KOL Content Marketing Report for the First Half of 2019

Core summary:

As a microcosm of online society, social networks have gathered a large amount of valuable marketing information for brands. The fan economy has enabled many brands to quickly reach users on new media platforms through the DTC (direct-to-consumer) model and content marketing strategies.

"Content + social" has become the hottest marketing method currently. The core idea of ​​KOL marketing is to find the right KOL to spread interesting stories on the right platform. First, we need to select suitable KOLs to form a communication matrix, and then cleverly use the platform to detonate traffic. The key lies in understanding consumers’ content preferences and acceptance habits and telling good stories.

KOL marketing fully embodies the AISAS rule and the new 4C rule, forming a content marketing closed loop from attracting attention to continuous dissemination, accelerating penetration, activating conversion and word-of-mouth sharing.

Each content platform has different functional positioning and language style. For example, public accounts focus on text expression and in-depth story narration, and cultural and educational content have the greatest advantages in the reading scenarios of public accounts. Taobao Live focuses on sharing the experience of using products, with beauty and food accounting for as much as 70%.

In order to follow the trend of KOL marketing, it is necessary to combine quantitative and qualitative indicators to evaluate KOLs, so that KOLs can truly serve marketing goals, combine horizontal and vertical delivery, and directly hit marketing hot spots to achieve them.

Research background and purpose

The ripple effect generated by KOLs is enough to bring huge traffic to the brand's communication and make it rise. KOL marketing is becoming increasingly important in brand marketing.

In today's world dominated by mobile networks and social media, people who have been exposed to information overload for a long time have become immune to traditional advertising. Consumers, especially the younger generation, are more willing to make their own purchasing decisions independently or with the advice of their friends. Therefore, once a brand or an internet celebrity has established a loyal fan base, the influence of group communication and the coverage of mass communication can bring unexpected growth to brand promotion.

Most KOLs operate across the entire network, with one account covering multiple platforms. However, the audiences of each platform are different, so the target audiences of brand communication are also different. For brands, finding the right KOL marketing platform is half the battle for content marketing. But the more important issue is how to accurately locate among the massive number of KOLs those KOLs whose fan groups are in line with the brand tone, have sufficient influence and strong ability to bring goods, and how to evaluate the KOL's ability to bring goods.

In this context, iResearch conducted analysis from the perspectives of industry overview, KOL fan portrait, and the relationship between content effect and release time, to provide KOL marketing placement references for relevant practitioners.

Mobile social networking creates convenience for content marketing

Mobile social networking is booming, and the value of content marketing is highlighted

Since the Web 2.0 era, people's attention has shifted away from traditional media and gradually shifted to new media platforms with social elements. As a result, with the popularization of mobile devices, the marketing value of social networks has been highlighted.

(1) Everyone can speak out on social platforms, and the various forms of content and ideas posted by people on the platforms can be delivered in a timely and efficient manner through "publishing" and "sharing", promoting two-way understanding between consumers and advertisers.

(2) Each netizen has multiple social accounts, and one social account can log in to multiple media platforms. This kind of social account interconnection and service interface maximizes the value of social accounts and provides convenience for data sharing and data improvement for social marketing.

(3) Social networks are a microcosm of online society. While satisfying people’s basic social needs for communication, they also provide brands with a large amount of valuable marketing information, such as user profiles and catalyst habits, thereby laying the foundation for precision marketing.

(4) The rise of the fan economy has enabled many brands to quickly reach users on new media platforms through the DTC (direct-to-consumer) model and content marketing strategies. “Content + social” has become the hottest marketing method currently.

The key to KOL marketing lies in three-in-one

Find the right KOL to spread interesting stories on the right platform

In content marketing, KOLs gradually gain more say:

First, young people are gradually becoming the main force of consumption. They are more willing to seek comments and make independent judgments or refer to friends' opinions to make consumption decisions.

Second, in the fragmented mobile Internet environment, people are only willing to follow people and things of interest on their favorite media platforms.

As a result, with the high-frequency reach of KOLs in various vertical fields, brand communication has soared.

So how can brands be successful in KOL marketing?

It is essential to choose the right KOL to cooperate with, spend more time and budget on the platforms that target consumers actually use, and create high-quality content.

Therefore, after advertisers select KOLs based on brand positioning and marketing purposes, KOLs create perfect content for the products that is in line with the characteristics of the social platform based on the information provided by the brand, so that the brand and brand concept can be continuously spread on various platforms, thereby maximizing the marketing effect.

Find the right KOL: feature matching, twice the result with half the effort

Build an organic KOL marketing matrix based on brand positioning

Not all KOLs can enhance the brand’s value and communication efforts. For brands, selecting suitable KOLs to form a communication matrix is ​​the first step to enhance brand influence and conversion power.

In terms of KOL size, KOL can be divided into head, waist and long-tail KOL.

In terms of KOL types, KOLs can be divided into celebrity, vertical and pan-entertainment types.

It is worth noting that the influence of KOLs cannot be measured solely by the number of fans, but also by indicators such as the number of users truly reached and fan stickiness. Therefore, brands need to combine the characteristics of each type of KOL and choose to cooperate with KOLs that match the tone of their own products.

On the right platform: cleverly use the platform to trigger traffic

WeChat Official Account

Backed by WeChat's massive and highly sticky user base, WeChat public accounts are undoubtedly one of the most important platforms for self-media marketing.

The marketing traffic of WeChat official accounts belongs to the private domain traffic operated by the official accounts themselves. It is distributed internally by self-media circles and relies on users' social networks for external dissemination and reach, and has strong short-term burst capabilities.

This form of communication determines that the traffic value of WeChat public accounts is accelerated to enrich vertical media and head media in terms of communication volume, and the Matthew effect is obvious.

Top public accounts often have obvious user population characteristics and their own style and tone, and the characteristics are stable, which makes it convenient for advertisers to freely combine them according to marketing needs. But at the same time, due to the relative closed nature of public account traffic, in order to achieve marketing goals more smoothly and expand the communication effect, it is necessary to rely on interest incentives to optimize various user behavior nodes and promote user fission and conversion.

Taobao Live

Today, when online shopping has almost replaced most offline shopping formats, strong experience is almost the only advantage of offline shopping, especially for non-standard products. However, on the one hand, live streaming has further enriched the display dimension of online shopping beyond pictures and texts in the form of video. On the other hand, its form of direct interaction between sellers and consumers has to some extent subverted the offline experience.

Backed by Taobao, sellers use Taobao Live to interact with consumers instantly and establish emotional connections with real and down-to-earth content. The connection between consumers' intention and making a purchasing decision is almost seamless, which effectively stimulates purchasing impulse and promotes conversion.

Spread interesting stories: co-creation of content, letting a hundred flowers bloom

Content research starts with paying attention to what consumers are paying attention to

Content determines the effect and is the cornerstone of information dissemination. The core driving force of KOL marketing lies in content.

In recent years, the methods and operational points of content marketing have undergone great changes. This is certainly due to the rise of new content forms, such as live streaming and short videos, but the greater degree of change comes from the changes in users' content appreciation ability and acquisition habits caused by the increasing saturation of content supply.

On the one hand, the saturated content supply "trains" users to increase their ability to appreciate, select, and create content.

On the other hand, in order to absorb information more effectively in a massive information environment, users have adapted to and formed relatively fixed content acquisition habits. These two aspects can be transformed into two key points in marketing operations when it comes to KOL marketing, namely, what content to invest and where to invest.

KOL Marketing Rules

From awareness to recommendation, the five-step KOL marketing method advances step by step

"Find the right KOL to spread interesting stories on the right platform and ultimately achieve effective conversion." In summary, KOL marketing fully embodies the AISAS rule and the new 4C rule, and has formed its own set of marketing rules.

A hundred boats compete in the current: the trend of KOL industry

Cultural and emotional public accounts are more valuable

Among the TOP300 KOLs in terms of monthly active device numbers and stickiness index, cultural KOLs account for the highest proportion, and this category can be said to be the most important part of the public account KOL map.

In addition, emotional categories have a high distribution ratio in the TOP300 of monthly active users and stickiness index, which deserves more attention from advertisers.

Emotional public accounts often meet users' emotional needs with touching emotional stories or emotional skills interpreted in a rational tone, and their target users are mostly female consumers. Therefore, emotion + beauty or emotion + fashion content will have a good communication effect.

Taobao live streaming beauty, makeup, and food take the top three spots

Taobao live streaming KOLs are backed by Taobao stores, and their high-activity and high-stickiness categories are highly correlated with Taobao’s main product categories. In addition, the function of Taobao Live is to make up for the lack of consumer experience in online shopping.

The clothing products sold by beauty KOLs are the category of products that consumers most want to know about the wearing effect and wearing experience. The KOL's trying-on experience can greatly enhance consumers' desire to buy.

In addition, the beauty and personal care categories are similar to the beauty matching categories. Consumers have detailed concerns about "face effect" and "comfort of application". Such consumers rely more on KOLs to help them understand the actual effects of the products and promote decision-making.

Food needs to be shared, and content such as "food broadcasts" and "late-night food shows" can successfully arouse people's yearning for food.

Beauty KOL Marketing

Improve marketing competitiveness from two aspects: professionalism and personal charm

Driven by the appearance economy, the number of cosmetics consumers has increased, and KOLs’ influence on beauty brands on the Internet and consumers’ purchasing decisions has continued to increase. KOL marketing has become the dominant force in beauty industry marketing. Since the beauty and skin care products have evolved from simply pursuing brands and prices to the current stage of rational choice, beauty professionals have been educated by various expert KOLs and have increasingly higher demands for content and KOLs.

TA competition: Make KOL truly serve marketing goals

Know yourself and know your enemy. Audience portraits provide accurate reference for marketing goals

The data shows that the proportion of women in the beauty and skin care industry is high, the age range is mostly between 18 and 30 years old, the proportion of middle and low consumption levels is high, and in terms of urban distribution, the beauty and makeup attention group in third-tier and below cities is higher than the natural sample.

Leading the way: Making KOLs truly serve marketing goals

Zero Point Planting Grass (Official Account): High-quality communication ignites festival marketing

According to the recommendation of Onemedia, iResearch's new media monitoring database, KOL midnight promotion has excellent communication performance among the beauty and skin care crowd on the public account platform, with an advertising value index as high as 93.16.

From the perspective of dissemination conditions, the number of active devices as high as 720,000 makes it have the dissemination level of top traffic, and the high stickiness index rarely seen among top KOLs further amplifies its driving effect.

From the perspective of fan composition, its focus on young women and its fan composition with balanced spending power ensures its efficient coverage of the core beauty group, making it an excellent choice for advertisers to ignite consumers' purchasing enthusiasm in major marketing activities, especially before various shopping festivals.

Maternal and Child KOL Marketing

Need depth: maternal and child content creation should be both scientific and heartwarming

Issues related to parenting are often considered major issues. Therefore, compared with other fields, maternal and infant audiences are more serious about the content disseminated by KOLs and expect more professionalism.

The demand of mothers and babies for KOLs stems from their need for scientific parenting knowledge, their need to adapt to their own role changes, and their emotional need to share and communicate the emotional life content that constantly emerges in the parenting process.

Therefore, vertical maternal and child content creation can broaden the content and deepen the depth of dissemination from these perspectives.

Bow and Shoot the Eagle: KOLs from all directions strike together

Top KOLs expose traffic horizontally and waist KOLs penetrate circles vertically

At present, KOLs can be divided into two types: horizontal and vertical:

Horizontally, high-pink people with high voice volume can quickly spread traffic and drive KOLs to browse, like, and forward their posts.

There are also KOLs in vertical fields. They often work hard in their vertical fields, providing in-depth content and professional explanations.

Combining top KOLs with mid-level vertical KOLs, while taking into account both the breadth and depth of communication, is more likely to trigger a marketing explosion.

For example, when targeting maternal and child KOLs to promote new complementary foods, the Douyin account "Dad's Review" can be used as a traffic pioneer to promote and attract attention, and the two public accounts "Baby Nutrition Complementary Food" and "Growth Tree" with lower user reach but higher stickiness can be used as vertical depth hooks to update consumer cognition with introductions to product selling points and excellent user experience, thereby promoting final purchases.

Look at the breadth: Remove duplication and talk about real reach, and accurate integration of indicators can add icing on the cake

Nian Gao Mama is a KOL that has both horizontal and vertical advantages. If the official account Nian Gao Mama is used as the main force of the delivery matrix, when choosing a KOL that matches it, it is necessary to consider both the horizontal and vertical positioning of the KOL, and to optimize the delivery matrix based on specific indicators.

Taking the six maternal and child KOLs listed in the previous article as the analysis objects, and looking at indicators such as overlapping reach rate and consumption capacity, it is found that among the public accounts, Cui Yutao’s Yuxueyuan and Nian Gao Mama have the highest overlap rate of reach, which is not the preferred choice for combined delivery when pursuing marketing breadth.

The overlapping reach rate of Growth Tree and baby growth food is relatively low, and combining them can maximize the reach scale with the same investment.

On the TikTok platform, Daddy’s review has a higher proportion of high-consumption users and its reach is better than that of the chatterbox Xu Meida, so it is a better combination choice.

Beauty and Skin Care KOL Advertising Value Index Red Star List

Maternity and baby KOL advertising value index celebrity list

Author: iResearch Consulting

Source: iResearch