KOL Marketing for Online Branding

KOL is an emerging marketing approach in recent years, known as Key Opinion Leader (KeyOpinionLeader, or KOL for short), which is usually defined in marketing as a person who possesses more and more accurate information about a product that is accepted or trusted by the relevant group, and who has a greater influence on the group's purchasing behavior. As a conceptual term, opinion leader first comes from Lazarsfeld's The People's Choice, which divides communication into two stages: the mass communication stage and the interpersonal communication stage. An opinion leader is a person who is active in the interpersonal communication network, who often provides information, opinions or suggestions to others and exerts personal influence on them, and who has the ability to influence others. In the era of social media, the rapid development of the Internet big data and these emerging tools, so that the brand can be more effective and more targeted to establish a connection with consumers, KOL plays a role in guiding the bridge between consumers and consumers communication. Thus, the role of KOL in advertising is becoming more and more obvious, they have obvious personal characteristics, have a strong fan base, and at the same time play the advantages of social media in terms of coverage and influence. They become the key for brands to occupy the marketing high ground. For example, of the 93 brand owners interviewed by AdMaster, 72% said they would increase their social marketing investment in 2017, and 63% of them said the focus would be on Netflix and KOL promotion. As the way people consume has changed, traditional marketing methods are struggling, and the rise of online sales and online shopping has made it necessary for brands to adapt to changes in the trend, so the relevant promotional methods and supporting programs accompanying marketing have also changed.KOLs can use their voices with credibility to help drive consumers to e-commerce sites, and brands won't have to bear the traditional channels such as advertisements that bring a The brand does not need to bear the heavy burden of advertising and other traditional channels. A large number of KOLs are already active on mainstream platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter in foreign countries, and their research ideas and cooperation paths can be used as learning cases for local brands. In China, a large number of brands on platforms such as Xiaohongshu are cooperating with KOLs, as well as cooperating with small- and medium-sized KOLs in large quantities. More and more brands see its value, and they are eager to apply KOL marketing to their social media promotion strategy.The basic concept of KOL marketing is to rationalize the selection and distribution of resources, ensure the authenticity of KOL's influence, and put an end to cooperating with KOLs that buy fans and falsify data.No.2-Who are the KOLs? -Traditional opinion leaders (such as stars, celebrities) They are the earliest opinion leaders, their image is y rooted in people's hearts, accepted and recognized by the public, with mass recognition, in most cases representing popular culture, walking in the forefront of fashion trends, playing the role of a trend leader, and at the same time, the demonstration effect is also more obvious. The use of top-level KOL marketing can maximize the visibility, effectively promote brand reputation, and stimulate consumers' purchasing desire with the aura of "star effect". Non-traditional opinion leaders + niche professionals (such as platform V, net red) they play a more "pro-people" in the promotion of the role of the call, this part of the KOL, although the number of fans is relatively small, but their interaction with the fans compared to the traditional opinion leaders are more in-depth as well as professional, the information they publish, mostly objective! The information they release is mostly objective, insights and evaluation, which can effectively communicate with the brand and achieve the role of word-of-mouth marketing; there is also a part of KOLs who are good at encouraging fans to forward, stimulating secondary dissemination, and controlling the direction of public opinion; the release of lucky draws and implantation of hardcopies can increase the exposure and topicality to a certain extent. -Field professionals (e.g. grassroots daijun) "In the new media era, everyone can become self-media, producing and disseminating information." Although they can't compare with the above opinion leaders, they have their influence compared to ordinary people. They are better able to have an equal dialog with consumers, and they are also the spreaders and bakers of various promotional topics, and they are the same brand traffic builders as the traditional as well as non-traditional leaders mentioned above. In addition, they are also the KOL group with the largest number, the strongest spreading effect, and the most love to promote various promotional offers.No.3-Where are KOLs going - KOL platform verticalization is not only in Weibo and WeChat, but also in the emerging network of professional platforms (such as Jittery Voice and other short-video apps) have begun to pay attention to KOL marketing. First, word-of-mouth marketing, based on consumers' personal use of experience sharing, to attract consumers; second, a large number of KOL in the network platform for product evaluation + product recommendation, "in a 'state of embeddedness' profoundly integrated into people's daily lives;" third, the network user get personalized recommendations through likes, comments, retweets, etc. In 2017, the number of new posts on the Xiaohongshu platform reached 340,000, up 68% year-on-year, with an average of 11,000 new posts published a day. -KOL's own specialization and verticalization micro broadcast easy (short video function marketing platform) 2015-2016 annual order data, double micro grassroots account placement amount fell significantly, while the vertical KOL growth trend is obvious, and the latter has become the preferred choice of enterprises. Take beauty as an example, observe its discussion volume since 2017 related to the hot words "beauty blogger" "beauty app" "beauty video"" Beauty teaching" and so on, original professional and verticalized content exchange is getting more and more attention. Taking Weibo as an example, various types of beauty bloggers have appeared to carry out advertising and marketing through short videos. -Intensive exposure through different KOL to intensively cover and influence a certain type or a certain user group, then this user group will also gradually be influenced and changed, so as to trust the KOL. For example, some beauty bloggers take advantage of the recent hot sweepstakes on Weibo to spread intensively, launching multiple forwarding sweepstakes to give away cosmetics within a short period of time, so that network users can see the brand-related beauty products many times within a short period of time and deepen their impression, in order to achieve the purpose of intensive exposure. Through the users' likes, retweets, concerns and other behaviors to expand the scope of dissemination to increase brand awareness, thus changing the consumption pattern of the cosmetics market. From the "pyramid" to the "inverted pyramid" KOL model used to be more of a top-down communication model, and its communication channels are relatively single, usually through traditional opinion leaders, mainly through mainstream traditional media; the development of social media and the requirement of content specialization has made this structure more and more attractive. The development of social media and the specialized requirements of content make this structure change, and the role of grassroots people and consumers in the communication mode is more and more important, and begins to show an "inverted pyramid" structure. Advertisers are focusing more on the tail end of opinion leaders in their promotional campaigns. According to Markerly, 82% of consumers are very willing to listen to the recommendations of the tail opinion leaders.No.4 - KOL's Means - Take the beauty industry as an example - Promoting on new media platforms and KOL's cooperative marketing is a very hot marketing method in some industries nowadays, and a lot of brands would like to maximize the effect of their marketing in social media, considering the relationship between brands and KOLs is mutually beneficial. The relationship between brands and KOLs is mutually beneficial: while KOLs provide continuous exposure for brands and products (exposure promotion), brands also need to support the cause of KOLs (development of cyclical promotion programs), so that KOLs can enjoy more continuous and effective social media interactions. There are more and more cooperation between brands and KOLs, so what do you need to pay attention to in the operation of KOLs? -Choose the right placement platform and resource allocation According to the survey, the automotive industry likes to place small numbers with less than 100,000 fans, and personal care prefers to place large numbers with more than 500,000 fans than other industries. For brand owners, the main value of KOLs with more than 1 million followers is to create core content, while small and medium-sized KOLs with a lower number of followers are more likely to diffuse the core content. Under the big classification of personal care industry, the beauty sub-category has both the same **** and its own characteristics, forming its own unique style. For the selection of placement platforms, our selection methods include KOLs that are of interest to target consumers; KOLs that are related to the promoted products; KOLs with popular traffic and KOLs with top rankings. But what are the screening criteria for KOL, and how can KOL and brands maximize their appeal when cooperating? I think the first thing is to comply with the basic principles of KOL cooperation, reasonable development program, not fake not profit-oriented. For KOL screening is the degree of participation and content quality and KOL has the number of fans, which is also the standard to determine the merits of KOL. But at present, KOL is more and more expensive, ROI (return on investment) can not be effectively guaranteed, under this premise want to ensure that the attractiveness of KOL maximization should be a reasonable allocation of KOL resources. To the beauty industry, for example, WELLDEMA dream snail is a South Korean cosmetics company, although there is no old cosmetic brand fame, but make full use of the advantages of the current digital age, they are very reasonable for the choice of KOL resources, for a platform KOL is divided into three echelons, the first echelon for the millions of fans of the KOL, the number of control in the 10-20 people, these people are quite influential, but also become a KOL. The first echelon is the KOL with millions of fans, the number of which is controlled at 10-20 people, these people have considerable influence and have become the main force in KOL cooperation, the second echelon is the KOL with 100,000+ fans, the number of which is controlled at about 50 people, they have a certain fan base, which is more in line with the needs of the consumer group of the general public, and the last one is the vegetarian KOL, although they don't have a large number of fan groups, but they are in the number of people at low prices, which also produces a diffusion of the role of the KOL in the KOL cooperation. tribe -Dynamics' monthly quotes for the medium-sized markets of France, Germany, Hong Kong, Brazil, South Korea, and Japan are $3,000, $4,500, and $6,500, respectively, while for the smaller markets of Canada, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Russia, Australia, and the Gulf States, the monthly quotes are $2,250, and $3,500 (for regular projects), respectively, 5,500 U.S. dollars, depending on the project and the region to set different price points. Graded allocation maximizes the effectiveness of the placement and stabilizes the ROI (return on investment). -Balancing scale and customization In the rapid development of the brand at the same time also faces the difficult problem of scale and customization difficult to balance. To solve such problems, "the relationship between treating the symptoms and treating the root cause should be dealt with." On the one hand, larger budgets are needed. Promotional activities are often difficult to carry out because of a lack of funds, and by increasing the budget to make the KOL advertising and marketing model is more scalable and increase the capital investment can be developed more scalable products to meet the needs of a large number of consumers. On the other hand, brands need to develop a long-term marketing strategy and make timely and flexible adjustments according to public demand. Organize a team to conduct market research, "improve the ability to develop their own," after understanding consumer demand, targeted research and development of products, to achieve the effect of tailor-made for consumers. Brands should plan to establish long-term and stable cooperation with more KOLs through screening, rather than short-term promotion of a particular activity. Part of the reason why it is important to establish long-term cooperation is that, in today's social media era, many KOLs have more or less cooperative promotions with a number of brands, and the effect and exposure of a single promotional activity will be more or less diluted for its audience. Long-term cooperative promotional relationship is not only beneficial for KOL's own image building, but also has a stabilizing effect on the brand itself. Therefore, the practical operation of KOL is not a call to action, to carry out a systematic work as a whole, if the beauty industry, for example, we must first make a detailed understanding of the brand, including the company profile and its brands, a good positioning of the brand, and then list some competing brands, and cut to understand how they carry out the KOL marketing, and begin to look for some excellent KOL! and suitable promotional platforms, here you can choose the priority of beauty professionals or Watson's such a collection of stores to promote, the platform is to choose the current hot short video platforms, such as Xiaohongshu Shake, etc., and communicate with them to discuss the KOL program, the content of the promotion and the amount of demand for the development of a detailed and reasonable program (combined with the company's own strength and so on in all aspects), but also to choose the appropriate promotion of brands and products, KOL promotion, KOL promotion, KOL promotion, KOL promotion, KOL promotion, KOL promotion, KOL promotion, KOL promotion, KOL promotion, KOL promotion. No.5-KOL is the representative of young consumers? --No.5-KOL is the representative of young consumers? It's fundamental that brands want to appeal to a younger audience segment, and one way to do this is to engage young people in their area. Nearly half (45%) of teens are online almost as often as they can be. With video platforms getting hotter and hotter (YouTube says it has nearly 2 billion active users per month), and Gen Z (those born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s) reportedly watching 23 hours of video per week, it's only natural that brands would want to engage young people with KOLs, which in 2018 reached a six-figure annual income on YouTube, a 40% increase from last year. Surveys show that the ability of KOLs to provide brands with an "authentic voice" and "third-party" validation of their credibility are the main reasons why young people choose to trust KOLs. The ability to use KOLs to help brands gain a specific demographic profile and "increase brand audience" is far less important to the younger generation. Therefore, the credibility of bringing a third-party perspective to a brand and conveying an authentic voice has attracted the attention of a new generation of young people***. Matching authenticity and credibility with KOL guidelines is a recipe for success, and then creating content that will resonate with your audience. -Are employees KOLs? There is an increasing number of brands that consider their company's employees to be KOLs as well, and we are definitely seeing a trend where large companies are realizing that their employees are among the best brand advocates. The future will see more companies taking steps to create an internal employee advocacy program. For example, encouraging employees to use employee hashtags and participate in events or platforms that make it easy for employees to share content with the community. However there are also voices that argue that employees are non-influencers. This view argues that employees do need to deliver a message and brand ambassadors are employees but can be considered influencers, but regular employees are not media relations in the sense that once these employees leave they are not useful to the brand as they will not be reached by traditional media. So there is still a need for methodology and further discussion on the relationship and collaboration between employees and KOLs. Why are consumers happy to buy? Why are brands willing to buy? For the recommendations of KOL people, consumers are willing to buy for this. Many niche or previously unheard of brands can instantly become hot items after KOL cases, KOL is different from other marketing modes in that KOL people are best able to capture the psychological needs of consumers, with a high fan conversion rate and strong interaction with consumers. KOL is different from other marketing models in that it can capture the psychological needs of consumers, has a high fan conversion rate, and has a stronger interaction with consumers, and can satisfy the curiosity of consumers about the product, thus achieving the effect of planting weeds. Consumers can understand the advantages and disadvantages of the product more intuitively and clearly through the KOL, and have a sense of trust in the KOL. Therefore, KOL itself is a "brand", and it is easier to solve the problem of consumer trust in the product. Microblogger Zhang Kaiyi Taobao store opening day 7 million turnover, three-day sales of nearly ten million, which shows that the KOL for fans to buy the conversion ability is still relatively strong, consumers are willing to pay for this.KOL development to the present, this marketing approach is not only some niche brands prefer, including some of the big international brands. Dior and Chanel and other big brands can be said to be the most successful KOL marketing brand on microblogging. KOL is less expensive and more efficient compared to celebrity promotion. This kind of marketing is more grounded for brands, and it's easier for consumers to feel a sense of immersion in their products compared to celebrity endorsements. That's why more and more brands are favoring KOL as a marketing method; KOL's recommendation is more persuasive than hard advertisements, which is one of the most important points for brands. The emergence of KOL not only witnesses the development of new media, but also accomplishes a new marketing model for brands, which breaks through the traditional marketing model with original content and vertical socialization to attract more consumers. Nowadays, KOL has developed from a new way of playing to the new normal of e-commerce, the new marketing mode of brands, and the indispensable traffic representative of most industries, so more and more brands are joining the KOL army and are happy to pay for it. no.6-Conclusion-In the beginning, we didn't agree with the behavior of this kind of pursuing traffic, but it's not easy to completely revolutionize the industry of pursuing traffic and speed! But it is not easy to revolutionize this traffic and speed-seeking industry. What we can see, however, is that every party in the industry seems to have begun to make changes. Therefore, the pursuit of traffic is not necessarily a completely bad thing, but it is always good to make some appropriate changes.