Research on Li Ziqi's word-of-mouth marketing

There are many reasons why internet celebrities can gain attention and their traffic-monetized products become popular. This article takes word-of-mouth marketing as the theoretical basis to study Li Ziqi's word-of-mouth marketing.

1. Introduction

In recent years, the rapid development of the Internet economy has spawned many new economic situations. Many people share their lives through the Internet, attracting the attention of a large number of netizens and gradually becoming Internet celebrities. At the same time, with the birth of the Internet celebrity economy, Internet celebrities have the opportunity to monetize their popularity.

There are many reasons why internet celebrities can gain attention and their traffic-monetized products become popular. This article takes word-of-mouth marketing as the theoretical basis to study Li Ziqi's word-of-mouth marketing.

2. Theoretical basis

This article will use four theoretical models, namely the six elements of adhesion, the tipping point theory, the AISAS model, and the Lazarsfeld two-level communication model.

Making creativity sticky means making a contagious message memorable in a special way. There are six ways to make creativity or ideas sticky: simplicity, surprise, specificity, credibility, emotion, and story.

Tipping Point Theory: The tipping point theory was proposed by Gladwell of the United States.

The theory consists of three parts:

• The first is the key person rule, which includes three types of people: connectors, mavens, and salesmen;
• The second rule is the stickiness factor, which talks about the elements that a popular item should have. It should have the stickiness that makes people unforgettable, or at least leave a deep impression.
• The third law is the law of environmental power.

AISAS model: The AISAS (Attention, Interest, Search, Action, Share) model, reconstructed based on the market characteristics of the Internet era, considers the information collection (Search) after consumers notice the product and become interested in it, and the information sharing (Share) after they take purchasing action, as two important links.

Lazarsfeld's two-stage communication model: relevant information and ideas first reach the so-called "opinion leaders" from a certain information source through mass media; then the information is spread to the general public through opinion leaders. The former, as the first stage, is mainly the process of information transmission, while the latter, as the second stage, is mainly the diffusion of interpersonal influence.

3. How to create Li Ziqi’s IP?

3.1 Li Ziqi

Li Ziqi is a well-known food video blogger on Weibo and a self-media person signed by Weibo. Known as the "Oriental Gourmet Lifestyle Expert".

In early 2016, Liziqi began shooting handmade videos. The early video editing, directing, filming, acting and editing were all done by Li Ziqi. The themes of Li Ziqi's works are derived from the simple traditional life of the Chinese people. They take the food culture that the Chinese nation is proud of as the main line and revolve around the four aspects of food, clothing, housing and transportation.

Li Ziqi's works convey a positive attitude and a love of life, and her works combine her life experiences to convey the spirit of independence and self-reliance. These works have been reprinted and praised by many mainstream media, including the official Weibo account of the Communist Youth League of China. As of January 2018, the number of fans on the entire network is nearly 20 million, and the cumulative number of views is nearly 3 billion. He is known as the "No. 1 Internet Celebrity in 2017."

Many mainstream media and official social groups have made the following comments about her:

• The official Weibo account of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League: Salute to every young person who strives for his or her dreams, and salute to every young person who works diligently and makes the most of his or her time. The motherland is proud of your diligence, keep running.
• Sina Entertainment: Li Ziqi continues to expand her influence with her high-quality video works, simple and natural emotional resonance, unique personality charm, and positive energy of self-media.
• Phoenix News: These delicacies are prepared using ancient cooking methods and simple cooking utensils. They exude a light pastoral atmosphere. The unique perspective coupled with the melodious and graceful ancient tunes highlights the pursuit of pastoral life and is unforgettable.
• Global Times: He is not only a representative of the ideal life of ordinary people who work hard, but also a well-deserved inheritor of Chinese traditional culture.
• China Daily: It is like a leisurely landscape painting, inspiring people's emotional resonance of returning to nature. It carries the obvious personality symbols of Li Ziqi and is a true portrayal of her commitment to her original aspirations and pursuit of beauty.

Won the following awards:

• Top 10 Food Celebrities of 2017 Super Celebrity Festival
• 2017 Food V Influence Summit Top 10 Influential Food Bloggers on Weibo
• 2018 Won the YouTube Silver Award after 3 months of overseas operation
• 2017-10 Miaopai Top 1 in Influence Ranking
• 2017 Golden Second Award for Best Food Short Video in the Third Quarter
• 2017 Golden Second Award for Best Food Short Video in the Third Quarter
• 2017 Golden Second Award for Best Food Short Video in the Third Quarter
• 2017 Top 1 in the Weibo Video We-media Original Ranking

3.2 Li Ziqi IP

Since March 2016, Liziqi began recording videos with Chinese food as the theme and rural life as the background and posted them on Weibo. In August 2016, she signed a contract with Weinian Company and began to register the Liziqi trademark. In 2017, due to online violence, Liziqi proposed to stop recording videos. After that, she started recording again after forming a team. All videos after May 2017 were recorded by the team. Since the establishment of the company in July 2017, various products have radiated outward with Liziqi's IP image as the center.

In March 2016, Liziqi began to post her own short videos on Weibo.

In July 2017, Weinian Company invested in the establishment of Sichuan Ziqi Cultural Communication Co., Ltd. Since then, most of Li Ziqi's operations, except for Weibo, have been completed by her team.

• In October 2017, Li Ziqi's team established a WeChat public account
• Established Douyin account in December 2017
• Created a YouTube account in early 2018
• Taobao account established in August 2018

The source of these resources is thanks to the company that Li Ziqi signed with - Wei Nian

Wei Nian is a company that crosses over into new consumer brands by incubating and deeply integrating KOL networks. According to the official introduction of Weinian Company, the company's business scope includes: IP incubation, content shooting, brand research and development, e-commerce operations, supply chain, warehousing and logistics, omni-channel, advertising operations, capital channels, etc., and these are all reflected in the IP of Li Ziqi. In addition, the company has many cooperative channels, including 24 mainstream media such as Weibo, Douyin, Toutiao, WeChat, JD.com, Taobao, CCTV, YouTube, and Facebook.

(Pictures from the Internet)

It can be said that Li Ziqi's success, in addition to her own unique skills, is inseparable from the commercial operation of her team, which enabled her to eventually have a large number of users and traffic and keep her works fresh.

Crowd portrait: From the graph depicted by Baidu Index, we can intuitively see that the people who follow Li Ziqi's updates are mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier developed cities. People here have a fast pace of life and high pressure in life, which makes videos like Li Ziqi's that convey the concept of a slow pace of life popular.

In terms of age, they are mainly concentrated between 20 and 40 years old. This is because people in this age group are at the beginning and rising stages of their careers and are more likely to worry about gains and losses and feel anxious. Li Ziqi's videos can help them temporarily escape from reality and enter an ideal and pleasant state of mind.

Compared with another internet celebrity, Li Jiaqi, although their main age distribution is consistent (consistent with the age distribution of all Internet users), there are subtle differences. For example, among people under the age of 19, Li Jiaqi's proportion is higher than that of Li Ziqi.

This is because the two videos have different directions. Li Jiaqi's videos are about beauty and makeup. With the popularization of makeup and the younger age of people wearing it, the underage market and demand will become larger and larger. Li Ziqi's videos are about freehand brushwork of life. For minors, the pressure is not as great as in the adult world, so the number accounts for a relatively low proportion.

In addition, in terms of gender distribution, there are more women than men. This is because Li Ziqi's video selection is more in line with women's needs.

(Picture from Baidu Index)

3.3 Li Ziqi’s word-of-mouth marketing

Communication mechanisms: six elements of creative stickiness.

(1) Accident

City-rural area, Li Ziqi was born in the countryside and moved to the city to develop after growing up. In 2016, Li Ziqi's grandmother was seriously ill, and Li Ziqi returned to the countryside without hesitation to take care of her elderly grandmother. From then on, she lived a secluded and secluded life. Such a change seems to be different and goes against the trend of contemporary urbanization, so it has received a lot of attention.

Self-media - collaboration. In the early days, Li Ziqi's videos were about her own life. Just when people were used to her clear identity as a self-media blogger, she began cross-border collaborations and collaborated with IPs with tall and positive images, such as Forbidden City Videos and National Treasures. An internet celebrity has received such great recognition that more and more users are paying attention to and are curious about him.

As a gourmet and cultural ambassador, Li Ziqi has not stopped exploring other aspects of her development. Since 2018, she has begun to spread Chinese culture as a breakthrough, concentrating on production and has achieved considerable results, such as spreading pens, ink, paper and inkstones to the Malaysian royal family; becoming the Chengdu intangible cultural heritage promotion ambassador; sewing Shu embroidery dresses herself; and being interviewed by TouTube, etc.

Li Ziqi has created new topics and attracted attention through one unexpected transformation after another. Step by step, he became a public figure loved by everyone.

(2) Specific

Regarding specific daily life, the materials selected and presented in Li Ziqi's videos all revolve around daily life. There seems to be no barrier to entry, the connection is natural, and the details are appropriate.

The process of product formation: making soy sauce can start with planting soybeans, making silk quilts can start with raising silkworms and reeling out silk, and making rice paper can start with pulling tree bark. The process of producing each finished product can make you feel like you are witnessing it firsthand.

(3) Emotion

“Truth, Goodness, and Beauty”

From the following related word cloud, we can see that the emotions evoked by Li Ziqi's works can be summarized as "truth, goodness and beauty". "Rural area, life, reality and yard" show that the emotional connotation is truth, "grandma" shows that the emotional connotation is goodness, and "rural life and delicious food" shows that the emotional connotation is beauty.

In fact, both Li Ziqi herself and her videos embody beauty. In addition to her delicious food, exquisite Shu embroidery and other products, her video editing that is comparable to blockbuster movies and the visual beauty it brings make her stand out among a large number of market followers.

(Picture taken from Weihedian.com)

(4) Story

Almost all of Li Ziqi's videos are about the process of creating the final products in our daily lives (such as food, furniture, cosmetics, etc.). They are series with the affection between her and her grandmother as the main emotional line, and coordinated with the timeline of life (various traditional festivals and various harvest seasons).

It tells the story of the past and present of traditional culture, narrows the distance between us and traditional crafts that are psychologically far away from us, and allows the audience to get close to Chinese traditional culture.

(5) Resonance

Li Ziqi recreated Tao Yuanming's idealized pastoral life through videos. Every frame seems like a fairyland, and Li Ziqi's own image is also positioned as a "fresh and unworldly" and "all-powerful" fairy. Such a life and image can greatly alleviate the loneliness and anxiety of modern urbanites. It satisfies people's spiritual needs of slowing down and pursuing the beautiful and simple life they long for in the rapidly developing Internet era.

How it happens - the AISAS model

(Pictures from the Internet)

• Follow: Have a preliminary understanding of Li Ziqi, understand her videos, life and worldview, and form a memory of her
• Interest: Be interested in her, actively browse and receive relevant information
• Search: In-depth understanding of Li Ziqi's process
• Action: Participation process - Interact with Li Ziqi
• Share word of mouth: recommend to others

Lazarsfeld's two-stage communication model: Taking Weibo as an example (the number of views is still increasing)

(Pictures from the Internet and Weibo)

Information source: Li Ziqi's videos, texts, pictures, opinions, etc. were spread through mass media (first-level broadcasts were played more than 20 million times)

Opinion leaders: Opinion leaders (KOLs) who obtain information from mass media and then spread the information to the general public (secondary communication forwarding volume is 182,000 times)

Other audiences (diffusion through interpersonal influence): ordinary audiences reached by secondary dissemination by opinion leaders, or directly disseminated by recipients of information sources to form word-of-mouth

3.4 IP Specific Event Word-of-Mouth Marketing - Tipping Point Model

Background: From the perspective of Baidu Index, point D on August 7, 2019 is the highest point in the past two years, second only to point E on September 12, 2019. By checking Li Ziqi's Weibo, it can be found that August 7, 2019 was the first anniversary of the establishment of her Li Ziqi Taobao flagship store.

(Picture taken from Baidu Index)

And on the same day, the number of fans of its Taobao store increased by 100,000.

Data shows that on August 9, the first anniversary of the opening of Li Ziqi's Tmall flagship store, a total of 21 products were sold online, with a total sales volume of more than 1.3 million and a total sales amount of up to 71 million. (Data from 3 days)

This data means that its sales volume is 5.5 times that of usual days, and sales revenue is nearly 9 times that of usual days.

From this point of view, the event organized by Li Ziqi and her team can be said to be very successful. In order to study the reasons for its success, the following article uses the tipping point as a theoretical basis to study the spread mechanism of this activity.

(Pictures from the Internet)

August 6-8, 2019

Qijia’s 1st Anniversary

Communication Mechanisms - Individuals - Contacts

As a KOL, Li Ziqi has the following characteristics as a contact person:

1. Weibo has 19.87 million followers, and the average video playback volume is 30 million, with the highest video playback volume reaching 300 million.
2. Tik Tok has 28.24 million followers, and its videos receive an average of 800,000 likes;
3. WeChat public account has over 100,000 readers per post;
4. YouTube has 6 million followers;
5. The average number of followers on other platforms is 20 million.

As the event approached and on the day it started, Liziqi and her team posted related videos and texts on major social platforms such as Douyin, WeChat official accounts, Toutiao, Xigua Video, Meipai, etc. (It should be noted that Li Ziqi and her team rarely introduce and spread activities in the title or text of Weibo. They are more likely to mention the activity in the comment section and at the end of the tweet. Therefore, on the surface, it may seem that this dynamic is just one of their ordinary dynamics. However, this practice is in line with Li Ziqi's personal image and makes the audience have more positive emotions towards Li Ziqi. This move has more benefits than disadvantages.)

Taking Weibo as an example, the contact person Li Ziqi chose to use private chat on Weibo to tell fans that the Taobao flagship store she runs has been one year old, and guided fans to visit her Weibo homepage to browse related information. On the same day, Liziqi released a new update, and the video showed her new product - Liuzhou snail noodles. Coming to the comment section of the Weibo, a pinned message explains that "Luoshi rice noodle is an intangible cultural heritage of Guangxi and is also a new product of this anniversary brand. Of course, there are also video benefits! [Repost + post a screenshot of the added purchase to get 277 free Liuzhou Luoshi rice noodle]" and is accompanied by a long picture.

Mechanism of communication - Individuals - Mavens, Salesmen

As an expert and first-level salesperson, Li Ziqi's main sales method is video + picture + text. The above pictures generally describe the production process of the product and introduce the one-year anniversary event.

Although there is no direct sales promotion, the language description of the product production process includes: in general, it introduces the product's origin, describes the professionalism and hardship of the craft, the freshness of the materials, the complexity of the process and the characteristics of the product. At the same time, it eliminates fans' concerns: although some content does not match the video, the material is natural and fans can rest assured that the quality is guaranteed. Then the first anniversary event was introduced, including gifts and fan benefits.

This coherent description of text + pictures not only helps consumers understand the product, but also provides a gift promotion and a purchasing channel.

Second-level salesperson: Big V; sales method: evaluation.

Secondary salesmen are some big Vs who conduct reviews through short videos and thus convey product information to consumers. However, Li Ziqi’s reviews are generally conducted spontaneously by big Vs.

Third-level salesperson: user; sales method: comments.

Judging from the user comments on Taobao, users have learned about product information and made purchases from platforms such as Weibo, Douyin, and Meipai. There are also some "insiders" from Liuzhou who have made a lot of good comments. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the praise rate of Li Ziqi's Tmall flagship store is 100%.

Propagation Mechanism - Adhesion

topic:

• Guangxi intangible cultural heritage food;
• The first anniversary of Qijia.

Type: Guangxi intangible cultural heritage food is long-term attention, Qijiajia’s first anniversary is short-term attention, and commenting, forwarding and lottery are short-term attention.

Factors: Narrative method: Recording the process and telling stories, the content quality is high.

Repeated appearance: Start the promotional activities two days in advance and appear on major platforms, so that consumers encounter them more frequently and induce consumption. Various reposts have sparked heated discussions.

Spreading Mechanism - Environmental Power

Macro environment: In September this year, the "2018 Weibo E-commerce White Paper" released by Sina Weibo Data Center mentioned: More than 60% of users are willing to buy the same products as celebrities, and more than 70% of users have a positive attitude towards products recommended by celebrities.

(Picture from Weibo Data White Paper)

Microenvironment: Chinese Valentine's Day, Qijiajia's first anniversary, and Celebrity Day.

(Picture from Weibo)

Li Ziqi won the titles of the Most Popular Blogger of the 2019 Super Red Star Festival and the Most Commercially Valuable Red Star of 2019 during the Red Star Festival.

The above factors worked together to make the event such a success.

How it happens - the AISAS model

Follow: Follow Li Ziqi and learn about the first anniversary event of Li Ziqi through videos and related publicity.

Interest: Interested in the product and the Qijiajia 1st anniversary event.

Search: Search for relevant product information (e-commerce platforms) and browse related reviews.

Purchase: Create a desire to buy.

Share - Word of mouth: recommend to others.

Lazarsfeld's two-stage communication model:

Information source: opinion leaders

In this process, Li Ziqi's publicity channels are information sources, and Li Ziqi herself is an opinion leader; through stimulation, the desire to buy is formed.

Other audiences: (spread through interpersonal influence and post-purchase reviews)

Word of mouth is formed by the secondary dissemination of opinion leaders to the general audience, or directly disseminated by the recipients of the information source.

4. Summary:

Undoubtedly, overall, the feeling that Liziqi and her products give to fans and consumers is natural and not deliberate. This is a great success for both Liziqi herself and the entire operation team. In this era of Internet celebrities, standing out and gaining a stable foothold is very successful.

Problems:

Li Ziqi will reply to fans' messages on Weibo. But with multi-faceted penetration, almost all communication tools except Weibo are managed by other members of the team, and they hardly interact with fans.

However, fans were initially attracted by the spiritual leader herself, but team-based communication is like a machine without flesh and blood. In the long run, Liziqi will really become an IP. When fans' feelings are inconsistent with their initial impression and emotional resonance of Liziqi, they will feel a sense of distance, which will ultimately affect her products and brand .

suggestion:

1. Focus on interaction with fans, maintain activity and resonance with the audience;
2. Team management should be optimized to enhance credibility.

Author: Marketing Notes

Source: Marketing Notes