Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) are influencers who play a vital role in shaping public opinion and driving sales. They are thought leaders whose opinions and recommendations significantly influence their followers.
They are influential individuals who influence their peers through recommendations or endorsements. KOL Marketing helps businesses gain access to a new audience and build trust, loyalty and credibility with customers.
A key opinion leader is someone who has strong opinions about something and communicates them on behalf of other people. They often serve as sources of information for other people and pass along messages from marketers and brands they respect.
Key opinion leaders (KOLs) work for your company, helping you sell your product or service to other customers. KOLs may be bloggers, journalists, business owners, consultants, etc. They typically create original content about your industry, which helps generate traffic to your site.
As such, they have immense social power and influence over other consumers. Their opinions drive the buying decisions of countless individuals. In 2017, these influential voices generated $2 trillion worth of retail purchases.
This year, KOL Marketing has become an increasing focus for marketers and brands alike. More companies are now understanding its importance in order to reach today’s digitally savvy customers. According to recent studies, 90% of buyers base their purchase decisions on recommendations from friends and family.
Benefits of KOL Marketing
There are several reasons why you might want to use KOL marketing – but here are three big ones:
1) Increase your reach:
By reaching out to influencers, you can boost your followers and potential customers. You can even start conversations with people who wouldn't otherwise follow your brand. If done correctly, you could end up boosting your following by 10x or more.
2) Helps to create trust:
KOL marketing is all about trust as its existence is based on the trust of key opinion leaders. They believe in their recommendations and actions then companies who advertise their products with any celebrities. It is their trust in that person that leads to trusting what they claim and consider the product worthwhile.
3) Audience connection:
Kol marketing helps with strong audience connection if connected with the right kol marketer. They are trusted by their audience therefore influence the consumers behavior.
Four Step Approach:
a) Objective setting:
Approach to objective setting begins by identifying what is important to your business. This allows us to understand the objectives you want to achieve through online marketing. It defines your overall strategy, sets out key metrics and benchmarks against which to measure success and ensures a clear alignment between your digital investment planning and your existing corporate strategies.
b) KOL selection:
Selecting key influencers starts by identifying who your target audience is, what they like doing, where they hang out online, and what products and services appeal most to them. Then, it’s important to know which social media platforms work best for reaching this specific audience. This will depend on several factors including the nature of your business.
c) KOL engagement:
KOL marketing is not just restricted to social media; it encompasses everything from websites, blogs, email campaigns and mobile apps.
KOL marketing has become one of the most effective ways to promote products or services online. It's not just about getting people to know who you are and what you offer; it's about engaging them emotionally so they'll want to hear from you again and again. And, once you've got their attention, you still need to figure out how best to communicate with them.
The first step in this process is understanding where they're coming from and what makes them tick. Then, you need to discover whether or not they'd benefit from your product or service. Once you've determined that they would, then you can begin to engage and build trust by providing great content, quality customer service, and offering incentives like discounts or freebies. Finally, you can close the deal by delivering exceptional experiences and earning their loyalty through word-of-mouth recommendations.
d) Monitoring:
Monitor your progress through online tools. Using Google Analytics will give you the best insight into where your traffic comes from and what people are searching for online. This will allow you to focus your marketing efforts to reach specific audiences by ensuring your website is optimized for keywords. If you know who your target audience is, then this step will ensure that they find you rather than another company trying to outrank you in search engine results.
Types of KOL Marketing
1) Influncer:
Influencer is the term for someone who uses his or her personal influence to market a product. An influencer will usually share a post about a product he/she has recently reviewed, tested, bought, borrowed, or just loved. The goal of influencers is to create excitement around a product and entice other people into buying it. Influencers may be bloggers, vloggers, Instagrammers, YouTube personalities, Facebook pages, Twitter users, etc.
2) Innovator:
An innovator is someone who has taken initiative to create something new, unique, or different from what already exists. Innovation does not always mean progress. Sometimes innovation means just changing things around a little bit. The key thing about innovation is that it creates change.
3) Marketer:
A KOL marketer is someone who creates and/or executes a marketing plan for a business. They use KOL marketing strategies to increase sales, gain new customers, and retain current ones. The goal of all marketers is to find ways to connect the company’s product or service with its target audience.
5 steps to creating a successful KOL marketing campaign
To create a successful KOL Campaign, here are some tips:
1. Research your niche, create a plan for how you want to market your company and what your goals are.
2. Create content that adds value to your audience lives.
3. Build relationships to develop trust.
4. Grow your business starting with your close networks approach KOI with clear vision, offer and pay attention to the competition.
5. Get feedback, measure everything and if you don't measure things then you won't know whether they worked or failed.
Example of KOL marketing
There is no doubt that Coca Cola, McDonalds, Nike, and Apple are some of the biggest names when it comes to marketing, and they all use KOL to generate customer engagement.
Let’s look at some of these brilliant examples.
Consider one statement coming from Elon Musk that can influence people to invest their money in a share.
So what is that?
That’s KOL marketing because people trust him and his opinion matters to them, and it influences them more than any ads or any other campaigns. According to stats 75%of customers' decisions are influenced by word of mouth KOL influencers. That’s the power of KOL!
Another one, companies who want to market their products and services online will look for influential KOLs who are leading in their niches.
For example, an e-learning platform that wants to sell their courses will look for KOL who is leading in that particular niche. Their recommendation will influence their consumers behavior, which influences others' behavior, which influences sales.
As a result, companies who wish to sell courses on Udemy, for example, will seek out people who are leaders in these groups and ask them to endorse their course. Because their endorsement will influence their behavior.
This strategy involves building real relationships with target audiences through social media platforms. The aim of this strategy is to build brand awareness and increase brand loyalty. It relies heavily on being able to connect with followers online and encourage conversations between brands and consumers.