KOL usage guide: 6 practical marketing experiences!

Where there are people, there is the world; where there is the world, there are KOLs; where there are KOLs, there is traffic; where there is traffic, there are naturally brands coming to "make trouble"!

KOL (Key Opinion Leader) is a key opinion leader. They have a large number of loyal "fans" and rely on their strong appeal and influence to make their "voice" penetrate deeply among the "fan" crowd.

In the era of mobile Internet, not everyone can afford to invite celebrities, but you can invite KOLs.

But do you really understand how to choose and use your KOL?

In the world of KOLs, there are different levels.

Top KOLs: celebrities and star-level KOLs with a large fan base and high public recognition

Segmented vertical KOL: has deep influence in professional fields, has more segmented fans, and is more loyal

Expert users: have a certain degree of communication power, a large base, and can communicate with consumers on an equal footing

There may be less than 20% of top KOLs sitting at the top of the pyramid, but they occupy more than 80% of the advertising resources in the market, and a lot of advertising fees go into their pockets. A KOL once did the math and found that the total annual profit of a startup advertising company (excluding utilities and labor costs) might be less than that of a non-famous KOL.

Their advantage is that they can quickly increase brand awareness, and the brand can also leverage this opportunity to do a lot of subsequent peripheral publicity, giving the brand a strong endorsement.

If advertisers want to get relatively high exposure, as long as they are willing to invest money, one of the shortcomings of this type of KOL - being expensive - will not be a problem.

However, the reality is that on the one hand, there are the KOLs that brands dream of, and on the other hand, the high investment is not commensurate with the results. It is inevitable that the budget for ordinary brand promotion will be a bit weak.

When working with KOLs, increasingly sophisticated and savvy brands no longer blindly choose star-level KOLs who easily bring in tens of millions of traffic and are at the top of the KOL pyramid. Instead, they begin to explore vertically segmented KOLs whose coverage audience may only be tens of thousands or even thousands of people.

Segmented KOLs are often influential figures in a certain circle or field, and their audience is very focused. When it comes to appealing to this targeted group of fans, their influence is sometimes more powerful than that of celebrity KOLs, and can drive more fan participation and interaction.

For example, in the field of marketing communication, L'Oréal Paris' Beauty Squad has carefully cultivated niche KOLs to influence consumers in different segments one by one, and in the process demonstrated the brand's "diversity" spirit.

For example, in the field of content marketing, Suning.com, the "number one player", has also explored content scenario-based marketing, using amateur opinion leaders around them to mobilize and influence people around them, without any fanfare, but subtly and imperceptibly.

These KOLs have relatively more free time and space, so they will be more cooperative and will put more thought into the design and promotion of advertising content.

In this way, a certain degree of promotion can be achieved at a low cost, and the possibility of converting promotion into profit will also increase.

Brands need to look for KOLs with distinctive personalities.

The projection of the brand user portrait is the KOL you should choose. KOLs can attract a group of fans for a long time because at least they are "like-minded" in some aspects.

For example, some KOLs are sharp-tongued and good at inciting users' emotions. They look at problems very venomously and can easily stir up users' attitudes towards things.

NetEase Yanxuan once used a certain account to say "I can't afford a house, but I can afford a home." This chicken soup speech particularly hits the reason why some urban youth want to buy things.

For example, the users of your product may have a certain amount of life experience and tend to follow their own inner judgment rather than blindly follow the crowd. In this case, a highly knowledgeable KOL with style and depth, such as Mr. StarYan’s official account, would be a good choice.

To give another example, Casarte once created the knowledge IP " Knowledge is Power " and the new offline cross-border species "Life Bookstore", and used highly educated KOLs to effectively convey its brand proposition, thus creating a marketing model that interests high-end people.

In the pan-entertainment marketing model, celebrities and internet celebrities can help you convey a story and constantly cater to consumers' appetites, but will consumers really buy it? Is your story touching enough?

When you choose a vertical KOL, to tell a good story, you need to put your heart into it rather than your body .

You need to help your KOL to delve deeper into the product and dig into the details. Through the three steps of explanation, internalization, and feeling, you can proactively output valuable content in a hierarchical manner and guide consumers to experience the brand step by step.

In the stage of outputting content, you need to have a deep binding relationship with the KOL, with highly branded strategy output and in-depth co-creation with the KOL that suits the fans' tastes. Today's fans prefer to see the KOL himself rather than a third-party perspective talking to himself.

A more intuitive personal experience is the most unique and valuable content that these KOLs can provide, and affinity and authenticity are the biggest advantages of these brand campaigns.

For example, ordinary graphic advertisements are like shooting an outdoor video of a roller coaster, while original experiential content is like the game segment shot by the celebrities in a reality show who ride the roller coaster themselves. The fun and appeal of the two are very different.

Of course, before looking for self-media as a promotion channel, you must ensure its ability to write advertisements. If the KOL's advertising ability is really not up to standard, you can also prepare copywriting materials that match its personality in advance.

The seven effects of exposure in traditional media on users also apply to social media.

In the face of high cost-effectiveness, using the cooperation budget of a top KOL, you can invest in a group of small and medium-sized KOLs without any pressure, which is especially suitable for event and activity marketing that requires a screen-sweeping effect. Through intensive delivery, we can cover and influence a certain circle of users.

For example, a certain brand’s anniversary celebration used a large number of YouTube KOLs, and all of the video covers were people holding special shopping bags for the brand’s anniversary celebration. When you click on the window, the screen is filled with shopping bags, which immediately creates a sense of hot event, making it hard for you not to click on it out of curiosity!

For example, in the early stage of promotion, Keep launched a "mine-laying plan" (KOLs were active in various communities). When it was officially launched, it used the KOL voice it had accumulated to inform group members that all the high-quality fitness experience sharing content previously came from Keep, which triggered a surge in Keep downloads overnight.

Finally, when brands cooperate with vertical KOLs, they are often not limited to one KOL, but a diversified combination of KOL matrices, which is of great benefit to the diversified development of the brand.

Mr. StarYan once mentioned in "The so-called "screen swiping" is all caused by KOL (opinion leaders):

In the context of new media, kols can be divided into two categories: one is the horizontal breadth - influence, and the other is the vertical depth - word-of-mouth.

The first type: volume type

That is, influence building, which provides traffic value.

For example, celebrities, Weibo big Vs, and other active nodes have a huge number of fans. Every time they speak, they are forwarded hundreds of thousands or millions of times. Their existence means Weibo hot searches, encyclopedia entries, and XX index inclusion. Their exponentially growing voice effectively attracts users' attention.

The second type, vertical

That is, professional insights and word-of-mouth output provide content value.

For example, the Zhihu celebrities and professional commentators in each niche field provide value by analyzing and expanding upon the event itself.

Therefore, most of the screen-sweeping cases we see are the result of the interaction between volume and verticality.

Use high-volume KOLs as the main voice channel to increase exposure, and use vertical KOLs as a supplement to increase the verticality, professionalism, and credibility of information. Then place the content within a reasonable dissemination range and better control the breadth and depth of dissemination.

The above are the 6 correct nonsense in the KOL usage guide. The reason why they are called nonsense is that everyone understands the principle. If they are not applied in practice, they may all be nonsense. But if you read them often, you will always find them new, and one day you will internalize them into your own case.

From the above cases, we can also see that KOL marketing is gradually bidding farewell to the past extensive phenomenon of only focusing on top-traffic KOLs, and turning to vertical KOLs with more precise and refined audiences. KOL marketing is maturing.

Source: Mr. StarYan