KOL marketing promotion, how does KOL bring products?

Currently, more and more brand owners choose KOL marketing to promote their brands and products. The market size of KOL marketing is between 600 billion and 1 trillion yuan, accounting for about 2%-3% of e-commerce transaction volume, and is growing at a rate of more than 100% per year.

Why do KOLs have such a powerful ability to bring products? How do KOLs play in the uniquely changeable and diverse Chinese market?

Before we get into the topic, we must first briefly distinguish the differences between KOL and Internet celebrities, two different online operating entities. An internet celebrity is a person who suddenly becomes popular due to attention paid to a certain event or behavior, for example, Sharp Brother; a KOL is a person who becomes popular due to the long-term output of professional knowledge or content, for example, Papi Jiang and Office Ono. There is a certain overlap between the two, and internet celebrities can be transformed into KOLs. Our focus is on the KOL’s sales model.

Common KOL sales models

Model 1: Direct sales of goods

This is the main and most common way for KOLs to bring products. Generally, it is a brand owner with a specific consumer group who aims at sales conversion and directly sells specific products through this method. "Lipstick King" Li Jiaqi and Taobao sales queen "Viya" are the most representative cases.

The model of directly selling goods has strong requirements on the professionalism of the KOLs themselves, and they need to have super skills in the vertical field. Li Jiaqi, who sold 15,000 lipsticks in 5 minutes, had always been talking about the BA at the L'Oreal counter before doing the live broadcast. The main job is to explain skin care and makeup knowledge to customers and recommend products based on customer needs. Because of his outstanding performance, he was selected into the anchor training program, and thus began his journey of live streaming and selling goods.

Wei Ya, who created the sales record of 267 million in 2 hours, has run an offline clothing store, entered the entertainment industry, been a Taobao girl, and opened a Tmall store. The unique combination of four roles, namely leader + artist + model + e-commerce operator, has made her the queen of Taobao sales.

In addition, brands that choose KOLs to directly sell products should pay attention to the following three points. On the platform: Try to select as many as possible to cover each catalyst scenario of consumers and achieve deep reach and stimulation. In the selection of KOLs, we should focus on exploring mid-level KOLs in vertical fields, and try to cover more different fan groups in vertical fields on a large scale; we should achieve differentiation in content, and the content of different KOLs on different platforms should be personalized to avoid overexposure of homogeneous content and arouse user disgust.

Mode 2: “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.

All 100 limited edition MINI cars priced at RMB 285,000 were sold out within 5 minutes, and all orders were paid for after 50 minutes. I believe you must have heard about Rebecca's amazing record of selling products, but this is most likely a premeditated "fake sales" and real PR event.

In addition to creative gimmicks, continued hype is another element to the success of this model. After an incident occurs, continue interactive discussions and even create controversy to increase its impact.

The "fake sales" and real PR sales model is difficult to implement. It is necessary to pay attention to the following points, formulate phased strategies in advance, and continuously expand the volume of marketing activities through the execution rhythm of preheating-detonation-continuous diffusion; focus on creating hot topics, pay attention to exploring the interactivity and creativity of topic points, and thus increase their secondary dissemination value; choose pyramid-shaped KOLs, such as 1-3 celebrity KOLs to take the lead, and then use mid- and long-tail KOLs in various fields to cover more fan groups in different vertical fields. The selection of celebrity KOLs in the entire pyramid KOL matrix is ​​particularly critical, and has important value and influence at every stage.

Model 3: Planting is better than selling

The ultimate goal of promoting products is also to achieve sales, but it is more implicit than the direct sales method of Model 1. General product features are related to the KOL’s tone. Brands can deeply reach their target audiences through KOLs and disseminate marketing information effectively.

Xiaohongshu, a powerful product recommendation machine, gathers many KOLs who recommend products to customers. For example, when beauty and skin care bloggers teach or share their makeup and skin care skills, Amway products can really be effective in a subtle and silent way.

The core point of the grass-planting model is to establish a sense of "neutrality" and reduce the obvious sales orientation. At the same time, continuous operation is also required, and even the placement of "shills" to provide positive feedback to maintain the popularity.

KOL Marketing Platform Analysis

Currently, the most powerful KOLs in promoting products are mainly distributed on four major platforms: Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu and Taobao Live. However, the user characteristics of each platform lead to some differences in the specific products that KOLs promote.

Tik Tok

61% of Douyin users are female, of which 75% are under the age of 25, which makes it a very young user overall. Users pay special attention to content that is good-looking, pleasant to the ear and cute.

Impulse consumer goods, fashion consumer goods, mass consumer goods, new products and other types of products are easy to sell on Douyin. The categories with the highest sales volume are fashion, home life, mother and baby, and food. These four categories account for 64% of the total sales volume.

Above: Statistics of the number of hot-selling products on Douyin in March

Judging from the sales prices of goods, photography, games, and cute pets are sold at higher prices, while fashion apparel, home life, and books and courses, which have the highest sales, are priced relatively low.

Above: Price statistics of Douyin’s hot-selling products in March

The Douyin platform itself also provides e-commerce sales support, which is a great help for KOLs to achieve increased conversions. Currently, Douyin’s product showcase function can directly connect to third-party e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, Taobao, and JD.com for purchases.

quick worker

On Kuaishou, there are more male users, accounting for 54%, and users aged 18 years old account for 39%, which is a relatively young age group overall. In terms of geography, the Kuaishou platform has seen the most significant decline. Among them, fourth-tier and below cities account for more than 40%, the highest among all platforms.

Kuaishou’s unique “old iron economy” creates common consumption patterns between users and KOLs, and the main products promoted prefer mass brands. Users across the entire platform have a high level of acceptance of e-commerce. Among them, the products that Kuaishou users like to buy most on Kuaishou are mainly snacks, beauty products, men's and women's clothing, agricultural and sideline products, cultural relics, fishing, fitness products, etc.

Above: Kuaishou users’ attention rate to advertisements of various categories

You can open a Kuaishou store directly on Kuaishou. In addition, you can also connect to third-party platforms such as Youzan, Taobao, Tmall, Wudizhanggui and Pinduoduo.

Little Red Book

Female users are absolutely dominant on Xiaohongshu, which is known as the "national grass-planting machine", accounting for 83.7%, which is much higher than male users. 65% of users are under 30 years old, and 29% are between 31 and 40 years old. Mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities. Xiaohong’s main products are fashion consumer goods, high-end consumer goods, beauty and daily necessities, etc.

Above: Xiaohongshu Mall Product Category Catalog

Xiaohongshu has already realized e-commerce, and you can open an official store directly within Xiaohongshu. Since Xiaohongshu is also a content sharing platform, a lot of traffic is also directed to other platforms such as WeChat and Taobao to facilitate transactions.

Taobao Live

As a rising star, Taobao Live has grown to a scale of hundreds of billions in three years. Taobao Live’s users are mainly female users aged 25-35. They have no obvious geographical identification and no clear consumption orientation, and their purchasing decisions are relatively casual. The average viewing time of users is more than 30 minutes, which has no advantage in length compared to game live broadcasts or Tik Tok that often last for an hour. However, the behavior of live broadcast users in placing orders or leaving the venue is consistent with the sales at stalls in hypermarkets.

Currently, the conversion rate of KOL marketing in skin care, beauty, clothing and apparel is outstanding. These types of goods are characterized by high consumption, low price, and intuitive effects.

Above: Statistics of the proportion of categories in Taobao live streaming in March 2019

Taobao Live is rooted in Taobao and has strong e-commerce attributes, so Taobao users do not need to be educated. Because they come with money, KOLs are just responsible for promoting products. At the same time, watching live content has also become a pastime for users in their spare time.

Analysis of goods sold

We have summarized the products promoted by KOLs on Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu and Taobao Live, and summarized the main categories into: beauty and skin care, clothing and shoes, food, mother and baby, home life, etc. Among them, beauty and skin care and maternal and child products are standard products, while clothing and shoes, home life and food are non-standard products.

It is not difficult to find that the products promoted by KOLs are mainly mass-market fast-moving consumer goods. This can also be indirectly proved by the preferences of different industries in choosing KOL marketing platforms.

Above: Industry benchmark market owners’ preferences for KOL marketing platforms

In terms of price, it has the characteristics of low average order value and high gross profit. The main products are priced between 50 and 300 yuan, among which the industry gross profit margin of standard products such as beauty and skin care is 80%, and the gross profit margin of maternal and infant products is 50%. The clothing, shoes, home life and food products with the largest sales volume are non-standard products, and asymmetric information leads to greater profit margins.

In addition to the price advantage, the quality of the product has a huge impact on brand owners, users and KOLs. If you want to create super consumer reputation, the quality of the product is a key influencing factor.

However, products such as cars, which are expensive and require a long decision-making cycle, are not suitable for the direct sales model. But when such abnormal behavior occurs, we need to think carefully and discern it. Because cars are not necessarily unsuitable for KOL marketing. On the contrary, they are very suitable if the goal of KOL marketing is not to bring goods directly but to "plant grass" and "PR".

Of course, there are also some cases of promoting special commodities. For example, a live broadcast of "Sany Heavy Industry" on Kuaishou was watched by only a few hundred fans, but it eventually achieved a sales record of 31 road rollers priced between 350,000 and 450,000 yuan. It can be seen that products with high average order value can also bring sales. The key lies in how to find them among the KOL’s users.

Summarize

Regardless of the platform or the sales model used, KOLs essentially help the platform achieve more accurate matching of goods and people through the continuous production of professional content in the circle. KOL’s ability to sell products comes from users’ trust. KOLs create content that brings them closer to users and thus influences their decisions.

When brand owners choose KOLs, they should note that KOLs are not only content producers but also super consumers. They have fans, but they also consume merchandise. When product features are related to KOLs’ usage preferences, commercial reputation and fan effects can be maximized.

The importance of channels is becoming increasingly important. In addition to choosing the right KOL, brand owners also need to find a good channel platform. KOL+platform+content, there must be no shortcomings in the sales model, only then can marketing be successful.

Related reading:

1. Xiaohongshu KOL promotion: the secret of note flow limitation!

2. How to use Xiaohongshu KOL to promote products?

Author: Zhang Yinong/Zhang Huimin

Source: Website Analysis in China