KOL is too expensive, do you know more about KOC marketing?

There is not enough budget to continue looking for KOLs for promotion, but channel construction must be accelerated. For small and medium-sized enterprises or startups facing this problem, looking for KOCs to endorse their products may be an effective way. KOC is not an opinion leader, but is closer to the user group than KOL. It has a great influence on the consumption decisions of specific groups and has great potential for brand marketing effects, but at the same time, we must also be prepared for long-term training and investment. KOC has become the new concept most mentioned privately in the marketing circle. I hope you can get there first this time. Enjoy～

KOL has become an indispensable link in the brand communication chain, but the value of KOC (Key Opinion Consumer) seems to be ignored by many brands.

The editor believes that KOC and KOF may be important driving forces for brand marketing in the future . Under the topic of "private domain traffic" in 2019, KOC and KOF have more communication advantages and may deserve more attention from brands.

KOC is different from KOL in that they create content in a certain vertical field for a long time to gain vertical marketing power. KOC cannot even be called an opinion leader, but it has a greater decision-making influence among the vertical user groups and can drive the purchasing behavior of other potential consumers.

We can see the influence of KOC from a simple example: under the relevant content released by KOL, KOC's popular comments on product information can often better reflect the views of ordinary users and can also greatly influence the user's final decision-making behavior. Therefore, controlling reviews has become an important operational action in brand marketing.

Judging from the content they publish, the content shared by KOCs is usually not focused and is not oriented towards life or interests. They support brands as ordinary users rather than promoting products as experts. This makes KOC more authentic and thus more able to influence other users' decisions.

From the perspective of user relationships, KOCs are more closely connected with ordinary users (KOCs may themselves be ordinary users), and are more able to influence other users through empathy when publishing content. However, due to commercial cooperation reasons, the information released by KOLs is sometimes not trusted by users . With the rise of Generation Z, young users are less and less willing to blindly follow KOL recommendations.

Strictly speaking, the distinction between KOL and KOC is not very clear. If we roughly divide the entire brand communication chain into head, middle and long tail, KOL represents the head communication power, which can quickly build brand awareness; KOC represents the middle power, although it cannot obtain large exposure of communication, it can achieve user information penetration, and if the content is high-quality, it has a greater chance of achieving low-cost communication burst; and the long tail represents ordinary users, who are usually in a state of passively accepting marketing information and recommendation information.

Nowadays, more and more people are accustomed to reading hot reviews, and the power of hot reviews is the embodiment of the KOC communication value. Even many hot reviews can become communication materials and drive viral brand communication . For mid-level KOCs, the cost of cooperation is low, the content is more realistic and convincing, and they have greater stickiness with other users. They will be better promotional cooperation targets for future brand communications.

KOCs lack the systematic content creation capabilities of KOLs, but are usually happy to express and share themselves on various social platforms.

If a brand has its own community, KOCs are often active members of the community and are willing to share information with other users that is not limited to brand product content. Generally speaking, KOCs are in-depth users of various brands in the vertical field and have a certain cross-circle communication ability. In addition, KOCs may also join the user communities of various brands at the same time, have a certain influence of their own, and maintain good relationships with the operators of each brand.

After a brand identifies a KOC in its user base, it can try to establish value binding with the KOC, but it is more of a weak cooperative relationship rather than directly advertising like a KOL. Generally speaking, trials and sharing are good marketing methods . In short, KOC is a core user with communication and influence capabilities, and is worthy of detailed operational guidance from brands.

In addition to identifying KOCs among users, brands can also try to create their own KOCs . In today's environment where the concept of "private domain traffic" is very popular, many brands are trying to import users into personal WeChat accounts. Operating personal WeChat accounts in the image of unofficial personnel can be regarded as creating KOCs.

The operation of KOC mainly focuses on the establishment and enrichment of personal image . For example, KOC’s circle of friends cannot only share hard advertisements related to the brand, otherwise it will easily make users bored and thus be blocked; it is also not recommended to induce attention through interests, otherwise once the interest point disappears, other users will lose the reason to pay attention.

As mentioned earlier, the most important thing for KOC is authenticity . In fact, the routine for creating KOC is a bit similar to the WeChat business routine of "the girl selling tea". KOC needs to share a lot of topics that are not related to the brand to enrich its personality , such as some jokes, selfies, fun things, interest content, etc. It depends on the personality and positioning set by the brand for the KOC .

However, this kind of daily operational work is not an easy task for most brands. Moreover, if you want to create a fictional character for operation, it is also difficult to ensure the authenticity of the content. Usually, you have to build a complete "script" to execute it . Shiqu recommends that brands use the personal accounts of active employees as a starting point for internal incubation, which may have a relatively higher success rate. However, in any case, incubating KOCs is a task that requires a lot of effort.

For brands, the cultivation and discovery of KOCs is more like a development game . Since KOCs usually do not have many commercial attributes, it takes a long time to accumulate trust, otherwise it will be difficult to truly convince the KOC himself and potential users.

On the other hand, KOC usually exists as an independent individual, and sharing on the Internet is usually just out of interest or hobby. KOCs with better development (also the KOC targets that brands consider first) are at a critical point in their transformation from KOC to KOL. If brands want to capture this part of high-value KOCs, they need to invest a lot of time and energy in operators. Otherwise, it is difficult to accurately screen KOCs through current data-based and automated technical methods.

In general, with the support of private domain traffic and grass-planting marketing, KOC may be an important breakthrough point for brand communication in the future.

Author: Zhou Zai'an

Source: Shiqu Interactive