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Amid the meteoric rise of short-form video and live-streaming platforms, KOL marketing has turned from a nice-to-have to an essential for all digital advertisers looking for brand recognition and a boost in user traffic. Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) have a deep grasp of content, their audience and wield significant influence, particularly when it comes to product recommendations. Put simply, product recommendations now play a crucial role in social media and are essentially a social interaction where internet users share their shopping experiences and recommended products. As KOL marketing gains traction, a growing number of brands are spending the bulk of their marketing dollars on these influencers.
Equipped with a strong understanding of creatives and a wide network of KOLs, Nativex provides brands in online services and consumer goods, among other sectors, with a one-stop KOL marketing solution that is driven by results, powered by expertise, and geared toward growth. Nativex’s years of experience in performance marketing have been acknowledged in a wide range of sectors, especially in gaming and non-gaming apps, eCommerce and brand advertisers.
Recently, Nativex helped the matchmaking app, Yidui, expand beyond its core audience and drive high-quality conversions through Douyin KOLs.
Yidui is a leading video matchmaking platform in China that allows strangers to interact through real-time videos, voices and text messages for romantic purposes. It offers its more than 100 million users a whole new dating experience that covers a variety of scenarios. It targets the younger generation in small towns, who have a limited circle of acquaintances, less pressure from work, and more time for themselves.
The right KOLs for the right niche
Yidui’s target users are scattered widely across China’s tier 3 and lower cities and rural areas. Part of the core strategy was to build a portfolio of up-and-coming creators that focus on rural life and whose followers fit the profile of Yidui’s target users.
Utilizing Douyin’s Rural Content-Creators
Recently, agricultural content creators have started gravitating towards short-form video app Douyin as a way to give big-city viewers a glimpse into everyday rural life in China. The genre has become so popular that in August 2020, Douyin launched an RMB 1.2 billion ($190 million) program to support these creators in hopes of attracting more users to Douyin, and to answer the government’s call to help alleviate poverty in rural areas. The program provided creators in impoverished rural areas with training and a boost in user traffic, among other privileges.
In addition to basic criteria such as the demographics of their follower base and brand image, Nativex also looked at the KOL’s commercial performance and the quality of its content. Each KOL has a specific purpose within the campaign where their impact will be most widely felt. Whereas top and mid-tier KOLs are able to wield platform-wide influence, lower-tier accounts have higher engagement and activation rates.
Through this strategy, Nativex built a KOL portfolio comprised of top-tier, mid-tier, and low-tier creators each with a specific goal in mind. The top-tier creators were tasked with building hype through brand awareness, the mid-tier to engage and educate users, while low-tier creators helped expand beyond existing user groups. As a result, Nativex was able to gain high impressions and quickly convert.
CAASdata classifies KOLs on major Chinese short video platforms (excluding Bilibili) as follows: top-tier accounts, with 3-10 million followers (2.51% of all KOLs); mid-tier accounts, with 1-3 million followers (10.88% of all KOLs); low-tier accounts, with 0.3-1 million followers (31.63% of all KOLs); super top accounts, with over 10 million followers (0.38% of all KOLs).
Relevant co-created content
Video production and style proved to be an important factor of our design and marketing strategy as each influencer will have a specific tone that resonates with their audience. As each KOL is different, Nativex designed marketing messages tailored to individual KOLs to ensure they would match life in lower-tier cities and rural areas and resonate with the target viewers.
Take the creator @小表妹乐乐 (XiaobiaomeiLeLe), for example. XiaobiaomeiLeLe positions herself as a vlogger who records outdoor rural life and provides viewers with an immersive experience into country life. In a fishing video used as part of the promotion, she presented Yidui’s selling points through a casual dialogue and amassed nearly 100,000 likes and over 1,000 comments.
In addition to reviewing scripts, determining themes, and supplying KOLs with ideation, Nativex also created top comments to boost conversions.
Timely data-driven marketing strategy
To expand their advertising reach through brand awareness, advertisers need to consider how much user acquisition can be generated. For that reason, reporting and analysis needs to be developed on a daily basis and include metrics such as conversion, audience reach, content quality, marketing impact, and consumer opinions.
What’s needed to succeed in KOL marketing:
- A KOL asset library with a complete tag system
- Data monitoring that spans each KOL marketing touchpoint
- The ability to incorporate industry/pop-culture trends into creative content
- The ability to govern every aspect of the project from timeline to budget
Nativex was named one of the best ad networks of 2021 and won the Ocean Engine Awards at its 2022·ONE conference. The award recognizes companies, MCNs, agencies, and other ecosystem partners that have had a stellar performance in marketing and operations over the past year.
Nativex has helped countless online service providers and e-commerce companies in China and across the globe realize the opportunities and returns of KOL marketing. Backed by a global network of KOLs and media platforms, Nativex has blazed a new trail in KOL marketing where advertisers can pinpoint target users, engineer trends and grow beyond their core audience.
How Nativex can take your influencer campaigns to the next level
Understanding and navigating the influencer market across regions and verticals is a significant challenge for most brands and advertisers. This is why our influencer marketing solutions can help our partners save time and resources, while at the same time maximizing their campaign ROI around the world.
With a strong influencer marketing team working across 10+ verticals including gaming, e-commerce, beauty, and more, Nativex has the skills and resources to run high-quality influencer campaigns tailored to your needs.
Our one-stop solutions are data-driven and results-oriented. Whether you’re looking for short, mid, or long-term goals, we believe we can take your campaigns to the next level, so contact the Nativex team today and you can be the next success story.