No matter what business you are working for, Digital Marketing is essential for standing out from competitors in your field. Especially in the era of Smartphones, capturing attention from ‘Smombies’ (Smartphone Zombies) has become the first step to success. Digital Platforms have become battlefields of marketers, no matter Social Networks like Facebook, Instagram, or Composite Messaging and Social Platforms like WeChat.
Brands can certainly buy ad spaces, (e.g. Ads on Facebook Timeline, WeChat Moments) directly from service providers to exp ose hard-sell content. On one hand, audience might be cautious in perceiving promotional messages. More importantly, repetitive exposure with the same hard-selling content might lead to advertisement fatigue. As a result, target audiences might not be inculcated with desired promotional messages and target business growth cannot be met.
Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), a.k.a. Influencers, generate content themed with specific issues. They can hence attract fans with common habits or characteristics. This makes them one of the favorite choices of marketers recently. Subject matters and Writing Styles of KOLs are usually synchronized among posts and makes content binge-worthy and attract ive.
Basic Rule to Choose an Appropriate KOL
The key to absorb advantages from KOLs is to keep their genuine writing style. Yet, KOLs are numberless as sand. Not to mention you have to choose appropriate ones for different platforms. How can you choose an appropriate KOL to manipulate your budget more efficient? The following rules might inspire you!
1. Reliable Member Base
Number of fans would be one of the indicators. Yet, it cannot reflect the engagement of readers. Not to mention the influence of fake-fans. Thus, you should also refer to the engagement indicators reading, sharing and comment counts, which reflect more on the actual social influence of them.
2. Match with your product type
Your target audience might search information before taking the move. Comments from a product-relevant KOL might directly affect his/her purchasing decision. Hence, promoting or inviting them to comment on your product can be an effective way to inculcate your product message to the audience who have higher purchasing intention.
3. Match with Demographics of your Target Customers
Different brands might have their own target audience with different targeted customer demographics. Finding an appropriate KOL to reach similar audience can nurture purchase intention of more potential customers!
4. Match with your Brand Image
Writing Style and subject matters are crucial in construct KOL’s image. You should also consider if their images suit your brand image and core values.
5. Genuine Content
KOLs with genuine content possess strong person style, which means they have got a strong persuasive power. Indeed, some KOLs or WeChat Public Accounts in China do share content from other sources. This information might be still useful for some followers. Yet, they do not possess the same power in calling forth their audiences to take purchasing moves.
Case Study
StrawberryNet.com, the world’s largest online beauty store, has been expanding their business aggressively in Asia. In one of our partnership projects, we were tasked to launch a campaign in Taiwan to grow StrawberryNet’s brand awareness and business.
We developed a brand strategy focusing on visibility and availability. To execute our strategy, we collaborated with Mini Tsai (a.k.a. DouHuaMei) and Candy Yang as the KOLs to promote the brand via their Facebook Pages.
The young and healthy KOLs are famous in Taiwan and possess genuine fan base. Plus, they are frequent users of cosmetic products which makes their recommendations more convincing. This brings positive impacts to the brand focusing on young female market.
We formulated a 3-step approach for our KOL strategy – Shop, Talk & Makeover. First, Mini and Candy would share their tips on make-ups followed by navigating the online store to order their favourite products on strawberrynet.com. Second, they posted on their Facebook pages what they bought and shared how simple and quick products are delivered. Third, they shared video posts of their makeover session with a famous make-up artist. Confidence on buying cosmetic products on strawberrynet.com can thus be boosted.
We also set up designated landing page for each KOL to invite their fans to order cosmetic products using a unique promotional code that gave fans free delivery, free gifts and extra discount. Through sales conversion, the efficiency of the campaign and marketing ROI can be accurately measured.
The performance of the collaboration was excellent. The 3-month campaign has successfully brought additional 10% increase in sales revenue. Number of repeat buyers soared by 19%. Indeed, this KOL marketing campaign was awarded by Marketing Magazine with 2018 GOLD WINNER Asia Best Social Media Ecommerce Campaign, as well as 2018 SILVER WINNER, Best Use of Social Media.
