For KOL marketing, just do these 3 things!

In the social media environment, brand marketing and promotion cannot be done as it was in the past, where you can just produce materials and release them on a large scale and sit back and relax. As information dissemination becomes more and more network-based, KOLs have become an important node between brands and consumers. Naturally, KOLs have become a common means of brand promotion.

Although KOL placement has become a marketing standard, in practice, the same budget may produce very different results. Smart brands know how to find users' pain points and itchy spots, and use small amounts to achieve big results, thereby creating waves in social media and achieving both sales and popularity. Inexperienced brands often invest large budgets but get no response.

"Lipstick King" Li Jiaqi, picture from the Internet

Many people often face three major obstacles when doing social communication for e-commerce: difficulty in promoting interaction, poor sharing and communication, and low sales conversion . So how can we achieve the best results in social communication (especially KOL communication)? How can we achieve the goal of making a big impact with a small amount of voice?

Next, we will share how to optimize the communication effect by promoting UGC, stimulating active forwarding, and optimizing the grass-planting effect .

Question 1: How to promote UGC and create social interaction volume?

The advantage of social marketing promotion lies in the real-time interaction and secondary dissemination of users, which also means that UGC interaction volume is an important goal of advertising. Only through UGC can the brand be spread by word of mouth among users. So how to promote user UGC?

Method 1: Introduce the product through specific stories

The more personalized the delivery, the more it can arouse the potential users' desire to express themselves. In addition to finding matching KOLs and self-media, the important technique of personalized delivery is to promote products through storytelling and specific examples . Only through such soft implantation can users find resonance in specific set scenarios and arouse their desire to create and share UGC.

Three photos of Range Rover works, pictures from the Internet

Method 2: Cross-platform multi-point coverage

In today's era of media fragmentation, users' awareness of brands requires multiple touches and communications, and so does their desire to share and create. To give a simple example, when a user sees a friend forwarding an article in the circle of friends, he will not be motivated to open or comment on it, but when multiple friends forward it at the same time, it will stimulate UGC and the desire to comment.

It is for this reason that brand promotion needs to cover and reach across platforms and multiple touchpoints . Especially for large consumer brands such as fast-moving consumer goods, beauty, and digital products, the goals should not be limited to penetration in specific scenarios, but also need to be covered over a large area and at multiple points.

Method 3: Focus on personalized self-media

When choosing self-media placements, the focus needs to be on personalized KOLs/self-media . Generally speaking, the higher the degree of personalization, the stronger the KOL's user stickiness, ability to bring goods, and message interaction will be, while information integration and information sharing accounts will be slightly weaker.

Douyin bloggers "Duoyu and Maomaojie", pictures from the Internet

Question 2: How to motivate KOLs to actively forward and gain additional exposure?

It is not difficult to achieve a satisfactory effect within a certain budget, but how to obtain incremental communication is a test for brand promoters. There are generally two types of incremental communication: active forwarding by ordinary users and active forwarding by KOLs.

It seems that actively forwarding by ordinary users can bring better results for communication, but in fact, active forwarding by KOLs is more important for brand promotion , because KOLs can make brand information spread beyond the circle. At the same time, the standard for active forwarding by KOLs is higher than that of ordinary users. Therefore, if you get active forwarding by KOLs, brand exposure will increase exponentially. So, how to stimulate KOLs to actively forward content?

Method 1: Big Brand + High-Quality Content

Normally, only high-quality content and a big enough brand will attract KOLs who have not yet invested to actively forward it. On the one hand, KOLs are also afraid of personally endorsing and diverting traffic for unknown brands. On the other hand, only high-quality content can strengthen the KOL’s personal image in social media.

Method 2: Brand placement reaches critical mass

KOL’s active forwarding will not be a timely help in the dissemination process. We cannot expect to become famous overnight by creating content and attracting KOLs to actively spread the content without initial investment. The more realistic situation is that KOL’s active forwarding is just icing on the cake. The brand itself needs to have achieved a certain level of publicity in social networks before looking for the possibility of breaking the circle.

Therefore, to some extent, KOLs’ active forwarding is more conducive to the expansion and dissemination of big brands and big IPs. This is indeed true from the perspective of communication practice, because there are only a handful of small brands that have become famous overnight due to KOLs’ active forwarding.

Question 3: How to achieve product promotion and combine product quality and effect?

The most important challenge in promoting online e-commerce is to achieve the integration of brand and effect. How to promote sales while maintaining voice is an issue that has been repeatedly discussed in the marketing industry. But in any case, for products with e-commerce channels, sales must be one of the ultimate goals of the brand. So how can we effectively achieve brand and effect integration?

Method 1: Optimize the structure of the image and text of the seeding

The key to product sales needs to be assisted by "grass-planting articles", and a good "grass-planting article" structure can effectively drive the attractiveness of the product, amplify the product's features and achieve user recognition.

The classic structure of a grass-roots article is divided into three parts : reasons for recommendation, introduction to product features, and communication of discount information . In addition, it also requires an overall visual effect of both text and pictures . Any missing part will have a significant impact on the overall conversion rate.

In addition, "grass-planting articles" are usually presented to users in the form of a product collection recommendation. Therefore, the "unspoken rule" of conversion is that it needs to be finalized and confirmed as soon as possible during the execution process in order to compete with KOLs and channels for the top of the list in order to obtain the best exposure and conversion effect.

Method 2: Comment control guidance in the comment area

Nowadays, users are accustomed to checking related comments and reviews after viewing the main content of KOLs, and users' spontaneous comments will greatly influence their purchasing decisions. Therefore, KOL investment cannot be regarded as just a one-time investment. Post-investment guidance and comment operation optimization also need to be taken seriously.

In the actual process, we often need to prepare high-quality content comments ourselves and communicate with KOL bloggers in advance, so that we can gain the advantage of public opinion in the comment area.

Method 3: Real-time user public opinion monitoring

User comments have a lag, so brands need to monitor frequently during the promotion process to discover users' potential purchasing difficulties, especially for some medium-sized KOL fans with strong stickiness and KOL fans with slightly misaligned user portraits. They often only need a "last push" to achieve high conversions.

For example, if you encounter a user who is hesitant or wavering in the comments, you can contact the blogger in time, push relevant discount information a second time, and convert the "middle customer" in time . This may seem easy to do, but it is where the team's execution ability is tested. In terms of execution, the team needs to summarize relevant data every day, check new comments, continuously optimize content, and find product integration points through comments for secondary dissemination.

Conclusion

Social media communication has become a mainstream way of brand promotion, but the execution effects of different brands with similar budgets vary. Only by doing a good job in UGC topic interaction, finding additional incremental dissemination, and achieving grass-planting conversion can we maximize the effect of social communication.

Source: Spreading Gymnastics” (ID: chuanboticao)