In the interconnected media environment, young Chinese consumers tend to spend a massive amount of time searching for Influencer/Key opinion leader (KOL)s' product recommendations via social media for their purchase decisions. In 2018, 43% female and 36.6% male Chinese consumers' fashion purchases were influenced by KOLs' contents on social media platforms respectively. Therefore, our team advises clients to include KOL marketing in the brand reputation building strategy, to spread the 'word of mouth' and build reputation effectively in social networks.
In this article, our team would explain the reasons why KOL marketing has a great impact on young Chinese consumers buying behaviour. Then, we would suggest valuable social media platforms to practice KOL marketing and advice for brands and marketers to implement KOL marketing strategies as the new source of 'word of mouth' properly.
Influencer/KOL marketing is a vast and particularly prevalent phenomenon in China because of the convergence between social media and e-commerce. E-commerce platforms like Taobao and JD.com are starting to integrate social features like RED (Xiaohongshu/Little Red Book) and Weibo to develop their e-commerce functions. These developments provide KOLs with an integrated environment to establish a reputation as the purchase guide through posting their professional knowledge with interactive contents related to their specialized industries.
The social eCommerce phenomenon has empowered KOLs to impact young Chinese consumers' buying decisions from product discovery to purchase transactions, leading to rapidly growing sales conversion rates, resulting in eCommerce profit growth.
Therefore, to help you understand the significant influence of KOL marketing in consumers’ buying behaviours and its causes, this article will explain this phenomenon with the introduction of two primary social media platforms that are suitable to establish KOL marketing, then list out the key considerations before implementing such strategy and summarize the benefits of it.
4 main reasons why KOL marketing influences young Chinese consumers' buying behaviour
1. Product Buying Patterns
Young Chinese consumers frequently purchase luxury goods, especially fashion accessories or beauty products, which calls for more intensive product research and consideration. The relatively higher prices and the potential sunk cost of making the wrong decisions urge consumers to consider the KOLs’ reliable recommendation during the product discovery and research phase. Hence, KOLs play a critical role in consumers' buying journeys with their opinions, which help screen the most suitable products.
2. Professional, Personalized and Creative User-generated Content
KOLs have built their reputation as products experts via social platforms. Within the highly connected retail ecosystem, they are perceived as crucial professional product opinion leaders due to their valuable knowledge and testimonials regarding brand products. Therefore, consumers respect the KOLs contents in discovering their desired products, so they gradually rely on them for personalized buying recommendations. Influencer marketing is highly effective in implementing a brand marketing strategy. The reputation of the KOLs will drive consumers' attention towards the brand product, and the impact of highly respected KOLs opinions could lead to a high conversion rate.
3. Psychological factors
Most young Chinese consumers are not independent-minded, so they would feel more secure in digesting the KOLs recommendations and receiving valid product information. KOLs contents could give consumers more elaborated details about the products and authentic reasons to buy them
4. Experiential consumption
Displaying products and using them in pictures and videos could effectively build genuine connections with consumers. Interactive contents created by KOLs could make consumers feel more involved when they engage with the contents, such as liking and commenting on the live stream. Therefore, KOLs marketing enables a more engaging buying experience which raises consumers brand awareness
2 valuable social media platforms for Influencer/KOL marketing
Moreover, research showed that young customers have a high interest in creative brand promotional content, and they tend to use two or more platforms for purchase recommendations. Integrated product information from different KOLs via different channels is in demand. We introduce RED and Taobao Live Streaming as the two major platforms for KOL marketing.
RED
RED (Xiaohongshu/Little Red Book) is the most influential social media platform for KOLs marketing in the fashion and beauty fields because the e-commerce function is embedded within a social media platform. Users can easily search for professional recommendations from KOLs on RED and gain required information to make purchases in the in-app e-commerce page. Also, it enables KOLs to provide authentic testimonials with visual and audio features.
Features such as product linkage, video creation and the lucky draw can encourage the instant interactions between audience and KOLs. With the in-app eCommerce page, KOLs could successfully promote the brand and boost the sales conversion rates. As a result, these convenient features make most young Chinese customers rely heavily on searching for fashion information via RED.
For filtering KOLs marketing contents on the platform efficiently, RED's label function classifies KOLs who have a firm purpose of cooperating with a particular brand to sell products. Customers could use this function to find the specific KOLs generated contents to get genuine recommendations, which further attract customers to trust and rely on RED's KOLs contents.
Taobao Live Streaming
Taobao is a powerful e-commerce platform for KOLs marketing, especially in the fashion field. Apart from the RED's advantages, Taobao live streaming is an integrated channel that provides services from product-advertising to selling. Consumers can complete their buying journey from information searching to choosing the right products on one single platform. Based on the different consumers' requirements, online shopping platforms' choice was influenced by the convenience of social media functions, the quality of KOLs contents, and quantity of KOLs available on those platforms. Compared to Taobao Live Streaming, other social media platforms cannot provide all the above advantages to young customers.
Recommendation for brands and marketers on KOL Marketing Implementation
Brand marketers would need to note that
Working with professional and qualified Key Opinion Leaders who could brainstorm creative ideas is more effective regarding the marketing contents to attract more followers
Ensuring the validity of KOLs to avoid misleading messages sent to potential consumers is important: brand marketers would need to encourage KOLs to gain product-related knowledge to become more dependable for future consumers
Experiential consumption has become young Chinese consumers' online buying preference: KOLs marketing can integrate multi-sensory promotions into their content to interact with consumers and use the most influential social media platforms like RED, Taobao live streaming to attract target customers from a diverse range of industries
Combining multiple social media platforms in their marketing campaigns is an integral approach to reach the most customers who have frequently been using two or more social media channels.
Adding labels onto high-quality KOLs contents for customers to efficiently distinguish them and then communicate with KOLs about the product reviews to build trust in the brand
KOL Marketing as the New ‘Word of Mouth’
In conclusion, influencer/KOL marketing is necessary, as it satisfies Chinese customers' needs for professional brand recommendations and purchase solutions with the rise of eCommerce and social media platforms integration in the Chinese market.
Therefore, as the new source of 'word of mouth', influence/KOL marketing effectively targets the mass audience on social media and eCommerce platforms by precisely disseminating the selling point of products. The interactive contents generated by KOLs also encourage a higher customer engagement rate and help the brand build a relationship with consumers. Thus, KOL marketing can help brands achieve a high return on marketing investment with lower costs in the Chinese online social eCommerce market. MediaMo can provide you with professional solutions from understanding and adopting early KOL strategies, selecting the most matchable platform, and delivering shareable content throughout the campaign.
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