Key opinion leader(KOL) is a popular concept in Chinese business recently. Chinese Key opinion leaders are particularly powerful, which reflected on almost all social media platforms in China, such as Weibo, Tiktok, bilibilibili and Xiaohongshu. This combination of Key opinion leader and e-commerce had brought new development opportunities to many industries.

What is a key opinion leader

Key opinion leader (KOL) is a marketing concept. It is usually defined as a person who has more and more accurate product information, is accepted or trusted by relevant groups, and has an amazing influence on the purchase behavior of this group. They are experts in specific fields. Their followers attach great importance and to what they say, so they can easily influence the discussion in their field.

Compared with more traditional channels, Key opinion leader marketing can bring higher return on investment. Besides, Chinese Key opinion leaders has great influence than what you can image and have a huge impact on a brand’s reputation in China.

There are many types of Key opinion leader, like Li Jiaqi(Austin Li), Luo Yonghao, Li Ziqi. All of them have made great contribution to China’s e-commerce livestreaming.

In the past 3.8 women’s Day pre-sale day, the sales of Austin’s live studio reached 2.825 billion yuan, nearly three times the cumulative sales of Li Jiaqi last two years. On April 1, 2020, Luo Yonghao completed the first show of live delivery, which earned more than 48 million views, which set a record high on Douyin. A nd Li Ziqi has 22 million followers on Weibo, 34 million on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) and 7 million subscribers on YouTube. Although there are only a bit more than 100 videos uploaded, but most of which watched for more than 5 million times.

 5 common cooperation modes with Key opinion leader

1. The brand will send products to Key opinion leader for him tocreate and post articles

This is the most common way of cooperation. After confirming the cooperation with Key opinion leader,Usually, the brand will send products to Key opinion leader. Then Key opinion leader will take pictures or videos, write down or say the feeling of use, and reflect the selling points of the products. To put it simply, Key opinion leader is asked to post information about the cooperative brand, introduce the brand to his fans, and expose and drain.

2. 
   

   Sponsor or Give special editionproducts as gifts to Key opinion leader

The most popular way is product evaluation. The merchant sends the product to Key opinion leader for free, and then invites Key opinion leader to give a recommended trial evaluation. This can bring more product exposure, real person evaluation, and obtain many product publicity materials.

However, brands should pay attention to the value of goods when carrying out such cooperation, and make products high-quality and special. Many Key opinion leaders will spontaneously create content for this.

3. Key opinion leader forwards the content of the brand

This type of cooperation is common in Weibo and Douying. The brand has carefully produced a video advertisement or lottery content. In order to increase the exposure of the video or content, it cooperates with multiple Key opinion leaders to forward and recommend the brand. Multiple accounts drive the fan groups to interact and form the popularity of communication.

4. Commission cooperation

This is also the cooperation mode that many brands expect to try, especially some brands that take sales as the marketing goal. Generally, it can be divided into two modes: pure Commission and exposure fee + commission. In particular, some new brands or brands with small marketing budgets often expect pure Commission cooperation. This cooperation mode requires the brand side to carefully select Key opinion leaders to achieve better results. When selecting bloggers, we should not take “content” as the consideration standard, but know their fan portraits, delivery experience and even their sales ability.

5. Live broadcast cooperation

When it comes to Key opinion leader cooperation, it is inevitable to think of the hot “live broadcasting with goods” in the past two years. The brand can ask the anchor broadcast live on its own account, or invite the anchor or Key opinion leader to its own live broadcasting room to interact and activate the atmosphere as participating guests.

Some points must be paid attention to, for example: the promotion price is too low, which is not conducive to brand building; Don’t sacrifice your “ace product”; The anchor’s carrying capacity should be deeply considered.

How to contact Key opinion leader

In the process of looking for KOLs, you can often look for the following sources.

1) Existing relationship/platform

You can filter in your own Wechat Moments and community, and you can also filter in your own website, forum, and applications. This source is the easiest source for KOL discovery

2) Competing products

Mining from competing products is an accurate and targeted source of KOLs, but you must choose carefully to reduce your own legal and public relations risks. At the same time, community operators should also try their best to serve these KOLs, because their loyalty is low. If the service of community operators is not good, these KOLs may leave at any time.

3) Social platform

Major social platforms are a relatively mainstream way to find KOLs, especially on platforms with KOLs as the core, such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu, where KOLs can be easily found.