In 2023, who will make a fortune in the beauty industry?

This article starts with the development of KOLs in recent years, points out that there are two factors that affect the sales effect of KOLs, and then conducts an in-depth analysis of these two factors. This article is suitable for brands to learn and improve the brand's publicity effect.

In recent years, KOL has become a key path for brand growth. It can be found that a large number of emerging brands have risen rapidly through efficient KOL investment, and a large number of traditional brands are also looking for new growth in the KOL channel.

It is obvious that KOL sales have become the core link and key to current brand marketing.

For brands, KOL sales can directly boost product sales. However, the effectiveness of KOL sales, in addition to being related to the quality of the product itself and the degree of matching the delivery, actually tests the stickiness between KOL and fans.

For KOLs, the essence of selling products is still to monetize content traffic. No matter what kind of cooperation billing method is adopted, the more traffic sources they have, the better the monetization effect will be.

Therefore, it can be seen that there are two major factors that affect the effectiveness of KOL in bringing products: fan stickiness and traffic volume.

These two factors seem to be related to the KOL's own capabilities, but in fact they are more closely related to the platform's product features and platform positioning. We might as well further break them down and analyze them.

1. Interaction is the cornerstone of fan stickiness

Fan stickiness depends not only on the quality of KOL's creative content, but also on the frequency of interaction between KOL and users. It is not difficult to find that the more frequent and diverse the interaction between KOL and fan users, the stronger the fan stickiness can be built.

Looking at the KOLs on major mainstream platforms today, content homogeneity is very serious. Different social media platforms show different user patterns. The platform on which the KOL has stronger fan stickiness will have greater potential for bringing goods.

At present, mature social media platforms have very rich content presentation formats. For example, on Douyin, videos under 1 minute and 30 seconds are the mainstream, while Xiaohongshu tends to be more like graphic notes with strategies, and Weibo tends to be more fragmented and diversified content sharing. Users can see short texts, pictures, long graphics, short videos, long videos and other forms of content carriers, and there is no limit on the number of times content can be pushed. The rich content formats can enable fans to form a more three-dimensional understanding of KOLs and form recognition of KOL personality traits.

At the same time, the traffic distribution mechanism of mature social media achieves a good balance between centralization and decentralization.

Many emerging traffic platforms, with the support of AI technology, tend to pay more attention to algorithm recommendations, which also leads to the platform mastering the right to distribute traffic, making the role of KOL fans' attention not obvious. In other words, the platform can use the right to distribute traffic to break the stickiness formed between fans and KOLs. This centralized traffic distribution system is often difficult to reverse, and it is also difficult to build a truly strong social relationship chain. This is also the criticism of many current short video platforms.

However, mature social media platforms have already accumulated user social relationship chains based on past operations. Now, by adding information flow algorithm recommendation mechanism, the entire product has achieved a balance between centralization and decentralization. For example, the revision of WeChat public account information flow is to add algorithm mechanism to the past subscription relationship, and recommend content that friends who "take a look" are interested in.

Taking Weibo as an example, the content flow of Weibo is not simply recommended by algorithms. The following relationship still allows fan users to see the content released by the KOLs they follow more frequently. This also shows that the number of KOL fans has a higher "gold content". Compared with the centralized algorithm of short video platforms, the relationship between the number of KOL fans and video playback volume on short video platforms is not that large.

Therefore, we can see that the diverse and high-frequency content contact between Weibo KOLs and their fans can easily form a relationship similar to that of "idol-fans" and "friends-besties". This kind of relationship is the key to Weibo's iron fans. These iron fans become the core foundation of Weibo KOL fans, and KOLs also become a strong trust endorsement for fans, which can also be directly reflected in the KOL's sales effect.

Take fashion blogger @易梦玲- as an example. She actually has a high reputation on all platforms. On Weibo, she shares her daily life more through short texts, pictures, animated pictures, videos, etc., and conveys fashion content and life status to fans. She has currently gained the attention of more than 5 million fans. Not only has she obtained a large number of cooperation opportunities with luxury brands, but she also often becomes a guest on variety shows.

In May, the golden period for travel, Yi Mengling was invited to participate in the variety show IP event #Take Weibo to the Beach#. During the event, four topics related to Yi Mengling's makeup were on Weibo's hot search, attracting a large number of netizens' attention. Yi Mengling not only increased her popularity on Weibo, but also spread to other platforms. In addition, even the Lancome liquid foundation that was applied before the trip became popular.

The invitation of Yi Mengling to the variety show shows that Yi Mengling has a certain "idol" nature, and also shows that the stickiness between Yi Mengling and her fans is very strong. She not only has the ability to bring goods, but also can help brands achieve product premiums. In Yi Mengling's daily pictures, fans will even take the initiative to explore the brands she wears and help brand clothing bring fresh water. In video vlogs and other content, more experiential product video placement can promote fans' product conversion.

Compared to Yi Mengling's "idol" attribute, a large number of mid-level Weibo influencers have the attributes of "friends" and "besties", such as lifestyle blogger @我是MISS南, who has formed a strong fan stickiness through a large amount of daily life sharing content. In the process of cooperating with a home furnishing brand, a single tweet achieved more than 500 blogger-exclusive coupon redemptions and ultimately more than 300 purchase conversions.

2. Hot events keep traffic flowing

Traffic is essentially public attention. The amount of traffic depends on the amount of public attention, which in a sense determines the effect of KOL's conversion.

The public's attention often comes from hot topics. Looking at major social platforms, when it comes to hot topics, Weibo is indispensable. Then, the topics continue to ferment, and public accounts use long pictures and texts to conduct in-depth analysis, thereby feeding back to the hot discussions on Weibo. There may be multiple reversals of events in the middle, and the official media will ultimately speak out and set the tone.

This kind of interaction between Weibo and public accounts has become a basic form of Internet hot spot communication. Since public accounts are more private and Weibo is more widespread, Weibo has always been the core area of ​​hot spot traffic, and hot spots also bring a steady stream of natural traffic to KOLs.

On the Weibo platform, public domain traffic and private domain traffic can be connected through the formation of reposts, comments and likes to achieve diffusive communication.

For example, during the fermentation of a hot event, the fans of KOLs will be exposed to the event because of the KOL's forwarding, commenting, and liking of a topic or blog post. This kind of opinion exposure will stimulate the secondary comment interaction of fan users, thereby further promoting the spread of hot topics. In this way, the fans who are followed in the private domain of KOLs can achieve topic links with the public users in the public domain, allowing the event to quickly break the circle.

From the perspective of brand marketing, leveraging the links between marketing content and hot events can bring in greater traffic volume, thereby improving the effectiveness of KOLs in promoting products and achieving breakthroughs in brand topics.

For example, beauty blogger @毛小星Ryan was invited to be a debater on "奇葩说". In addition to being a beauty blogger, he also has the attributes of an opinion leader and has a large number of loyal fans. In daily content creation, he pays more attention to the combination of hot events, such as taking advantage of current entertainment events and hot microblogs to achieve cross-circle user attention. Mao Xiaoxing Ryan's beauty product conversion has always been impressive.

For brands, the selection of KOLs on Weibo can help brand content take advantage of hot topics. Driven by the potential energy of hot topics, brand content can gain greater exposure and conversion effects.

3. Brands need to return to social media

In 2019, there was a call in the marketing industry to "stop updating Weibo, WeChat and Douyin", but now it seems that this call has been proven to be wrong. In fact, mature social media platforms have become more important for brand marketing.

In today's world where product sales are king, a large number of brands have overlooked the potential of traditional marketing platforms and instead have resorted to social media marketing through pure product promotion. This is actually the problem for a large number of brands, and the reason behind this is that brands still treat product promotion and product sales separately.

At present, the marketing chain of brands and the decision-making chain of consumers have been shortened. "Product promotion-promotion-conversion" can be quickly realized with the help of digital infrastructure. Therefore, product promotion and conversion can no longer be considered separately. Brands should explore the value of promotion in social media communication and form a full marketing chain. Weibo, as a national topic square, and WeChat, as a circle of friends scene, will always be the core position of brand marketing.

In fact, the potential of mature social media to promote sales has gradually been noticed by leading brands. According to official data from Weibo, the number of influencers who opened Weibo stores in 2022 has reached 1.17 million, the number of blog posts promoting sales has increased by 34%, the measurable GMV has increased by 24%, and the number of influencers with GMV of 1 million has increased by 14%.

It can be seen that the potential of platforms such as Weibo to promote products and sell goods is being continuously explored and released. Whether it is the promotion rate within the site or the conversion rate outside the site, tangible results can be seen, and this may also become a major bonus for brand marketing.

Author: Zheng Zhuoran WeChat public account: Spreading Gymnastics