I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Elijah Whaley for a webinar about KOL marketing in China. As former chief marketing officer of influencer marketing platform PARKLU, Whaley is one of the world’s foremost experts on KOLs, and our discussion ranged from the dos and don’ts of KOL marketing, when and how to include KOLs in your China digital marketing plan, and where the future of KOLs is headed.

Tl;dw (too long; didn’t watch)?

Not a problem. I’ve condensed the entire webinar into four handy posts that answer just about every question you ever wanted to ask about KOL marketing.

In this first post of the series, I’ll cover off the basics: what is a KOL, and when should you be doing KOL marketing.

What is a KOL?

When discussing KOLs (or key opinion leaders) there can be confusion that stems from the variety of terms used to describe them: influencer, blogger, wanghong, etc. But Whaley says this is just semantics – whatever term you choose to describe them, they’re all essentially doing the same thing:

1. Creating social media content that does some combination of the following:

• Shows their expertise in a certain topic
• Gives value to their audience
  
• Is entertaining

2. Using this content to develop a niche audience on that social media platform.

How many followers does a KOL need before they can call themselves a KOL?

Depending on the platform, the number of followers a KOL needs to truly call themselves a KOL can vary widely. On WeChat, for example, you only need to consistently be getting about 2000 views for each piece of content you’re putting out before you can call yourself a micro-KOL. On Weibo and Douyin, however, KOLs need to have at least 200,000 followers before obtaining micro-KOL status.

When should I be doing KOL marketing?

Because of the hype surrounding KOL marketing, brands often want to jump into it as soon as possible. But according to Whaley, KOL marketing should in fact be the last thing you do.

The average Chinese consumer requires 8 touchpoints before making a purchase – twice as many as Western consumers – and KOLs are only one touchpoint on this journey. In order for KOL marketing to be effective, therefore, brands need to make sure all their other touchpoints, such as their store, their localised website, their social media channels, their SEO and so forth, are up to scratch. As Whaley puts it:

This goes double for start-ups, says Whaley. Start-ups must focus on getting proof of concept and market-fit right first, before then looking at generating brand awareness and trust through other channels. That being said, once you’re ready to start investing in KOL marketing, product seeding can be a great place to start.  Consider sending KOLs free product samples – even without paying a fee, you can often get a posting rate of 10–20%.

In our next post on KOL marketing 101, we’ll discuss the effectiveness of KOL marketing and how to pick the right KOL for your brand.