Content Marketing: Recommendation and Endorsement by KOP

In 2022, 86% of users will go to different content communities to search for relevant product guides before placing an order to reduce risks. Nowadays, users are becoming more and more cautious before placing an order, especially when purchasing high-priced products, they will repeatedly compare on multiple platforms. A cruel reality is that the decision-making link of consumers has become longer. So how should brands and merchants solve the problem of "recommended marketing is difficult and ineffective" on the platform? In the past two years, a new trend of content marketing has emerged: KOP (Key Opinion Professional) professional opinion leader. Many new brands are using KOP to "plant grass", for example: Dreame, which earns 4 billion a year, has a core strategy of KOP, and some new brands rely on this content marketing method to become the industry's leading brand. .....What exactly is a KOP? How can brand merchants use KOP to do content marketing well? Today's article will talk about these two issues.

What are KOPs?

The full name of KOP is Key Opinion Professional, and the Chinese translation is professional opinion leader. The source of this concept, similar to KOC, is derived from KOL, but it is singled out because it plays a completely different role in content marketing. In terms of commonality, all three are experts or organizations who are keen to share content on social media. They all have many fans, and the output content can affect the "cognition" and "decision-making" of some people. However, unlike KOL and KOC, the core of KOP is Professional, emphasizing that professionals do professional things and share professional content. Specifically, what is the difference between KOP and KOC and KOL?

1) "Expert" in the Internet age

In all walks of life, there are professionals who are immersed in the industry and specialize in a certain skill. They were relatively unknown in the past, but in the Internet age, they stand out with their solid professional knowledge and background. Share professional knowledge to the public through pictures, texts or videos, and get the love of a large number of fans. This group of people is the so-called KOP.

Compared with KOL and KOC, KOP has the following identity characteristics:

① Have a high degree of education

② Rich working experience

③ Deeply develop original content in professional vertical fields such as health, technology, engineering, and humanities

In addition, KOP does not have to be a specific person, it can also be an institution. Through these characteristics, it can be found that some top talents who are active on different platforms belong to this category. KOP can describe them as "expert" in the Internet age.

2) Share vertical content with user thinking

The content produced by KOL is mainly based on opinion-based output, with a wide range of content and suitable personality;

KOC publishes mostly personal experiential content, which is often strongly subjective and affected by individual factors;

KOP has a rich experience and knowledge system. The content they produce is relatively vertical and professional, and usually has user thinking (vivid and interesting content).

Therefore, the content of KOP is dominated by "science popularization", often targeting a certain problem, starting from the underlying logic, and dismantling the essence and principles of things. The same is recommended cosmetics, KOL emphasizes the same style as Internet celebrities, KOC focuses on sharing consumer experience, and KOP will analyze from a professional perspective, the formula, ingredients, and whitening principle of cosmetics, to solve doubts for fans.

3) Attract circle users

In terms of fan audience, the three also have significant differences.

Because KOP is good at vertical fields and convincing content, it can often radiate core users and interested users in a certain circle. KOLs attract pan-user groups, usually with a large fan base. Fans are often attracted by personal design or interesting content, and the interaction with KOL is relatively one-way and far away.

KOC usually has a small number of fans (less than 50,000 fans), and the difference between them and amateurs is relatively vague. The relationship with fans is like friends on the Internet. They often actively interact with fans and are very close to users.

How can brands rely on KOP to do content marketing well?

Through the previous content, we can already perceive that the influence of KOP is gradually expanding, and consumers are increasingly recognizing the grass-planting content of this group of experts. Therefore, many brands also regard KOP as a "weapon" to promote business growth. Many brands have already enjoyed the dividends of KOP content marketing, let’s take a look at how they do it.

1) Single KOP content marketing methodology

Have you ever heard of bone-conduction headphones? This is a new category in the field of electronic products in recent years. As a new product category, consumers' awareness of bone conduction earphones needs to be improved, and popular science education is needed to improve category awareness. Here's a look at how Mojawa headphones, the leading brand in this field, do:

The first step is to create a high-quality content model through multi-scenario KOP content testing.

Mojawa Headphones regards Zhihu as the main content marketing front. During the period from June to October 2022, it will conduct content tests on the evaluation scene, grass planting scene, and festival scene. A blockbuster content.

Through content testing in different scenarios, Mojawa found that users have 4 concerns about bone conduction headphones: 1. Suggestions for purchasing; 2. Product evaluation; 3. Characteristics of ear health needs; 4. Outdoor sports scene needs.

Around these 4 points, they built a high-quality content model, produced a large number of KOP content, and produced a large number of popular articles. For example, "Are Bone Conduction Headphones Really More Expensive?" A picture teaches you how to choose sports earphones” won 1,501 user favorites, and once squeezed into the eighth place on Zhihu’s hot list. Another KOP-produced piece, Are Bone Conduction Headphones Good for Sports Parties? Is the recently popular Mojawa MOJO2 worth buying? "Also received hundreds of user likes and favorites.

The second step is to increase the flow and increase volume of the brand through the duplication of explosive articles.

After having a high-quality content model, Mojawa continued to increase the budget for popular content and concentrated on investing in 20 highly praised content in one go, with a total of nearly 300 pieces of content released.

From the launch of Zhihu in June to October, the brand awareness of Mojawa has grown rapidly. By November of the same year, the Mojawa brand’s search interest in Zhihu had increased by 588% year-on-year, becoming the most vocal brand under the topic of bone conduction headphones, accounting for 25% of the site-wide exposure share.

The third step is to centralize the delivery of nodes and convert traffic into sales through external links.

After gaining traffic through content marketing, Mojawa increased his content budget while placing an external link on Tmall on Zhihu, and converted the huge amount of traffic into sales through preferential benefits.

In November 2022, Mojawa has become the third best-selling bone conduction headset on Tmall. By March of this year, Mojawa became the second best-selling brand, achieving a breakthrough from 0 to a leading brand in the industry. Currently, the omni-channel sales of MOJO2, Mojawa’s flagship headset, exceed 5 million yuan.

2) KOP+KOL+KOC combination boxing, linkage multi-platform content marketing

Through the above cases, it can also be found that KOP does not actually have an independent role in marketing and delivery.

Many brands still favor the combination of KOP+KOL+KOC to achieve multi-platform linkage.

Another case is the smart home appliance brand Dreame Technology, which has annual sales of more than 4 billion yuan. They are representatives of content marketing on the entire network. Their content on different platforms has obvious differences in focus.

In Zhihu, they mainly use KOP to output professional content. On the one hand, the Zhihu official launched topic discussions: "Why do more and more people start to pay attention to sweepers", and "What do you think about the new X10 series of sweeping machines of the year, is it worth starting in 2022?". The two topics attracted 255,000 and 485,000 views respectively.

On the other hand, invite top KOPs to produce professional content with authoritative and trustworthy attributes. For example, @SunLau, an excellent answerer in the home furnishing field, analyzed the characteristics of Chaimi's latest sweeping robot from the perspective of robot evolution speed, pain points and evaluation of sweeping robots, and output professional grass-planting content.

In Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili, the content marketing of Chaimi is more inclined to link with KOL and KOC. For example, cooperate with @陈抱一, the UP master of technology and home furnishing at Station B. To demonstrate the cleaning ability of the sweeping robot, @陈抱一 used soy sauce to draw a picture of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" on the floor. After two days of air drying, it was cleaned with the sweeping robot of Dreame. In the end, this video drove millions of views.

Obviously, in content marketing, the function of KOP is to set the tone for the product and emphasize the product power of the brand. KOL and KOC tend to pay more attention to the personal influence and experience of bloggers. The operator believes that in large-scale content marketing planning, the three are indispensable, so the combined marketing of KOP+KOL+KOC may be more suitable for most brands.

For now, KOP is still a relatively new concept. This model will be valued by content marketing practitioners and accepted by users. In essence, the content of various platforms is uneven, and users need truly professional science and knowledge to endorse consumption. In addition to experience-based delivery (KOC) and influence delivery (KOL), a large number of consumers are more eager for recommendations and endorsements from professional opinion leaders.