After KOLs, Let’s Get to Know KOCs
Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) become a trending topic years ago, but the influencer trend doesn’t stop there. Introducing KOCs (Key Opinion Customers)!
In China, influencer has its own term, KOL — Key Opinion Leader. Ever since its introduction, KOLs have been essential parts of various brand campaigns. These KOLs, be it singers, actors, or online personalities, advertise products in partnership with those brands. Thanks to them, plenty of businesses have achieved overwhelming success. Coupled with the rapid growth of China’s social media, the KOLs have thrived and maintained their online supremacy.
However, in the midst of the country’s fast-paced market and competitive e-commerce industry, a new form of influencer emerged and is claimed to be more productive in building a brand’s image.
Enter, KOC (Key Opinion Customer). What are they and how do they differ from KOL?
KOC: Brief Introduction
Key Opinion Customers are basically your everyday consumers. Their primary value lies in their relatability and trustworthiness. KOCs are experts when it comes to product testing and giving their honest opinions as well as recommendations regarding the said products. As such, KOCs are especially good at utilizing consumer reviews. For Chinese consumers who have been bombarded with all sorts of advertisement on a daily basis, this raw approach is extremely appealing and influential in affecting their purchasing decisions.
How did they start?
China’s social media landscape is quite different from its western counterpart. Its online community has long embraced social commerce as part of their digital lifestyle, and as such, serves as a better foundation for KOCs.
For instance, China’s Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu), the go-to-platform for product reviews and recommendations in China, has long ranked posts based on the account’s content quality instead of the number of followers. As a result, users are encouraged to produce high-quality, authentic, and reliable content, which is the essence of KOCs.
KOC vs KOL: The Difference
While both KOCs and KOLs are influential, there are still several differences between the two. For one, KOLs in collaboration with certain brands are paid to advertise specific products or brands, whereas KOCs are regular consumers who decide which products or brands they want to try, review, and recommend.
Second, KOLs can range from micro-KOLs to mega-KOLs, depending on the number of their followers. Most of the time, their value depends on the number of their followers. The value of KOCs, meanwhile, is irrelevant to the number of their fans and instead depends on their credibility as reviewers.
Third, many of the KOLs are in brand partnerships, thus the messages they conveyed to their fans are often based on the customized plan with the brands they represent. On the contrary, KOCs are acknowledged as independent reviewers, and therefore, they are responsible for formulating their own opinions about certain products or brands before conveying it to their followers.
Why KOCs?
Thanks to the popularity of KOLs in China, the cost of paying a KOL to promote a product is often too expensive. Furthermore, as the value of KOLs hinged on the number of their followers, the risk of KOLs resorting to buy fake followers and fake views to meet KPIs is quite high. This could affect KOLs’ reliability and eventually, customers’ confidence.
Moreover, the idea that commercially driven recommendations cannot be identified by regular consumers is quite naive for today’s society. Consumer reviews have long been noted as a critical tool to influence purchases and to establish a stronger brand image and authority. This is exactly where KOCs triumphed. Beyond that, KOCs also serves as a bridge to improve a brand’s CRM strategy, as their roles generally focus on sales and customer service.
KOC Marketing: Getting Started
While it is impossible to completely eliminate the role of KOLs in China’s e-commerce industry, KOC influencers are for sure here to stay.
For brands and marketers looking to leverage the power of KOCs, here are some of the strategies you could apply:
Free products
Sending complimentary gifts is one of the common strategies in KOL marketing, and it can also be applied to KOC marketing. You could send “free” or pre-released products to selected KOCs so they could review them in exchange for free brand exposure. However, you need to make sure that the KOCs remain authentic in their opinions.
Hashtags
You could come up with unique and creative hashtags or themes to be used alongside your products in your campaign. KOCs who reviewed your products could then utilize the same hashtags to increase the chance of their posts going viral online, thus increasing your brand’s visibility.
Online community
Creating a community for the KOCs where they can voice their opinions and engage with you and other consumers directly is especially effective to collect valuable data to improve your products and nurture brand loyalty.
Partnership
It’s always good to be ahead of the game by going into collaboration with KOCs, who matched your brand’s image. As such, you could encourage them to continue with product exposure and product trending even after the completion of your campaign.
Wrapping Up
KOCs might be the latest trend in influencer marketing, but smart marketers know to always diversify their marketing strategies. Regardless of KOLs or KOCs, the formula is always the right mixture of relevant influencers, engaged audiences, positive brand messages, and responsive channels.
Do you also consider implementing KOC marketing in your business?
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