The rise of KOS matrix! 7000 words to explain how to move from public domain to private domain

Last year, when Xiaohongshu promoted buyer culture, it unexpectedly popularized the concept of KOS. However, many brands are still confused about the operation of KOS, and even have some misunderstandings. In this article, the author thinks about the key links from cognition to construction, from public domain to private domain, and takes you to systematically sort out the full-domain operation system of brand KOS.

Speaking of KOS, you may feel a little unfamiliar. After finally understanding KOL and KOC, what is this new Internet jargon KOS?

In fact, KOS is nothing new. What made it popular this time was Xiaohongshu. Xiaohongshu is the place where we go when we are in doubt and where we can get our hands on everything. It has been deeply engraved in our minds.

Since the second half of last year, Xiaohongshu has been vigorously promoting the "buyer" culture and has made the concept of KOS (key opinion sales) popular.

The KOS here do not refer to ordinary salespeople, but experts who can use their professional knowledge and unique insights to help you find your way around the shopping trail. Their presence allows every time you "plant grass" on Xiaohongshu to bear fruit more accurately.

But recently, I found that many brand customers are still confused about KOS operations and even have some misunderstandings about cooperation needs. Today, I will think about the key links from cognition to construction, from public domain to private domain, and take you to systematically sort out the full-domain operation system of brand KOS.

01 Why is KOS becoming increasingly important to brands?

In today's consumer ecology, consumers' purchasing decisions no longer rely solely on the brand itself, but are influenced by multiple dimensions including KOL (key opinion leaders), friend recommendations, algorithm recommendations, and brand collaboration.

As the Internet dividend gradually reaches its peak, the market space is monopolized by top KOLs, new entrants face severe challenges, and brands also feel the pressure of rising traffic acquisition costs and supply chain competition.

However, as the Internet dividend gradually peaked, some problems began to surface. "Top KOLs have taken up too much attention" and "The market space feels squeezed and suffocated" are voices that have been heard one after another in the Internet market during its settling period.

The early traffic dividends have been divided up, the market structure is becoming increasingly stable, and it seems extremely difficult to break through in this ecosystem.

Brands are also trying to survive in the gap between IP content and supply chain. Since the IP is not their own, they have to keep spending money to acquire traffic. Competition in the supply chain has fallen into the quagmire of price wars. The living space has been repeatedly compressed, it has become difficult for brands to expand channels, and their stickiness with consumers is also slowly weakening.

But at this point, "KOS" is different from KOL in terms of its high investment, and also different from KOC in terms of its lack of professionalism in product details.

I think it is worthwhile for brands to build their own KOS operation system for many parties. In an era where everyone is an IP, and in the stock market, more attention should be paid to the accumulation of fragmented and accurate traffic, while combining it with private domains for deep bonding:

1) To users , KOS is like the front-line salesmen and saleswomen we are familiar with. They have front-line service experience of brands and are full of sales knowledge. Their friendly professional identity makes interested users unable to help but chat with them and seek answers to their questions or suggestions and help on shopping.

2) For brands , KOS are "spokespersons" who have both professional knowledge and the ability to promote products. They are the pioneers of the dialogue between brands and users, and the pathfinders of brand's global operations. KOS are real and multifaceted, but they always maintain the unified tone of the brand.

3) For the platform , KOS is like a "grass-planting officer" with double insurance of brand and product. Their existence makes the platform's content promotion safer and more reliable.

The rise of KOS is not only a transformation of global operations, but also a deepening of user experience. KOS has its unique charm of "internal employees", which is both a brand attribute and not completely a high-end brand, bringing users a more real and personalized purchasing relationship.

02 Brand KOS, who are they?

1. What is KOS?

KOS stands for Key Opinion Sales. They are within the brand and have more professional service capabilities and brand knowledge reserves. They can effectively shorten the communication link with consumers and create a stronger sense of connection and brand belonging.

They are usually composed of the brand's sales consultants and product experts. They not only understand the product features, but can also use content and communication interactions in public and private domains to influence consumers' purchasing decisions and provide key opinions on sales, including personalized recommendations and suggestions.

The traditional marketing method of "Internet celebrity recommendation" has gradually lost trust due to excessive consumption of user energy, while "search-based" shopping, through multi-party evaluation and decision-making, has gradually become an important user purchase path that cannot be ignored.

Driven by this change in shopping decision-making paths, more and more brands have begun to build a KOS operating system, transforming the sales guide identity into a brand KOS. In the public domain, they can become brand-seeking opinion leaders, and in the private domain, they can become expert consultants for user services.

2. What is the value of KOS?

Let’s take a case study as an example. For example, sales clerks and saleswomen in the fashion and beauty industries enrich their social media content through dressing styles, product recommendations, and skin care knowledge.

Just search for a few fashion and beauty brands on Xiaohongshu, such as YSL, and you will find that the pictures, texts and video notes from the sales assistants bring about fan interaction, likes, favorites and reposts, and also trigger interactive discussions among user comments.

For example, the YSL salesperson in the picture did several things right as a KOS:

First, real people

From the name + profile + introduction, it is reinforced that he is a YSL store counter consultant, and a real and reliable counter guy who is right next to you.

Second, the sense of reality

Combined with real product recommendations, users can experience the getting started experience more intuitively.

Third, clever drainage

A closer look at his traffic-driving method reveals that he did two things right. First, he cleverly used notes to drive traffic, hiding his WeChat ID in a calculator image with a simple title of "How to find me". Those who understand will understand. Second, he added store location to both the introduction and notes. Even if he didn't add micro-driving, but he had the store location, he could achieve precise traffic, rather than going to other stores.

Fourth, immediacy

The comment section provides timely interactive responses and answers to all questions, which creates a very good sense of interaction, user trust and traffic. For some users who ask questions about prices, he also mentioned that he would send you a private message, thus turning the comments into a private message scenario.

To sum up, KOS has found a balance between the brand and users, taking into account accurate traffic acquisition while also effectively solving the fragmented needs of users.

1) Videos and pictures express product value more intuitively and freshly, and use more friendly and real characters to solve user problems. It is neither a one-way marketing advertisement from the brand side nor a promotion by an internet celebrity, but provides solutions for users from a professional and detailed perspective.

2) Even if the number of fans is small, they are all accurate users! KOS shopping guides guide users to offline stores through private messages, to purchase in mini programs, and even to WeChat directly across platforms, and accumulate them as their own potential customers, forming a full-domain operation and service.

03 How to accurately position KOS?

1. In the new era of seeding, the difference between KOL, KOC and KOS

We may be more familiar with KOL and KOC. Let's first sort out the relationship between them.

KOL (Key Opinion Leader) is a key opinion leader, an individual or organization with extensive influence and authority in a specific field. They attract a large number of fans through their professional knowledge or personal charm. They are comedy bloggers, travel bloggers, appearance bloggers, etc.

The influence covers a wide range and the user base is strong, but they may lack in-depth understanding of specific products and brand attributes. Their relationship with brands is more in the form of advertising, and it is more of a shallow level of cognition.

KOC (Key Opinion Consumer) is a key consumer. They are ordinary consumers who can influence friends and fans in their social circles. They influence others by sharing their personal consumption experiences.

They have relatively concentrated influence, focus more on sharing personal experiences, and have closer relationships with users.

Therefore, the KOL’s stance is brand advertising, standing on the same front with the brand and having a stronger influence, but with the addition of filters, there is a greater sense of distance; whereas the KOC’s stance is that of a consumer, with no filters or low filters, which is more lifelike and provides a more real product experience.

For KOS, they focus more on the sales of specific brands or products and are able to provide more professional advice and personalized services.

It is not difficult to see that compared with the early KOLs and KOCs, the most unique thing about KOS is the superposition of its three attributes: "teller" + "shopping guide" + "service". In terms of user relations, it is more like a personal consultant for a brand/product.

Therefore, in terms of brand global operations, the main differences among the three applications lie in “user relationships” and “operation strategies”.

1) In terms of operational strategy, use KOL to expand brand awareness, conduct word-of-mouth marketing through KOC, and achieve sales conversion through KOS.

2) In terms of user relationships, KOCs have the closest relationship with users. KOS build trust through personalized services, while KOLs quickly gather fans for brands through content and popularity.

2. The difference between KOS and sales and customer service within the organization

Just looking at the relationship and differences between KOS, KOL and KOC from the perspective of brand operation, this is also the current mainstream understanding of KOS.

But in fact, many people often overlook another perspective: the relationship between KOS and customer service and sales from the perspective of internal organization. In fact, brand KOS is an upgrade of the capabilities of customer service and sales guide positions.

Why do I say that? Let’s start with the job responsibilities of customers and sales guides:

– Customer service , user service providers, represent the brand in daily communication with consumers, answer consumers’ questions, and handle issues and complaints. They are the first line of service for the brand and are crucial to building consumer trust.

Focus on solving consumers' questions and problems, usually follow established customer service process SOPs and scripts, focus on pre-sales consultation and after-sales service, and are passive service, problem-solving positions.

– Sales guides are responsible for promoting products or services and achieving sales targets. They directly contact consumers, understand their needs, and provide corresponding products or services. For example, traditional store sales are mainly sales-oriented, including organizing goods, product display, etc., and focus more on pre-sales links.

Under the global operation, the functions of brand KOS are more complex. From the functional point of view, KOS is neither a simple customer service to answer questions nor a single salesperson.

Instead, it integrates customer service (online + offline), brand image display, product experts, and even live marketing anchors, which puts new demands on KOS.

1) KOS’s evolution and upgrade relative to customer service and sales

① Personalization and professional upgrade

• Customer service: Traditional customer service focuses on standardized service processes and may lack personalization and passive service.
• Sales: Salespeople provide personalized service but may be limited by product knowledge and the sales environment.
• KOS: Combining the customer service attitude and sales product knowledge, we provide more personalized and professional services through social media platforms.

② Upgrading user thinking

• Customer service: more passive consultation in pre-sales and after-sales services, oriented towards problem solving.
• Sales: Focuses on pre-sales marketing and service stages, and is transaction-oriented.
• KOS: Covering all stages of user services, including intention mining, pre-sales consultation, transaction conversion, after-sales maintenance and repeat purchase activation. KOS can exert their capabilities and value in each link, and they need to cultivate user thinking.

③ Upgrading tool application capabilities

• Customer service and sales: Traditionally, communication is mainly done offline, by phone or through customer service platforms.
• KOS: Use social media platforms to connect with consumers and apply multi-dimensional tools from public to private domains.

④ Upgrading content marketing capabilities

• Customer Service and Sales: Solve problems or facilitate transactions primarily through direct communication.
• KOS: Attract consumers by creating valuable content, such as product reviews, usage tips, industry insights, etc.

As the evolution and upgrade of customer service and sales positions, KOS not only improves the personalization and professionalism of services, but also leverages social media platforms and content marketing capabilities to bring wider influence and higher sales conversion rates to the brand.

At the same time, it also provides employees in customer service and sales positions with new paths and templates for improving their capabilities.

2) KOS job talent profile

First of all, all the time and all areas, especially for the store-based sales model, user acquisition and operation are no longer confined to offline scenarios. Instead, before arriving at the store and after leaving the store become the key to marketing.

The mobile phone of each KOS is a sub-store of the brand, the new media account is a hypermarket, and the private WeChat domain is a VIP room. All-domain customer acquisition + all-position marketing + full-time connection are new requirements for KOS talents.

Furthermore, KOS talents are divided into three types of composite talents: shopping assistant, topic expert, and personal partner, depending on the speed of their ability growth or their personal strengths:

① Shopping Assistant: Provide customers with product and event information, as well as convenient services at all times and in all areas in offline or private scenarios.

② Topic experts: Empowered by the company or guided by the team, they are able to generate social media topics and publish high-quality content. For example, maternal and child KOS can provide potential customers (moms) with good recommendations for their own brands from Xiaohongshu notes, and at the same time guide them to discuss maternal and child topics in the community and come to the store to experience the latest products and services.

③ Private partner: Through the continuous improvement of "trust" in the private domain, the relationship between users and you will become closer, taking into account both practical value and emotional value.

The following are the KOS talent profiles and job requirements, corresponding to the ability requirements of different KOS roles

The talent profile and ability requirements of the KOS position reflect the multiple values ​​of this role in global operations. KOS is not only a sales executor, but also a narrator of brand stories, an observer of market trends, and a builder of consumer trust.

When selecting and training KOS, brands should pay attention to these capabilities and traits to ensure that KOS can effectively promote interaction and sales conversion between brands and consumers.

04 How to build a global KOS system?

1. Current misunderstandings in the establishment and operation of the KOS system

In the current brand KOS operation system, most brands focus on building the front-end public domain, but are actually not enough in building the back-end private domain, including organizational empowerment. What impacts and problems will only come from focusing on building the front-end public domain?

1) One-sidedness

It focuses on acquiring public domain traffic, which is a traffic strategy. It lacks the back-end to take over the private domain, resulting in serious traffic loss. At the same time, the private domain traffic diversion capability is weak, which leads to traffic disconnection and failure to convert traffic into retention. From a long-term business perspective, the requirements for KOS content production will become higher and higher.

2) Disorder

Only focusing on the establishment of the public domain KOS operation system and lacking the empowerment of the back-end organization, KOS lacks guidance and help in operation methods, which can easily lead to disorderly management and arbitrary behavior. When it is necessary to concentrate the voice for new product marketing, it is difficult to form saturated promotion and attack.

Therefore, in addition to building an operating system, it is also necessary to improve KOS's management system and empowerment system.

2. Which industries are suitable for building a KOS operating system?

Building the KOS industry is not exclusive to retail industries with offline stores and counters, such as apparel, beauty, automobiles, jewelry, and maternal and child products. In fact, this model is applicable to many industries.

What is considered more is what kind of identity is used to build a personal IP. Even if you are an HR of a company, you can become the KOS of the company, but the goal may be more focused on brand promotion and talent attraction rather than the attribute of bringing goods.

For example, the healthcare, beauty, education and training, financial services, and real estate industries are all naturally suitable for building a KOS system. This is because when there is information gap and cognitive threshold between products and services, it can better highlight the KOS's professional knowledge reserves and solution capabilities, and users will have a stronger sense of gain.

For example, real estate consultants can provide professional and personalized real estate configuration advice in a more neutral and objective capacity, different from the position of an intermediary. For another example, consumers of health products need to make purchasing decisions based on their personal health conditions. KOS can provide targeted product introductions and health consultations to increase product credibility.

3. Global strategy for brands to build their own KOS system

When a brand builds its own KOS operating system, it should not only include a public domain account system, but also a global thinking from a management perspective, which includes the construction of at least three major sections:

1) Front-end KOS account system: that is, our public and private domain operation matrix, which can include brand number, employee number, and shopping guide KOS number horizontally from the identity attribute, and each identity attribute includes the establishment of public and private domain accounts vertically;

2) Operation strategy center: Do not simply rely on the spontaneous operation of shopping guides KOS. The operation center needs to provide support from multiple dimensions including strategy, content, activities, traffic, and tools. It is the brain of the entire KOS project.

3) Company organizational background: Without the support of human resources, technology, product development and other departments, and without training, incentives and compliance management, the KOS system will find it difficult to develop sustainably and accumulate valuable user assets and transform them into company value.

Combined with the KOS operating system blueprint, the following is an interpretation of each section:

Front desk: Building an account matrix

Upgrade shopping guides to KOS and establish a brand-wide KOS account matrix system. From brand numbers, regional store numbers, to headquarters staff and personal shopping guide KOS, build a pyramid-shaped KOS account matrix.

In addition to corporate brand accounts, the focus is on store accounts and personal shopping guide KOS accounts, which are divided into public domain and private domain accounts.

① For public domain accounts, you can build them across the entire domain or select key platforms based on industry characteristics, such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, as key platforms.

For example, Douyin is suitable for local life and catering industries; Xiaohongshu is suitable for women-related products, education and training, and study abroad services industries; Video accounts are suitable for serious traditional industries such as finance, health, and commerce; the automotive industry is suitable for various platforms and is distributed and operated through multi-platform content.

For example, the automotive industry urgently needs to establish close ties between brands and users. Many OEMs directly face users through a direct sales model, while also providing more online services such as car maintenance, charging, and peripheral products.

In the process of service and interaction, a KOS pan-private domain system is gradually formed. The private domain is a long-term and loyal relationship between brands and users. At present, the private domain can be divided into three levels:

Relationship layer, based on the narrow private domain of personal WeChat and WeChat groups

Service layer, relying on the private domain of WeChat public accounts and corporate WeChat

Interest layer, a pan-private domain built around more social media content platforms and APPs

For example, NIO has created a pan-private domain gameplay on Xiaohongshu through the KOS matrix, namely the "1+X+N" KOS operation matrix.

1 refers to the brand enterprise account; X refers to the regional store matrix; N represents the KOS account, which is subdivided into corporate employee accounts and amateur consultant accounts. Of course, if it is further broken down, it should also include KOC accounts, but today we will focus more on the discussion of brand self-operated accounts. I will share with you about the KOC section later.

It can be seen that NIO has actually built a quite complete KOS operating system and is at the forefront. This KOS account matrix is ​​like a snowball, giving NIO more opportunities to display and acquire customers on the Xiaohongshu platform.

② For private domain accounts, they are combined with public domain accounts to carry out the consolidation of front-end and back-end personal settings. Both corporate WeChat and personal WeChat are suitable. Corporate WeChat has strong brand endorsement and is convenient for group management. Personal WeChat is suitable for industries with strong trust relationships, such as store beauty industry. It is recommended to use personal WeChat for traffic diversion and take over.

Similarly, private domain personas can also follow the "1+X+N" operating principle, as shown in the figure:

Official accounts, mini programs, and video accounts can all serve as traffic pools for brands to undertake in their private domains, and they can undertake brand-aware pan-traffic;

Brand WeChat accounts, such as experience centers, welfare officers, and member managers, are private brand personalities and are operated by the brand headquarters.

The KOS private domain account can form a private domain shopping guide KOS system with store numbers, store manager numbers or employee numbers. Please pay attention to the corresponding connection with the front-end KOS account.

Middle platform: empowering operational strategies

The KOS brand matrix covers both public and private domain operations. Currently, the general shopping guide content and operational capabilities are relatively weak. In order to improve business efficiency and KOS operational capabilities, it is necessary to empower the brand frontline KOS with strategies and content materials from the headquarters, including at least the following aspects:

Empowerment of customer acquisition topic selection, empowerment of content script reference, empowerment of professional knowledge and human language, empowerment of operation activity mechanism, empowerment of picture/video material...

The middle platform operation part is a critical but very difficult link. Here, the middle platform operation team is needed to control the KOS project. In addition to supporting the front end, they are also responsible for data effects, improvement and overall optimization.

Don't just rely on the free play of KOS shopping guides. We must know that top sales are always a minority. Under the barrel effect, helping to improve the waist and bottom shortcomings can determine the height of the project.

In terms of the overall operational strategy, there are several key points that need special reminders:

1) Build a KOS account content template library and material library to provide KOS with plug-and-play creative inspiration for public domain content;

2) KOS’s public domain content will be distributed on all online platforms in the initial stage, with a focus on Douyin and Xiaohongshu;

3) KOS’s two-part public-to-private SOP: In the first part, KOS personal public accounts are directed to KOS personal private accounts; in the second part, personal private accounts are directed to company brand accounts (official accounts/video accounts/enterprise WeChat accounts, etc.);

4) Build a good user tag system. It would be best if it can be connected with the SCRM platform. If not, at least let the KOS know how to do a good job of channel tagging.

5) Support for refined private domain content strategy, including KOS’s pricing policy, activity policy, circle of friends content materials, community materials, etc.

Backstage: Empowerment of organizational structure

A strong and systematic KOS operation matrix requires all-round organizational support. Without the support of KOS organizational resources, if we just give an order and ask sales guides to open accounts on social platforms and use WeChat to chat with users to close deals, I believe it will be difficult to form sustainable operations, form marketing synergy, and amplify brand operations and service value.

Therefore, it is necessary to attach importance to the management and support of the KOS operation system by the middle and back-end organizations.

1) KOS training mechanism: how to build public domain accounts, how to combine public domain with private domain for traffic operation, how to maintain user relationships in private domain, etc.;

2) KOS incentive mechanism: store horse racing mechanism, KOS account incentive mechanism, sales transaction reward mechanism, etc.;

3) KOS management mechanism: account asset management mechanism, KOS account content ethics, KOS goal setting, KOS data analysis mechanism, etc.;

Training, motivation, and management are the three most core backend work modules in building the KOS system. They are also the links that many companies currently ignore in building the KOS system. This is because most current KOS operating systems only focus on how to create public domain accounts, but do not know how to drive sales guides to do a good job in public and private domain user operations. In fact, the core relies on the empowerment of the organizational structure.

Summary: KOS traffic gold mine, waiting to be mined with ingenuity

Brands build their own KOS systems more in the hope of controlling traffic in their own hands. This is an attempt at refined operations. From the top-level marketing driven by the brand to the marketing of fragmented touch points, it also shows that the trend of point-like distribution of traffic is becoming more and more obvious, and employee KOS accounts have become the concrete tentacles of the brand.

It is not difficult to create an account on social media. However, there is still a lot of room for optimization and improvement in terms of how to operate in a systematic manner, how to provide long-term management and incentives for KOS with different fan sizes, and how to enable KOS to continue to maintain the private domain users added by them.

This article alone cannot fully explain the operation of the KOS system, whether it is the front-end account establishment and operation, the middle-end operation strategy, including the back-end support. There is still a lot of content that has not been elaborated due to limited space. If your brand needs to solve the problem of KOS system operation, we can discuss it in more detail.

At present, the market lacks a comprehensive and systematic explanation of how the KOS global operation system should be implemented from the perspective of combining public and private domains and front-, mid- and back-end business management. Perhaps in the future, I will release a more complete and detailed content or course around the global KOS operation system. I hope today’s content can give you some new inspiration.

Source: LearningBeta