screening KOLs for you, which can save a lot of later communication costs and even unnecessary friction.

The following is the order demand template I used when I was promoting a project at MINISO. Because of this, we are called the most detail-oriented Party A by the Party B.

This can be applied, and I share it with you for reference.

In addition, the most important point is that for the KOLs screened by MCN, you should find your own budget limit and the ones you are interested in launching, and monitor the data of these accounts one by one before launching. Many platform tools can currently achieve this. I won’t go into details here, and will give you a detailed explanation of each media channel later.

3. How can I find a KOL that matches me?

Next, I will analyze several mainstream promotion platforms one by one:

1. Weibo

(1) To be honest, sponsors should not expect conversions when they invest in Weibo KOLs. Don’t ask why. The answer is that they are stupid and have lots of money.

If you want conversion, you should find celebrities and top KOLs to cooperate with, because of the celebrity effect. Plus, fan girls all use RMB to cheer for their idols. At least the real traffic and ability to bring goods are somewhat guaranteed.

Of course, the premise is that your budget must be able to support your ambitions.

(2) Establish a Weibo KOL resource library

If you can’t afford to spend a lot of money on top KOLs but want to create a little buzz on Weibo, you can try to approach some bloggers in smaller circles, such as bloggers in the notebook, BL, cosplay and other circles… Use gift exchanges or fees to maintain long-term cooperative relationships with these bloggers and build your own blogger resource library.

These bloggers may have tens of thousands of fans, but because of their influence in the circle, they have real fans. Because they have not been commercialized, the fan stickiness is relatively strong.

• Of course, there are pros and cons.
• First of all, you need to analyze whether the tone of your brand’s fans matches that of the other party’s fans, so you have to invest a lot of time in screening and communication.
• Secondly, many of these bloggers are immersed in their own little world. Emmm, to put it simply, they have their own personalities and may not pay attention to you.

For example, MINISO has established its own KOL resource library. Our Weibo editors will, based on the characteristics of our products, discover and connect with some niche bloggers that match MINISO’s tone, such as food bloggers, makeup bloggers, and notebook bloggers.

Then we will divide the blogger into ABCD levels according to the number of fans, reposts, comments and likes. For AB level, we will consider cooperating with the blogger by paying some advertising fees, and for CD level, we will cooperate with the blogger by exchanging gifts. Of course, the premise is that your product cannot be too useless and must be able to meet the blogger's interest needs.

It’s no wonder that after long-term cooperation, we are still greatly surprised by the data feedback from these small bloggers. Their comments and likes are not inferior to those of the so-called big Vs with millions of fans. They are even of higher quality and not fake. They can be said to be treasure KOLs.

(3) Play with Weibo Blue V Alliance

Everyone should understand that it is good to lean on a big tree for shade.

For brands with limited budgets, they can reach out to other Blue Vs to attract fans and traffic to each other. There are also some high-quality Blue Vs who can bring a lot of exposure, such as Haier New Media, etc. Although this form is more of a small-scale effort, it is at least much better than wasting hundreds of thousands of advertising fees, right?

After talking about how to screen accounts, let’s take a look at how to evaluate the real fan activity of a Weibo account.

I won’t go into detail about the basic likes and comments. As long as you spend a little time to browse the blogger’s historical post records and see whether the comments are sincere, you can tell whether they are fake.

Here I would like to share a simple operation. You can log in to Weibo with your mobile phone and click to enter the blogger’s account homepage to view the fan interaction data in the box.

The data is real. One good thing about this feature launched by Weibo is that if users’ reposts, comments and likes do not stay on the blogger’s tweet page for more than a certain period of time, they will not be counted.

The more you dig deeper into this function, you will find that Weibo big Vs in various fields generally have very few active fans. Compared with the thousands or tens of thousands of comments under her tweets, the number is sporadic and dismal.

2. WeChat Official Account

(1) First, draw! Heavy! point! Don’t vote for fashion accounts easily (except for accounts with big names like “深夜发兀”, “Ｒｉｂｅｃａｒｄ的奇幻世界”, etc.) , as fashion accounts are the hardest hit by the inflated traffic of WeChat public accounts. (Smiling face, these are all the bitter experiences I gained from spending money recklessly when I was young)

Why?

Compared with other financial or emotional accounts, the content of most fashion accounts is relatively light. To put it simply, an account can be created by copying and pasting articles, so its operating costs are very low and its fans are very sticky.

(2) Apart from a few large-scale accounts that may not contain any inflated volume, if there are any accounts that retain a pure land, I think they are corporate public accounts.

As everyone knows, I once led the team to achieve 50 million fans across the entire matrix of MINISO’s new media, ranked first among companies on WeChat public accounts, with over 100 million readers, and over 10 million in BD advertising revenue.

Skin care brands such as HFP, Aifeilier, and Mingmo No. 1 are all our long-term clients. Why do they prefer to choose corporate accounts like MINISO for advertising?

Regardless of whether the brand tone of the two matches or not, the authenticity of the data is far better than that of a dozen KOLs.

Why?

Many corporate public accounts open up BD cooperation only to increase revenue channels, but advertising revenue is not a necessary and sufficient condition for the operation of public accounts. Simply put, companies do not lack your advertising fees and will not waste time and energy on brushing data for the sake of immediate small profits.

(3) Another approach is to screen some accounts that are close to your brand tone and that you consider to be of high quality after evaluation, and then give them to the MCN agency to inquire about the price.

The effect of this type of account will be more controllable and generally will not differ too much from the expected results. However, you get what you pay for, and the quote won’t be cheap.

Now let’s talk about how to evaluate the effectiveness of WeChat public accounts. My suggestions are:

• Before launching the ad, first conduct minute-level monitoring on potential cooperative accounts (many platforms currently have this function, such as Xinbang). First find the blogger’s advertising tweets for the day, look at the data a few hours after the release, and then monitor the data fluctuations between 1:00 and 5:00 in the evening. If the number of readings continues to increase during this period, then it is undoubtedly water.
• According to my experience, most accounts will have 30%-40% inflated reading volume. The total reading volume minus this is the blogger's actual reading volume. For example, if a fashion account has about 80,000 advertising tweets, then the actual data may be only 30,000 or 40,000.
• After testing the waters with high-quality accounts, you can sign a framework agreement for long-term cooperation. On the one hand, the tacit cooperation among everyone can reduce communication costs. On the other hand, there is a price advantage and there will be more room for discounts.

3. Xiaohongshu

(1) Due to its grass-growing nature, Xiaohongshu has more advantages than WeChat and Weibo in building brand or product reputation. In addition, its price is highly cost-effective compared to other media channels that can easily cost tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan .

Of course, the wild growth and over-commercialization of Xiaohongshu before it was taken off the shelves caused its content to be distorted for a time, but the content review of Xiaohongshu will become more and more stringent after it is put back on the shelves. I believe that there is still a lot of room for its commercial value.

(2) The content on Xiaohongshu is of the active search type. What does this mean? This means that the advertisement will not be actively pushed to the fans' homepage. Instead, the fans need to search for keywords based on their needs, such as "moisturizing mask". Therefore, your product content tags must match the fans' search needs in order to have a chance to be displayed in front of the fans.

This means that it is unrealistic to launch a product by simply placing an ad on Xiaohongshu. The ad must be a wide-ranging bombing campaign. You can find this out by searching for [Perfect Diary] on Xiaohongshu.

(3) The quotes from Xiaohongshu bloggers are also quite interesting. For example, there are three levels of quotes for cosmetics and skincare products. For example, one price range is shown for the pure product, while the quotes for hand swatches and face evaluations are different.

However, there is still a lot of room for negotiation for some products. According to our experience, for example, IP products have high IP awareness themselves, unlike cosmetics and skin care products where the risks are uncontrollable. Therefore, many bloggers will be happy to accept this kind of promotion. At this time, there is room for price reduction. In this case, cooperation can be negotiated at a relatively low price.

4. TikTok

(1) What can be directly felt is that lightweight, niche mid- and low-end KOLs, especially mid-level KOLs, are more popular with brands and have become the absolute protagonists of short video KOL delivery strategies.

Why?

Professional and vertical mid-level experts who have deeply engaged in a certain field have a high influence in the circle and a more precise audience. Although the absolute number of fans cannot be compared with the head and shoulders, experts in vertical fields can create "head influence" in the circle.

In addition, these mid-level influencers, especially those whose fan operations and content creation are on the rise, not only have better ability to "attract fans", but are also reasonably priced, which makes them more friendly to brands with smaller budgets.

(2) When we screen KOLs, in addition to focusing on the appeal of the blogger’s content, the KOL itself must also have a unique personal charm so that fans can develop a sense of trust in it.

(3) Finally, I would like to share my personal experience: There are many high-quality KOLs on Douyin, but the KOLs who treat their sponsors with care are the real ones! No! many!

Many Douyin KOLs put a lot of effort and thought into creating their own content, but the advertising content is obviously perfunctory and always feels forced.

Therefore, when screening accounts, sponsors must make good predictions and evaluations and take multiple considerations into account.

5. Bilibili

(1) Regarding the placement on Bilibili, I would like to share here a makeup project we have done before, which is quite interesting.

According to normal logic, when it comes to beauty products, most people have a preconceived notion that it is appropriate to find a beautiful lady to do the evaluation and promotion for the product, which will add icing on the cake and be more convincing.

But after testing the campaigns of many bloggers, we were really surprised by the data feedback we got. The blogger with the best conversion rate was a blogger with ordinary looks and even a little fat.

We analyzed and found that most makeup bloggers’ product recommendation model is quite conventional, but this blogger has carved out a path among the many regular bloggers’ videos with her humorous eloquence and weird outfits.

I attribute it to personal charm, which has a lot to do with the ghost-animal nature of the platform.

(2) Compared with other platforms, Bilibili’s commercial operations are not yet mature, so its cost-effectiveness is relatively high.

at last

Of course, in order to achieve product and effect integration, the brand must clearly sort out its promotional appeal: is it to sell goods? Is it brand exposure? Or build word of mouth?

Finding the right promotion channel is only the first step. You also need to consider whether the product you choose is suitable for promotion, whether it matches the needs of consumers, and whether it has the potential to become a hit product. It is the right way to clarify the conversion path for each step and to proceed step by step.

Author: Sister Mulan

Source: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)